That was the day that the IRA detonated two bombs in London.
I suppose in the storymind of modern times this is just another tale of destructive terrorism. From wiki "It is estimated that between 1969 and 1997, the IRA was responsible for the death or injury of over 20,000 people: over 14,000 of these being civilians."
I am Irish by birth, I don't know if this made our household slightly more aware of the violence or not, but certainly I should think most people in the Western World have an instant Brand Name recognition of the IRA.
I'm now going to borrow some more from the site that gave us the opening quote. The author was an eye witness & his embroidered style gives a tapestry-like view into a day 27 years past.
Mirror polished breast plates reflecting the sun in blinding flashes and black leather thigh boots burnished to a patent gloss atop perfect black mounts whose clinking harnesses provided a triangle like backing to the rhythmic thudding of hooves on tarmac.
That July morning I was busy on a sales enquiry and could only glance across the six heavily trafficked lanes of Hyde Park Corner to see the Blues and Royals passing by. I saw the usual mixture of locals and tourists strolling along the pavement, cameras clicking, fingers pointing. As I lowered my head below the nondescript partitions of my cubicle I heard a sound like thunder, louder even than the intense concussion you get when lightning flashes directly over head. The next sound was a crack and a glass window just a few yards from me split diagonally from top to bottom as it failed to resist the pressure wave of the explosion.
I looked up again knowing that something was badly wrong, and saw a guardsman crawling along the road on all fours behind the remains of a car that was on fire. The previously animated spectators were now horizontal, scattered all over the pavement.
Two small family cars that had been parked one behind the other were now burned out shells, one shattered carcass on top of the other, perfectly placed as though they had been lifted into position by a crane following the instructions of a movie director making a war film...
...One of my colleagues, a man of great sensitivity and warmth, rushed across the road to do whatever he could - when he came back he sat down in the room where we kept the stationery and slept all afternoon, within a year he had died of a stroke. Full article here..
That bombing led to the death of four soldiers & seven horses. Less than two hours later another explosion under a bandstand in Regents Park blew a further seven music making soldiers to kingdom come. Rather graphic article here.
Ever since my deeply & darkly felt visit to Sydney's Hyde Park in 2007, I have wondered about the OZ-London Hyde Park connection. I started looking then stopped. I started again when I discovered London's Hyde Park-Tyburn connection in conjunction with the mysterious Serpentine drowning of Harriet Westbrook (Shelley).
I felt a strong urge to look into the IRA Hyde Park bombing, but had no idea what I might be looking at. Certainly the date of 20th July was one I had come across during my time of writing & researching.
It was the date, we are told, that Apollo parked his Eagle on the moon.
It was also the date in 1944, that that the bomb-ina-briefcase huffed & puffed & blew down the Wolf's Lair - four little piggies fell down, but the Big Bad Wolf got away.
And it was the birth date of the Titan Sir Edmund Hillary.
While searching for a picture of 'Moon over Everest' to complete my moonish ensemble, I experienced a number of wtf moments when I learned of an astronaut taking a piece of the moon to the summit of Mt Everest earlier this year.
"Former astronaut Scott Parazynski reached the summit of Mt. Everest on May 19, just as dawn broke. A moon rock sample, collected by Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong in July 1969, accompanied him.
The lunar sample... was retrieved about 15-20 feet north of the Lunar Module Eagle which landed in the southern Sea of Tranquility. NASA loaned the sample to Parazynski and his climbing team."
If I was not already a lunatic, I hope that I would have found this just a little strange!
Being a lunatic gives me free range to suggest that something very symbolic went down, err sorry I mean up, when the moon climbed Mt Everest (Qomolangma). If you scroll down on the link I'm gonna give you, you come to an image which shows this - "Scott holding up moon rock sample... so as to eclipse the rising moon. The west shoulder of Mt. Everest is on the left."
Going for an Ouroburos ride on this unscheduled, symbolically-charged moonstop, lets finish where we started. "After his historic trip to the moon, Armstrong became close friends with the first man to summit Everest (in 1953) Sir Edmund Hillary. The two historic figures later traveled the world together - including a trip to the North Pole."
Actually I lied, I'm not quite finished - I was just doing a very quick final scan down the wiki page for that date when a name caught my eye - one I'd thought of in conjunction with the 'women, water & death' connections of this series - July 20 was the birth date actress Natalie Wood who drowned in mysterious circumstances 9 months before the Hyde Park & Regents Park bombings.
