The Master of the Sea & the Holy Grale - Part II

We're following the trail of a fated NZ Yachtsman. His course twirls us around ...

... & around this world & spins us into unsuspected waters. A good man, I understand. Yet his footsteps take us into murky places.

We began with the deadly 1979 Fastnet Yacht Race. An outcome of that re-searching was a freer-range viewing of the yachting world, illuminated houses & missing children.

Now we re-visit the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race...


... which was re-cast'n'spelled as the Volvo Ocean Race in the year that Two Towers fell & Peter Blake would go no more a roving.

Legend has it, that the Whitbread Race was 'conceived' over a pint of beer. I know not if this conception be true (or immaculate), but its parentage was certainly manly. The purported proud fathers being Admiral Otto Steiner (Royal Naval Sailing Association) & Colonel Bill Whitbread (two-centuries old brewing family).

According to his obituary, the admirable Otto was so much more, than merely a sailor. In 1965 he was made ADC to Queenie-Liz:- Translation for the acronymically challenged = "An aide-de-camp ... is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state."

Otto's zero-bit also states that his full name became his duties very well in-deed.


Meanwhile the magnificent conception was being birthed & baptised as the "Mt Everest of ocean racing."

... and wise men came (spl)uttering phrases like 'to the ends of the earth', 'hell & back' & 'one way ticket'.

In true biblical style, this sanctified birth had had its John the Baptist forerunner, jogger, I mean sailor, a few years earlier.

"The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race was a non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race held in 1968–1969, and was the first round-the-world yacht race ...

... The race was controversial due to the failure by most competitors to finish the race and because of the suicide of one entrant". Wiki

"I thay, do you think that could have been a thack-we-fice?"

Modelling yesteryear's wet weather gear & sporting an appropriately Sea-son'd name ...

... is the man who may have been the SUNday Times Golden Globe-sailing libation - Donald Crowhurst.

Like it or not, fellow programmlings, our minds have been tricky-trained to mickey-morph the name Donald ("ruler of the world") into a sailor, at the flick of a media (s)witch.

Donald: The fresh-water duck with the daringly al fresco salt-water suit.

Also available in psychopomp flavour - Eider John/Elton Down

Sorry where were we? Ah yes...

One meaning-filled interpretation of the surname Crowhurst says that it is "derived from the German word ‘hurst’ [horst] meaning ‘nest’ - thus Crowhurst is the same as Crows Nest."

Donald Crowhurst - an all-round, admirable appellation for a would-be mythical hero.

The Golden-Globe-Race starting-committee was very relaxed about the kick off date: "... competitors were permitted to start at any time between 1 June and 31 October"

Uno Juno keeps cropping up in research for this article eg. it's the birthing date of Fastnet Ted's Completely Newsworthy Network. As to the thirty once'st of October, I feel sure it's already readily familiar.

"Crowhurst left from Teignmouth, Devon, on the last day permitted by the rules: 31 October aka (Halloween) 1968"

Course change to 1993 :

"On October 30, Devil's Night in Detroit ... Shelly Webster ... has been beaten and raped, and her fiancé ... Eric Draven ... is dead on the street outside, having been stabbed, shot, and thrown out of the window. The couple were to be married the next day, on Halloween ... One year later, to the day, a crow taps on the gravestone of Eric Draven; Eric awakens from death ... Guided by the crow, he sets out to avenge his and Shelly's murders" -from wiki on The Crow (1994 film).

More wiki: "Crows, and especially ravens, often feature in European legends or mythology as portents or harbingers of doom or death."

..... Introducing the Crow (Brandon Lee)


..... Now introducing the Omen that brought death to the son of the Dragon

He "died of an accidental gunshot wound on the set of the film [The Crow]. There were eight days left before shooting of the film was to be completed."


A remarkable visual & real time twinning takes place when the Crow is placed in the vicinity of a jester ...


..... Enter a spell-binding weave of fact & fiction.

Both comic book charactors life changes revolve around the death of love.
Both are remembered in memoryum as the death-weaving characters that became their own executioners.
Both rising stars set at the age of eight & twenty years.

We return again to 1968 & Donald Crowhurst.

His story has received a great deal of attention down through the years as the man who faked his world-rounding voyage, drifted into madness & finally dived into suicide.

"Over the following eight days, he wrote 25,000 words of increasingly tortured prose, drifting farther and farther from reality, as Teignmouth Electron (his boat) continued sailing slowly north, largely untended. Finally, on 1 July, he concluded his writing with a garbled suicide note, and jumped overboard." (Apparently)

Some interesting numbers & dates - perhaps you can make them add up:

"Teignmouth Electron was found adrift and abandoned on July 10, 1969 by the RMV Picardy (latitude 33 degrees 11 minutes North & longitude 40 degrees 28 minutes West)."

