|
|
|
|
This page is big!
If it fails to load fully, please click Refresh on your browser menu.
It's fully loaded when you see the purple menu bar at the foot of the page.
reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
First time here? See the Index for
How it works
Celebrate each and every day with a free subscription to the daily ezine. You can apply by form or send a blank email. Read what the 'Almaniacs' (members) say about Wilson's Almanac.
I request your support if this website pleases and informs you, as this is my livelihood. Thank you, from the bottom of my fridge.
Inquiries from publishers are welcome, but, dear reader, please don't use my work without my written permission. If I've inadvertently used something of yours that you consider not to fall under the fair use doctrine, please tell me and I'll remove it.
Carpe diem! (Seize the day!)
Our news on your homepage (that is, if you use My Yahoo, which we recommend for your start-up page)
|
|
|
In Upper Egypt on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning, that is, on the tenth of September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town chooses its own ruler. This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool's cap and a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand of office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes, executioners, and so forth, he proceeds to the Governor's house. The latter allows himself to be deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a tribunal, to the decisions of which even the governor and his officials must bow. After three days the mock king is condemned to death; the envelope or shell in which he was encased is committed to the flames, and from its ashes the Fellah creeps forth. The custom perhaps points to an old practice of burning a real king in grim earnest. When a man dies he is like those who are being initiated into the mysteries ... Our whole life is but a succession of wanderings and painful courses ... but as soon as we exit, places of purity receive us, with songs and dance and the solemnities of holy words and sacred visions. |
|
Quickly, Demeter let the corn grow up from the fertile fields,
and the broad earth was weighed down with leaves and flowers.
But she, going to the law-giving kings,
showed to them – to Triptolemus and to Diocles, driver of horses,
to strong Eumolpus and to Keleus, leader of his people –
the rituals of her worship, and instituted secret rites for all of them.
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, tr. CA Sowa
All men have stood for freedom ... For freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down.
Gerrard
Winstanley, leader of the Diggers, who died on September 10, 1676
Let reason rule the man and he dares not trespass against his fellow creatures, but will do as he would be done unto, For Reason tells him is thy neighbour hungry and naked today, do thou feed and clothe him, it may be thy case tomorrow and then he will be ready to help thee.
Gerrard Winstanley
Everyone that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates, that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty.
Gerrard Winstanley
For surely this particular property of mine and thine hath brought in all misery upon people. For first, it hath occasioned people to steal one from another. Secondly, it hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil action and then kills them for doing it. Let all judge if this not be a great devil.
Gerrard Winstanley
The work we are going about is this, to dig up George Hill and the waste ground thereabouts and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows ... that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor.
Gerrard Winstanley; The True Leveller's Standard
Advanced, April 20, 1649
Every day poor people are forced to work for fourpence a day, though corn is dear. And yet the tithing priest stops their mouth and tells them that
'inward satisfaction of mind' was meant by the declaration 'the Poor shall inherit the earth'. I tell you, the Scripture is to be really and materially fulfilled. You jeer at the name
'Leveller'; I tell you Jesus Christ is the Head Leveller.
Gerrard Winstanley; ibid
The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the
land.
Gerrard Winstanley
When this universal law of equity rises up in every man and woman, then none shall lay claim to any creature and say, This is mine, and that is yours. This is my work, that is yours. But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all; when a man hath need of any corn or cattle, take from the next store-house he meets with. There shall be no buying and selling, no fairs or markets, but the whole earth shall be the common treasury for every man, for the earth is the Lord's ... When a man hath eat, and drink, and clothes, he hath enough. And all shall cheerfully put to their hands to make these things that are needful, one helping another. There shall be none lords over others, but everyone shall be a lord of himself, subject to the law of righteousness, reason and equity, which shall dwell and rule in him, which is the Lord.
Gerrard Winstanley; The New Law of Righteousness
… whosoever takes those Scriptures, and makes exposition upon them, from their imagination, and tells you that is the word of God, and hath seen nothing: That they are the false Christs and false Prophets … Men must speak their own experienced words, and must not speake thoughts.
Gerrard Winstanley Source
And here I end, having put my arm as far as my strength will go to advance righteousness: I have writ, I have acted, I have peace: and now I must wait to see the spirit do his own work in the hearts of others, and whether England shall be the first land, or some others, wherein truth shall sit down in triumph.
Gerrard Winstanley; A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army
The poorest man has as true a title, as just a right, to land as a rich man.
Gerrard Winstanley
Wheresoever there is a people united by common community of livelihood into oneness, it will be the strongest in the world, for they will be as one man to defend their inheritance.