"the Queen's official bodyguard regiment during the Changing of the Guard between Buckingham Palace and Knightsbridge."
"...[The} Household Cavalry deemed the most glamorous of all the Guardsmen. Riding immaculate horses, their grand ceremonial dress consists of thigh length black boots, shiny breastplates, plumed helmets and red tunics for the Life Guards and navy ones for the Blues and Royals."
A number of thoughts formed when I began wondering if there was a reason for horses being targeted. I recalled a snippet of info I'd bumped into some time ago about horse sacrifices. I played (very gingerly) with the IRA & found something interesting when I perceived, looking back at me, the Eye (I) of RA. I got a sense that I should be noticing something about that year, 1982. The regal atmosphere of the event reminded me of Newspaceman's tireless watchings of the Royals & in particular The Boy who Will(iam) be king.
So let's take a closer symbolical look.
"The Blues and Royals were formed in 1969 from an amalgamation of The Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) and The Royal Dragoons." Our sacrificial lambs were symbolically born the year Apollo & his Eagle took the moon. Prince William of course is the Sun of the Moon oops I mean the son of the moon goddess, Diana. Diana, we remember, is the Roman version of Artemis, twin sister of the moon walker, Apollo.
Prince William was born on the Summer Solstice or 21 June, 1982. Just one month later a horse sacrifice takes place in the outskirts of his Kensington Palace garden. Kensington Palace being home to the sun & moon royal family.
Kensington Gardens was carved out of the western section of Hyde Park and designed c.1728-1738. (111 hectares).
It never ceases to amaze me how many little extra snippets appear along the way once I put fingers to keyboard.
I'd seen Physical Energy Statue marked on the maps of Kensington Gardens but had thought it would be something geometric & hadn't got round to checking it out. As my eyes were leaving the Kensington Garden internet page, this blackened figure leaped out of the page at me.
I guess you can make anything fit your ideas & this 1902 statue, by the energetically named G.F Watts... did rather remind me of the 1982 Hyde Park horse sacrifice.
"His [G.F. Watt's] most famous work, the 1902 large bronze statue Physical Energy, depicts a naked man on horseback shielding his eyes from the sun." If you wanted to get a spade & dig a little deeper, you could apparently find the "origins of this iconic work in Watts’ equestrian bronze Hugh Lupus" (Latin: Wolf). So we have a sunny side up statue, originally based upon a man dressed in a wolf's name - "As a Celtic symbol, the Wolf was a source of lunar power. Celtic lore states that the Wolf would hunt down the sun and devour it at each dusk so as to allow the power of the moon to come forth."
This sun-moon statue is situated between the crescent shaped Serpentine River & the oval Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. (If I've inserted it correctly, you can now trundle back up the page a bit & click on the map to get the bigger picture).
In keeping with our symbolic horse trek under a moonlit sky, I will also point out that the moon goddess Diana was birthed 46 years to the day that Watts died.
I played a little with the topography of sacrifice & created this little triangulation - the outer limits being the Regents Park 'bandstand bombing site', Buckingham Palace where the Blues & Royals were headed & the Physical Energy Statue. Mind you Kensington Palace works too, & my son informs me that you can make a triangle with any three points that are not on a straight line - still it puts the 20th of July, 1982 into a little more perspective.
Along the bottom line of my geographical menage a trois, is an orange dot indicating the Hyde Park bomb site plus a blue dot indicating the Goddess Diana Memorial Fountain . Actually it's far more of a watery Ouroburos, than a fountain & creates yet another Lady of the Lake scenario within Hyde Park.
From what I could find on my maps the two bombs of 20th July seem to be in a straight longitudinal (ley??) line.
Sorry I haven't even gone into horse sacrifices yet.
"In Vedic India, the greatest of sacrifices was the Ashvamedha (or Horse Sacrifice). Kings spent fortunes in the elaborate rituals, which sometimes required hundreds of officiating priests and lasted for several weeks at a time... these sacrifices were often associated with Tantric practices." Yep, you read that rite.
"In the ashvamedha, the wife of the officiating priest the mahishi simulated a ritual mating with the sacrificial horse. The mahishi (lit. "the Great Cow") represented the Earth, much as the horse symbolized the Sun. Indeed, she also stood for the queen as the Primordial Whore, just as her husband (the mahisha) was an alias of the Horse, the Sun, the Primordial Male (or buffalo). The couple stood for Heaven and Earth... "
"The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom."
