"Their ashes were then ground up and dumped into the Seine, so as to leave no relics behind."

This all started Gid after asked me to review his last post for suggestions and I gladly obliged.  In his post Gid mentions the Knights Templar in connection with a priest who also serves as an army chaplain.  It stuck in my head, because, well, Knights Templar!  I've read the books, stumbled across their symbols hanging from crosses on a stone altar, the cross later shattered, suggestive Merovingian bees lurking close by....I'm as entranced by the legends as much as the next nerd.

After reviewing the post I closed blogger and popped over to the NYT and there I read that Anders Behring Breivik, the terrorist/mass murderer of Oslo, referred to himself as a Templar.  A meaningful coincidence indeed.  It was the first time that the scope of what had actually happened registered and I knew immediately the conspiracy theorists would have a field day.  When I got around to looking over Breivik's massive (1500 page) manifesto (2083 – A European Declaration of Independence), I saw a photo of him in full Masonic regalia.  Like raw meat before a pack of dogs.

Conspiracy theorist Michael Hoffman has written extensively about what he terms the Revelation of the Method (great explanation there, btw) and one detail illustrating this alleged tactic came back to me immediately.  He has written that part of the pattern found with mind-controlled sleeper agents is that they have three names.  I recalled he'd reiterated that point after the January shooting in Arizona.

(Targeted Killings in Arizona 1/10/11, boldface added) 

The alleged perpetrator, Jared Lee Loughner, has been made to fit the familiar "lone nut" profile, complete with the requisite three names (as in John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Mark David Chapman). One of his other victims was a nine-year-old girl born on Sept. 11, 2001. Rep. Giffords attended a liberal "Reform" synagogue. Both Giffords and Roll were alleged targets of citizen displeasure over their actions relating to illegal immigration. The alleged perp supposedly wrote about government mind control.

So, here we have Anders Behring Breivik and questions relating to immigration and demographic change.  I can't help but think of my own recent Haboob post, a lightly satirical poke at nativist/nationalist sentiment which was dramatically highlighted by the Arizona shooting.  Some would say Breivik's actions were political, others the work of a madman.  But what is the line between political extemist violence and th e actions of a lunatic?  I read another article where I guy points out that when Arabs were suspected of the initial bombing, it was described as an act of radical Islamic terrorism.  When it was revealed the guy was Norwegian, the work of a madman.  When does it become Christian or Right-wing terrorism?  Is it?

There are other facts that some will use to support claims that this was a conspiracy.  Why, for example, did it take the police so long to respond?  Breivik was the son of a diplomat, and according to the NYT "He attended the elite high school where the country’s current king, Harald V, and his son once studied."  A step-brother to the Crown Princess was among the victims.  One might resonably ask how one man could kill so many?  Why could a news crew in a helicopter film him whereas a police helicopter wasn't even present?

Then there's the Freemason thing: 

Four years ago, he joined the Norwegian Order of Freemasons [St. Olaus T.D. Tre Søiler No. 8, Oslo]. To gain admission, a man must be “known to have stability in his daily life,” said Ivar A. Skar, the group’s leader. “He has now been excluded — the exclusion immediately effective,” Mr. Skar added.

The exclusion order and condemnation of his acts can be read here. 

(There is another Tamplar group called the The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (SMOTJ), unaffiliated with Freemasonry but part of the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani (OSMTH).  They are a Christian charitable group founded by founded in 1804 by French physician Fabré-Palaprat.  Both sites have also issued statements like that of the Swedish Freemasons.  The Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), aka the Order of Oriental Templars) exists in Sweden, but as of yet haven't offered up any statement.)

Hoffman again: 

In a search for patterns one must look everywhere. If one looks on a map of Kaczynski's adopted hometown, Lincoln, Montana at the time he resided there, one sees that the location where he chose to erect his cabin was amid the Scapegoat Mountains and the Scapegoat Eatery.

If one looks at images of Anders Breivik, one sees him attired in a masonic apron.

Sometimes in our modern desire for complexity we overlook the significance of the simplest signals.

The mere fact that he was a Mason and pictured thus is apparently "proof" enough of a conspiracy.

But then again, any plan to perpetrate a criminal act by more than one person is by definition a "conspiracy": 

The police said later they were not ruling out the possibility that Mr. Breivik’s claim of accomplices, which he described as “two more cells” in an organization he called Knights Templar, was accurate. But they also noted that he had previously told them he had acted alone.  (NYT)

Reality or fantasy?

