One thing the guidebooks never bother to tell you about France is also one of the most important of all that you should know. In fact this piece of information is so important that my imparting it to you, as I am about to do, is worth the price of the book of all this. So perhaps, if you’ve borrowed this from a friend, you should skip to the next chapter right now. (I jest.)
So what is this invaluable knowledge that no-one should travel in France without first having assimilated? Just this:
Everything Shuts At Twelve. For Two Hours. At Least.
That’s it. Outside of the major metropolitan cities like Paris and Lyon, and maybe even Marseilles these days, if you ain’t got whatever it is you were looking for by the time the midi rings, you can forget getting it until two o’clock at the earliest.
Believe me, you will not be in France long before you realise how much this immutable chronology affects life.
Christianity has pagan origins. This has been known for hundreds of years and is easily proven.
The pagan origins of Christianity and for that matter Judaism and even Islam have fascinated me for many years.
What does ‘pagan’ mean?
The term pagan comes from ‘paganes’, a Latin word meaning country person, or in other words, not a city sophisticate. It was coined by the Romans and curiously, later became attached to the principal Graeco-Roman cults, of the Olympian gods and goddesses, as well as others.
The irony is that Christianity itself has pagan origins and we’ll be discussing them. This video is a basic taster but there will be many more.
The origins of Christianity lie far back in time, even before civilisation first appeared in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. Naturally, our first recordings are from after that, because previous cultures did not write and so their mythologies were oral traditions. But the earliest religious mythology can be traced forward to Jesus, directly.
The story of how we evolved what became the most successful religion ever, still dominant today, is fascinating. Christianity is fundamental to Western culture and remains powerful within it. That culture has been responsible for the greatest triumphs of humanity in the sciences, the arts, philosophy and economics. No other culture has even come close.
In an era where this culture, the most successful we have ever invented, is under constant attack, we should re-examine its roots. When we do we will find a great. all encompassing universality.
The fact that Christianity has pagan origins should neither come as a surprise nor should it be seen as a challenge to either Christianity or the cultures informed by it. While they might not be perfect, these cultures, which originated in Europe and were developed by European men, remain the most seminal and power ever to have existed; and at their heart is the Goddess, she who both gives and takes life and who begat Jesus Christ himself.
The Philippines is steeped in folklore and mythology. The very air seems supernatural at times and even today, Filipinos firmly believe in the supernatural creatures which also populate their country. Best known of these are Aswangs and Engkantos.
Many of these beliefs certainly date from the pre-colonial period and before the establishment of Catholicism as the dominant religion. Prior to this, the Philippines was not a unitary polity, but was made up of many small kingdoms and tribal areas. These all seem to have believed in a somewhat similar form of Animism but were all brought together under one faith and one colonial rule, by the Spanish.
Manila is huge. Apart from Manila itself, the conurbation of Metro Manila includes other cities that would themselves be enormous by any other measure: Makati, Pasig, Quezon, Cavite, and others. So transport is a major part of Manila life. But this is Asia, and unlike Europe, there is no organised public transport. There are no service buses, no trams or metro systems oganised by local government. Everything is run privately, and the sheer amount of private transport provision is staggering.
Given that I have not yet see anyone carrying a passenger on his shoulders, and horse-and-cart solutions are reserved for the tourist area of Intramuros, the old part of Manila, the most basic, though not always the cheapest, means of transport is the gloriously named ‘pedicab’. This is a bicycle with a side-car.
The main problem with this solution, leaving aside the thorny moral issue of whether it can be right for a 14-stone Scotsman and an admittedly much lighter Filipina to be push-biked around by a sweating 9-stone Pinoy, is the complete lack of suspension on these contraptions. Since the roads in Manila resemble the Somme after a barrage, this means a bone-jarring ride that risks lumbar impaction.
My dear sister, it is some years since last I heard from you now. I am worried, my dear. There you are, far away, outside the loving matriarchy, where you would be safe and never oppressed. I don’t even know if you receive my messages, but again, as I do every year at this time, I write to you, womyn to womyn.
Today, things are very different from what you had become used to in the years BM (Before Matriarchy). You were used to the not-womyn roaming freely and oppressing womyn at every turn. You were used to them having the vote and a political voice. But the problem was that allowing them a political voice also allowed them to exercise their masculinity and through that their violence. Society could not progress as long as we allowed not-womyn to influence it.
