Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps

When I was about 10 years old or not much older, my father started taking me on amazing backpacking trips to Yosemite, Mokelumne Wilderness, Tuolumne Meadows, Mount Conness and the Conness Glacier, and many other awe-inspiring destinations in the Sierras.

We would pack very light on these trips, and usually stop by the iconic Redwood Trading Post to stock up on essential supplies that were difficult to find anywhere else. Those visits to the Redwood Trading Post are themselves worthy of several paragraphs of description, with their amazing rack of backpacking and survival books by the door and their rows and rows of military knives and unit patches behind the counter.

One essential item we would always take on a backpacking trip was a tiny bottle of Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 soap, in a bottle that looked exactly like the 32 ounce (one-quart) bottle pictured above, but about ten times smaller (about the size of your thumb or a little larger and containing perhaps four to six fluid ounces).

Peppermint was perhaps the only option back then (in fact, on those old labels, it apparently used to declare that: "Peppermint is nature's own unsurpassed fragrant Deodorant!"). In any event, it was the flavor we always took, and it came with the same fascinating and famous labels that are still on the bottles today, complete with instructions for the proper dilution to use for washing your camp dishes, washing your hair, washing your clothes, brushing your teeth, or even cleaning the fruit spray off of your fruits and vegetables!

I was of course fascinated by the densely-packed Moral ABC's printed on every bottle, and my Dad and I would laugh together at the quirky syntax that Dr. Bronner made famous on his tiny blue labels.

But there is no doubt Dr. Bronner believed very strongly what he was conveying in the labels on his versatile soaps. Here's one example: "Free Speech is man's only weapon against half-truth, that denies free speech to smear - slay - slander - tax - enslave. Full-truth, our only God, unites all mankind brave, if 10 men guard free-speech, brave!"

The timeline of Dr. Bronner's story posted on the Dr. Bronner's website today notes that Dr. Bronner began printing the messages and attaching them to the soap bottles early in the 1950s when he was urgently lecturing in Pershing Square in Los Angeles, convinced that the world needed to unite before it destroyed itself, but frustrated that people were buying the soap that he sold at the lectures and leaving without hearing his talk.

Dr. Bronner's message was -- and is -- that humanity needed to recognize how vanishingly trivial are their differences in the face of the stunning celestial majesty of Creation, according to the website (and any reading of his messages on the labels of his soaps).

For Emil Bronner, who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1929, these were no mere intellectual conceits -- they were urgent and personal. His parents were both murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In the 1940s, before he even began his soap business in 1948, he was lecturing on the need for unity "across ethnic and faith traditions, and about the dangers of Communism alongside Fascism," according to the Dr. Bronner's website.

For his efforts, Emil Bronner was actually arrested in 1947 for speaking without a permit at the University of Chicago, and committed to an insane asylum at Elgin, Illinois. He was involuntarily exposed to shock treatments and forced labor but escaped (on his third attempt) without a lobotomy. For a moving description of that part of his life given by his son Ralph Bronner, see the video below.



Dr. Bronner made his way to Los Angeles to avoid being recaptured in Illinois, and started his soap business after an initial foray into the nascent world of health-food (he made Dr. Bronner's Mineral Salt and Dr. Bronner's Mineral Bouillon before salt). He started his soap business in 1948, only a few years before the Redwood Trading Post (another family business) started much farther to the north in 1952.

Dr. Bronner's soap became a huge counterculture success among people who were suspicious of the chemicals in other products during the 1960s and 1970s. These concerns are still valid today -- we all know that our skin is the largest organ in the body, and that we shouldn't put on our skin anything we wouldn't be willing to ingest through our mouth. In fact, chemicals rubbed on the skin may be more dangerous than those swallowed through our mouths because the skin enables direct absorption into the bloodstream, while our digestive tract has systems for filtering out poisons and toxins and other harmful substances.