"The number 243 shows up several times in these writings: he originally planned to finish the trip in 243 days, recorded a false distance of 243 nautical miles (450 km) in one day's sailing (which if valid would have been a record day's run at the time), and may have ended his life on the 243rd day (1 July) of his voyage." Wiki

If you would like to place a bet in the Sacrificial Sweepstakes, here's a little tip off:

On 1st July 1969, being his future wife's 6th birthday, Prince Charles, the apparent heir to the British throne, made a very large investment in the land of Wales.


On that day gwent to Wales & was regaled with regalia, serenaded with ceremon(e)y, crow-ned with Cymry & otherwise ritually invested in the spiritual possession of Wales ...

... Enter the Dragon ... oh I see he's already here (egad! some of those images look alarmingly in sync!)

The charming investiture is forgotten now, but 'twas huge in it's time.

Like the coronation of '53, it was performed to a world-in-waiting - 500 million worshippers, says the BBC. Not bad for 1969. An irreligious interpretation of this BBC story, is that the investiture was the ritual climax of a year long foreplay codenamed Croeso (Welsh for Welcome) - well, well, well looky there, that kinda looks like, it sounds like, CROWso.

A few hours prior to the vesting of Charles, there was a non-televised, pre-ritualised fireworks display:-

"On 30 June 1969, the evening before the investiture, two members of MAC [disruptive, rather than malevolent, Welsh Nationalist group], Alwyn Jones and George Taylor, were killed when a bomb they had been placing near government offices exploded prematurely. On the day of the investiture, two other bombs were planted in Caernarfon, one ... exploded as the 21 gun salute was fired. Another was planted in an iron forgery near the castle but failed to go off" (Wiki).

Wonderfully symbolic touches, n'est-ce pas?

These two unfortunates were later invested with the title “Abergele Martyrs". Their sacrifice coming as a surprise to at least one family as well as to the creator of the big bang who, many years later, still could not understand why it erupted prematurely.

There is another whose story has come to light amid the constant delays that have accompanied this article. I am glad. Not for the horrible event, but for the chance for the truth-minded to be open-minded.

The winner of the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race was the (later knighted) Robin Knox-Johnston. The dash for second place was between remaining argonauts, Donald Crowhurst & Nigel Tetley. We know that Donald gave up the ghost. What we also find, is that so did Nigel.

Three years later.

You may wish to place a handkerchief in the vicinity of your nostrils because this next bit 'reeks to high heaven'.

"Though showing no outward signs of stress or depression, he went missing on 2 February 1972. His body was found three days later, hanging from a tree in woods near Dover, England. Three weeks later, at the coroner's inquest, it was revealed that the body had been discovered clothed in lingerie and the hands were bound behind the back. The opinion offered by a pathologist suggested masochistic sexual activity. The coroner, noting there was no evidence that Tetley had deliberately taken his life, recorded an open verdict."

I found a description of Mr Tet-ley as a fine sailor and gentleman. I do not know his story. I will simply present what a little sideways sleuthing showed to me.

"February 2 is the 33rd day of the year."

It is also the day that Hollywood made us live through...


over & over & over again.

In the paganish world it is spelled Imbolc
"one of the four principal festivals of the Gaelic year ... celebrated on February 1 or 2... which falls halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere.


"Originally dedicated to the goddess Brigid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid's Day ... As both goddess and saint she is also associated with holy wells (Holly Wells?), sacred flames, and healing".

Nigel Teltey's round-the-world boat was named Victress

"She [Brigid] is the goddess of all things perceived to be of relatively high dimensions such as high-rising flames, highlands ... and of activities and states conceived as psychologically lofty and elevated." Nigel died from excessive elevation.

"One folk tradition that continues in both Christian and Pagan homes on St. Brigid's Day (or Imbolc) ... girls and young, unmarried women ... create a corn dolly to represent Brigid ... adorning it with ribbons and baubles"


"Long pieces of straw or rushes would be woven into the shape of a doll and wrapped with white cloth to represent a dress."

"The doll is usually dressed in white, with ribbons, lace and even jewelry added"

Nigel's body was discovered clothed in lingerie.

"the tying of clooties (strip or piece of cloth, a rag or item of clothing) to the trees next to healing wells, and other methods of petitioning or honoring Brighid still take place."

Nigel's body was found hanging from a tree in woods.

Apart from the terribly sungodly fingerprints found all over Nigel's death i.e. hung on a tree, death upon a ritually rich date & turning up three days later - there is this strange cross-dressing-over to the feminine side. Was he turned into some bizarre corn dolly sacrifice? If there was an indepth police search into the death of a man found hanged with his hands tied behind his back, I have not been able to find it.

Here's a snippett from an article I haven't read. It changes our direction by calling Imbolc, 'male-oriented' - yet perhaps it also offers a pointer towards Nigel's sad ending;
"Thus Imbolc is the official beginning of the Spring Quarter of the year. As we stated earlier, human sacrifice is required to properly observe this Male-Oriented solstice festival ... The highest sacrifice is that of a victim who was innocently killed"- not quite sure about the mechanics of the last bit.