Rome was another place that sacrificed horses. Every year one was 'dispatched' to Mars.
"On the fifteenth of October in each year a chariot-race was run on the Field of Mars. Stabbed with a spear, the right-hand horse of the victorious team was then sacrificed to Mars for the purpose of ensuring good crops, and its head was cut off and adorned with a string of loaves. Thereupon the inhabitants of two wards—the Sacred Way and the Subura—contended with each other who should get the head."
It is more than likely that you yourself have partaken of a symbolic horse sacrifice. Well what do you think the horse's head was doing in bed with a man in The Godfather?
"Woltz, in one of the most famous scenes in movie history, wakes up the next morning to find the decapitated head of his prize stud horse, Khartoum, in bed with him."
I have come across other cultures who sacrificed horses & even read an account that was worthy of the blood thirsting Aztecs.
Lets look at the symbology of these amazing creatures.
"The Horse symbol meanings of power are widespread through most cultures, and it is linked as an emblem of life-force. Many cultures assign the attributes of the four elements to the Horse: Earth, Fire, Air and Water."
"As a Celtic symbol, the Horse was associated with war. With war, comes attributes of victory, conquer, longevity as well as procurement of territory and other spoils that come with triumph in battle... In fact, the Celts hailed the Horse as the beast belonging to the sun god, and assigned it a place with the goddess Epona."
"The Greco-Romans also associated the Horse with ... power, victory, honor, domination and virility. In Greco-Roman myth the Horse is said to be created by Poseidon (Neptune) and is devoted to Hades (Pluto) and Ares (Mars)."
"Black Horse:Mystery, death, night, secret, messenger of esoteric knowledge."
"White Horse:Light, sun, day, vitality, illumination, resurrection, messenger of birth."
It is not for no reason that powerful horses have long been linked with 'great' leaders of history
And who could forget horse racing "the chariot races of Roman times are an early example, as is the contest of the steeds of the god Odin and the giant Hrungnir in Norse mythology. It is inextricably associated with gambling. The common sobriquet for Thoroughbred horse racing is The Sport of Kings."
Lets return to the idea that a sacrifice of horses took place to reign in the newborn sun-king-to-be, in 1982. This event happened a month minus a day after his birth & a few weeks before his christening on August 4, the date that lives in infamy as the opening to 'The Great War' in 1914.
As bizarre as all this seems, I find I run the risk of falling asleep if I do not take the time to look again at the past with wondering eyes. The thing is, eleven men & seven horses were slaughtered that day. It seems that the Hyde Park ritual was performed by remote control which means that someone close by, chose the moment, pushed the button & watched.
I was very surprised to come on a name that kept this story even closer in the (royal) family. The commander of the 'blasted' Blues & Royals was one Andrew Parker-Bowles, former husband of the Camilla, the woman who took the place of the moon goddess by marrying the not quite so apparent heir, Prince Charles.
If we were re-looking & seeing what might be a horse sacrifice then the following excerpt reads rather ritualistically;
"The regimental farriers, who had sprinted from their barracks when they heard the explosion, were splashed with blood from head to foot on their bare torsos and long leather aprons. Debris was scattered everywhere, and human remains were being taken away. The atmosphere was desperately tense, for there was every chance that a second bomb might go off.
The regiment’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Parker-Bowles, had raced to the scene on foot, and as he arrived had met a groom leading a severely wounded horse, which had blood gushing from a huge hole in its neck.
Immediately he told the man to take off his shirt and stuff it into the wound — but that was impossible, for one of the groom's hands had been pierced by a four-inch nail, which was sticking out on both sides. Another man sacrificed his shirt and staunched the blood. But for that, the horse would never have reached its stable. It survived and became a hero — Sefton — and lived to the age of thirty.
At the scene itself mortally injured horses were still struggling to get up. The only weapon to hand was a pistol belonging to a constable on duty at a nearby diplomatic post, and as he had no experience of shooting horses, Parker-Bowles persuaded him to hand the gun over to one of the farriers, who put two horses out of their misery.
With commendable courage and presence of mind, the colonel then ordered that the bodies of the horses should be left uncovered until press photographers arrived, to make sure that their pictures would expose the full horror of the attack. Then, mercifully, the corpses were shrouded with tarpaulins."
