1911
Max Dupain (d.
1992),
Australian photographer
1913 Frances Langford (d. 2005), American actress
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reetings from Australia.
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She [the statue of Cybele, carved from a black
meteorite] had arrived at Ostia, where the river Tiber divides to join the sea and flows with ampler sweep. All the knights and the grave senators, mixed with the common folk, came to meet her at the mouth of the Tuscan river. With them walked mothers and daughters and brides, and the virgins who tended the holy hearths. The men wearied their arms by tugging lustily at the rope … Yet the ship stuck fast, like an island firmly fixed in the middle of the sea. Astonished at the portent, the men did stand and quake. Claudia Quinta … whose beauty matched her nobility … when she had stepped forth from the procession of chaste matrons … thrice lifted her palms to heaven (all who looked on her thought she was out of her mind), and bending the knee she fixed her eyes on the image of the goddess, and with dishevelled hair uttered these words:
"Thou fruitful Mother of the Gods, graciously accept thy suppliant's prayers …" She spoke, and drew the rope with a slight effort. My story is a strange one, but it is attested by the stage
[Frazer writes,
"It was probably acted at the Megalensia"]. The goddess was moved, and followed her leader. Attended by a crowd, Claudia walked in front with joyful face . . The goddess herself, seated in a wagon, drove in through the Capene Gate; fresh flowers were scattered on the yoked oxen. Nasica received her. Ovid, Fasti, IV. 291
Mother of all the gods Sing of her She loves |
Montgolfiers |
Claudia, the peerless priestess of the tower-crowned goddess.
Propertius IV. 11. 52
Claudia took off her girdle and fastened it about the prow of the ship, and, like one divinely inspired, bade all stand aside; and then she besought the goddess ... And lo, she not only made the ship move, but even towed her for some distance up stream. Two things, I think, the goddess showed the Romans on that day; first that the freight they were bringing from Phrygia was ... truly divine, not lifeless clay but a thing of life and divine powers ... And the other was that no one of the citizens could be good or bad and she not know thereof. ... I am told that on the same subject of which I am impelled to speak at the very season of these holy rites Porphyry too has written a philosophic treatise.
Julian the
Apostate, Hymn to the Mother of the
Gods, 159, D; id. 161, C
John
Aubrey,
Miscellanies Upon Various
Subjects
Witnesses say that they [bees] are born out of the corpses of oxen, because they
are created by beating the flesh of slaughtered calves; this causes worms to
form which later become bees. It is correct to say that bees are born from oxen,
just as hornets come from horses, drone-bees from mules, and wasps from asses.
St Isidore of Seville, whose feast day this is; Etymologies, Book 11, 4:3
Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
'Drake's Prayer'.
Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I on board his ship, Golden
Hind, on April 4, 1581
Jag längtar
till landet som icke är,
ty allting som är, är jag
trött att begära.
(I long
for the country that is not,
For everything that is I am tired of desiring.)
Edith Södergran, Russian-born Swedish-language poet, born on
April 4, 1892; The Country
That Is Not
If a man hasn't discovered
something he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
Martin Luther King,
Jr,
who was
assassinated on April 4, 1968
In your struggle for justice, let
your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate
him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon
you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well
as yourself.
Martin Luther
King,
Jr
Salvation isn't reaching the
destination of absolute morality, but it's being in the process and
on the right road.
Martin Luther
King,
Jr
In small clumsy letters he wrote:
April 4th, 1984.
George Orwell
describes the first entry in Winston Smith's secret diary; Nineteen
Eighty-Four
April 4
is
the 94th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (95th
in leap years), with 271
days remaining.
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Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Festival of Megalesia
(or Megalensia, Magna Mater, Ludi Megalenses)
of Cybele, (Apr 4 - 10), ancient Rome
The meteorite idol
Magna Mater (Cybele, 'the All-Begetting Mother, who beats a drum to mark the rhythm of life'; Great Mother of the Gods), was the great mother and all other Roman goddesses may be seen as aspects of her. Earlier, the Greeks had identified her with the Titan goddess, Rhea, sister and wife of Cronus.
This week-long festival was to celebrate the arrival in Rome of the idol of Cybele in 204 BCE. From 191 BCE, when Cybele's temple had been completed, the great festivities began on this day and were celebrated for six days each year.