Like Prince Charles' investiture (...oops typed incestiture first time round!), Nigel's leavetaking was also accompanied by a (ritualistic) big bang;
"2 Feb, 1972 A bomb explodes at the British Yacht Club in West Berlin." (Wiki)

Nineteen Seventy Two - that was the year that the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race was conceived. It was also the year that the Olympics Games went down in Munich.

We leave Nigel here, but his name travels on with us - indeed we will wonder as we go, whether it may have had a hand in his death:-

"Tetley's is a brewery founded in 1822 by Joshua Tetley in Leeds ... England. The brewery ... produces a range of beers, including Tetley's Bitter, and is the world's largest producer of cask ale ...

Thus through his surname, Nigel Tetley became my fourth pointer on this Holy Gr-Ale Trail.

The other three looked like this:

Pointer number 1: Whitbread = Beeeeer (& had done for 2.5 centuries).
"Samuel Whitbread got his company off to a flying start in the middle 18th century "establishing the first purpose-built mass-production brewery in Britain ... Over the next 200 years, Whitbread & Co introduced many brands to the UK market, such as Stella Artois and Heineken alongside its own brands."


Pointer number 2: Rub a dub dub he sailed in a tub (a tub that spelled of beer).
"[Peter] Blake (the man whose trail we're following) returned to the Whitbread Round the World race in 1985 with one of the race favorites, Lion New Zealand, sponsored by the Lion Brewery."


Pointer number 3: A (B)lake of Beer
1989-90 - On his 5th attempt, Peter Blake becomes the only man to have sailed in every Whitbread Race since it's heady conception. This time he wins.

His boat? Steinlager II

"Steinlager ... is a lager-style beer brewed by...


... Lion Nathan in ... Auckland, New Zealand. It ... is New Zealand's biggest export beer."

Pointer number 4: Nigel Tetley - sacrificial libation?

So now it's time for me to cross over into an area that is quintessentially or even macho-essentially, male. I'm aware that women certainly do drink beer ...

... but it's aura...

... remains ...

marketedly MALE.

I must confess that I have rather been putting off the next bit because of the aura of 'men's club' that surrounds this brew. Heck, it makes up three quarters of everything mALE. Add to that the fact that I know bugger all about it & don't drink the stuff & you can see my hesitation.

... However the clues kept knocking on my door & in the end I let them in.

So we're going to take a wider look at beerish drinks from the perspective that all is not as it's been marketed up to be. What if there's a whole lot more to beer than the manly man's drink?


Historically it's globally exceptional - archeologists claim that beerish concoctions have been found in almost every society.

"Beer is one of the world's oldest prepared beverages, possibly dating back to the early Neolithic or 9000 BC, and is recorded in the written history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia." (Wiki)

Also historically interesting is the apparent necessity of the feminine touch - here's some reading or you can just look at the pics & headlines;
Ancient Peru
Just for the pictures
Telegraph Newspaper (UK )
A Cultural Anthropologist & Professional Beer Drinker (highly recommended for the historically inclinated).

Now we're NOT going down any my sex is better than your sex roads here. What we're interested in, is the forgotten & dismembered energy that was once part of daily life.

A few historically different suggestions I've come across:


-Beer came before bread

-Moses' secret formulae for manna from heaven was actually a formula for beer

-Beer was the parent of civilisation i.e. people stopped wandering so they could start brewing.

It seems that beer-creating was not only women's work, it most often came under goddess jurisdiction

" Ninkasi is the ancient Sumerian matron goddess of the intoxicating beverage beer"

"The Mesopotamian goddess Siris was the patron of beer who is conceived of as a demon, which is not necessarily evil.."

"In ancient Celtic polytheism... Dea Latis... is known as the goddess of water and beer"

"Tenenet ... was an ancient Egyptian goddess of beer."

"Babylon women brewers were also priestsses"

and a variation upon our theme "Hesat An Egyptian cow goddess. The ancient Egyptians referred to milk as 'the beer of Hesat'."

"Beer ... was the main beverage of the ancient Egyptian population, drunk by rich and poor, old and young. The alcohol content was low, and the beer had to be consumed immediately, necessitating daily brewing."

Perhaps it could be likened to a daily prayer.

"With the invention of the steam engine in 1765, industrialization of beer became a reality"

Let's take this as a diversionary turning off point.

The feel I have picked up along my research road is of beer as a beverage that was considered both human & divine. A beverage that was created through human touch & then seemingly magically imbued with something more - an unknown element - creating a drink with a life force of it's own. It's effects too were of something more than this world.

I have sat & walked & wondered & internally brewed these ideas for quite some time now. I came to a place of fermentation, well my poetic interpretation of fermentation.