We'll have to wait and see.  I'm led to think of another story about a conservative Christians assuming the Templar/Crusader mantle.

Recall back in 2009 that Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater (now Xe) was accused by a former employee of being a man who "....views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe...." 

To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Blackwater/Xe has also been linked to the very real and still-existent Knights of Malta (who have also released a statment of condemantion).

The two riders on the same horse represent poverty.  Could it also mean the Templar never acts alone?

The Templars were a monastic/military order of founded circa 1119 by two French veterans of the First Crusade for the purpose of protecting pilgrims to the freshly-seized Jerusalem.  In pursuit of this goal they came up with an idea that has been described as the forerunner of modern banking.  Let's say you wanted to travel from France to Jerusalem; it didn't make much sense to lug a bag of gold along--too risky.  So what you did was left your gold in Toulouse or Beziers or whereever and the Knights wrote you a receipt, with which you could withdraw part of your deposit along the route.  For a fee of course.

They also spent a great deal of time fighting in the Crusades, which is more important to our narrative.

The templars soon amassed a vast fortune of cash and properties: vineyards, lands, ships, castles.  Far from their ideals of poverty, humility and chastity, they acquired a reputation as both haughty and debauched.  Resented by many, their wealth was coveted.  On Friday, October 13, 1307, French King Philip IV, who'd been hatching a plot with Clement V, ordered the Templars arrested and tortured.  They were accused of heresy, blasphemy, idolatry, homosexuality....but it was pretty much all a pretext for seizing their wealth.

In any event, Clement formally disbanded the order in 1312 and the Templars disappeared.  Or did they?  Some of them may have fled to Scotland, which at the time was excommunicated from the Church.  Although far from proven, there is some tantalizing evidence.  Many point to the sudden appearance of Templar symbols on Scottish gravestones in the years following the dissolution.  Some authors of a fanciful bent (Born in Blood, Holy Blood Holy Grail) posit that these fugitive Templars evolved into Freemasonry.  Bear in mind that these books are considered pseudohistorical by most serious historians, but that aside, this particular claim is not wholly without merit.

Many Freemasons and anti-Masons believe this to be true, however, and many Freemasons who don't believe in a historical link nevertheless honor them.  In the US, for example, the appendant York Rite contains degrees or orders, divided into Commanderies and Grand Commanderies, known as the Knights Templar; both Northern and Southern jurisdictions of the Scottish Rite contain degrees inspired by the Templars.  The Masonic youth group Order of DeMolay is named after the last Grand Commander of the Templars, Jacques DeMolay.  There is a curious legend that upon the death of Louis XVI during the French Revolution, a man jumped on the scaffold an cried "Jacques DeMolay, thou art avenged!"

The Templar history and mythos is such a morass of bullshit that it would be folly for me to try and refute or deny the Templar thesis of Freemasonic origin.  Serious scholarship has produced, however, a strong case for a Scottish origin to Freemasony (David Stevenson. The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710.)  It's not an airtight case, but it does at least demonstrate a strong and quite early Masonic presence before the solidly documented existence Freemasonry after 1717.  But that's a whole other story and doesn't involve Templars.

Anders Behring Breivik is not the first Islamophobe to identify with crusaders...his video also cites El Cid as a hero...and if I recall correctly during my researches on Pelayo (Pelagius) I came across a website celebrating him within a militant Catholic/anti-Muslim context.  As I argued in that post and a series of posts about contemporary folklore, the long period of the Crusades and the Reconquista gave rise to a lot of legends celebrating Christian resistance and fortitude set during Late Antiquity.   Contemporary propagandists are similarly reaching back into the Middle Ages for inspiration.

Unlike Anglo-saxon "Blue" Masonry, yet like the Templar Degrees of the York and Scottish Rites, the Norwegian Order of Freemasons is restricted to Christians.  Breivik's affiliation will be an endless source of speculation and "proof" of a conspiracy.  Perhaps it's not so bad that this post has taken me so long to cobble together, today in my inbox I received another essay on the tragedy by Hoffman entitled Anders Behring Breivik: a Judeo-Masonic Terrorist‏. 

Which leads me in many directions.  First I ask myself why I continue to read this kind of shit.  Second it supports my idea that anti-Masonry is often not so cryptic anti-Semitism.  Third is that there is an interesting anti-Zionist narrative being constructed around the tragedy, which I'll leave you to dig into for yourselves.  Fourth, that what counts as "coincidence" and "meaningful" is an extremely subjective and dynamic phenomenon and that when their existence outside of the mind and the eye that sees them are taken too seriously, lead us into the realm of conspiracy.

