Christmas

Just how wise were those three wise men? If they had only been more discreet when they spoke to King Herod, he might never have ordered that terrible slaughter of the innocents. It can't have been comforting for Jesus to know that so many babies died just so that he could be the only child with a divine pedigree. Mind you, as all the others were killed, it ruled out any possibility that the magi had picked the wrong kid. As we know, Christmas has pagan roots. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, it incorporated several ancient festivals and pagan traditions.

* Saturnalia
The customs of gift-giving, indulgent feasting and having fun comes from this Roman festival Saturnalia - which was celebrated around 17th of December. Saturn, to whom the festival was dedicated, was the Roman God of agriculture and plenty. Presents symbolised the redistribuion of wealth from rich to poor during the season of greatest hardship and the rich would lay on big feasts to feed their poorer neighbours.

* Mithras
The ancient festival to mark the solstice on 25th of December was to celebrate Mithras, the Roman God of Light. Traditionally the festival marked the renewal of hope and is believed to have been taken up by Christians as the birthday of Jesus around the fourth century.

* New Year's Eve
Decorating the home with greenery is today seen as a Christmas tradition, but originated from the Roman celebration for New Year's Eve. Dedicated to the two-faced God Janus (who looked both forward and backward ) Romans would have torch-lit processions, sing songs, have their fortunes told, give presents and decorate their homes with greenery to symbolise new life. Other ways of celebrating Christmas were adopted more recently. and were once peculiar to northern Europe. Typical of these, is the Yule log, which is believed to have arrived in Britain only in the 17th century. One theory is that it originated in the Germanic paganism that was practiced across northern Europe before Christianity; others argue it came from Anglo-Saxon paganism,
practiced in England in early medieval times. The Yule Log was seen as a protective amulet and also a source of rivalry between neighbours.

Leonardo's Codices

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the outstanding figures of the Rennaissance and of all time. An entirely self-taught intellectual giant, he was endlessly curious about the physical world.
His amazing notebooks reveal the breadth of his research into areas as diverse as anatomy, architecture, botany, geometry, engineering, mathematics physics, painting, including his extraordinarily understanding of what the future would bring like robots, airplanes in anticipation of modern technology.

During his life, Leonardo produced thousands of pages of notes, sketches and designs 'about anatomy and other interesting things ' (extract from a letter of an agent for the Duke of Ferrara) these pages are called codices, manuscript pages that are bound together in a book form. However, Leonardo's manuscripts were not always grouped together in this way.
Although Leonardo had organized his papers prior to his bequest to his student, Francesco Melzi, the manuscripts have unfortunately not been maintained in that manner. Melzi's heirs were terrible curators. Individual pages were sold chaply to collectors. Folios were re-arranged and separated. The individual that did the most damage was a sculptor from the court of King Phillip IV of Spain. His name was Pompeo Leoni. In an attempt to sort artistic drawings from technical drawings, he disassembled, re-organized, rebound and in some cases completely lost many of Leonardo's papers.

Amazingly, some of the documents were so completely lost, that they weren't found again until 1966 ! What a year that was for the National Library of Madrid ! They found two bound manuscripts, which are now referred to as 'Madrid I and Madrid II ' At present, approximately 5,000 pages are accounted for, in various museums and libraries. I will mention a brief resume of a few of the 20 Leonardo's Codices. For me, the most startling is the CODEX ATLANTICUS. This is the largest collection of Leonardo's manuscripts that has ever been assembled in a series of 12 leather bound books. Within this collection, you can find some of his designs for automatons or robots. Of particular interest, are the pages on gliders and flying machines. Most of Leonardo's aereal machines were designed after he studied birds. In his notes he recorded, " The bird is an instrument functioning according to mathematical laws, and man has the power to reproduce an instrument like this, with all its movements". There is written evidence in this codice, that Leonardo may have flown one of his gliders when he wrote:

" When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there, you will always long to return '

Leonardo built a working model of one of his flying machines and on January 2, 1496, he recorded in his notes that he was going to attempt to fly it the next day. It is unknown whether he did try it or not, but judging by what he later wrote on a note to himself to try any more flying experiments over a lake where he would be less likely to be injured in a landing. Suggests that maybe he came down with a painful thump on the ground as later on this same Codice Atlanticus he has drawn a design for a parachute which might have been conceived to allow for the safe escape of ny pilot from a flying device.