Simply put I've been viewing fermentation as the changing of & exchanging of time. Or perhaps we could say the reshaping of time.

Fermenting
Boiling, brewing, bubbling
concocting, exciting, fomenting
frothing, inflaming, leavening,
ripening, rousing, stirring up.

Let's take a couple of ingredients, say a man & a woman or flour & yeast or a need & an idea. If we combine them correctly a beginning can be activated & all is potentially wonderful. However completion can only come about if a space is created to hold & transform.

"space (n.) c.1300, "an area, extent, expanse, lapse of time". "

What if the true purpose of dedicated fermentation is a restructuring of time? Perhaps a melding of consciouness & the time it is brewed within

What if we viewed time as living grain instead of dry, grainy, falling sand?

What if once upon a time, this was understood & beer was one of the forms it took. The female body contains the womb, the space where time is gradually transformed into a human being. I would presume that the hormones which aid that transformation could be valuable in aiding other types of time transformation. I read a tale told by the professional beer drinker (linked to above), of how he'd queried some Brazilian wisish women as to whether men made beer.
When the howls of laughing stopped, they explained to the comedian, that masculine brewing would end in something akin to a hurricane in the gut.

Very basically I'm suggesting that beer was, & was understood to be, a magic brew.

Hmmm... "Alongside the basic starch source, the early European beers might contain fruits, honey, numerous types of plants, spices and other substances such as narcotic herbs."

So then, how interesting, that witches brew went & 'got religion'.

"As the church and the monasteries were the early seats of study and learning, so were they the birthplaces of brewing science"

"... by the 7th century AD, beer was also being produced and sold by European monasteries"

That's what I like about religion, it's so reliable, there aint no pies it won't stick it's holy fingers in.

Hops didn't appear in alestory until well after Jesus.
"first mentioned in Europe around 822 by a Carolingian Abbot and again in 1067 by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen."

I know not if hops were a religious additive but they certainly add a certain piquancy to the pot of 'magic brew' theory;

"Humulus lupulus, also known as Beer Hops is part of the Cannabinaceae plant family"

And while on the subject of magic pots. Remember Tetley's? Well here's a little pub trivia for thee;

"In 1911, Tetley's challenged escape artist Harry Houdini to escape from a padlocked metal cask of ale. Houdini accepted this challenge; however, it proved too much for him and he had to be rescued from the cask." I guess that magic was just too strong for him.

Time to take these hops, & skip & jump ourselves back into a sporty little number - for beer is tied to sport in the same way that lungs are tied to breathing


Advert for above: "Re-live the excitement of the 89/90 Whitbread Round the World Race... with fabulous highlights of the six legs of the 33,000 mile race."
Funny how the Whitbread race came to be known as the 33,000 mile race. And funny how even though they don't run it anymore whitbread still manage to mainatin a magical number of staff "Employees 33,000 (2010)" wiki

When I mentioned Peter Blake's outstanding Whitbread victory, after 17 years of trying, to my West African friend, his response contained the word covenants. My understanding of his reply goes like this;

It is possible to desire something so much that a person agrees, on a some level, to pay whatever the price might be, unbeknownst to them this desire can constitute an agreement/covenant with an energy/entity unknown. Thus I have wondered about this man. Like Mallory on Everest he seemed obsessed with the idea of victory.

During the Whitbread race of 1989-90, it was if the gods themselves were at Peter Blake's back;
"In the 1989–90 Whitbread race, Blake skippered Steinlager 2 to an unprecedented clean sweep. His team walked off with line, handicap and overall honours on each of the race's six legs"

What happens when you mix an obsessive hunger with a magic brew?

Is an energy generated?

And just what was a-hubbling & a-bubbling in the three witches brewery when Macbeth came riding by?

Is there a reason why beer is SO invested in 'sport', the generator extraordinaire of primal emotion?

Beer is the 3rd most drunken drink in the world - only water & tea can better it.

It's a HUGE business.

Perhaps that's why it's labelling is so spell-binding...


... If what's inside the bottle is anything like the sigils on the outside then be careful what you wish for.

"Charlemagne considered beer essential for moderate living" (Wiki)
According to David Icke, Monsieur Charles Mane's blood (& perhaps beer) has flowed through the arteries of approx three quarters of America's presidents. Skol.

Beer's grandmama is granular - well not exactly but that was too fun not to say. Granny I mean grain, gets fermented. Barley is perhops the reigning Queen of the beer grains

A telling pic of Old Grandmother Barley? The Sacred grain before a sacred mountain?

We are not a consciously grain worshipping society - thought I think beer unknowingly encompasses this. Here's a few ideas on granular timing to broaden the mind;

"All of Yahweh’s seven annual Feasts or moedim (appointments) revolve around the harvest cycle of cereal grains and other produce. This is clear with the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread, which occur at the barley harvest...