The prophetic Sibylline Oracles had advised that the stone of Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess of mountains and fertility, must be brought to Rome to help bring about a victory against Hannibal the Carthaginian in what we now call the Second Punic War. So in 204, Cybele's sacred black statue, which was a meteorite (to which the Romans later added a likeness of the goddess) from Pessinus in Anatolia (in modern Turkey, it was the city ruled by the legendary King Midas), was shipped to Ostia. There, Scipio Nasica took custody of it and brought it to the city of Rome. On April 4, 204 BCE the ship bearing the idol ran aground at the mouth of the Tiber River.
By prayer, Claudia Quinta, a Vestal Virgin (a position held by several Claudias from various branches of the Claudian family), helped to release the grounded ship. Claudia, who had previously been falsely accused of breaking her holy vows, joined the throng that gathered at the ship, and, praying to Cybele, laid her hands on the ropes being employed to tow the foundering vessel. Although the crowd thought her mad, the ship came free of the mud, and in some versions of the tale (see Julian's, in the quotations section at the head of this page), she even towed the ship upstream with her girdle. Claudia and the goddess were brought to Rome in triumph. In the Middle Ages, Claudia was revered as the paragon of womanly virtue. A relief in the Capitoline Museum shows Claudia in the act of dragging the ship.
Read on at the Megalesia article at the Wilson's Almanac Scriptorium
Roman
calendar Roman
festivals and notable days in the Book of Days Deities
of many cultures in the Book of Days
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By Thom Hartmann
By Robert Fisk
Photo of the day
 10 Reasons to Abolish the IMF & World Bank
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 Palm
Sunday (2004)
A note about the dating of
items in Wilson's Almanac Commemorated from the earliest days of the Christian Church, today (in 2004) is Palm Sunday, the Sunday preceding Easter that commemorates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem before his trial and crucifixion, seated upon an ass and his path strewn with palm fronds by his devotees. Palm Sunday is a moveable feast in the church calendar observed by Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant Christians. In olden days, throughout most of Europe, not having palm trees, they used branches of box, yew, willow, and so on. Hence 'pussy willow', an English plant, is called 'English palm' in some quarters. These boughs were blessed by the priest
after mass and distributed to the people, who carried them in
procession. Later they were burnt (the boughs, not the good
parishioners), the ashes to be sprinkled on the heads of the
worshippers on the next Ash Wednesday. Crosses were made of palm, sold to the people by priests as preventives of disease. In England, the branches for the clergy placed on the high altar; those for the laity on the south step of the altar. Blessed by the priest in case any demonic beings having influence in the leaves. The flowers and branches then fumed with frankincense from censers. Sometimes the procession featured a wooden ass on wheels, carrying a wooden mannequin of Christ. [Hone* says that after the procession the boys played with the ass around the town.] The people strewed their willow branches on the ground before it. The branches were then picked up; they were believed to protect from storms and lightning the ensuing year. Cakes were thrown from the steeple, boys would pick them up. Later, an angel was introduced into the procession. Boys would go a-palming the day before – into the forest to pick willow. They would return with willow branches in their hands, and sprigs of the willow in their mouths and their hats or button-holes. Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)
Pre-Christian origins? The Festival of Hilaria, in honour of the Mother of Gods, ancient Rome was a festival dedicated to Cybele and her consort, Attis. The rites, which had a strong life-death-rebirth association, began on March 15 with a procession of reed-bearers (cannophori). *William
Hone, The
Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and
Co., London, 1878; 1825-26
edition online
Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of: Epiphany Candlemas/Imbolc Hall Sunday Collop Monday Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day Ash Wednesday & Lent Mid-Lent Care Sunday Painful Friday Lazarus Saturday Palm Sunday Spy Wednesday Maundy Thursday Good Friday Easter Saturday Easter Easter Monday Easter Tuesday Hocktide Ascension Rogation Days Whitsunday/Whitsuntide Corpus Christi May Day/Beltaine Lammas/Lughnasadh Michaelmas Halloween/Samhain Martinmas Advent Christmas Eve Christmas More at Articles Index Hundreds of feast days of saints, gods and goddesses at Wilson's Almanac Book of Days
Processions
of St Spridon, Patron Saint of Corfu Feast day of St Agathopus Feast day of St Aleth of Dijon Feast day of St Benedict the Black (Benedict the Moor; il Moro; Benedict the African) Feast day of St Gaetano Catanoso Feast day of St Guier Feast day of St Gwerir of Liskeard Feast day of St Henry of Gheest Feast day of St Hildebert of Ghent Feast day of St Isidore,
Archbishop of
Seville,
Spain
(Isidore of Seville) Isidore, a cleric, historian, rhetorician
and linguist, lived from c.
560
- April 4,
636.
