5th of November - V For Vendetta Day!

[Gimpy]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Well, as of 11 pm Eastern Standard time, CNN announced Barack Obama as the president elect of the United States of America...

Yep, he's projected to win the swing states, Indiana, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio. Just watched McCain give his speech about not winning. He looked pretty content. How long will the honeymoon last???

What I've seen of the state results so far, Obama got Ohio and Pennsylvania, but Indiana's was too close to call for either of them, and I'm not sure about Virginia.
No results are in from Alaska yet either, which is interesting.

 

[Hildegarda]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

No results are in from Alaska yet either, which is interesting.

they haven't finished voting yet, b\c of their remote time zone.

 

[RedFox]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Well, its 9.41am on the 5th of november.
Thought I'd start of the celibrations :)

(hope the firework images work!)

 

[Adaryn]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

So, shall we dance ?

 

[Adaryn]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

An alternative Wizard of Oz: Scarecrow as a Guy :

 

[Bobo08]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

 

[Adaryn]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Searching for more info on Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot (I remember studying that event at university... a long time ago), I stumbled upon this article written by Carol Brouillet:

_http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/11/04/18326516.php

Unmask State Sponsored Terrorism
Stop the Deceptions and the Wars
Guy Fawkes Day- Peace Week November 5th- November 11th

November 5th is the 401st anniversary of state-sponsored false-flag terrorism or synthetic terror in the English-speaking world: Guy Fawkes Day. We hope to unmask these state sponsored terrorist attacks, devised by those wishing to terrifying populations into supporting wars which serve imperial agendas.

Even now, few understand the original plot: Guy was a dupe ensnared by a chief minister in a madcap scheme to blow up King and Parliament. The real plot was royally successful: to invent a pretext for war with Spain. The fraud was the foundation of the British empire.

In 1898, the American century was ushered in by a similar anti-Spanish hoax: the bombing of the USS Maine in Havana harbor. On 9/11/2001, plotters embedded in the US government, working on a Project for a New American Century, faked the pretext for a Clash of Civilizations - and a neo-fascist world order.

Webster G. Tarpley in his book- Synthetic Terror- Made in the USA, wrote about the granddaddy of False Flag Operations, the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605 (an abbreviated excerpt):

“ In 1605 James I Stuart, was considering a policy of accommodation with the Spanish Empire, the leading Catholic power. He was also considering some measures of toleration for Catholics in England, where the landed gentry in the north was loyal to Rome. An influential group in London, backed by Venetian intelligence from abroad, wanted to push James I into a confrontation with the Spanish Empire, from which they hoped to extract great personal profit. They also thought it was politically vital to keep persecuting the Roman Catholics. Chief among the war party was the royal chancellor, Lord Robert Cecil. Cecil set out to sway James I to adopt his policy, by means of terrorism.

“Cecil cultivated some Catholics, one of them Lord Thomas Percy, and used them as cut-outs to direct the operations of a group of naïve Catholic fanatics and adventurers, among them a gullible man named Guy Fawkes. This group of Catholic fanatics hatched the idea first of tunneling into the basement of the Houses of Parliament from a nearby house, and then renting the basement of the Houses of Parliament, in order to pack that basement with explosives for the purpose of blowing up King, Lords, and Commons. Instead Guy Fawkes was caught going into the basement the night before the crime. Fawkes and the rest of the plotters were tortured and hanged, and several Catholic clergy were scapegoated. James I put aside his plans for toleration of Catholics, and England set out on a century of wars against the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, from which the British Empire was born. Guy Fawkes Day became the festival of “no popery” and hatred of Spain.

“Concerning the Gunpowder Plot, Cecil either found means to instigate the conspirators to undertake their enterprise, or, at least, being, from an early stage of the undertaking, fully aware of what was going on, nursed the scheme till the time came to make capital out of it. The conspirators, or most of them, meant to strike a great blow and their guilt should not be excused, but they were unwittingly playing the game of plotters more astute than themselves.

The conspiracy was, and must have been, known to those in power, who, playing with their dupes, allowed them to go on with their scheme, till the moment came to strike with full effect.

“This can also be applied to 9/11.

“(James I does not seem to have been aware of the operation in advance. The plot was not directed against him; but intended to push him in a specific policy direction. After the event, James I does appear to have realized what Cecil’s role had been. Thomas Percy, Cecil’s agent in the Gunpowder Plot, was called a ‘tame duck employed to catch the wild ones.’ The fact that he was Cecil’s agent did not prevent Percy from being killed as part of the cover-up after November 5. At the risk of mixing metaphors, we can cite the opinion of a contemporary observer that Cecil, once he had secured the game birds he was seeking, hanged the spaniel who had actually caught them for him, ‘that its master’s art might not appear.’” It is time to expose these schemes to the light of day.)

Let us declare Global Peace Week from November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day to November 11th, Veterans Day which commemorates the end of WWI on 11/11/1917. To end these wars, we have to awaken people to both the knowledge of how the war party incites war, and to sympathy for the fallen.