... In reality, the Hebrew moed simply means "set time" or "appointed time." Yahweh has set Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread by the criteria of the crops, not by a purely astronomical reckoning known as the vernal equinox.
The vast majority of Jews gradually got away from actually looking for the green ears of barley, going instead by a calculated calendar"

... If all truth seekers would realize that the Feasts have profound significance ... and that His year as well as His Feasts are closely tied to the harvest" source

Among the mythic history of Granular Grannies is Demeter - "She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon"

A Papalular Cereal - Ceres/Demeter on pagan ground at the Vatican

"In ancient Greece, the ritual significance of barley possibly dates back to the earliest stages of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The preparatory kykeon or mixed drink of the initiates, prepared from barley and herbs, referred in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, whose name some scholars believe meant "Barley-mother". The practice was to dry the barley groats and roast them before preparing the porridge ... This produces malt that soon ferments and becomes slightly alcoholic."

Of possible interest "Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley" - poppies of course are famous for their remembories of sacrifice & their narcotic aid of human slumber.

"Another way to honor the Grain Goddess is to make a corn doll"

When the industrial revoultion initiated the removal of humanity from creation, beer was one of the victims. Materially, monetarily, & mechanically motivated males herding grain & hops into metallic wombs.

The funny thing with those mechanical men is they all kinda look the same . These aren't all beer guys as I couldn't get i-mages, but I couldn't help being re-minded of the four, or is it fore, fathers of America - so manly one'n'all but still their ma's son.

Is beer more than a mere blokeish bevvy?

If it packs a little extra je ne sais quoi on the charmed side, we might expect to find it leads a darker double life - we might look for perhaps symbolism (I mean beside the kind plastered over bottles & cans) plus initiations & unexplained deaths (loosely explained & drained away, of course).

I want to take you on a magical mystery tour.


There can be only one time & one place to start. In September at Oktoberfest - the ode to beer!
A "16-day festival held each year in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to early October ... one of the most famous events in Germany and the world's largest fair, with some six million people attending every year."

I wonder how many of this years punters realise that they will be 200 year old wedding guests;

"The original "Oktoberfest" occurred in Munich, on October 18, 1810: For the commemoration of their marriage, Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen (namesake of the Theresienwiese festival grounds) organized a great horse race (the marriage took place on October 12; the horse race on October 17." wiki

Meanwhile when in Rome:

"Celebrants held horse races on the Campius Martius (field of Mars), and drove a scapegoat out of the city of Rome, expelling the old and bringing in the new.
Equus October was a festival on 15 October (idus), in which the right hand horse of the winning pair of a race was sacrificed to Mars. The tail was rushed to the regia to have its blood drip on the hearth there. There was a traditional fight over its head between the inhabitants of the Subura" ..... ahhh the good old days of horse sacrifice.

I don't know if any butchering was done for Ludwig's nuptuals but the dates are splendidly reminiscent of those extra special horse days. Horse races remaned a part of the wedding party up until 1960. Water however, with added grain & hops, continues to this day to be turned into beer.

Meet Big Mamma Beer of the Oktoberfest


This grand lass is "a bronze-cast statue of a female figure representing ... [the] "goddess of the land of Bavaria", located at the border of the Theresiwiese in Munich ...where the Oktoberfest takes place ... oak wreath ... bear-skin, lion and sword ... Greek design ...between an athena and an amazon ... an allegoric personification of Bavaria's strength and glory. ... Bavaria is one of the biggest bronze sculptures in the world... 18.52 metres (60 ft 9 in) high... Inside the statue, a staircase of 66 stairs allows tourists to climb to the top and view Munich from above" (Wiki)

Six million worshippers gather yearly in her presence - creating what must be the worlds largest & most intoxicated, congregation.
"Many pass out due to drunkenness. These especially drunk patrons are often called "Bierleichen" (German for "beer corpses")."
FYI "A bier is a stand on which a corpse, or coffin or casket containing a corpse, is placed to lie in state or to be carried to the grave."

Oktoberfest 1980: "A pipe bomb was set off in a dustbin at the restrooms at the main entrance on September 26, 1980 at 22:19. The bomb consisted of an empty fire extinguisher filled with 1.39 kilograms of TNT and mortar shells. Thirteen people were killed, over 200 were injured, 68 seriously."

The lone culprit, who was of course killed in the blast, was named as Patsy, sorry Gundolf Köhler - his titling of German right-wing extremist imMEDIAtely providing headline motive.

"... debate has raged for decades over whether or not he really acted alone"
"... However, this account is disputed strongly by various groups."
I found very little about this on the Internet, perhaps his wings were made of extreme rites or then again perhaps a wider view is now permissable.

Onwards

As far as the actual birthing process goes Venus had it fairly easy - luckily for her she was a member of the local yacht club.

Normally the birth instruction is to PUSH.

Pushing & birthing go hand in hand.

I realise you are probably uberly familiar with the whole 9/11 thing, but I feel it is important to go back over it & see it from the birthing angle.