Many skincare, shaving products, lotions and hair products sold to unsuspecting consumers today contain chemicals and substances such as methylisothiozolinone (MIT) and numerous forms of parabens (such as methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben), as well as petroleum bases. All of these substances have been alleged to be harmful in various ways to human health, and some studies appear to back up these fears (MIT, for instance, appears to be lethal to human neurons, according to more than one study).

With all the attention that we pay to what we put in our diet, we might want to consider looking into what we rub on our skin every day as well.

While the following is a bit of a tangent, it is worth pointing out that Dr. Bronner's soap is not only useful for washing your mess kit when you go backpacking, but it is also a fantastic soap for use back home in the confines of civilization. Not only that, but chips of bar soap from your Dr. Bronner's bar version soap make great shave soaps to toss into your shave mug when they start to become too thin to use with a washcloth.

When I was in the 82nd Airborne, there was a wily old Sergeant First Class named SFC Williams, who used to take a shave mug in his rucksack even out to the field. It was actually an unbreakable plastic coffee mug, with the "Strike Hold!" crest of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment on it, and he would use a moistened shave brush to create a lather and shave with it out in the field, while everyone else was trying to splash water on their faces with their hands out of a canteen cup and then apply some kind of foamy shaving cream out of a spray can.

Intrigued, I asked him the story behind this novel and old-fashioned method of shaving, and was told that once when he and his wife were going through very tough financial times (the pay we give the NCOs who devote their lives to protecting our freedoms is and was quite shameful, in my personal opinion) he examined every aspect of his budget to see where he could possibly save money. He determined that shaving with soap from a mug was far more economical than spending money on cans of shaving cream every couple of weeks, and so he switched to using a shave mug. He said he also considered switching to a straight razor, which would have been cheaper than using disposable razors, but decided that the risk involved was not worth the potential savings.

Soon enough, I had my own shaving mug (including a plastic coffee mug for taking to the field with a disc of shave soap) and was discovering all the benefits of this forgotten method of applying shaving cream. In addition to saving money (which it certainly did -- a disc of shave soap back then could cost under a dollar, when even the cheapest brands of cans of shaving cream were a couple bucks), it enabled you to heat the shaving water much hotter than you could heat it if you had to apply the water to your face using your fingers. The brush didn't mind if you heated the water to a boil in your canteen cup (or at home with your microwave oven), and by the time you had swirled it around in the shave mug it was cool enough to apply to your own mug but still hot enough to be quite nice. Additionally, the action of the brush helped invigorate your face, make the stubble stand up better, and even gave you a bit of a facewash (which was nice when you were out in the woods for weeks on end, and smearing green grease all over every inch of exposed skin every few hours).

Later, when I was no longer in the Army, I returned to using Dr. Bronner's soaps and stopped buying special discs of shave soap, since Dr. Bronner's works wonderfully for shaving (this is in fact the very first of the uses listed in line 1. of Dr. Bronner's original usage instructions!) Dr. Bronner's soap is well-known for its amazing lathering quality.

Later still, I discovered that SFC Williams could have saved money on razors without risking his jugular by using a straight-razor. As you can see in the video below, it is actually possible to "strop" a safety razor using an old pair of bluejeans.



The method shown in the video above actually works quite well, in spite of the naysayers in the "comments" below the video. Before I discovered this method, I changed out my disposable razor blade every week religiously. With this method, you can easily use the same blade for a year or more (you should splash it with rubbing alcohol after stropping it, which you only have to do every few days).

Critics may point out that I am not the most reliable source for shaving advice, since I now have a beard, but the answer to this is that I was in the US Army Infantry for 11 years of active duty, plus four more years at West Point, so I know a thing or two about having to ensure a good shave every single day.

