William Shakespeare or Francis Bacon or Edmund Rasher or whoever held the quill, once penned the phrase "What's in a name?" - well bugger me if that's not a loaded word & statement.
I realised I've been putting off this last part of The Sacrifice because I didn't think I had enough info, but then a juicy little four letter word comes along & there can be no more prevaricating around the bush.
For anyone who has not read my other articles on 'The Sacrifice', this may not make quite as much sense. The first one will give you a reasonable grounding
http://toolonginthisplace.blogspot.com/2008/03/sacrifice-part-1.html
(but the other two are bloody good as well).
http://toolonginthisplace.blogspot.com/2008/05/put-out-light-sacrifice-part-2.html
http://toolonginthisplace.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvest-of-fools-sacrifice-part-3.html
So I thought I'd start with the ANZACs (if you don't know what I'm talking about then it's because you skipped the link - off you go now & do not pass go & do not collect $200).
In that first part of the Sacrifice I wrote that I believed that the Gallipoli carnage of 1915 was a re-enactment of the Battle of Troy. Now if this really was a large & bloody 'dedicated' sacrifice then I reckon that I should be able to unearth a tad more to substantiate this idea.
So is anyone in the audience here tonight a professional sacrificer?
"You sir in the back, yes you, with the scythe, tell me what should we be looking for to create a fitting sacrifice?
"Yes exactly, thank you Mr errr... Reaper is it, marvellous!
As Mr Reaper pointed out, prior to their bloody exit from the face of this earth, a good sacrifice needs to be 'prepared'. In NZ (possibly Australia, I'm not sure) we have a popular nibble known as the Anzac Biscuit. I got into the habit of making them a little while back, however because I was invariably researching (a bit like Nero with his fiddling) they did have a tendency to get burnt. By a slip of the tongue or perhaps picking up on some historical vibes, my son nicknamed them 'crispy aztecs'. The other week as I was discussing the ANZAC situation with him I also found myself repeatedly calling them 'Aztecs', so....
Well for starters the lettering is interestingly similar AZTEC / ANZAC. And do you like numbers? Then have a squiz at the dates - on 21st April 1519 Hernan Cortes landed in Mexico for his successful takeover bid on behalf of the Court of Spain. With a slight numerical juxtaposition we have the ANZACs landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 25th April, 1915.
A little further play with numbers - April 21 (=3) & it is the 111th (=3) day of the year & April 25 (=7) & it is the 115th (=7) day of the year. I'm not a numbers expert but the interestingly similar repetition of numbers was, I felt, noteworthy.
The name of the ever so lucky Hernan Cortes is also quite interesting. His parents must have had a premonition (or something) to call him Hernan - Bold Explorer . And this is rather interesting "Cortez: is of jewish bloodline. see sephardim.com, it means cort or court, courteous, kind, mannerly, stately and the "ez" means "eres zion" or "of zion", or "es" means eres sion, or "of sion", zion or sion used both ways in the bible means "jerusalem", so then the surname "cortez" means in its fullest definition - "the kings court or the kings residence in jerusalem", and the only way you could have a name like that is to be the descendant of a king." I must say here there was some dispute on the site I got this from, but I just thought it was ...interesting.
OK moving right along. I did some research on the Aztecs, but had to stop. I remember reading about them in my younger days & being somewhat fascinated, now they just make me feel sick. So I'm not going to give lots of details, suffice to say, that bloody sacrifice was a big part of their culture. Thousands upon thousands of human beings were slaughtered atop their pyramids, by having their bodies cut open & their hearts ripped out & offered to the sun.
Because you can find anything on the Internet, I went browsing for info on blood sacrifice - not something I'd do for fun. I've done a quick cut & paste from a site I found to put things into a bit more perspective.
"There have always been cultures throughout history that have made sacrifices to their God, deities or idols...There were many times throughout the Bible that sacrificial offerings were made to God. In most cases a virgin lamb was used. You will note that in most animal sacrifices the animal is to be virgin. This is because it is pure. You will note also that God only found blood sacrifice pleasing.
We have Abraham in the Bible who was asked to sacrifice his firstborn son to God. Replacing animal life for human life...Let's face it...the Bible is full of blood sacrifice and killing in the name of God. Makes you wonder doesn't it?
We have the Aztecs who were very big on human & animal sacrifice...As they saw it, the offering of blood through human sacrifice ensured the perpetuation of the universe.