You see I think it was not a failure at all. I think it was a very successful birth complete with the necessary beer libation to properly 'wet the baby's head'. We recall that Mr Herr Hitler wore very occult jackboots & he knew where to insert them.

"The Beer Hall Putsch (also known as the Munich Putsch...) was a ?failed? attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November (9/11) 1923 when Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria and Germany. Putsch is the German word word for a military coup d'état."

"Hitler returned to the auditorium to make an extemporaneous speech that changed the mood of the hall almost within seconds. ... an eyewitness ... reported: “ I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds ... Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it."

Blood was appropriately mixed with the spill-spelled beer.

"The 16 fallen were regarded as the first "blood martyrs" of the NZDAP and were remembered by Hitler in the foreword of Mein Kampf. The Nazi flag they carried, which in the course of events was stained with blood, came to be known as the Blutfahne (blood flag) and was brought out for the swearing in of new recruits ... when Hitler was in power."

I rather think all this was a necessary part of a fermentation process - the brewing of Hitler to full ripeness.

"Hitler's imprisonment after the failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch would make him a national hero for his defense of a strong German state, convincing him that he was the Messiah who could save Germany."

When the time came for the big push into WWII, the Bürgerbräukeller (the beer hall used for the 1923 Munich Putsch) was called into sacrificial play again.

"After Hitler seized power in 1933, he commemorated each anniversary of the failed rebellion by giving a speech in the Bürgerbräukeller to the surviving veterans of the Putsch.

In 1939, an anti-Nazi workman, Georg Elser, concealed a time bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller, set to go off during Hitler's speech on 8 November. The bomb exploded, killing seven people and injuring sixty-three. But Hitler escaped unharmed: he had cut short his speech and left about half an hour early. Elser was arrested, imprisoned for 5 ½ years and shortly before the end of war executed." Ah yes of course, murder was not on the serious crimes list back then.

Or was that all part of a something a little darker?

Blasted blood spatter - a potent 'commodity' among the darkest cults.

Nazism was fermented in Munich. By 1919 Munich had became "a hotbed of right-wing politics, among which Adolf Hitler and the National Socialism rose to prominence."

Munich's neighbouring town is Nuremburg - one of those instantly recognisable names.

"Nuremberg held great significance during the Nazi Germany era ...the Nazi Party chose the city to be the site of huge Nazi Party conventions–the Nuremburg Rallies ... held annually from 1927 to 1938 ... After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933 the Nuremberg rallies became huge Nazi propaganda events, a center of Nazi ideals."

Somewhere amidst my bleery beery research, the land of Bavaria got hold of my attention - in the bottom right-hand corner of Germany, lies this strange other-world.

Firstly there's the beer angle. Upon Baveria's soil flows the greatest river of beer in the world - Oktoberfest. While it's Hallertau region "is the largest hop-planting area in the world".
The name of Bavaria's capital city, Munich, is "derived from the Old German word Mönche, meaning "Monks". In particular "from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city". "Traditionally the Benedictine monks were excellent brewers of beer."

The feeling that has brewed as I've truffled through Bavarian undergrowth, is that like beer, Bavaria is magic.

I think Herr Hitler was very aware of this too.

As were later occultists.

"The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympics team were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Black September...

... By the end of the ordeal, the terrorists had killed eleven Israeli athletes and coaches and one West German police officer. Five of the eight members of Black September were killed by police officers."

What if Bavaria is a land of real creation stories?

A portal for the german-nation of mythic forces - giants & demons, dreamers, wizards & dark princes. Not a bad place, rather a very powerful one where otherwordly stories can enter, or be helped to enter, our reality.


Once upon a time there was a king of Bavaria whom history proclaimed mad.

But then again history is rather mad is it not? Perhaps real madness is the inability to recognise the intersection of two worlds.

Meet Ludwig II. "He is sometimes referred to as the Swan King in English and der Märchenkönig (the Fairy tale King) in German." His story began in the splendidly named Nymphenburg Palace on 25 August 1845.

Ludwig had a dream.

Well actually he had quite a few of them. He dreamed of majestic castles.

"Ludwig is best known as an eccentric whose legacy is intertwined with the history of art and architecture, as he commissioned the construction of several extravagant fantasy castles (the most famous being Neuschwanstein).

By 1886 his real-wordly ministers were tired of his crenellations in the sky & arranged to have him measured for a mad hatters hat - "the rebelling ministers decided on the rationale that he was mentally ill, and unable to rule."

"His cousin Empress Elisabeth held that "The King was not mad; he was just an eccentric living in a world of dreams. They might have treated him more gently, and thus perhaps spared him so terrible an end"."


Our fairytale now transforms into Le Carre thriller or Christie whodunnit.