This Atlanticus Codice also includes studies for some of his paintings like The Battle of Anghiari of which we talked about earlier and where recently, an Italian professor has claimed that this painting is behind Vasari's other battle painting.

THE CODEX FORSTER
One fascinating element of this Codex is information that lead Prof. Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo ideale of Vinci, to discover that Leonardo had developed one of the original synthethic plastics. The material was organic, non-toxic and unbreakable. Prof. Vezzosi has recreated the materials based on notes from this Forster Codex. The Forster manuscripts were lost for a number of years. When they resurfaced at the end of the 19th Century, they were purchased by Earl Edward George Lytton, and subsequently inherited by John Forster and it was finally bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1876 and it remains there to this day.

THE MADRID CODICES
There are two. One and Two, which are bound in red Moroccan leather and these codices are an engineer's delight, full of widgets, gadgets, gears, and inventions, dated between 1490 - 1496. Madrid II, is primarily a treatise on Geometry, and was written by Leonardo between 1503- 1505. Although these manuscripts thought to be lost, they resurfaced in 1966. The manuscript now resides at the National Library in Madrid.

CODEX ARUNDEL
This codex aludes to the properties of water and it even has a description and a drawing of a pre-historic sea-monster. This codex is only rivaled in size and scope only by the Codex Atlanticus, since it covers Art, science, and technology in addition to studies in geometry, weights and architectural projects for the Royal residence of the King of France. It currently resides in the British Museum.

CODEX LEICESTER
It was purchased by Bill Gates for $30.8 million. This manuscript dates from 1506-1510, it covers a wide varity of topics. It only has 72 pages and this is the only manuscript that's in private hands. So we cannot see it.

Leonardo da Vinci and the church

In the year 1492, Italy faced troublesome years ahead as the death of Lorenzo de Medici threw the nation's political system off balance and paved the way for an invasion by the French. That August in Rome, Rodrigo Borgia became Pope and Christopher Columbus put out to sea to set foot in the New World just over two months later. In April 1492, Lorenzo de Medici, the powerful and highly respected ruler of Leonardo's native Florence, lay dying. When lightening struck the cathedral dome, the extraordinary Dominican preacher, Girolamo Savonarola took it for an omen, thundering at his congregation ' Behold the sword of the Lord, swift and sure over the peoples of the earth ! ' and he warned the Florentines that terrible times lay ahead for the church and the state.

By 1527 Rome was ransacked by German troops, while Michelangelo worked for the Medici in Florence. Pope Clement VII was held prisoner and was soon to face another crisis - Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir, wanted to divorce his wife, and if the Pope refused his permission the dominion of the Catholic Church in England was at risk.

Against all this historical background, here we are in the year 2009. Now the Vatican is openly ackowledging extra-terrestrials beings associated with Jesus Christ ! The same church which squashed other religions in the New World as heathen.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci has been described as the greatest genius the world has ever known, and for good reason. He was a dreamer inspired to be a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a musical composer, a writer and an outstanding inventor. He designed an aeroplane and a submarine 500 years before they appeared in the twentieth century.

A genius is a visionary and a visionary is a dreamer. We are all dreamers and we may all be visionaries but we are not all geniuses. The difference between the da Vincis of this world and others, is that they can pluck a thought or an idea that comes to them in the still of the night, in a dream and create from it reality. To them, the true world is their inner world. Above all, they are good listeners, not only to other people but to that small, quiet voice within.

Dreams of the famous and infamous throughout the ages have without doubt helped to make history and shape our present way of life. In essence, however, their dreams are no different in any way from our dreams. We all have prophetic dreams, warning dreams and inspirational dreams just as they did, but if we do not accept them as sources of power and original thought, and acknowledge that we can obtain from them all information and solutions we can possibly need during our lifetime, they will be content to remain in the background like shy friends.
Recognize them, however, and immediately they step forward and begin to put our house, the mansion of our soul, in order. But, llike Professor Kekule said, we must first learn to dream.