Others may ask why anyone would go to such trouble. Certainly, if you feel like donating your money to disposable razor manufacturers, go right ahead. But keep in mind that their business model is actually such a well-known way of separating you from your money that it has spawned imitations across a broad swath of other industries, where it is known as the "razor-and-blade model" and is used to describe any business that sells you the supposed main product for next to nothing, in order to get you to buy the consumable accessories on a regular, ongoing basis for the rest of your life (computer printers might be another good example from a different industry).

This description of the wonderful shaving benefits of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps may be a bit of a tangent from the original direction of the post (which is about my warm memories of Dr. Bronner's from my childhood, and its ongoing place in my everyday life, as well as why everyone should carefully consider the ingredients in the products they rub on their skin), but it isn't really too much of a tangent.

The fact is that Dr. Bronner was urgently and personally aware of the danger of descent into barbarism in even the most apparently civilized cultures, and the need to prevent that horrible and very real possibility. He also put his finger on what he felt to be the catalyst for such barbarity: losing sight of the fact that we are all one family -- as he put it, "Whatever unites mankind is better than whatever divides us!"

This is a crucial insight, and one that we have examined together on this blog before, such as here and here, where we saw the horrible results of believing that differences in faith, skin color, or even length of earlobe can (and has) led some to decide that others deserve to lose their property, their freedom, and even their lives. Dr. Bronner experienced the loss of freedom himself over differences in belief (he later blamed the involuntary electrotherapy that he received for his failing eyesight, so he had not only his freedom violated but his body and his possibly his eyesight as well).

He spent his life trying to counteract that hideous tendency which is always lurking beneath the veneer of civilization, ready to bring it down. He understood that the security we enjoy is more fragile than we have been led to believe. He believed this message so urgently that it is still carved into every bar of soap produced by the company he founded: "ALL ONE!"

If only washing away this lingering dark side of the human condition were as easy as working up a good lather with Dr. Bronner's wonderfully therapeutic soap!

The Great Square of Pegasus (and more evidence for ancient contact across the oceans)

The earth continues its progress through its orbit around the sun, and as it does so, it brings forward each star's rising time by about four minutes per night. This has the effect of bringing up all the constellations four minutes earlier each night, of course, and if you have been watching the sky each night at about the same time each evening, you will now notice a distinct change from the beginning of the summer.

The beautiful constellation of the Scorpion is now much further along each evening, and begins to bend down towards the western horizon much earlier each evening at the same time of night that it used to dominate the center of the southern sky (in the northern hemisphere). Similarly, the constellation of Orion is rising earlier each morning: it used to be rising just before sunrise, but now the first stars of Orion begin to break above the eastern horizon as early as 2 am at a latitude of about 35^o north. By the end of September, the first stars of Orion will begin to rise at midnight at the same latitude.

As the sky in the early evening rotates westward, new constellations are now higher in the sky for an observer at 10 pm. One of these is the important landmark of the Great Square of Pegasus, shown above. The Great Square is fairly easy to locate if you can find the constellation of the Swan or Cygnus flying high in the night sky in the band of the Milky Way, and then looking down towards the horizon from Cygnus. To find the Milky Way, one of the easiest ways to begin is to go to the Scorpion again and follow the band of the Milky Way from its origin at the long curving stinger of the Scorpion (it rises between the Scorpion and Sagittarius and arcs across the summer sky, very distinctive and beautiful).

Another way to locate the Great Square of Pegasus is to find the North Star using the pointers on the Big Dipper. Circling the North Star on the other side of the Big Dipper is the "W" shape of the constellation Casseiopeia -- it is quite easy to locate. Using the star at one end of the "W" (the more upright end of the "W" of Casseiopeia, as opposed to the "lazier" side of the "W" which lies down more, as can be seen in the star chart below) you can draw an imaginary line from the North Star through the end of Casseiopeia's "W" and it will lead you right to the Great Square of Pegasus (see the diagram below).

























The Great Square is in a part of the night sky that has fainter constellations, so it stands out quite plainly this time of year.