Share this story, pass out the “Unmask State Sponsored Terrorism Deception Dollars,” organize celebrations, actions, educational events, join with others, when everyone learns the history of false flag operations, then they will be recognized as crimes, rather than acts of war, and the perpetrators will be prosecuted and no longer be able to pursue and profit from war. Let truth and peace prevail.
_http://www.waronfreedom.org/peaceweek.html

From a session :

Q: Anyway, as a result of the search for "Dominoes," I ended up searching for "Percy's" and I found at the same longitude as Oak Island, a place with the name "Percee." This led to Fontainebleau, Chartres, and Coll du Perche and Moulins la Marche. Then, the clue you gave about 'blue waters and white skies' led to lake Geneva and this amazing place in Europe that is clearly the geographic center of all the landmasses on the planet, and probably the point from which all measures should be made. And this was the third 'Percy'... or Domino...
A: Devour newspapers for any recent news re: Percy.
Q: Okay. So, then I had the thought that 'Percy' was the center of an incredibly complex web. It was like what you had described for me before: mosaic consciousness. I could see connections no matter which way I looked. I mean, literally everything connects... alchemy, Rosicrucians, Masons, physics, genetics, eschatology, Cassiopaea, prime numbers, Medusa, Perseus... I mean, it is the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life...

 

[RedFox]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Thanks for that Prayers for rain, it certainly gives me a new perspective (one I'm supprised I missed now I've been here for a while) on Nov 5th.
Have people started letting off fireworks on 9/11 yet I wonder? burning an effigy of osama?
I never liked buring the 'guy' on guy fawkes night.

 

[Adaryn]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Thanks for that Prayers for rain, it certainly gives me a new perspective (one I'm supprised I missed now I've been here for a while) on Nov 5th.

I searched on the forum and couldn't find any info on this, so I googled "Guy Fawkes" and found the above article, and this clip.

Interesting questions, when considering that conspiracy has always existed, and thinking of "Who benefits" and "in politics nothing happens by accident". The patsy / false flag theory seems quite logical.

 

[Adaryn]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Apparently, there's another book analysing the event : God's Secretaries, by Adam Nicolson :
Someone commented on this blog :
_http://tamandlaura.blogspot.com/2006/11/intrigue-explosions-parkin.html

By the way, in God's Secretaries (author escapes me), there's a great passage about the gunpowder plot and how much it impacted England, the way 9/11 has impacted the US...essentially the response to the plot was nearly hysterical in terms of searching out anyone even remotely known to the attackers and executing them. And of course, all catholics were essentially suspected of all societal ills from then on. There is even the theory that Cecil knew about the whole plot and intervened at the last second to secure his own power with James as well as James' with the people who, prior to that, were not necessarily sure how they felt about him. The crown even sentenced to death the priest who heard Guy's (and the others') confessions of the impending plot, but didn't report the plan to the crown (although he had urged them to abandon it). Protestants, not believing in the whole confession thing, didn't go for the priest-penetant defense and convicted him of treason. He, too, was to be hung until not quite dead, then cut down, his privates cut off and shown to him, then disembowled (again while presumably still alive), quartered, and put up on stakes for all to see (and the birds to eat). The theory was, believe it or not, that this gruesome punishment would represent physically each of the sins he had committed (hanging so that he could not think such thoughts again, castration so he could not procreate his evil seed (extra irony there), etc.). Apparently, the executioner actually hung him until he was dead before doing the rest, out of mercy and a general sense that this wrong. The crowd reportedly booed about a good man being killed for nothing.

 

[webglider]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Even now, few understand the original plot: Guy was a dupe ensnared by a chief minister in a madcap scheme to blow up King and Parliament. The real plot was royally successful: to invent a pretext for war with Spain. The fraud was the foundation of the British empire.

Garry Wills in his book Witches@Jesuits connects the gunpowder plot and Macbeth which Shakespeare wrote for King James.

Duncan, the good hearted but ineffectual king who can not keep his country safe from war was meant to be a foil for King James who supposedly intuited the gunpowder plot and prevented it On page 18 of Willis's book he writes:

The proof that god delivered James was the inspiration - beyond even his normal capacity-that allowed the King to divine the hidden meaning in the letter that betrayed the Plot. That letter, sent to warn a friend of the Plotters away from Parliment on the fifth, spoke of a "blow" to be "received" during this session of Parliament. A blow struck in the obvious senses. But the King, whose fathe died by gunpowder, had a mysterious hunch that "blow up" was meant, and he ordered a search to be made for blowing-up materials. This was a mystical experience his preachers would celebrate and elaborate on for years to come."

Gunpowder was believed to be an invention of the devil.

"...gunpowder, which they say none but the devil, the King of the sulphurous pit, did invent."

The Jesuit plot was claimed to be a piece of writing called A Treatise of Equvocation which was found in the chambers of Francis Tresham one of the plotters. (pg 93). Equivocation is the telling of half truths meant to gain trust and mislead the victim. Because Catholics were forced to go underground to practice their religion at the same time they presented a false public face of being observant Protestants, they were misleading others, in effect lying about their true nature, and thus they were considered to be in league with the Devil.