DREAMS, ART and SURREALISM

Biblical and historical dreams have provided artists with exciting subjects to paint since at least the eleventh century but it was not until the surrealist movement came along that dreams were psychologically captured in essence and in feeling. Surrealism, the name given to an artistic group in France in 1924, endeavoured to express dreams, the action of the unconscious mind, on to canvas. Although nightmares were no stranger to the imagination of the artist, Goya in particular excelling in this respect, none had tried to convey the atmosphere and symbolic message of the dream-experience until this time. 'Surrealism is based on a belief in the omnipotence of the dream', said Andre Breton, often called the Pope of the Surrealist movement.
Reaching its heyday in the 1930's the influence responsible for its emergence was clearly that of psychoanalysis. With Freud's emphasis on free association of ideas, laced with sexual repression and Jung's symbolism; paintings appeared that shocked the world to its artistic roots. And even today there are those who, not caring to understand dreams, let alone art, dismiss this art as total rubbish.

Salvador Dali's paintings, with titles like ' The Persistence of Memory' 'The Birth of Liquid Desires' ' The Spectre of Sex Appeal' are clearly reflections of Freudian-type dreams. Melting telephones and furniture, watches, crutches, barren beaches. Eerily produce appropriate, dreamlike atmospheres of general un-ease and obsession. In contrast, Max Ernest, with his 'Robing of the Bride' and 'The Eye of Silver' fills his scenes with archetypal forests, blazing suns, bird-headed women, rocks towering to the sky, silent swamps and mysterious figures all very much in keeping with the traditional Jungian concept of dreams.

Other artists in this group went on to paint anxiety dreams, portraying strong feelings of fear and terror in one form or another. Hypnagogic dreams were a popular subject, too, showing images falling half-way between sleep and the waking state. Here to stay, surrealism certainly opened the door on our inner world and in so doing, contributed in its own way towards a better understanding of art, ourselves and, of course, dreams too, for dreams are very much like paintings.

Dreams In Art and literature

Before Freud described the dark battles going on in the minds of men and Jung unveiled the world of the collective unconscious filled with prototypes and symbols, poets, writers and painters had long since discovered all this, and more. Their dreams had been mines of information on every subject under the sun, inspiring them to reflect on the profound psychological and paradoxical nature of man.

Expressing that confrontation of repressed savagery and open benevolence present within the authors and other artists, we find literary revelations that could easily have come straight from the confidential casebook of a present-day psychiatrist. The fears of hell and visions of horror were therefore recognized ages ago, as aspects of one's darker unknown self.

Neither Freud's generation, nor Freud himself, should have been surprised by his discoveries concerning man's true self if they had read earlier literature. The symbolic paradise dream, set in a personal garden of delight, was seen and written about in terms of compensation and wish-fulfilment, a long time before it received the analytical Freudian treatment. Throughout Shakespeare's work, run themes and references to sleep and dreams conveying those states of reality and illusion between which we so often find ourselves trapped.

The author Robert Louis Stevenson who was fortunate in that he remembered most of his dreams, in his book 'Across The Plains' he described how complete stories came to him during sleep. Each night he would pick up the fantasy-thread where he had left it the night before and carry on from there. In Shakespeare's Hamlet we find: ' To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dream may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil ?

GHOSTS

I liked Victoria's ghost stories very much and as we have been talking about unusual phenomena, time travel and the fourth dimension, I thought we could continue to talk about ghost stories. I have never seen a ghost apart from distant red stars, which died long ago and their light has taken a million light years to get here to earth but I have experienced some unusual and uncanny happenings like the one more than 30 years ago, when Peter and I had not yet married. Late at night, I was reading my book alone, waiting for a phone call from Peter who was in the U.S. at the time, when the lights started flickering not all at the same time, first, the bedside table lamp on my side of the bed and then on Peter's side and afterwards the lights from the ceiling started to flicker as well. I waited for a little while and the lights all went back to normal, so I turned them all off and went to sleep. During my sleep, in a dream, I saw Peter's father, he sounded anxious and told me that he wanted to give his son an important message; he asked me if I could go and use the ouija board that had been left in our living room. I replied that I was afraid to use that board and if he could just tell me what was his message for Peter was, he replied it had to be written down, I felt mortified that I was not helping him the way he wanted and I was just promising him to remember all what he told me. He just disappeared and I felt frustrated not knowing exactly what this message for Peter really was.

The next day, someone called Nicky called to ask for Peter. I said that he was in the U.S. she said it was urgent but refused to tell me what it was about and that she would talk to Peter when he got back home; that morning Peter called me and when I told him there were urgent news for him here at home, the lights started flickering quite dramatically, so I remembered to tell him about my dream last night and how the lights suddenly started flickering all through our conversation. When Peter came home from abroad, we learned that his father had passed away on the night that I had had my dream.