The square is flanked on either side by the constellation Pisces, which resembles two fish tied together by two long cords that are knotted and form a "V" shape -- see the diagram at the top of this post.

The stars of Pisces are very faint and much more difficult to make out than the stars of the Great Square of Pegasus. However, they are very important to ancient mythology found around the world, as discussed by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in Hamlet's Mill (all of which can now be read online for free at various places on the web, such as here or here, and their diagram of the same Great Square flanked by Pisces can be seen online here).

De Santillana and von Dechend tell us that in ancient Sumeria this astral square was referred to as "l-Iku" and figured prominently in mythology from some of the earliest texts we have from any culture. The authors of Hamlet's Mill explain its significance:

"l-Iku," the Pegasus-square (= alpha beta gamma Pegasi, alpha Andromedae) is, indeed, of the utmost importance, l-Iku representing the fundamental field measure, and Ungnad (Das wiedergefundene Paradies [1923], p. 11) understood the constellation, enclosed by Pisces, for the "Paradise," the primordial field, so to speak. More important, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh (GE 11.57) about his ark, which was, like the apsu, an exact cube: "One iku was its floor space." (Before, 11.31, Ea had ordered Utnapishtim: "Like the apsu thou shalt ceil her.") Remembering what we heard above: "Since the ark disappeared there was a stone in its place . . . which was called foundation stone," e.e., Eben Shetiyyah, that covered the abyss, this cubic ark, the floor space of which was one iku, cannot be without interest for us, the less so, when the gods "raised high the head of Esagila (= l-Iku) equaling Apsu." 435 (Appendix 39).

Thus, the Great Square enclosed by Pisces appears to represent both the Paradise field and also the ark (Utnapishtim is the Sumerian / Babylonian Noah).

Together with the Great Square, the two fish form an important motif in art from around the world. The square is often depicted as a gameboard, with two fish on either side. It is interesting that in Norse mythology the Aesir gods are often described playing chess in the paradisical field, using golden chessmen -- this probably refers to the same important square.

Note how often the artistic pattern of a square -- either depicted as a gameboard or as a square or parallelogram with cross-hatching reminiscent of a chess- or checkerboard -- appears in art from around the world, accompanied by two fish, or one creature with two fish-tails, or even two turtles arranged in similar angles to the fish of Pisces, their intersecting bodies cross-hatched like a chessboard. You can see them for yourself in the following images shown in Hamlet's Mill: (set one, set two, set three).

Note that the images above are all very similar -- two water creatures and a square "gameboard" pattern being common to each -- and yet some are from ancient Egypt, some are from Africa, one is from Sumatra in Indonesia, and one is from the New World. This recurrence is remarkable, and cannot be simply wished away by isolationists (who do not believe in ancient contact across the oceans between cultures) or put down to some kind of "collective unconscious."

Isolationists must fall back on the explanation that somehow the stars of the Great Square and the surrounding stars of Pisces are interpreted the same way by cultures that never came into contact with one another at all.

This explanation is ridiculous to anyone who goes out and looks at the stars for himself -- while the square would probably suggest itself to anyone from nearly any culture, there is nothing about it that inherently suggests a chessboard or a gameboard. Still less is it obvious that the very faint and hard to find (even if you are looking for them) stars around the Great Square should be interpreted as two fish. That they should be interpreted independently as two fish and a gameboard by cultures from ancient Egypt to the Americas stretches credulity beyond its breaking point.

Such theories would not even be proposed except for the flat refusal of the guardians of conventional theory to admit the possibility of very advanced ancient human achievement (even in the face of quite extensive evidence).

The case of the Great Square of Pegasus is just one more clear piece of evidence in a pile that includes many other powerful clues (see here and here, for example) that there was ancient contact across the seas long before conventional history admits was possible.

Hurricanes and Hamlet's Mill

Hurricane Irene 2011 is beginning to slam into the east coast of the United States, and we wish all those in the path of the storm safety during this uncertain time.