But the tradition of moral theology was absolutist on the matter of lying, depending heavily on Saint Augustine's doctrine that one can never lie.The view of language as natural, not artificial was still held in the sixteenth century. God had [i']named creatures as he made them. Either he named them himself (And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." Genesis 1.5) or he delegated the naming to Adam ("and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof." Genesis 2.19).Toe give false name, to oervert language, was a sin against nature." Abusing words was abusing things - that was one source of the potency of abused language in magic and withcraft. It explains why it was so easy for controversialists to equate Jesuits with witches." pgs. 94-95

This concept ot the sacredness of language made lying a sin. Equivocation, the telling of half truths, was a capital offense in those times.

By claiming that he prevented The Gunpowder Plot, King James shrewdly allied himself on the side of God, and by casting the blame on the Jesuits, he also shrewdly created "The Evil Ones" which James, with God's help, will continue to foil and destroy to insure the safety of the state. The contrast between James, and poor King Duncan who is murdered by Macbeth who then unleashes a reign of terror in Scotland, would be obvious to the people of the time. Above all else, the role of the King was to create order and maintain the safety of his kingdom.

Poor Guy Falkes was just a pawn.

 

[Laura]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Yes, indeedy... My Percy ancestor, Richard, was a younger brother of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland (April 27, 1564–November 5, 1632) known as "The Wizard Earl", who was connected to his cousin, Thomas of Gunpowder plot fame in such a way that one wonders what part he may REALLY have played in the incident. Was it a "false flag" op as suggested by Collins, or did they REALLY intend to blow up Parliament? Without taking a close look at the Wizard Earl, there's no possibility of figuring any of it out.

The history is very much tied up with a couple of important houses: Alnwick and Syon House.

See: http://www.ukheritage.net/castles/alnwick.htm

The castle was sold to the Percy family in 1309. They were a strange bunch. The first Lord Percy was involved in the capture and execution of Piers Gaveston, Edward II's homosexual lover. His estates were confiscated as punishment, but were restored to him later. The murder of Edward II is a MOST interesting and appalling episode.

It was the 4th Lord Percy and 1st Earl of Northumberland, Henry, whose son, also Henry, earned the nickname "Hotspur" at the age of 12 (siege of Berwick, 1378). In 1399 the Percys were again involved in rebellion when Richard II was deposed and Henry IV put on the throne.

Henry, 6th Earl of Northumberland was the one who was involved with Anne Boleyn right at the point that Henry VIII became interested in her. Thomas Wolsey broke off the informal betrothal with Henry Percy - the latter was then allegedly upbraided by his formidable father.

Remember here what I wrote about Anne Boleyn in The True Identity of Fulcanelli and the Da Vinci Code:

{Regarding Auch Cathedral} Father Raymond Montané tells us:

The canopy, of flamboyant style, is decorated with an original Trinity. It is the “showing” of Christ on the Cross, by God the Father himself. The Holy Spirit, symbolised by a dove, is placed between the Father and the Son. This theophany is truly in relation with the Burial of Christ, and even more with the theological basis of the Passion, but not with the text properly said to be of the Gospels.

He notes in passing that the monument was inspired by Margaret of Austria. Margaret’s husband, Philibert de Savoie was a cousin of one of the bishops that was involved in the commissioning of the work of the cathedral, Francois de Savoie, and this was the family in possession of the Shroud of Turin.

It is also noted in the history of Auch that Marguerite of Navarre, the second cousin of Margaret of Austria, was closely associated with Auch Cathedral. We will be delving further into the people associated with the Cathedral Ste-Marie at Auch in another book dedicated to its mysteries, but allow me to give the reader some clues.

Marguerite of Navarre takes us right back to Fulcanelli.

In the early 1520s, Marguerite became involved in the movement for the reform of the church, meeting and corresponding with the leading reformers of the period. In 1527, apparently by her own choice, (rare in those days) Marguerite married Henri d’Albret, King of Navarre (though most of his kingdom was in Spanish hands). Henri d’Albret was the son of Catherine de Foix, descended from a famous Cathar family.

Around 1531, Marguerite allowed a poem she had written to be published, Miroir de l'ame pecheresse (Mirror of the sinful soul). Marguerite gave a copy of Miroir to one of her ladies in waiting, Anne Boleyn, and it was later translated into English by Anne’s 12 year old daughter, Elizabeth later to become the greatest monarch England has ever known. As it happens, Anne Boleyn had previously been the lady in waiting to Margaret of Austria, so the two ladies undoubtedly communicated with one another and shared a Lady in Waiting. It also makes one wonder about the possibility that there was a great mystery surrounding Anne Boleyn?

A fascinating article entitled The Holbein Code has recently been published in Fortean Times (FT 202), written by David Hambling, a well respected journalist. He suggests that this particular painting by Holbein was intended to deliver a specific message. He writes:

There is no contemporary record of the painting, and the two sitters were not identified for centuries. In 1890, Sir Sidney Colvin suggested that the man on the left was Jean de Dinteville, French ambassador to the court of Henry VIII, because of the presence of Polisy, Dinteville's chateau, on the terrestrial globe visible in the painting. In 1900, Mary Hervey did some historical detective work, visiting Polisy and sifting through 17th century documents, including a 1653 inventory of possessions. She confirmed that the painting had originally hung there, and identified the second sitter as George de Selve, bishop of Lavour and sometime French ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire.

The picture, then, shows French ambassadors on a mission to London at a crucial point in history. Henry VIII was about to discard the Spanish Catherine of Aragon and declare Anne Boleyn his new queen. Anne had spent her formative years at the French court...