Why do you need to use blood? Because blood is life...it has an energy...a life force. So demons are attracted to it. Plus it gives them some substance to take form. If only you could see the demons attracted to the fresh corpses of the newly killed on the battlefield in times of war...it only has a life force of about fifteen minutes. Once the life force is exhausted the entity will probably leave."
Surely by now at least some of us are aware that there is far more to life than what we can see with our eyes or what science will allow us to believe. Anyone who comes to sites like this does so because their whole being cries out that there is more & not all is as it seems in the world (either that or they accidentally leaned on the keyboard toolong!).
By the way, it seems the Aztecs also ate bread which symbolised the body of the gods long before the Eucharist was introduced to them courtesy of the Catholic Sunday School. It rather makes me wonder now about the significance of our Anzac Biscuits.
Anyway to return to the theme of 'preparation', where do you think we might find our sacrificial lambs, sorry I mean 'heroes' as they are prepared for battle?
You were going to say that weren't you! I mean it's pretty bloody obvious really. You sail away for a year & a day to the land where the palm trees grow (or Egypt, which ever is closer), then unload your troops & transport them 140 miles to Cairo. You set up camp a handy 16 miles outside of the city - it's the ideal place because if the wind is blowing in a certain direction you can shelter behind the pyramids & the Sphinx makes a great backdrop for concert performances.
The Straits Impregnable by Sydney de De Loghe (real name Sydney Loch) was a true story of Gallipoli which was published as a novel to get it past the censors. In it he describes Mena Camp as "a huge triangular area reaching almost as far back as the pyramids...we would see the sun rising behind the trees along the Cairo highway. It was of immense size & blood red, it's long rays swept across the desert..."
I didn't click on the pyramids at first, I'd seen the photos before & they'd been filed in my mind in the 'I already know this' drawer. It was the name of the camp that first grabbed my attention - Mena Camp. In Matthew Delooze's book Is it me for a moment? he says this of the ubiquitous prayer ending 'Amen' "AMEN is the Egyptian Sun god. Amen Ra"." His opinion is that when we say Amen we are invoking that deity. What I saw in the name 'Mena' was 'Amen' rearranged - particularly interesting given the location of the camp.
That wasn't the only time that that four lettered word rearranged itself. It just sat there on the desk in front of me & every so often a word popped out like the once popular party trick of a woman appearing out of a cake.
"Mean as in "Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London." OK so pop Mean into a blender, whizz for 3 seconds & pour out an Amen, which just happens to refer to solar time - very neat (or did you want ice with that?).
Whizz those letters around again & we have Mane - owners of which have long been associated with solar worship
"The winged or white Horse is recognised in almost every culture as a solar symbol of light, life and spiritual illumination."
And then wonder of wonders I spotted what Shakespeare had seen all those years ago (without the aid of a blender I might add!) - NAME. What a truly cost effective set of letters they are. I had a little word play which I can't say means anything & I may be stretching it a bit, but what the heck.
A M E N
M E N A
E N A M
N A M E
I have to admit I haven't come up with anything particularly exciting for EMAN except of course it is MANE spelt backwards. What did interest me was finding yet another hiding place of these letters - how about (CI)NEMA - all the more interesting if we look at the first two letters as see (C) & eye (I) - (you know the seeing eye I mena!) & then just top them off with twist of AMEN.
Speaking of twisted men "During the Clinton presidential administration, there were accusations (most notably in the controversial film Clinton Chronicles) that Clinton, during his time as governor of Arkansas, and other high-ranking state officials were involved in some way with alleged illegal cocaine importation, money laundering, and drug-use centered upon the airport in Mena."
Mena was also home to "Operation Black Eagle" of the Iran-Contra affair.
I presume the official explanation for the Mena Camp name would be as described in Wiki "The term MENA, for "Middle East and North Africa", is an acronym ... generally covers an extensive region, extending from Morocco in northwest Africa to Iran in southwest Asia. It generally includes all the Arab Middle East and North Africa countries, as well as Iran but not Turkey." (v-e-r-y interesting). So there's a plausible reason for the name & even for the troops being under the pyramids - they were there to protect the Suez Canal which was a mere hop, skip & 70 mile jump away.
So now to Turkey, the country, not the sacrificial bird, for an introduction to a man whose power & fame were made by what seems like an unstoppable energy "He was the type of general who seemed, like Caesar and Napoleon and Robert E. Lee, that he could make his own luck." He has also been called "The Man of Destiny." At Gallipoli "he made his name as a brilliant military commander although he was extremely wasteful of the lives of his troops", like Zapp Brannigan in Futurama, it seems he too was only too willing to send wave after wave of his own men out to die.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who rose to become the leader, some may say virtual dictator of Turkey.