The authors of Hamlet's Mill discuss the origin of the term "hurricane" and some very interesting connections this word reveals with mythologies from around the world. It turns out that the trail back from the word is very important indeed.

In discussing the importance of the shaman's drum, they point to evidence recorded by earlier scholars that the cover of the drum in some traditions had to come from the hide of a black bull, and represented Taurus in heaven (124). They then note the connection to important drums in Chinese mythology, related to an important ox-like creature with one leg (this is a prelude to the discussion of the origin of the word "hurricane"). They write:

There is no need for a detailed inspection of Chinese mythical drums, merely a few lines from an "Ocean of Stories":

In the Eastern Sea, there is to be found an animal which looks like an ox. Its appearance is green, and it has no horns. It has one foot only. When it moves into the water or out of it, it causes wind or rain. Its shining is similar to that of the sun and the moon. The noise it makes is like the thunder. Its name is K'uei. The great Huang-ti, having captured it, made a drum out of its skin.

This looks prima facie like the description of an ancient case of delirium tremens, but the context makes it sober enough. This is a kind of Unnatural Natural History which has small regard for living species, but deals with events from another realm. The One-Legged Being, in particular, can be followed through many appearances beginning with the Hunrakán of the Mayas, whose very name means "one-leg." From it comes our "hurricane," so there is no wonder that he disposes of wind, rain, thunder and lightning in lavish amounts. But he is not for all that a mere weather god, since he is once aspect of Tezcatlipoca himself, and the true original One-Leg that looks down from the starry sky -- but his name is not appropriate yet. 125-126.

The authors of Hamlet's Mill are particularly good at giving hints like this and making you figure out for yourself exactly what they mean. In this case, the bread-crumb trail of clues leads through many important lines of discussion, beginning with their assertion that the Maya Hunrakán (whose name, remember, means "one-leg") is associated with the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, who is usually depicted with one foot missing (or, more precisely, one foot skeletal and the other foot normal).

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend explain that the connection with the leg of a bull (or a one-legged ox-like creature, in the case of the Chinese myth cited above) is quite clear in mythology going back to ancient Egypt, in which the Big Dipper going around the pole star was associated with the leg of a bull (it not only looks like a large spoon but also like a bull's leg and haunch), and because the Big Dipper is associated with the pole or central axis of heaven, we should suspect that these myths with one-legged bulls (or one-legged gods) have something to do with the unhinging of the axis of heaven and the casting down of the previous age (the Age of Taurus, replaced by the Age of Aries).

Through a long series of discussions, de Santillana and von Dechend demonstrate that the mythologies around the world discussing the end of the reign of Saturn are also mythological code for this same celestial circumstance (the changing of the world ages due to the unhinging of the axis), and also in a mysterious and confusing way, so are some mythological aspects of Mars. They bring up examples from many mythologies to confirm this mysterious Mars / Saturn connection, and note that the god Tezcatlipoca actually has two aspects, Red Tezcatlipoca and Black Tezcatlipoca.

The authors of Hamlet's Mill present compelling evidence that these two aspects of Tezcatlipoca represent the curious combination of the aspects of Mars (Red Tezcatlipoca) and Saturn (Black Tezcatlipoca). They explain:

One of the motifs, destruction, is often associated with the Amlethus figure. The other belongs more specifically to Mars. There is a peculiar blind aspect to Mars, insisted on in both Harranian and Mexican myths. It is even echoed in Virgil: "Caeco Marte." But it does not stand only for blind fury. It must be sought in the Nether World, which will come soon. Meanwhile, here is the first double figure of Mars and Kronos. In Mexico, it stands out dreadfully in the grotesque forms of the Black and the Red Tezcatlipoca. There is a certain phase in the Great Tale, obviously, in which the wrecking powers of Mars unleashed make up a fatal compound with the avenging implacable design of Saturn. Shakespeare has, with his preternatural insight, alluded to both when he made Hamlet warn the raging Laertes before their final encounter:
Though I am not by nature rash and splenetic
Yet there is in me something dangerous
Which let thy wisdom fear . . .
Hamlet's Mill, 176.