The driving force of the Renaissance was the new concept of Humanism, "the spirit of intellectual freedom by which man asserted his independence from the authority of the Church." In the mediaeval view, the Church could pronounce on everything, from the nature of God to the motion of the stars and the shape of the Earth. Humanism challenged the existing order.

There were new sources of information available from outside the Christian world: pagan Greek philosophers... Humanists tried to integrate all this into a single whole. A new spirit of inquiry was stirring. Copernicus had just published his theory that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe, and Martin Luther [nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church...]

The Church resisted, sometimes violently. Luther's proposed reforms were seen as heretical; so was Copernicus's theory. And anyone experimenting with Alchemy, Astrology, Cabalism or novel religious views learned to keep quiet or face burning.

We know Anne Boleyn supported the Evangelical cause. The writings of poet Nicholas Bourbon, who fled to England under her protection, give us an indiscreet glimpse of the group surrounding her. There were Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, as well as Evangelical Bishop Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Kratzer, William Butts - and the painter Hans Holbein. [...]

The members of this small, close-knit cabal that engineered Anne Boleyn's rise had two things in common: they were self-made men rather than aristocrats, and they held views which could be dangerous. Hence, their actions to turn England down a new road and make it safe for those threatened by the established church kick-starting the Reformation in the process.

Dinteville was an ally of Anne Boleyn. He was a patron of the humanist Jacques Lefevre, and Mary Hervey notes that he was also rumoured to be an enthusiast for the "secret sciences" of alchemy and astrology. Holbein's painting might indicate religious sympathies...

The most detailed study of the painting has been carried out by Professor John North, emeritus professor of the History of Philosophy and the Exact Sciences at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His book, The Ambassadors' Secret, contains a wealth of detail... [David Hambling]

As it happens, the instruments depicted in the painting indicate an exact time and date: 4 p.m. on 11 April 1533. This date was Good Friday, the day and hour of the alleged death of Jesus IF he had actually been crucified 1,500 years earlier in AD 1.

North is not given to theorising without a solid base of evidence. Like others, he considers the possible influence of the great Renaissance magus Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, a figure at the French court who may have been an acquaintance of Dinteville, Holbein or Kratzer, but he finds the sheer volume and complexity of symbolism used by Agrippa makes it impossible to be certain of correspondences. [...]

The Ambassadors is not just a portrait of two French dignitaries, but was intended as an instrument to - quite literally -change history. [David Hambling]

Here, I will give the "other side of the story" that may suggest an entirely different explanation for the "Holbein Code," and how it may very well mesh with the so-called "Da Vinci Code." What does seem to be true is that a desperate attempt was being made to transmit knowledge, to propagate Gnosis, but it failed when the headsman came to remove the head of Anne Boleyn because she could not produce a male heir for Henry.

But then, perhaps it did NOT fail after all? Perhaps it was just not yet time?

Getting back to Marguerite of Navarre, the mistress and teacher of Anne Boleyn, Sorbonne theologians condemned her poem, Miroir as heresy. A monk said Marguerite should be sewn into a sack and thrown into the river Seine, and students at the College of Navarre satirized her in a play as “a fury from Hell”. But her brother, Francis I, King of France, forced the dropping of the charge and an apology from the Sorbonne.

Marguerite was one of the most influential women in France. Her salon became famously known as the “New Parnassus”. The writer, Pierre Brantôme, said of her: “She was a great princess. But in addition to all that, she was very kind, gentle, gracious, charitable, a great dispenser of alms and friendly to all.”

The Dutch humanist, Erasmus, wrote to her: “For a long time I have cherished all the many excellent gifts that God bestowed upon you; prudence worth of a philosopher; chastity; moderation; piety; an invincible strength of soul, and a marvelous contempt for all the vanities of this world. Who could keep from admiring, in a great King's sister, such qualities as these, so rare even among the priests and monks?”

As a generous patron of the arts, Marguerite befriended and protected many artists and writers, among them François Rabelais.

Fulcanelli refers us frequently to Francois Rabelais. As it happens, his Gargantua-Pantagruel series, Le Tiers Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel (1546), was dedicated to Marguerite of Navarre.

Another of Marguerite’s associates and correspondents was Jules Cesar Scaliger who was a close friend and associate of Nostradamus. Nostradamus, as mentioned, was born in Alet-le-Bains, in Foix lands - Cathar country. Nostradamus also attended school with Rabelais.

In 1525 Nostradamus settled in Agen, not far from Toulouse and Auch. In 1534, it is said he married a woman of “High Estate”, who gave him two children. This woman has never been identified, but considering his highly probable association with Marguerite of Navarre, it is likely that there was some connection there. It is said that, in 1538, his wife and children died of the plague. Around the same time, he had a falling out with Scaliger, and he was accused of heresy by the Inquisition because of a statement made in earlier years.

Nostradamus' biographers tell us that he left Agen and “wandered around Southern France.” It was only in 1546, two years before the consecration of Auch Cathedral, that Nostradamus settled in the village of Salon de Craux which has laid claim to his glory for all these many years. To sum up the mystery we find here, Nostradamus lived in Agen for 13 years, and there are 8 years that no one knows exactly where he was or what he was doing. It is quite likely that he took refuge with Marguerite of Navarre who was the patron and protector of such as Nostradamus. One wonders what influence Nostradamus may have had on the history depicted in Auch Cathedral?