I got curious about Mustafa Kemal because the ANZACs & other soldiers at Gallipoli had such bloody bad luck, loads of it wrapped up in yards of ineptitude & criminal negligence. Mustafa Kemal on the other hand seemed, fortuitously be in the right place at the right time so often.
If ever a country had a ‘make-over’ it was Turkey after the First World War. In very large part due to the efforts of one Mustafa Kemal, it went from hundreds of years as a Sultanate to Republic in double quick time – adopting western politics, laws, dress, the Latin alphabet, secularism & industry – huge changes indeed. Kemal became this new Turkey's first president in 1924 & held (some may say very tightly) to that position until his death in 1938. When the surname law was brought in, Kemal took or was given (I’ve read both) the surname Ataturk which means ‘Father of the Turks’.
Just to give you an idea of how BIG this man was & still is "Atatürk's face and name are seen and heard everywhere in Turkey: his portrait can be seen in all public buildings, in schools, in all kinds of school books, on all Turkish Banknotes, and in the homes of most Turkish families. Even after so many years, on 10 November, at 09:05 a.m. (the exact time of his death), almost all vehicles and people in the country's streets will pause for one minute in remembrance of Atatürk's memory."
There are a number of reasons why I have looked at Kemal Ataturk. First off was his unstoppable rise. We seem to see this so often in history, with all the 'great' leaders, it's part of their greatness it seems. But I don't buy history anymore. I'm tired of being taught who & what is 'great'. I'm tired of seeing humanity as inhuman & I'm tired of believing there are great people & little people. I'm just damn tired of lies.
I don't know what the 'truth' is, but I do think it's important to look for yourself & ask questions. Because I was so surprised by Ataturk's meteoric rise I went looking & found sites suggesting that among other things he was a British Agent, a Freemason & that he was Jewish (wiki says of Turkey - "99.8% of the population is nominally Muslim"). Here's a site for your own investigation:
http://www.atajew.com/2000/01/freemason-lodges-confirm-that-mustafa.html
Now it could all be sour grapes but somehow it is the kind of thing I expected to find because a pattern of laundered history keeps emerging & it sure doesn't fit the history books. "Stories about the Jewishness of Ataturk, whose statue stands in the main square of every town and city in Turkey, already circulated in his lifetime but were denied by him and his family and never taken seriously by biographers."
By the by & in keeping with the theme of this & earlier articles you do realise don't you, that Troy is located in Turkey. Thus far we have the bloody remake of that battle at Gallipoli & in little under 10 years (the Battle of Troy's meantime) the new Republic of Turkey is born from it's ashes.
Of further interest is that the Armistice of Moudros, whereby Turkey stepped out of the war, was signed on 30th October, 1918 on board the HMS Agamemnon. Agamemnon (the original) was brother to Menelaus, Helen of Troy's unimpressed husband. He was the leader of the Greek squad during their olympic 10 year war, after which time he returned home to his wife Clytemnestra (none other than Helen's sister). Clytemnestra was not overly pleased to see her husband & in fact dispatched him to the afterlife with the aid of a lover, shortly thereafter. Interestingly, after the war the HMS Agamemnon was dispatched off to become a 'target' ship - she was exposed to poisonous gas, strafed by machine gun fire & had 40 & 120-mm rounds fired at her. Agamemnon was done to death in the bath although the autopsy revealed no signs of strafing.
I've had a little wander round this article & here seems to be the best place to pop in a savoury tidbit. Just out of interest I did check out the sacrificial turkey i.e the bird so prized at traditional rituals like Christmas & Thanksgiving. Come on now, nothing should surprise us anymore should it?
"Turkeys were taken to Europe by the Spanish who had found them as a favorite domesticated animal among the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples...The Aztecs relied on the turkey as a major source of protein (meat and eggs), and also used its feathers extensively for decorative purposes...The turkey was associated with their trickster god Tezcatlipoca.