Below is an image of Red Tezcatlipoca and an image of Black Tezcatlipoca from the pre-Columbian Codex Borgia. Note the one skeletal foot on each:
















For some understanding of the connection of Hamlet (who appears in earlier mythology as Amlethus, as well as several other names) with Orion and thus with Osiris and ultimately with Saturn (the god-king who ruled over a previous Golden Age but was cast down and now sleeps in the underworld or some other distant realm or island, as both Saturn and Osiris do in ancient myth), see this previous post.

Thus, the origin of the term "hurricane" is important indeed, involving as it does a god in myth who combines the implacable characteristics of Saturn and the raging characteristics of Mars, and who is associated with the axis of heaven (where his missing leg is circling the pole) and with the unhinging of that axis, which initiated the inexorable grinding of the ages and the end of the lost Golden Age.

The fact that these characteristics are embedded in myths spanning from ancient Egypt to ancient Greece to ancient China and even to Central America is powerful evidence for the existence of a single civilization which bequeathed a legacy of astronomical knowledge to all of these cultures, or to ancient contact across the oceans, or some combination of both possibilities.

These deep concepts are important to understand. They are explored further, along with a much more detailed discussion of the concept of precession which is central to this subject, in the Mathisen Corollary book.

Orion, Sirius, Jupiter and friends in the pre-dawn sky

August is one of my favorite times of year, because if you rise early in the morning before dawn, you will be treated to the spectacular vision of Orion in the east, trailed by Sirius closer to the horizon (in the northern hemisphere). As the earth turns towards the east, the eastern sky begins to grow lighter and become blue, but the bright outline of Orion and the brilliant star Sirius are still clearly visible even after all the other stars fade away in the light of the approaching sun.

Right now, that sight is clearly visible if you get up before the sun. Here is a chart from EarthSky explaining how to find Orion and Sirius for observers in the northern hemisphere at this time of the year. Here is a previous post discussing these particular stars in conjunction with the term heliacal rising and their importance in the mythology of the ancients.

Currently, that awesome annual phenomenon is made even more spectacular with the addition of planets in the morning sky, especially Jupiter. This morning, the beautiful waning crescent moon accompanied them as well, and tomorrow morning it will do so again, but it will be extremely thin on its way to becoming a new moon this Saturday/Sunday. Above Orion, the unmistakably bright Jupiter stayed visible even after the brightening sun had caused Orion and Sirius to fade from view.

The chart above shows the locations of Orion, Sirius and Jupiter in the morning in the east for tomorrow morning (27 August) in the northern hemisphere. It is a portion of the sky chart generated by the very helpful free Interactive Sky Chart tool from Sky & Telescope.

You can see Orion's belt is almost vertical as he rises in the east, as is Canis Major and Sirius rising behind him. Jupiter is located further up and to the right in the diagram, and will be much higher overhead. Jupiter currently rises about 10:33 pm on the night of the 26th and makes its way across the sky, reaching transit at about 5:18 am on the morning of the 27th, at latitude 35^o north. It rises and transits three to four minutes earlier per day.

You can also see in the above chart that Mars is located in the vicinity of Castor and Pollux in the constellation of the Twins (Gemini) at the same time. Here is a graphic from EarthSky describing how to find Mars on the morning of the 27th. It also explains how to find Mercury, low in the sky at dawn, tomorrow morning and over the next several days.

Be sure to rise early if possible and enjoy this glorious spectacle in the eastern sky.

More thoughts on mummies

Here is a link to a recent story describing the use of CT scans to examine ancient Egyptian mummies non-invasively, with remarkable images of a newly-scanned mummy from the 20th to 26th dynasty period (anywhere between about 1187 BC to 525 BC).