"Ludwig was transported to Castle Berg on the shores of Lake Starnberg, south of Munich ...
On 13 June [1886] around 6:00 pm, Ludwig asked Gudden to accompany him on a walk along the shore of Lake Starnberg. Gudden agreed, and told the guards not to follow them.

The two men never returned. At 11:30 that night, searchers found both the king and Gudden dead, floating in the shallow water near the shore.

Ludwig's death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but this has been questioned. Ludwig was known to be a strong swimmer, the water was less than waist-deep where his body was found, and the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs."

After an elaborate funeral on 19 June 1886, Ludwig's remains were interred in the crypt of the Michaelskirche in Munich. His heart, however, does not lie with the rest of his body. .... The tradition of Bavaria calls for the heart of the deceased king to be placed in an urn and kept at the chapel at Altötting. The heart of "mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the builder of Neuschwanstein castle lies in this chapel, along with that of his grandfathers and father."

Back to ... ahem reality.

OR are we?


You see the fantastical world of Bavaria was VERY successfully deposited into the Untied States of Amnesia by an occulted fore-fathered type of figure...

Yep you guessed it, that beer swilling Australian Malt Sidney.

Oh hang on a minute, maybe it's me who needs the drink.

"[Walt] Disney's production over the years is filled with Masonic symbolism, occult over- and undertones, mind control and indoctrination"


You see Ludwig's beloved Nueschwanstein castle "was used by Walt Disney in the twentieth century as the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castles at Disneylands around the world...
&
"As ... a Disney icon, it has become the basis for the logo of Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Television, Disney Music Group and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures."

Meanwhile back in Bavaria "with 1.3 million visitors per year Neuschwanstein is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe ... As of 2008 the total number of visitors was more than 60 million."

This place must have some serious magic.

My son made a very interesting comment a little while ago to the effect that the Nazi's were perfect villains - as if they had walked out of a James Bond movie - the only difference he could see was that they didn't seem to have a decent motive for being 'that' evil.

I think he made a very good point.

Perhaps Hollywood's Nazis have coloured my view. But then again perhaps that's because they slide into movies so very well, as if they were tailor-made for them.

Was Nazi Inc. channelled from an-other-world? An evil giant birthed by evil magicians in a land of magic?

Very briefly:
A geography lesson

"The Isar is a river in Tirol, Austria and Bavaria, Germany. Its source is in ... the Alps in Tirol; it ... flows through Bad Tölz, Munich, and Lanshut before reaching the Danube."

Very weirdly:
A brief history lesson

"Following their executions on October 16, 1946, the ashes of the Nazi war criminals Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Alfred Rosenberg, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Frick, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Fritz Sauckel and Julius Streicher were scattered in the Isar, as were those of Hermann Göring who had committed suicide the previous night."

ummm ... is it just me or does that seem awfully consecrated treatment for convicted war criminals to you? Especially considering that Bavaria was the location of one of their biggest crimes;

"Dachau concentration camp... was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (9.9 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria ... Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed." (wiki) Another monster birthed in Bavaria.

And speaking of monsters -know you that possibly the world's greatest monster is a Son of Bavaria?.

Dr. Viktor Frankenstein's big bouncing baby boy holds a Bavarian passport. Mary Shelley may have been ensconced on the shores of Lake Geneva as she wrote, but her creature came to life in Ingolstadt, Bavaria.

A fellow Ingolstadt passport holder was one "Johann Adam Weishaupt (February 6, 1748 in Ingolstodt - November 18, 1830 in Gotha) ... German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati, a secret society with origins in Bavaria."


There is so much jetscam & flotscam swilling about illumination on the net, that I'm not willing to dive in. Not that it doesn't make an exciting story.

Two things however interested me about Herr Weishaupt.

We'll work backwards - it works better.

The Illuminated Weis Man died on 18th November in Gotham City.

Sorry wrong story. I meant Golgotha.

No wrong again. What I meant to say was Gotha.

November 18 is the extra-magically numbered, 322nd day of the year.

I don't have any forensic equipment with me, so all I can do is wonder if Herr Weishaupt ...


might be the smiling face of this Golgothic corpse-oration?
"And they brought him to the place called Gol'gotha (which means the place of a skull)"

If this all sounds a bit Mickey Mouse to you, then you might be interested to know that 18 November is this fantastic creature's creation date.

It was also the date of High Noon, Jonestown in '78 & the Great Inferno of Kings Xbones of '87


Scooting backwards in time now, we find Herr Wieshaupt's birth date dancing a very familiar jig. If you've been tavelling with me of late, then you should be thoroughly bored with that date by now.

February 6 - Waitangi D-Day in NZ. Monarch Butterfly Hatching Day in UK (& Empire).

"1685 - James II of England and VII of Scotland becomes King upon the death of his brother Charles II."
"1952 - Elizabeth II becomes Queen upon the death of her father George VI."

This regal date linking link's us regally with yet another Bavarian link in this slinking chain.