Scaliger, we should note, is the “author” of the accepted historical chronology that is coming more and more into question in the present day. It is possible that the falling out between him and Nostradamus related, in part, to disagreements regarding how history should be viewed and taught.

In 1550, one year after Marguerite's death, a tributary poem, Annae, Margaritae, Ianae, sororum virginum heroidum Anglarum, in mortem Diuae Margaritae Valesiae, Nauarrorum Reginae, Hecatodistichon, (yes, long title!) was published in England. It was written by the nieces of Jane Seymour (1505-37), third wife of King Henry VIII. So, certainly, all these ladies were in contact with one another, and it is likely that secrets were shared among them.

Thus we see, in the person of Marguerite of Navarre, an individual who is central to the mystery of Auch Cathedral, whose associations suggest to us that she was well acquainted with esotericism and possibly even secrets passed down from the time of the Crusades against the Cathars - and more. Fulcanelli points us to Rabelais, and Rabelais leads us to Marguerite, and so we arrive at Auch Cathedral where the great mystery awaits the attentive seeker.

{...}

We come now to the intriguing link between Marguerite of Navarre and Leonardo da Vinci who died in 1519 while he was a guest of Marguerite and her brother Francis. A Venetian ambassador of the time praised Marguerite as "knowing all the secrets of diplomatic art," and thus, a person to be treated with deference and circumspection. We see here a definite clue since Fulcanelli repeatedly referred to the Green Language as "The Language of Diplomacy."

By 1508, Leonardo's career was drawing to a close though it would yet be ten years before his death. Only two paintings survive from that period; the Louvre's Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John.

Leonardo had made Milan, ruled by the French, his home for some time. In 1512, an alliance of Swiss, Spaniards, Venetians and papal forces drove the French out of Milan which was a minor issue of history for France, but a major disaster for Leonardo. He was about 60 years old and had been treated by the French with understanding and compassion. Now, he suddenly found himself without patronage or income, verging on total poverty. His fame had faded and, while the new rulers of Milan were not openly hostile toward him, he was certainly not accorded any honor or comfort.

In February of 1513, Pope Julius II died and was succeeded by Leo X - made famous by saying "It has served us well, this myth of Christ" - a Medici. The Medici had never shown Leonardo any special favor, but he apparently decided to throw himself on their mercy since they were, after all, patrons of the arts.

In September of 1513, the aging Leonardo set off for Rome. Pope Leo X was persuaded to give Leonardo a small commission - subject unknown - but the result was a disaster. When Leonardo started the project by compounding a special preservative varnish, the Pope reportedly threw up his hands saying "This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks about the end before the beginning!" Leonardo's notebooks record, around this time: "We should not desire the impossible." and "Tell me if anything was ever done..."

Not surprisingly, Leonardo became ill. The nature of his illness is unknown, but it is thought from other clues that he suffered a mild stroke affecting his right side. (He was left handed, fortunately.) Leonardo's self-portrait was apparently made during this time. His last painting was completed in Rome, noted to have been done without commission, but due to some inner compulsion. It is in the Louvre: St John.

Sick and forgotten in Rome, the French did not forget Leonardo. Francis I, brother of Marguerite of Navarre, offered Leonardo a manor house in France near the royal chateau of Amboise, and any funds he might require for his needs, wants, and any project he might, on his own, wish to undertake. Francis only wished the pleasure of Leonardo's company.

Leonardo set off for France taking with him his notes, his drawings, his last two paintings: The St. John, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, and a portrait described as "a certain Florentine Lady."

When Leonardo arrived at the royal castle at Amboise, he was given the title: "Premier peinctre et ingenieur et architecte du Roy" not for anything he was expected to do, but for what he had done already. Francis always went to see Leonardo, taking the view that it was easier for a vigorous 22 year-old king to make a call on an aging artist than vice versa.

Leonardo must have made quite an impression on Francis because, 24 years later, Benvenuto Cellini, then in the French service also, wrote:

King Francis being violently enamored of his great talents took so great a pleasure in hearing him discourse that there were few days in the year when he was separated from him... He said that he did not believe that there had ever been another man born into the world who had known as much as Leonardo, and this not only matters concerning sculpture, Painting and ARchitecture, but because he was a great Philosopher.

It was in 1517, while Leonardo was at Amboise, that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg. Most of his activities in France are unknown. He died on May 2, 1519.

Vasari, Leonardo's biographer, raised a smoke screen around Leonardo's religious beliefs (or lack of them). In the first edition of his "Lives of the Painters," published in 1550, he wrote that "Leonardo was of such a heretical frame of mind that he did not adhere to any kind of religion, believing that it is perhaps better to be a philosopher than a Christian." In the second edition (1568), he omitted the sentence, writing instead: "He desired to occupy himself with the truths of the Catholic faith and the holy Christian religion. Then, having confessed and shown his penitence with much lamentation, he devoutly took the Sacrament."

Leonardo himself had written about Christian funerals: "Of the dead who are taken to be buried: The simple folk will carry a great number of lights to illuminate the journeys of all those who have wholly lost the power of sight. O human folly! O madness of mankind!"