Note the crossed hands of the mummy, clearly visible in the video above, which is very representative of ancient Egyptian funerary practices and which John Anthony West discusses in some detail in his groundbreaking 1979 work, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt.

Because he argues that the ancient Egyptians were consciously manipulating harmonic forces which are beyond much of the knowledge of science today (see the previous posts here, here, and here), he believes that number and symbol were of paramount importance to everything the Egyptians did. He argues that the crossed arms of the mummy point to the number four, the Pythagorean number of physical substance, as well as to the number five, which transcends matter -- a very powerful concept and quite appropriate for funerary symbolism.

Note the crossed arms and the crossed crook and flail in the images on the funerary equipment of Tutankhamun in the photograph below:

Speaking of the number four and the symbol of the cross, John Anthony West writes in Serpent in the Sky:

Fire, air, earth, water. The ancients chose with care. To say the same thing in modern terms requires more words, and none stick in the memory. Active principle, receptive principle, mediating principle, material principle -- why bother with such abstractions when fire, earth, air and water say the same and say it better.

In Egypt, the intimate connection between Four and the material or substantial world was applied in symbolism. We find the four orientations, the four regions of the sky, the four pillars of the sky (material support for the realm of the spirit), the four sons of Horus, the four organs, the four canopic jars into which the four organs were placed after death, the four children of Geb, the earth.
[. . .]

This is the cross of matter, upon which all of us are pinned. Upon the cross, the Christ, the cosmic man, is crucified. By reconciling its polarities through his own consciousness, he attains unity.

It is this same principle of double inversion and reconciliation that lies behind all religious Egyptian art and architecture. The crossed arms of the mummified pharaoh -- who (whatever his personal traits may have been) represents successive stages of cosmic man -- holds the crossed scepter and flail of his authority. Schematically, the point where the two arms of the Christian cross intersect represents the act of reconciliation, the mystical point of creation, the 'seed.' Upon a similar scheme, the exalted, mummified pharaoh represents the same abstract point.

The cross and the mummified pharaoh thus symbolize both Four and Five. 50-51.

Mr. West follows up this remarkable insight with another which is pertinent to this discussion. First, however, note that the article linked above, with the story about the recently-scanned mummy at the Smithsonian, refers to a newly-expanded exhibit at the Smithsonian which will "explore ancient Egyptian life, religious beliefs and how burial practices serve as windows into ancient cultures, revealing how archaeologists and physical anthropologists gain these insights through their research." It can only be hoped that those insights are being informed by those already recorded by John Anthony West, but it is doubtful.

In any event, Mr. West later writes this observation, which should be clearly kept at the forefront of the consciousness when observing anything related to Egyptian burial practices, including the images of the mummy in the video above: "Now when death is regarded not (as with us) as an ultimate dissolution, but rather as a transitional (and crucial) stage of a journey, then the apparent Egyptian preoccupation with death becomes exactly the opposite of what it seems to be. It is, in fact, a preoccupation with life in the deepest possible sense" (95).

These are important matters which bear further examination and contemplation.

Duke Kahanamoku

August 24 is the birthdate of Duke Kahanamoku, born in 1890. Above is a photograph of the Duke, aged 21, about 100 years ago. An Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Duke's greatest legacy was his towering role as the first real international ambassador of surfing. He is almost singlehandedly responsible for launching the ancient Polynesian "Sport of Kings" in California and Australia and for generously sharing the stoke where ever he went.

Here is a link to a website describing the first recorded western account of surfing by a lieutenant of Captain Cook on a voyage to Hawaii -- subsequent pages describe the role of Jack London, George Freeth, Alexander Hume Ford, and especially Duke Kahanamoku in reviving the sport of surfing and then spreading it worldwide.

Below is a video showing early footage of Duke surfing at Honolulu with Diamond Head in the background.