Gerrard Winstanley
You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now,
The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging does maintain, & persons all defame
Stand up now, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,
Your houses they pull down, stand up now.
Your houses they pull down to fright your men in town
But the gentry must come down, & the poor shall wear the crown.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
With spades & hoes & plowes, stand up now, stand up now
With spades & hoes & plowes stand up now,
Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold
To kill you if they could, & rights from you to hold.
Stand up now, Diggers all.
Diggers' ballad; from A Ballad History of
England, Roy Palmer Full text
Attractive
as the Diggers' manifesto was to many of the dispossessed, it found little
favour with property owners.
George Monbiot,
English journalist and author; 'Still Digging'
... And what does it mean, then to be a poet? It was a
long time before I realized that to be a poet means essentially to see,
but mark well, to see in such a way that whatever is seen is perceived by
the audience just as the poet saw it. But only what has been lived through
can be seen in that way and accepted in that way. And the secret of modern
literature lies precisely in this matter of experiences that are lived
through. All that I have written these last ten years, I have lived
through spiritually.
Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright; 'Speech to the Norwegian Students', September 10, 1874, from Speeches and New Letters, 1910
Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.
Stephen Jay Gould, American scientist and author, born on September 10, 1941
Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny
– and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
Stephen Jay Gould; The Lying Stones of Marrakech
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics
classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or
question.
Stephen Jay Gould
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the
cosmos.
Stephen Jay Gould
If only Stephen Gould could think as clearly as he writes!
Richard Dawkins
Just think, nobody thought this would last.
Michael Jackson (b. 1958), US popular singer; New York Times, September 10, 1994; after four months of marriage to Lisa Marie Presley
I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on November 14, 2002, speaking on National Public Radio and Infinity Radio, USA
Source
Myths of the War on Terrorism and Iraq
JIM LEHRER: Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Secretary, I went back and checked the record today, the impression that was given in public statements and all that sort of thing was that when this war ended, this war was going to end, that when Saddam Hussein and his regime, you know, fell, then the rest of it was going to be kind of a mop-up. And I'm just –
DONALD RUMSFELD: Not by me.
Amnesiac Donald Rumsfeld, September 10, 2003 Source: PBS News Hour
September 10
is
the 253rd
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (254th
in leap years), with 112
days remaining.
Calendar converter Almanacs,
calendars, time, dedicated weeks, etc
Almanac screensavers
On this day
Dictionary
I
recommend
IMDB
days
IMDB years
Wikipedia days
Wiki decades
Wiki centuries
Timelines
Conversions
Calendrica
Lunabar
Birthday calculator
When 'Source'
links on this page move address or die, I might allow them to stay here, but the
Wayback Machine might help you
locate the original.
Feast day of Asclepigenia
Asclepigenia (flourished 430
- 485 CE), a priestess of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries
and philosopher of the Neo-Platonist school, is commemorated today.
Asclepigenia lived in 5th-Century
Athens, daughter of Plutarch the Younger who ran the neo-platonic school
there till he died in 430, when she, her brother Hiero and a colleague
inherited its management. The school's philosophy was Syncretic, merging
Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies.
Asclepigenia's interests were in the esoteric principles
of metaphysics that control the universe. She applied magic and theurgic
principles to affect fate, applying her knowledge of Plato and Aristotle
to the great religious and metaphysical questions raised by Christian
ethical theory. She believed that there were five realms of reality,
namely: the One, Intelligence, Matter, Soul, and Nature. We do not know
her work from original sources but from references and influences in those
of her pupils.
Believing that fates
might be affected by the means of metaphysics, cosmology, magic, and theurgy, Asclepigenia tended more toward mysticism, magic, and
contemplation of the mysteries of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics.
Her most famous student was the philosopher, Proclus (February
8, 412 - April
17, 487).
According to Nigel Pennick (The
Pagan Book of Days, Destiny
Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992), if the weather is good today it
will continue for another 40 days.
Asclepius
Asclepigenia was
named for Asclepius
(Aesculapius; Asklepios; Asklepius),
the son of Apollo by Coronis
(or Arsinoe), the celebrated
physician/deity who had been so successful at preventing mortal death that
he was accused of encroaching on the preserve of Hades. As a consequence
of his bad behaviour, Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt, and in revenge,
Apollo killed the first generation of Cyclopes (the
children of Uranus and Gaia) who had forged the
thunderbolt. Zeus placed Asclepius in the sky as the constellation
Ophiuchus
('serpent-bearer').(More
on Asclepius.)
Find an error or dead link?
Like to make a suggestion, or just say "G'day"?
Meet me at Corrigenda