[kofi]
To combat this, it became necessary to strip the not-womyn of executive power and to replace them with womyn. This was always the purpose of the Feminist movement, following the words of the Great Prophet Karl Marx (PBUH) and his Holy Priestess Gloria Steinem.
There are several sexual nexuses which affect gender in those born male. These depend on the three sets of parameters which underlie it. In turn these are: sex itself, that is our biological sex following whether we are male (XY) or female (XX) and all those entail; sexuality, which is either male (active, the desire to penetrate) or female (passive, the desire to be penetrated) and gender, our outward expression, masculine or feminine.
The First Sexual Nexus
These are to some extent variable. At the first nexus, a male might have female sexuality. This we call transsexualism or congenital Sexual Inversion. It can appear either around age five as strong and persistent cross-gender identification or around fifteen and up with an additional sexual element. However, homosexuality can also be acquired, in a number of ways, most of which depend on successful experiment — they tried receptive sex and liked it. Both these classes of people desire to be penetrated and will therefore seek partners who can do this. Mostly those will be masculine men, so the subject here becomes completely feminine, in order to attract them. Note that homosexuals only reluctantly partner other homosexuals; in general they far prefer masculine men. Similarly, some females are sexually Inverted and have male sexuality. They become as masculine as they can, the classic butch lesbian.
Perhaps incredibly, Roman sex remains the standard model in most of the world. It is only the Benighted West that thinks it’s different.
One of many orgy scenes in the film ‘Caligula’. This was probably fairly accurate.
There was no equivalent, anywhere in the Ancient World, to modern concepts like ‘gay’. There was a class of males usually called cinaidus or catamite, and these were exactly equivalent to the modern Homosexual, highly feminised, submissive, receptive in sex and often dressing as women.
‘Same-sex’ intercourse was commonplace and indeed, enthusiastically pursued, but only according to social conventions. Breaking these would incur no criminal penalty but the culprits might be shunned or excluded from society. This, in Rome, was a severe penalty.
[kofi]
Roman sex was dictated by two sets of rules. The first set was known as the mos maiorum , which translates to “the way of the elders”. It was an unwritten code of honour.
I’m going to become a Hedonist. No really, I am. Seriously. I am going to join the Church of Hedonism. Yup. Before this happens to me.
Of course, no such church actually exists, and most religions seem to be mainly concerned with stopping people having fun. But anyway. If there isn’t one, I think it’s time we started one.
I am rapidly approaching that watershed in life, the dawn of my seventh decade. I don’t have that much time to waste any more. I quick demographic of my parents’ families suggests that if I remain a non-smoker, keep the drink to a moderate level and eat reasonably healthy food, I have maybe another fifteen years of active life, and another five or so of winding down, before parting the mortal coil and becoming one with the Earth again.
That is not an awful lot of time. And I am beginning to resent every moment of it that is not spent, basically, having fun.
I am proud to be a European. Our culture has many faults, yet at the same time it has given the world so much. Science and democracy, equality under law and social inclusion simply would not exist without it. And across culture, art, science, engineering and technology, our culture remains a brilliant star, without which light, we would still be in the Dark Ages. I am very proud and lucky to be a part of that.
Despite this, I believed, for many years, that other cultures were equal.
But I was wrong. Culture is not a level playing field. The very qualities that define Western culture represent a system of morality, which allow us to judge other cultures. And we definitely should judge them.
So-called ‘homosexuality’, as it is known in the Anglo-West is almost non-existent outside it, despite efforts being continually made to revise history. That is because in all other places and at all other times, sex between males was strictly limited to sex between men and boys or older youths and younger boys, and sex between men and catamites who had permanently adopted the appearance and social role of women — mukhannathun — or today, ladyboys.
In the “homosocial” world of the early Ottoman Arab East, sexual symbolism was never far from the surface. Yet actual sexual intercourse between adult men was clearly perceived as an anomaly, linked either to violence (rape) or disease (ubnah).[1]
However, sex between men and boys was practically universal in the Islamosphere, which for centuries was far more relaxed about this than the Christian world.
Sexual relations between men and boys in the early Ottoman Arab East were almost always conceived as involving an adult man (who stereotypically would be the “male” partner) and an adolescent boy (the “female”).
![[kofi]](https://i0.wp.com/www.rodfleming.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/support-me-on-%5Bkofi%5D.png?resize=525%2C142&ssl=1)
You must be logged in to post a comment.