But it seems that Leonardo was not an athiest either. The name of the Creator appears often enough in his writings and indicates that he had an extraordinary conception of a divine power. Certainly, if he had wished to be explicit about it in words, he was quite capable. But he didn't explain - except perhaps, in his art. Before his death he wrote:

"See: one's hopes and wishes to return to one's homeland and origin - they are just as moths trying to reach the light. And the man who is looking forward with joyful curiosity to the new spring, and the new summer, and always new months and new years - and even if the time he is longing forver comes, it will always seem to him to be too late - he does not notice that his longing carries within it the germs of his own death.

"But this longing is the quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which through the soul is enclosed in the human body and which craves for return to its source. You must know that this very yearning is the quintessence of life, the handmaid of Nature, and that Man is a model of the world."

As he aged, Leonardo's dark view of mankind and his general pessimism grew. He was reported to erupt into fury liberally laced with scatological phrases such as the diatribe about man penned by Jonathan Swift: "Men who can call themselves nothing more than a passage for food, producers of dung, fillers up of privies, for of them nothing else appears in the world, nor is there any virtue in them, for nothing of them remains but full privies."

Francis I had such great respect for Leonardo that he required nothing of him at all - he just wanted to be able to drop in as often as possible and talk to the Master. It was in France, an "alien land," that Leonardo gave his final trumpet blast in an apocalyptic series of drawings called "The Deluge" which he predicted would one day inundate the earth and end the world of Man.

These drawings, almost abstract in their abandonment of traditional artistic styles, were obviously vivid exercises of his imagination. His scientific knowledge is applied here with devastating effect, showing how puny are the means of man when pitted against nature.

"Ah, what dreadful tumults one heard resounding through the gloomy air!" he wrote in the commentary to these drawings; "Ah me, how many lamentations!"

His depictions of the deluge were terrifying:

"Let the dark, gloomy air be seen beaten by the rush of opposing winds wreathed in perpetual rain mingled with hail... All around let there be seen ancient trees uprooted and torn in pieces by the fury of the winds... And let the fragments of some of the mountains be fallen down into the depths of one of the valleys, and there form a barrier to the swollen waters of its rivers, which having already burst the barrier rushes on with immense waves..."

This was Leonardo's Last Judgment on the World, his last message to mankind. Strange that it is the message of Auch Cathedral, the message of Fulcanelli, Kardec, Nostradamus, etc. And strange that they are all tied together via their connections to Marguerite of Navarre -

*Recall that the burial scene of Christ in Auch Cathedral was inspired by Margaret of Austria, who married into the family that was in possession of the Shroud of Turin. Margaret’s husband, Philibert de Savoie was a cousin of one of the bishops that was involved in the commissioning of the work of the cathedral, Francois de Savoie, and that Marguerite of Navarre, the second cousin of Margaret of Austria, was closely associated with Auch Cathedral.

*Remember: Marguerite of Navarre takes us right back to Fulcanelli via François Rabelais whose series, Le Tiers Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel (1546), was dedicated to her.

It was after the death of Leonardo that Marguerite became involved in the movement for the reform of the church, meeting and corresponding with the leading reformers of the period. In 1527, apparently by her own choice, (rare in those days) Marguerite married Henri d’Albret, King of Navarre (though most of his kingdom was in Spanish hands). Henri d’Albret was the son of Catherine de Foix, descended from a famous Cathar family.

*Recall also that another of Marguerite’s associates and correspondents was Jules Cesar Scaliger who was a close friend and associate of Nostradamus, that Nostradamus, as mentioned, was born in Alet-le-Bains, in Foix lands, and that Nostradamus also attended school with Rabelais.

*Recall: It was around 1531, Marguerite allowed a poem she had written to be published, Miroir de l'ame pecheresse (Mirror of the sinful soul). Marguerite gave a copy of Miroir to one of her ladies in waiting, Anne Boleyn, and it was later translated into English by Anne’s 12 year old daughter, Elizabeth I. Recall as well that Anne Boleyn had previously been the lady in waiting to Margaret of Austria before she went to serve Marguerite of Navarre.

The connections are just simply too much to ignore, too much to consider "coincidence," in my opinion.

And so, we come back to the fact that Anne Boleyn was in love with Henry Percy and this informal engagement was broken and the marriage with Henry VIII was engineered with subsequent disastrous results.

Henry was, apparently, a very cruel man. He ordered Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland who had been in love with Anne, to arrest Cardinal Wolsey and was appointed a member of the Commission to try Anne Boleyn; he got out of it by claiming to be ill.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry's brothers became involved in the Catholic uprising known as the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' and were executed for treason. Henry left his estates to the Crown, in the hope that after his death and with no heir, the King would relent and grant the estates back to his brother's family. In 1557, the Catholic Queen Mary restored the Earldom to his nephew, Thomas Percy. Thomas carried out various repairs to the Castle, but his fate was unhappy. As he continued to adhere to the Catholic faith, he was under suspicion by Elizabeth I and eventually he became involved with the plot to replace her on the throne with Mary, Queen of Scots. He was in due course captured and was beheaded in York in 1572. His brother, Henry, succeeded to the title, but despite a nominal allegiance to the Protestant faith, he too came to a sticky end, shot through the heart while imprisoned in the Tower of London. (This was the father of the Wizard Earl).