To what end such a conspiracy?  Again, I'll let you dig into that.  But you can bet their will be more calls for restrictions on hate speech, increased police powers, fearmongering, suspicion....

from Wikipedia.

I for one also can't help but think of a film which has just been released here in France. The English title is Ironclad and it was initially released on March 4 in the UK and July 26 in the US.  I think of it because of the French title:  Le Sang des Templiers (Blood of the Templars). 

The tagline:  "BLOOD. WILL. RUN."

Indeed.

The Chalice & The Sewer, or a Miracle in South St. Paul

A Catholic church in St. Paul, Minnesota, may have a bleeding eurcharist on their hands. This quote from the Star Tribune caught our interest as the chalice & the sewer are both subjects of LoSian concern:

...it [the dropped eurcharist] was placed in a chalice-like container with water so it would dissolve. Then it was to be poured into a special sink not connected to the sewer system.

The miracle was reported by a former soldier priest who took the pics at the top of this post--two callings that require incredible personal sacrifice, but immediately reminds us of the Knights Templar and sets our lizard brains to conspiracy-minded reflexive defensive posturings ("Duck! Xe's got us lined up in their Trijicon!").* An encounter with an army chaplain supposedly kick-started Heller's "Catch-22". I can imagine why.

At any rate, the supposed miracle is being investigated by biologists. I have no idea why biologists would investigate this. What possible good outcome can they envision? If they report it as natural phenomena, well, they just crushed the spirits of the hopeful. And if they report it as a miracle, won't their biologist badges be revoked? And who pays for the lab time?

The "miracle" will almost certainly wind up to be another case of serratia marcescens, a bacteria that looks red and keeps popping in these cases, apparently altering the course of human history.

It seems to be relevant to this story that 21 churches are slated to close in twin cities--including St. Augustine which has reported the possible miracle. When I asked Daurade for his take on this story, he said that "I'd like to see you talk about the merging of churches and how a miracle could boost one church's claim against another. then relate the numerous examples where this was happening, dueling claims to have a certain saint's relics, the traffic of relics etc....something like that?" Well, yeah, I'd like to see something like that, too, but I lack the historical knowledge, so I'll let you share your own stories in the comments.

Meanwhile, the Virgin's appeared in Green Bay, WI!

And boy-oh-boy don't them there pics that the chaplain took look like an eye-nipple?

_______
* An interesting game (that I suspect David Foster Wallace of playing) is to see how many characters (i.e., not letters) you can type in a row without breaking standard grammatical conventions. I have to take this moment to brag on the !").* 5-character combo that led to this footnote. I confess that the asterisk is pushing it (conventions-wise), but 5 in a row is pretty damn good.

هبوب aka "Strong Wind"

The New York Times reports today ('Haboobs' Stir Critics in Arizona) on a skirmish taking place in the op-ed pages of the Arizona Republic.

The dust storms sweeping over Phoenix recently are apparently being referred to in local media as "haboobs", an Arabic word for sandstorm meaning "strong wind."  This has rankled some Arizonans.

It all started here, when one Don Yonts ["Yonts" being an Anglicized version of the German "Janz"] objects: 

....this is Arizona, not some Middle Eastern nation.

I am insulted that local TV news crews are now calling this kind of storm a haboob.  How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?

Aside from wondering who appointed this guy as the guardian of veterans' feelings, his sentiment is hands down a sign of the silliest sort of nativism

Of course, the debate over loan words isn't a new one, and as any historian of American English knows, Webster single-handedly Americanized English spelling when he published his dictionaries.  His efforts along this line, as well as his work in Americanizing grammar, were part of the era's obsessive push towards creating a national culture, celebrating the virtues of liberty and patriotism.

Not everyone shares Yonts' point of view:

May I remind the writer that, according to his logic, the following words of foreign origin should also not be used as they may insult him and our armed forces? Typhoon, shawl, pajamas and kiosk. Also, we should not teach "algebra," use the "zero" or wear "khaki" pants.

Some are likewise amused, peppering an entire letter with loan words, while others "....laughed at [the] use of fancy words to describe a good old-fashioned dust storm."  According to the latter, the word haboob "has been imposed on us, and we can do nothing about it."  I  love the hapless victim posturing.  Very productive.