On closer inspection it seems Tezcatlipoca possessed a number of passports with some interesting identities - Titlacauan ("We are his Slaves"), Ipalnemoani ("He by whom we live"), Necoc Yaotl ("Enemy of Both Sides"). It would be worth your while to take a minute to read up this link at wiki, especially if you're a bit of a turkey gobbler during the aforementioned rituals - hey get to know your scarificial meals, that's my motto & besides there'll be a brief intermission shortly so that you can go to the toilet or make a cup of tea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tezcatlipoca
According to wiki, prior to WWII, turkey was something of a luxury & although it is rumoured to have been served at the first Thanksgiving dinner in America, it seems that there is little evidence that this was so, but never underestimate the value of a good rumour to get things started. I was interested to read "Turkeys are popularly believed to be unintelligent birds with claims made that during a rain storm turkeys will look up into the sky until they drown... Other criticisms include the bird being 'too dumb' to realize it can't fly." I have certainly heard the phrase 'turkey' used to refer to a stupid person. ThHis caught my attention too "Benjamin Franklin regarded the turkey as a noble bird and preferred it to the eagle as the proposed symbol for the new United States, describing it as a "Bird of Courage." Having read some very questionable things about Franklin, I had to wonder about this comment & then with this "US President George W. Bush noted the long tradition of keeping turkeys as pets in his 2001 National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation speech. Bush noted that Abraham Lincoln's son Tad kept a turkey as a White House pet." Well I got to wondering if this ritualistic turkey consumption of the last 70 odd years wasn't a little yoke, I mean joke on another group of disposable or sacrificial "turkeys" - guess who? A funny coincidence too about the country & the birds simultaneaous rise to prominence.
Sorry I digressed. Along with Kemal Ataturk, there is another famous name in connection to Gallipoli, one that you will definitely have heard of:
"The Gallipoli Plan was devised by Winston Churchill, who at the time was the Lord of the Admiralty. This was his first position of high power." Churchill pushed this plan through & lost his post when the campaign failed. He did make a dramatic recovery along the way & I've heard he did quite well for himself.
This particular detour is via a book called The Mark of the Beast - The Continuing Story of The Spear of Destiny. I'm not quite sure why I picked it up, but browsing through it I came upon a chapter about 'great' men & their past incarnations. Now I don't know where or how the authors get their info & I'm not drawn enough to the book to read it, but I am drawn to questioning history from any angle that may shed some truth - so see what you think of this.
The chapter in question is entitled "The Drama & Symbolism of History as the Result of the Interweaving of Reincarnation Patterns." - or more simply a look at the rencarnations of 'great' men. First up was Winston Churchill, with one of his previous lives being given as the great Athenian statesman & general, Pericles who amongst his many works sent an expedition "to fortify the area now known as Gallipoli."
Pericles was a famous orator & champion of democracy & a leader in Athens.
On top of that the authors state that one of Pericles' &/or Churchill's earlier incarnations was as Priam, the King of Troy - now if I hadn't read this with my own two eyes I might have thought I was making it to impress myself - The reincarnated King of Troy recreating the Battle of Troy in 1915.
And that's the thing what if we are just going round & round in big circles, with the same contestants in different human costume & slightly different environments. I have to ask "what is the point?" are we really learning anything? Why do we need the same bigshots creating the same mayhem over & over & over again.
Anyway there's one further stop on this tour. Guess who else got a mention - Kemal Ataturk - I have to say I was gobsmacked. He's just not your average 'Western' hero - I'd never heard of him & then he's popping up in the most unexpected places. So who do the authors give as one of his previous incarnations - how about a naughty member of the Borgia clan (I know that's not hard) who became Pope Alexander (& managed to father the formidable Lucrezia). Interestingly enough Ataturk, who adopted rather than fathered several children, had a formidable daughter himself. She became the county's first female combat pilot.
Ok folks feel free to stretch your legs or go make some genetically engineered popcorn. Transmission will be resumed shortly.
Go on, off you go, this is not a drill
Welcome back.
So we were looking at Mustafa Kemal, an unusual name at least to us Westerners. I had certainly not come across it before. So my eye was caught & held some time ago when I spotted on a WWI map of Belgium, a place called Mount (Mont) Kemmel, not quite the same spelling but intriguing enough to warrant a closer look. Here's what wiki has to say about the Battle of Mount Kemmel (1918);
"Reinforced by French units (who occupied the critical position of Mount Kemmel), the Germans continued their attacks on 17 April,.. they were able to seize Mont Kemmel from the French defending division on April 25... the German High Command called off the offensive soon after."
A more action packed description "The hill which had remained in Allied hands for four years had been taken by a spectacular display of brute force. Even the German airforce had joined in with 96 aircraft dropping 700 bombs and machine gunning the French positions as the Leib Regiment of the élite Alpine Corps stormed forward."
Kiwi's, Aussies & those in the audience who have been paying attention will have recognised the significant date of April 25 as ANZAC Day. I found it very interesting that after this takeover display Mount Kemmel was so soon abandoned, I couldn't help feeling a ritual had taken place.