Henry, the Wizard, married Dorothy Devereux (sister of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex) in 1594. At the same time, he appointed his cousin, Thomas Percy, to be Constable of Alnwick Castle and his Commissioner and Auditor, and Thomas and his family moved into the Castle. There were, apparently, many complaints about Thomas Percy's unjust, harsh and dishonest conduct made to the Earl by the tenants.

In spite of these complaints the Earl continued to trust him, with disastrous results to himself.

Henry the Wizard, though not Catholic himself, seems to have been a proponent of religious freedom. When it became clear that the Protestant James VI of Scotland was likely to succeed Elizabeth, Henry sent Thomas on a secret mission to James' court three times in 1602 to let James know that English Catholics would support James as king if he reduced the persecution of Catholics.

After James became king, religious persecution increased. It may have been at this point that Thomas Percy became a renegade or, he may have acted with the support of Henry the Wizard. Thomas Percy became one of the five conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. On November 8, 1605, a marksman shot dead both Robert Catesby and Thomas Percy with a single bullet. Shortly after, Henry, the Wizard Earl of Northumberland was suspected of being part of the plot and spent the next 15 years as a prisoner in the Tower of London.

Henry the Wizard, because of his rank and wealth, was able to continue to meet with his friends while in the Tower; these included Thomas Harriot and Sir Walter Raleigh. They discussed advanced scientific ideas and smoked tobacco. Harriot had been a navigational tutor to Sir Walter Raleigh and his captains. From 1598 (or possibly from 1607) Harriot lived in Syon House, Henry's estate near Richmond. There he used a telescope to make a map of the moon several months before Galileo did the same. He may have been the first person to observe sunspots.

The School of Night

In William Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost" (1594), there is a mention of the "School of Night". It is now usually accepted that this refers of a circle of scientific investigators which met at Syon House. Thomas Harriot and Christopher Marlowe were members. Because of his interest in scientific experiments and his library, Henry acquired the nickname "The Wizard Earl". The astrologer John Dee was also a friend of Henry. There is no evidence that William Shakespeare was involved, but it is possible he was - or whoever was writing Shakespeare's plays. Here we should note that there is a particular "Percy Lion" that reminds one of "Shakespeare" since the Lion's tail is exactly like a spear.

Often considered to be the symbol of Alnwick (but usually photographed from the other end) this lion is famed for being anatomically correct to a quite unnecessary degree, except for its tail which sticks out horizontally. The lion is the Percy Lion. It has a curly tail on the flag. The Duke's archivist once said taht he reckoned that reason is that it was easier to make than a curly tail. Except that the lions at the foot of the column seem to have managed to have quite acceptable curly tails...

Then, there is the Syon - Zion connection. From the Syon House website:

Syon House

Described by Sir John Betjeman as 'the Grand Architectural Walk', Syon House and its 200 acre park is the London home of the Duke of Northumberland, whose family have lived here for over 400 years. Originally the site of a medieval abbey, Syon was named after Mount Zion in the Holy Land. The abbey was dedicated to the Bridgettine Order, established in the 14th century by the great Swedish mystic St Bridget. One of the last great abbeys to be built (founded by King Henry V in 1415), Syon was dissolved by King Henry VIII in 1539.

Syon Abbey had become renowned for its spiritual learning, public preaching and library. It was favoured and visited by King Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon but it got embroiled in the religious turmoil of the King’s divorce and his subsequent action of making himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The Father Confessor, of the nuns, Richard Reynolds, could not accept the King’s supremacy and was brutally executed in 1535, his body placed on the abbey gateway. He was later canonised as a martyr.

In 1547, Henry VIII's coffin was brought to Syon on its way to Windsor for burial. It burst open during the night and in the morning dogs were found licking up the remains! This was regarded as a divine judgement for the King's desecration of Syon Abbey.

After the suppression of the abbey, the estate became Crown property and became the possession of the 1st Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector to the young son of King Henry VIII, Edward VI. He built Syon House in the Italian Renaissance style, over the foundations of the west end of the huge abbey church, (which was the size of a cathedral), between 1547 and his death by execution in 1552.

Syon was then acquired by a rival, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (no relation to the present family.) The Duke's son, Lord Guildford Dudley, had married Lady Jane Grey, the great-granddaughter of King Henry VII and it was at Syon that she was formally offered the Crown by the Duke. She accepted reluctantly, was conveyed to London by river and proclaimed Queen. Nine days later, she was displaced by King Henry VIII's eldest daughter, Mary Tudor. The following year Lady Jane Grey was executed.

In 1557, the Roman Catholic Queen Mary recalled the nuns to re-establish their abbey at Syon. But she died suddenly in 1558 and the nuns left the country on the accession of her Protestant sister, Queen Elizabeth I. (In 1861 the nuns returned to England to found their religious community in Devon, where they reside to this day).

In 1594, Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, acquired Syon through his marriage to Dorothy Devereux and the Percy family has lived at Syon House ever since.