Elizabeth II is "great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria"

"Victoria was of mostly German descent, the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent & Strathearn and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld"
.
In 1840, she made an honest man of her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

If we were talking astrology we might say that Coburg was on the cusp of Bavaria. I guess it must have been extra cuspy tipsy topsy, for it tottled rite on in there 90 years ago;

"Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany ... it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920"

"From 1826 to 1918, Coburg was one of the two capitals of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. During the nineteenth century, dynastic marriages created ties with the royal families of Belgium, Bulgaria, Portugal, as well as Great Britain, the last being achieved when Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ... married his first cousin, Queen Victoria. This marriage established the present British royal house, which renamed itself Windsor during World War I."

"After her marriage, Queen Victoria said of Coburg "If I were not who I am, this would have been my real home, but I shall always consider it my second one".

Another elite Bavarian export is the Holy Hopmeister, Joseph Alois Catzinger - strangely named Grimm keeper at the Home for Beer-Drinking Cats

.... The Catican - where any Vat or can will do for these confirmed catoholics

We feel presumptively convinced that Herr Catzinger's brand name Benedict Ex Vee Wan™ harkens back to earlier days of münching Bavarian brewers.

Interesting to note that his big nobbly bit (medical term: Papal Basilica) has been blessed twice. Well fair enough too - I'm sure you'd do the same too if you have one that could hold 60,000 people.

"St. Peter's Basilica, is a ... church located within the Vatican City ... [It] has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world, holding 60,000 people"

What's numerically interesting is that both rituals took place on a golgothically numbered day (& what's the bet they didn't even invite the thirteenth fairy?);

18th November:

"326 - Old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated"
"1626 - St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated"

Of interest: The Holy Hopmeister was born a hop, skip & a jump away from the the town of Altötting & the chapel that houses Mad Ludwig's removable heart.

"As soon as he was elected Pope, Ratzinger stated that Altötting was the heart of Bavaria and one of the hearts of Europe"

Another export of Bavaria is of course BMW.

I say that casually as if I've always known it, but truth to tell I only found out recently that the B beside the MW translates to Bayerische or (Bavarian). I recall being told (sold?) a story in a Sir Scene Canary movie, that the circular blue and white BMW logo signifies the movement of an aircraft propeller. However once you've spent any time delving into the land of Bavaria you come to the conclusion that that just might be a made up story from the land of stories.


The colours of Bavaria's flag.

The mention of planes however does takes us almost full circle - right back to sport, that bastion of beer.

The following tale occured in Bavaria & thus contains fairy tale element(al)s - like Babes in the wood & the magic number 3

It also transport us back once again to THAT date - 6th February with an Elizabethan class aircraft crashing on an Elizabethan date.

"The Munich air disaster took place on 6 February 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off ...

... By the time of the third attempt, it had begun to snow, causing a layer of slush to build up at the end of the runway. When the aircraft hit the slush, it lost velocity, making take-off impossible. It ploughed through a fence past the end of the runway, before the port wing hit a nearby house and was torn off... the left side of the cockpit hit a tree. The right side of the fuselage hit a wooden hut...

... On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the "Bushby Babes", along with a number of supporters and journalists. 20 of the 44 people on board the aircraft died in the crash. The injured, some of whom had been knocked unconscious, were taken to the Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich where 3 more died, resulting in a total of 23 fatalities with 21 survivors.

The team was returning from a European Cup match ... against Red Star Belgrade, but had to make a stop in Munich for refuelling, as a non-stop trip from Belgrade to Manchester was out of the "Elizabethan" class Airspeed Ambassador aircraft's range..."

Some interesting nature invoking surnames appear among the survivors:;

Blanchflower (white flower)
Berry
Viollet
Wood
Bellis (a type of daisy from the Aster family).
Plus stewardess Rosemary Cheverton.

Only one flower appeared among the fatalities - journalist Henry Rose.

................................................................................

A few finishing notes:

The Crow (Brandon Lee) - was born on Imbolc

LAGER = REGAL (reversed)

Eric dRAVEN aka the Crow reminded me of the movie Speed which I re-watched (with more lively eyes & ears) recently. I had never paid attention to the strange surname that Keanu sports throughout:

Jack tRAVEN

- if you shake up that name & then lettle it'all resettle, you may find yourself @ the temple where regal lagers are served - TAVERN.

Jack TAVERN's partner in Speed is sacrificed for the good of a good yarn - his name:

Harry Temple

Interestingly his non-acting name Jeff Daniels is ratherrrr reminiscent of a type of spirit you find in a tavern.

The Raven & the Temple both bring to mind the 7/7 bombing in London.

This concludes a very long segment of our journey.

But ... it aint over yet!

For the musically inclined, I thought you might enjoy this song which has been playing about in my head for the last few weeks

Skol

"Skol ... is the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish word for cheers, a salute or a toast, as to an admired person or group" :)

Additional: A spot of Altötting by the man in the moon