Is this a memorial I see before me? Indeed it is - it's the French Monument at Mount Kemmel - a 16 metre high monument with Nike, the goddess of victory looking out towards the area where the French fought - that goddess sure gets around. If she looks down the road a bit she'll be able to spy an ossuary containing the bones of 5000 unidentified & slightly less than victorious soldiers."
One last little tidbit. On February 25, 1924 Kemmel was granted its own Coat of Arms - I know they're usually pretty dull, so what think you of this?
"The arms show the local castle in fire and 7 cannonballs. The arms symbolise the heavy fighting that took place around Kemmel in 1918."
Among other things it rather made me think of this:
I can't help wondering if the land in Belgium & France, where unimagineable slaughter took place in WWI, is not some kind of energetic holding bank, something like Switzerland, but with vast human energy held securley in War Memorials, instead of safety deposit boxes.
Some time back I found a marvellous paper on the internet, I've sought again but cannot find it as I'd loved to have put up a link to it prior to posting this because it's so bloody good. Instead here are some excerpts from a person with the great good sense to ask questions (I've just added a bit of emphasis).
"Many of the major political events of the Twentieth Century have been characterised by massive killing, dying and destruction...These events - preserved in our collective consciousness by a relentless stream of books and television documentaries - lie the the core of the 'history' of the Twentieth Century.
Historians concieve their fundamental task as describing or documenting what occurred. Although the events that they depict may appear from a human perspective to be irrational or bizarre, rarely do historians describe events as irrational or bizarre. Rather, they focus upon the details: for example, the political machinations and economic situations leading to war; strategies of battles and descriptions of battles. The underlying assumption is that events are governed by logic.
Given the rational bias of Western culture, it is difficult to imagine that significant events could be the consequence of obscure, irrational forces. Once written up in "history books," the reality of what occurred becomes part of our world-taken-for granted. However grotesque an event may have been, historical documentation "normalises' it, confers dignity upon the event. Soon, given the weighty accounts that appear in so many books, one comes to assume that there was a reason for what occurred; that we understood what was going on.
We shield ourselves from anguish by telling ourselves that warfare is a firmly established social institution that has existed since before the beginning of civilisation...When we witness the killing, dying and maiming, we simply are observing the normal behaviour of soldiers. Why become upset?
I suggest that conventional representations of war in documentary and feature films function as a distancing mechanism required by the institution of warfare. These portrayals act to shield us from the reality of death and body mutilation, even as they allow us to 'get off' by depicting war as exciting and heroic. We enjoy our nation's power, but would prefer not to look too closely at what happens to soldiers bodies on the battlefield.
If what I describe does not seem to make sense, don't assume that it does make sense. Do not assume that historians or anyone else knew or knows what is going on. If what I describe sounds bizarre, strange and abnormal, do not assume that what occurred was not bizarre, strange and abnormal simply because it is written up in history books.
The victimized crowd of attackers in no man's land has become one of the supreme images of this war..."We were very surprised to see them walking," wrote a German machine gunner of his experience of a british attack at the Somme. "The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them." A frenchman described the effects of his machine gunners more laconically: "The Germans fell like cardboard soldiers."
Political scientist Jean Elshtain...The First World War...was the "nadir of nineteenth-century nationalism". Mounds of bodies were sacrificed in a prolonged dreadful orgy of destruction. "Trench warfare"... meant "mass anonymous death."
Eksteins discusses the soldiers' behaviour from the perspective of a "sense of duty" and "devotion to the cause of civilisation"...that what we were witnessing in the First World War was "modern state worship," with combatants being "sacrificed to the conflicts of nation-states."
..."the individual must die so that the nation might live"... According to the ideology contained within this phrase, countries exist as entities in their own right, separate and distinct from individuals residing within them. So pervasive is the ideology of nationalism that one must remind oneself when speaking of "France", "Germany" or "America" that these words refer to ideas or concepts created by human beings rather than concrete objects that actually exist. To make a statement like "The individual must die so that the nation might live" is to suggest that countries are living creatures, the preservation of which is more significant or valuable than the preservation of actual human lives.
Sacrificial Acts function to affirm the reality or existence of this sacred object, the nation. Entering into battle may be characterised as a devotional act, with death in war constituting the supreme act of devotion.
Excerpt from letter by George Morillot (died Dec 11, 1914)... "If this letter comes into your hands it will be because I am no more and because I shall have died the most glorious of deaths...Speak of me from time to time as one of those men who have given their blood that France may live and who have died gladly...What matters the life of individuals if France is saved?"