Henry Percy, the 9th or ‘Wizard’ Earl of Northumberland led an extraordinary life of a true Renaissance nobleman, despite his deafness and 15 years as a prisoner. He was a great scholar, became the patron of the English astronomer Thomas Harriot, the first man to map the surface of the moon before Galileo and earned his nickname ‘Wizard’ by experimenting in alchemy. He was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and their interest in the New World led them to consume great quantities of tobacco and potatoes. But it was on 4 November 1605, that the Earl’s fortunes declined literally overnight! A distant cousin, Thomas Percy, who was a staunch Roman Catholic, dined with the Earl at Syon before joining Guy Fawkes and his accomplices the next day, in the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. As one of the principal ‘gunpowder plotters’, Thomas was shot trying to make his escape. Although innocent of the charges brought against him, the Earl was implicated through his association with Thomas and the fateful meeting at Syon. He was confined in the Tower of London for the next 15 years on the orders of King James I.

The 9th Earl’s youngest brother George Percy, was one of the original settlers who sailed to Viginia and founded Jamestown in 1607. George played a signifiacant role during the early years of the settlement, acting as governor for a short period, when much hardship was experienced. He returned to England in 1612.

His son, the 10th Earl, was educated in the Tower of London and even kept a pet fox. He became a great patron of the foremost artists of his day, including Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Lely. But it was his reputation for impartiality during the English Civil War, which led him to become governor to King Charles I’s younger son, James Duke of York, from 1646-9, who was to become the future King James II. The younger children of King Charles I lived at Syon in 1646 and the King visited them during his imprisonment at Hampton Court Palace. It may have been during one of these visits that Sir Peter Lely painted Charles I and the Duke of York. The painting hangs in the Red Drawing Room, for which the 10th Earl paid the artist £20.

In 1750, Sir Hugh Smithson inherited the Percy estates through his wife, Elizabeth Seymour (the Percy family name had ceased due to the 11th Earl of Northumberland only producing a female heir). Proud of her ancestry, Elizabeth and her husband revived the Percy name. In 1750, Sir Hugh became Earl and then 1st Duke of Northumberland in 1766. The first Duke and Duchess of Northumberland were determined to make their mark on Syon Park; their solution was to completely redesign the estate. The Scottish architect, Robert Adam was instructed to remodel the interior of Syon House and the Northumbrian designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, to lay out the grounds in the fashionable style of the English Landscape Movement. Brown and Adam had more in common than just being fashionable designers; both were aspiring to create a new ideal form of an earlier time. Whilst Adam’s architecture was inspired by classical Rome, so Brown took the medieval deer park as a model for an ideal countryside. Both were consciously borrowing the connotations of wealth, power and antiquity, and packaging them for their clients.

The Duke was one of Robert Adam’s chief patrons and engaged him soon after Adam returned from Italy. In 1761, Adam published his plan for the interior decoration of Syon House, which included a complete suite of rooms on the principal level, together with a rotunda to be erected in the main courtyard. In the event, five main rooms on the west, south and east sides of the House, from the Great Hall to the Long Gallery were refurbished in the Neo-classical style. It was enough to place a stamp on the architect and his work in England and it is said, “at Syon the Adam style was actually initiated”. Syon House is feted as Adam’s early English masterpiece and has been recognised as the finest surviving evidence of his revolutionary use of colour.

The 1st Duke of Northumberland, (formerly Sir Hugh Smithson) continued the Percy family’s North American connections. He fathered a natural son, James Smithson. James decided that his fortune, valued in excess of half a million dollars, should be left to the ‘The United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institute, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men’.

The 1st Duke’s legitimate son, Hugh 2nd Duke of Northumberland, made the army his career and fought in the American War of Independence.

The 2nd Duke commissioned three paintings by the American painter, Gilbert Stuart, which still hang at Syon today, one of himself, his family and his friend, Joseph Brant, a native American. Joseph Brant was a Mohawk chieftain, his Mohawk name was Thayandanegea, and he rendered valuable assistance to the British during the American War of Independence. He visited England including Syon House. Brantford in Ontario, Canada is named in his honour.

The power and influence of the Dukes of Northumberland, was confirmed when the 3rd Duchess was appointed official governess to the young Princess Victoria. Between 1831 and 1837, when she became Queen, the 3rd Duchess oversaw the Princess’ education. The bedrooms of Princess Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, are still named after them and retain their original beds. The young Princess would have enjoyed the Great Conservatory in the gardens, which was completed in 1830, the first conservatory to be built from metal and glass on a large scale.

Today, Syon House is still the London home of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. As well as a home and visitor attraction. To many people Syon Park is regarded, in the words of the 3rd Duchess of Northumberland, “this delicious place”.

 

[Mrs. Peel]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

Okay, everyone who can assembles here when Nov 5 arrives... wherever you are on the globe... and party's over when Nov 5 ends on the planet ... that should give us 24 hours of celebration in multiple time zones!

Happy Guy Fawkes Day from the Eastern timezone of the States! Daylight savings time yet. :D

I won't be doing too much celebrating tho, I'm home from work with a stomach virus.

 

[Laura]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

As for our party, I propose that those who can, settle down and watch V for Vendetta for inspiration! Then, we can have a virtual toast and a dance...

 

[vinny]

Re: 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night

from the film:

Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.

There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.

How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten.

More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.