The IRA claimed responsibility, but who were the IRA? Were they Irish extremists or was there another element within their ranks as there seems to be within the ranks of every 'organisation'. What was behind their choice of targets?
I looked at their name & saw I RA or Eye of Ra. I wondered & I looked upon the waters of the internet.
"The Eye of Horus (Wedjat) (previously Wadjet and the Eye of the Moon; and afterwards as The Eye of Ra) or ("Udjat") is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra."
"1/4 was represented by sight or the sensation of light, symbolized by the pupil. The pyramid text says: "Perfect is the Eye of Horus. I have delivered the Eye of Horus, the shining one, the ornament of the Eye of Ra, the Father of the Gods."
and this one?
Some closing thoughts, all scrambled together because I'm knackered & this has taken me all weekend to write.
"There was chaos and confusion everywhere as roads around Knightsbridge were cordoned off; police were drafted in from all over London within half an hour. Scares and alerts that further bombs and suspicious vehicles were still around led to still greater confusion as police and soldiers shouted at spectators to stand clear." - so how come a band from the Royal Green Jackets was merrily playing songs from Oliver in Regents Park, just up the road, two hours later - check out the map.
The motto of the Royals & Blues motto "Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (Shame on him who thinks this evil)" is the very same one as that of The Most Noble Order of the Garter - 'the pinnacle of the honours system in the United Kingdom' - think exclusive & elite "Membership in the order is limited to the sovereign, the Prince of Wales, and no more than twenty-four members." Sir Edmund Hillary was one until his death last year. Recently Prince William the son-king became the 1000th member.
When I wrote the Mil-lion Man I played with the Egyptian gods - unfortunately they do not have a great sense of humour & were not amused. I found that if I gave Horus a good shake, then Shu the god of the air fell out & left me with some gold (OR) change -
HORUS = SHU (god of the air) + OR (French for gold).
At that time something royal came to mind which I knew I would find a home for one day & here it is. The royal family are the WINDSORS - WINDS = (SHU) + OR - can we shake up the Windsors & find HORUS? And who then would be Isis & Osiris?
On 20 july, 1997 an Eye of Ra ceasefire begins, & from what I can find that was the beginning of the winding down process of 'The Troubles'. Diana, Princess of Wales was killed a little over one month later, while her son had been born I month prior to the Hyde Park horse ritual.
And what of this LUNAR/RA link.
Michael Collins, Irish revolutionary leader & Director of Intelligence for the Eye of Ra (in the early years), was 'the third man' in the 1969 Apollo Moon production! Michael Collins, astronaut, who was born on All Hallows Eve went round & round the moon, while Neil & Buzz planted flags (apparently).
Ok one more thought to finish. I've been reading a book called "The Body has a Mind of it's Own" about how our brains are constantly creating maps. It tells me that my 'self' does not end where my flesh ends, but rather with each thing I come in contact with my self is extended & 'it infuses & blends with the world, including other human beings." The author goes on to give the example of what happens when a skilled horse rider goes forth - the body maps of horse & rider are 'blended in shared space'. It is possible then that the horse & rider connection in essence creates 'a centaur'.
This shared reality perhaps helps to explain how we are constantly being trapped within a very small world as we each share each other's realities.
Perhaps it's time to create some more exciting maps?
Additional: Apologies to Shergar who was always a part of this article, but in my tired trek to the finish line I missed him out.
Two years later, on 8 February 1983, he was kidnapped from the Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland by masked gunmen with the body never being discovered. The incident has been the inspiration for several books, documentaries, and a film..
What happened next set the tone for a police operation that has been called “a caricature of police bungling”. Fitzgerald called the stud farm manager, who called Shergar’s vet, Cosgrove. The vet then called a racing associate, Sean Berry, who in turn called Alan Dukes, the Irish Finance Minister. Not until eight hours had elapsed did anyone call the Gardaí (Police).
The strongest suspect for the kidnapping is the Provisional Irish Republican Arm"
A king of horses is taken just eight months after the Hyde Park horse sacrifice & disappears, with the help of an eight hour head start.
One last link to Ellis Taylors article "A Year of Tears & Tears" which covers a number of symbols that have bubbled to the surface (of the moon) in this article - Here's a sneak preview from page 4;
"NASA has physically despatched a Centaur rocket (read spear - or needle) to pierce, tear open the moon (the wolf Lupus) and timed the re-enactment exercise to coincide with the 40th anniversary of their Apollonian ‘cry wolf’ heresy." Full article here