The video below describes Kahanamoku's 1915 visit to Australia, where his surfing demonstrations fell on extremely fertile soil and can be directly credited with launching that country's well-known fervor for surfing.



Like other legendary Hawaiian watermen, Duke Kahanamoku was also an actual lifesaver, and once dove into the waves repeatedly to save several fishermen in distress when their boat capsized in heavy surf off of Newport Beach in June of 1925.

Surfers everywhere should be grateful to Duke Kahanamoku for his efforts to spread the ancient Polynesian art of surfing beyond the shores of Hawaii in the best tradition of Aloha.

Peace.

Today's magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia

Today at 1:51 pm eastern time, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake shook Virginia, with the USGS reporting the epicenter as a point 38 miles west of Richmond at a depth of 3.8 miles. The earthquake was the largest recorded in Virginia since 1897.

While the location of the earthquake is within a region known to produce occasional small and moderate earthquakes, known as the Central Virginia Seismic Zone according to this USGS description, the mechanism which causes such earthquakes is not well understood or clearly explained by followers of the conventional tectonic theory.

Note that Virginia and the east coast of the United States are far from any "plate boundaries" (see the USGS map in this previous post) where tectonic theory explains earthquakes as resulting from the buildup of pressure between drifting plates. Note that the post referenced discusses the phenomenon of earthquakes far from plate boundaries.

In his book In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, Dr. Walt Brown provides an extensive discussion of the mechanisms which cause earthquakes and notes the numerous aspects of earthquakes which the conventional tectonic theories have difficulty in explaining (the book can be read online, and the detailed discussion of earthquake mechanisms begins here).

In discussing earthquakes far from plate boundaries, Dr. Brown writes:

The compression event and earth’s vertical adjustments during and after the flood produced many faults throughout the mantle and crust. Only the weakest faults slip frequently and are considered “plate boundaries.” The entire mantle and crust are being compressed and, as shown in Figure 89, laterally displaced generally toward the Pacific. [See “Magma Production and Movement” on page 149.] Therefore, earthquakes sometimes occur far from plate boundaries.

The widespread presence of faults in Virginia is noted here and shown in graphic imagery here. Dr. Brown explains why such faults formed on this page of his online book, and then describes their connection with earthquake activity -- even if far from a "plate boundary":

Today, very slight amounts of slippage frequently occur along faults in the crust and mantle, especially where faults extend from a trench down to the unsteady liquid foundation of the outer core. If, instead of a solid foundation, your home rested on a dense liquid foundation, you can imagine how cracked the walls of your house would be if ripples sometimes pulsed through the liquid or if that foundation rose by the steady addition of dense liquid. Slippage would frequently occur along existing cracks in the walls. Within the mantle, slippage along faults produces more magma, most of which drains into the outer core, adding to its volume and causing more uplift, slippage, and ripples. The mantle is unstable.

Frictional heat generated along faults throughout the mantle conducts slowly into the walls of the fault. Above depths of 410 miles (700 kilometers), local instabilities sometimes arise as heat weakens the solid silicate scaffolding and forms more droplets. Once leaks form, the liquid droplets can escape; their buoyancy forces them upward if they are above the crossover depth or downward if they are below the crossover depth. The scaffolding then will quickly collapse and thereby generate much more heat and melting. Earthquakes—runaway shocks—result.

This explanation is much more scientific than the mechanism offered by the tectonic theory, which postulates a liquid mantle circulating below the crust and occasionally causing earthquakes when slippage occurs between plates, or when pressures build up between plates and they temporarily "unlock." We noted in this previous post that such an explanation is not even truly satisfactory for the activity of the famous San Andreas Fault in California.

Today's unusual Virginia earthquake should provide a good opportunity for greater interest in the cause of earthquakes in general, and of earthquakes far from plate boundaries in particular. Those who examine all the evidence may conclude that the hydroplate theory provides a much better explanation than does the theory of plate tectonics.