P.H. Pearse, founder of the Irish revolutionary movement upon observing th daily carnage in France "The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country."
"As a soldier dies so does a nation come alive." This last sentiment is so similar to the Aztec belief that constant sacrifice was necessary for the survival of the universe. Three nations came alive as a result of Gallipoli - New Zealand & Australia carved out identities through the legend of the ANZACs & Turkey was reincarnated as a Republic.
Gallipoli is glorified. Until I saw The Sacrifice statue in the memorial in Sydney last year I would not have questioned this. It's part of the story I grew up with.
Ahhh the beauty of war & sacrifice - pretty colours & pretty coloured symbols. The only stains here are the ones on the glass. (Please note no humans were hurt in the making of this display & not a single drop of blood was spilt).
More coloured glass adorns the ceiling with interesting patterns
This stained glass ceiling is situated directly above the Grand Foyer three floors below. Looking down this is what you see.
A ramp hides the top of the design but you can be sure it's there. Wherever you find a memorial there you will find a secret symbols. I asked one of the museum staff what the symbol meant & she had no idea, had never even thought of it before.
Before we leave Auckland & return to where this journey started, I just thought I'd show you some images (from regiments I think) displayed on the walls on the third floor - who wants to play pin the symbol on the country.
Ok so lets return to Hyde Park in Sydney, where this tour first began for me a little over a year ago now. If you remember it was the sight of the statue below which sickened me. The blatant symbolism speaking volumes about what WWI was really all about.
I covered that in the first instalment of The Sacrifice so I won't go through it again here. There are just a few other points I would like to make.
When I went to Sydney I was full of questions but I was a closet questioner. I had not really experienced a sense of something deeper, hadn't shall we say, felt it in my bones. There is a further little story to my ANZAC awakening that I have not mentioned previously. What seemed rather weird then I would take in my stride now.
When I returned to the ANZAC Memorial for my second viewing, that September day something said to me to look at what was beyond the memorial.
I will just remind you that at the opposite (northernmost) end of Hyde park was the Archibald Fountain which I found very unpleasant - my first introduction was this
Obviously there was no hotel rooms to be had, anyway if you go directly south from this couple, you travel quite some way along the 'Avenue of Figs' which eventually leads to the ANZAC Memorial (shown above).
"Have a look' said the voice in my head, "at what lies beyond the memorial" - which made sense to me because if energy was being chanelled down this corridor of Sacrifice, then it would also travel through the open doors of the memorial during the day. So I looked up...
In case the picture is a wee bit fuzzy I'll spell it out for you, it is 'American Express'. So I'd looked & thought hmmm & accepted that this felt important.
Around the east side of the memorial I found this - while you may raise an eyebrow I got more of a 'eureka' feel.
The message begins "Designed to express..." Now I admit at this point my son did the raised eyebrow thing, but then he had not heard my little voice (probably just as well). The use of the word 'express' twice in a very short space of time (combined of course with the little voice) meant that that phrase stayed with me afterwards. I started to notice how frequently it gets used in buinesses & they often have highly symbolic logos.
Some time later I read Ellis Taylor's book "In These Signs Conquer" & he introduced me to the Chi Ro which "are the first two letters in the Greek spelling of the word Christ (Greek : "Χριστός") - in other words 'XP'
It seems the Roman Emperor Constantine had dreams/visions in which he saw this sign & in a two for one deal also got the message "In these Signs, shall you Conquer." As conquering was the 'in' thing, he adopted this as his symbol & went on to kick ass.
So nestling behind the ANZAC WAR Memorial we have the symbol for conquering heroes, I could even tie in the Aztecs here or at least their conquerors the Conquistadors. If we look at conquering by another term - Victory, then we could say that Nike also overshadows this memorial. Perhaps the symbolism is a little clearer now & that eyebrow can be lowered a fraction.
I will finish this tale on a fine little synch. I emailed Ellis Taylor a while ago with the hope that he just might have taken a picture of the plaque shown above, on his visit to Sydney earlier in the year. Two weeks later while browsing the internet I found an image of a stained glass church window in NZ with the XP symbol on it & decided to send it to him. As soon as I had pressed send, back came his email with the image of the plaque I had requested. (Many thanks Ellis)
I could go on but I'm not going to. You probably have homes or jobs to go. This is the last in my series on the Sacrifice, although I have one more article which also came about as a result of my trip to Sydney. Many thanks for coming along on this journey with me.