The nativist sentiment recurs: 

Why does it surprise Arizonans when our legal aliens (non-natives) call dust storms haboobs?

These are the same strangers who have made no attempt to learn how to pronounce state names and landmarks given to us by our pioneers, Native Americans and Hispanic cultures, ranging back hundreds of years.

Apparently, history is finished.  Hispanic and Anglo pioneers are okay, but more recent arrivals are to be derided.  And Arab words should be avoided.  The process of linguistic enrichment stops here.  A line in the sand!

But these haboob nay-sayers may have a point.  On the discussion page of Wikipedia's haboob article someone writes: 

The term "Haboob" was defined by the indigenous population of the Middle East and Sahara deserts. The name defines the storms of their region that is a subset of dry wind storms that involved primarily sand and usually of a longer duration that North American dry storms. Dust storms of the southwest US and Mexico consist of primarily dust or top surface soil. To compare relatively benign dust storms to the more damaging sand storms of the Middle East and northern Africa is to reduce the impact the name "Haboob" evokes when discussing dry wind storms.

Now, keeping foreign words at bay is a hopeless task...just ask the French, notorious anti-loan worders.  They should know.  Old French and Norman account for more Modern English vocabulary than Old and Middle English. 

All this comes against the backdrop of the Arizona legislature's recent campaign to solicit private donations for a border fence to keep out illegal immigrants, drug runners and haboobs, an effort which netted 58,000 USD on day one.

Advocates of a fence have a powerful ally in reality.  The website for this effort features the following startling image:

When a country must warn people about movng freely within their own borders, there is indeed a problem.

But while most opponents of the fence target it as anti-Hispanic, the website actually dedicates a lot of its time arguing that the danger is in fact not from Latinos but Arabs, militant or otherwise: 

According to an investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security, intelligence officials have determined members of the terrorist group Hezbollah have already infiltrated the U.S. by crossing at the southern border. Border Patrol agents recovered military-style patches on clothing near the border—one patch contained the word "martyr" in Arabic and another depicted a plane appearing to fly into sky scrapers.

In 2009, according to Homeland Security documents, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials detained 45,279 illegal aliens classified as OTM (Other Than Mexican), many of whom were from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Pakistan.

Additionally, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the House Appropriations Committee stating that these OTMs "are individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic.

All this talks of desert storms and barriers and Arabs brings to mind Operation Desert Storm, the US name of the Iraq airland conflict in 1991.  Now, this storm began in 1990 as Desert Shield.  The name is a catchy one to be sure.  It's the English translation of a 2006 offensive by the Iraqi insurgency led by Al-Qaeda in Gulf War 2:  Son of Gulf War. Keeping foreign influence at bay it something shared by all parties it would seem.

So a shield becomes a storm and becomes a shield again, wielded by mad Arabs trying to get through yet another shield into a desert storm-ridden area guarded by Minutemen, glad American patriots who take their name from men who helped wrestle the east coast away from men who'd wrestled it from Indians and then made their way here to wrestle it away from Mexicans who'd wrestled it away from other Indians and who the Minutemen fear are slowly wrestling it back from Americans, etc., etc.

Do good fences make good neighbors?  What exactly is a storm fence?  How does a shield become a storm?  Are we reaching the perfect storm for....something?  Haboob?  Got boobs?  Got milk?  Where's the beef?  Who let the dogs out?

Is there room in this town for haboobs and dust storms?  I think so, but as much as I find the phrase "dust storm" to be evocative for the mind's eye, saying "haboob" is just funny, like "boing", "poob" or "pumpernickel".  I think I'll be using it a lot more in the near future.

And yeah, I actually get the rancor of the Arizona native.  I've seen Florida turn into a giant strip mall as aresult of an endless influx of New Yorkers and other assorted yankees.  I remember when Tampa was actually livable.  Now I live in France and am watching it happen all over again, thanks to the success of Airbus.

And my British friends call me a Yank.  I guess in terms of adding to the urban sprawl in search of a job, they're right.  Which is all a haboob wants, innit?

Copyright infringement

It's everywhere....

Fiat Lux

Facebook friend Hudson Luce was kind enough to brighten some photos from my essay on Notre Dame de la Daurade, which I'd linked to in "Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics."

I'd posted that article to Facebook on July 5th on 5:27 PM and he'd done these touch ups and made 'em known by 6:13.  That's pretty quick.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank him publicly and link to his Flickr photostream here.  Here's an example: