Friday, November 10, 2006

Halloween Roots

Why is Halloween sinister? Why the ghosts and goblins, skeletons and scary witches?

Halloween comes from the Celtic Samhain, the 'threshold day' when the door was open to the spirit world. Souls both friendly and evil could cross over on this night. Scary costumes and frightening jack-o-lanterns could keep the spirits at bay.

But the origin lies even deeper than this 2,500 year old tradition.

Thousands of years before the Celts, in the early Neolithic, our hunting-gathering forebears gradually settled down when the Ice Age ended and big game went extinct. They took up farming.

Farming was an off-and-on proposition. Some years were good, some bad. In good years there was a food surplus, enough for winter, new births, and spring planting. Bad years meant famine, disease and starvation.

And around the time of the year we now call late October, the harvest would be in, and the people would know for sure: if it was a good year or a bad one. Winter feasts or winter famines.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Infinity . . .

Infinity means "having no boundries or limits" and "having no beginning or end". Mathematically, infinity is unlimited in space and time.

Philosophers and theologians have always said that God is infinite: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent (all-powerful, all-knowing; everywhere).

Since infinity is everything, everywhere, always, it follows that there can be only ONE infinity. In the entire universe, in all time, there is only 'room' for ONE infinity. Nothing can exist, ever, outside this ONE infinity.

So if somehow our minds could slip beyond finite thoughts, could for a moment glimpse infinity, we would, in that moment, be infinite. We would be the 'one infinity'. We would BE God!

But since infinity is everywhere always, we (and everything around us) is already part of the 'one infinity', is already God!

This is the heresy of pantheism, but as much as theologians try to rebut it - http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100801.htm - they can only play with words. Infinity is infinite. Nothing can escape it. Not even nothing.

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."
-Luke 17: 20-21

Friday, January 13, 2006

What is Radix?

ra-dix
1. Biology. A root or point of origin. 2. Mathematics. The base of a system of numbers, such as 2 in the binary system or 10 in the decimal system.
[Latin radix, root. From the Indo-Euopean wrad-, branch or root]

From the roots come the trunk, branches and leaves of the tree, its shape, its character and its 'lifestyle'. Language families have a 'root language' that give all the descendant languages their structure. Hair, teeth and nerves have roots that hold them and nurture them. Human families trace geneology to ancestral roots -- ancestors whose decisions and actions determine the location, lives and physical appearance of their progeny.

Musical chords are built from root notes. From the simple embryo 'root' comes the complex adult. From the events of the past come the reality of the present, and the possibilities of the future.

To understand the whole of something one must absolutely study its roots.