He was was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and has
the reputation of being one of the great scholars of the early
Middle Ages.
He was brother to St
Fulgentius
of Écija, St
Florentina
and St Other saints associated with bees More Medieval bestiary: Isidore Feast day of St Micheal de Sanctis Feast day of St Peter of Poitiers Feast day of St Plato, abbot Feast day of St Theodulus Feast day of St Tigernach of Clogher Feast day of St Zosimus of Palestine Ose Matsuri, Ose Shrine, Shizuoka
Prefecture, Japan On the shore, taiko groups play their drums and many stalls sell local produce.
Qingming Festival, China, if a leap year (April 5 if not) National Walk to Work Day, USA
International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action In 2006, the UN General Assembly declared the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. The events will raise awareness about landmines and progress toward their eradication. The battle against landmines is being won, with some countries already achieving mine-free status. But victory will depend on the unflagging commitment of the governments of those countries where mines still exist and on the sustained support of the international community, according to Max Gaylard, director of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS).
1648 Grinling Gibbons (d. 1721), master wood-worker 1785 Bettina von Arnim (d. 1859), lyricist 1802 Dorothea Dix (d. July 17, 1887) (not to be confused with the journalist Dorothy Dix, 1870 - 1951), tireless American social activist who, from the early 1840s to well after the American Civil War, drew on the most advanced 19th century ideas about psychiatric treatment to successfully lobby almost every State legislature to create asylums for the insane. Unfortunately for her legacy, these state hospitals grew into enormous "museums of madness" that served as the deserving targets for later reformers' zeal. Early progressives in the Book of Days 1843 William Jackson, photographer 1870 George Albert Smith (d. 1951), president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1875 Pierre Monteux (d. 1964), conductor 1876 Maurice de Vlaminck (d. 1958), painter 1884 Isoroku Yamamoto (d. 1943), naval commander 1885 Arthur Murray (d. 1991), dancer, founder of a world-famous dancing academy 1892 Edith Södergran (d. 1923), pioneer of poetry in the Swedish language in Finland. Södergran had a significant impact on Nordic poetry, especially 1920s Finnish modernism. Comparable as a modernizer of poetry only to Katri Vala, Edith Södergran became one of the most loved Nordic writers. 1898 Agnes Ayres (d. 1940), silent film actress, starred with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik1902 Louise Leveque de Vilmorin (d. 1969), actress 1906 Bea Benaderet (d. 1968), actress (The Beverly Hillbillies; Petticoat Junction), voice of Betty Rubble in The Flinstones from 1960 - '64 1906 John Cameron Swayze (d. 1995), Amerian journalist, television host 1908 Robert
Askin (later, Sir Robin Askin), corrupt Premier
of New South Wales, Australia, in the 1960s
1911
Max Dupain (d.
1992),
Australian photographer
1913 Frances Langford (d. 2005), American actress 1914 Marguerite Duras (d. 1996), writer 1915 Muddy Waters (d. 1983), blues musician 1922 Elmer Bernstein, composer 1928 Maya Angelou, American poet, playwright and novelist 1932 Anthony Perkins (d. 1992), American actor, best known for his role as the mad, evil Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho 1932 Andrei Tarkovsky (d. 1986), film director 1939 Hugh Masekela, musician 1940 Sharon Sheeley, songwriter 1944 Craig T Nelson, actor (Coach; The District; The Incredibles)
1945 Daniel Cohn-Bendit (pictured at right), French radical activist of the 1960s, known internationally as 'Danny the Red'. Spokesperson and leader of the of the 'May Revolution' in Paris (1968), expelled from France that year. Member of the European Parliament for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (The Greens) (1994 - '99). Member of the European Parliament for Les Verts (The Greens) (from 1999). 1946 Dave Hill, Slade, guitarist 1948 Dan Simmons, writer 1950 Christine Lahti, actress 1956 David E Kelley, writer, television producer 1957 Aki Kaurismäki, Finnish film-director 1957
1958 Mary-Margaret Humes, American soap opera actress 1960 Hugo Weaving, Nigerian-born English-Australian film and stage actor best known for his roles as Agent Smith in the The Matrix and Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, as well as the title character of V for Vendetta
1963 Graham Norton, talk show host 1965 Robert Downey Jr, American actor 1970 Barry Pepper, actor 1973 David Blaine, illusionist 1979 Heath Ledger (d. January 22, 2008), Australian actor (Brokeback Mountain; Candy) 1991 Jamie Lynn Spears, American actress and singer
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