Spiritual

Anthony North: No occult figure is more puzzling than the Count Saint Germain. Always dressed in black, but decorated by diamond jewellery, Saint Germain first appears in Vienna about 1740 when he moves in high circles after curing a French Marshal of illness.Where the Count came from, no one knows - there are many versions of his birth from being the son of a Hungarian prince, to the son of a Portuguese Jew, to the b****** child of a Bohemian nobleman. In a full life he was known as a great musician, healer, spy, statesman, linguist, soldier and alchemist, havingadventures which took him from Vienna to Paris, Holland, London, Belgium, Russia, Nuremberg and eventually to the Himalayas in 1822 for a life of meditation – provided, of course, you don’t accept one of several accounts of his supposed death.Generally thought of as a charlatan today, he spent most of his life creating laboratories, where he was said to have achieved the Great Work of the alchemist - to produce the Philosopher’s Stone which turned base metals into gold, and the Elixir of Life, which gave him immortality.As proof of the latter, he claimed to have been a high priest of a cosmic race 50,000 years ago before intervening in history as the prophet Samuel.

He is said tohave also claimed to be:Joseph, husband of MarySt Alban, the first English Christian martyrProclus, head of Plato’s academyMerlinRoger BaconChristopher ColumbusFrancis BaconActivities within his contemporary life could be equally fascinating. Arrested as a Jacobite spy in England, he also tried to warn Louis XVI of his impending death, and was instrumental in placing Catherine the Great on the Russian throne.

View: Full Article | Source: Beyond the Blog

For thousands of years people have believed that prayer can help heal the sick and since at least the 19th century scientists have conducted research and experiments to try and determine if this is really the case. Just what is the real power ofprayer ?"Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick.

Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them ?"

View: Full Article | Source: Science Daily

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. - Ecclesiastes 12:6-7One Bible reference suggests that the above Old Testament passage be interpreted by taking the "silver cord" to mean the marrow of the backbone, the "golden bowl" to mean the membrane that covers the brain, the "pitcher" to mean the veins of the body, the "fountain" to mean the liver, the "wheel" to mean the head, and the "cistern" to mean the heart out of which the head draws the power of life.I infer from Ecclesiastes that the loosening of the "silver cord" is one of several ways by which the physical body and spirit body separate at the time of death, perhaps referring to old age. Clairvoyants and out-of-body travelers, however, see the severance of the silver cord involved in every kind of death. Frederic W. H. Myers, the Cambridge scholar who became a pioneering psychical researcher, communicated extensively through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins of Ireland, considered perhaps the most famous and credible automatic writing medium ever, after his death in 1901. Myers referred to the spirit body as the double, explaining that it is an exact counterpart of the physical shape. "The two are bound together by many little threads, by two silver cords," Myers explained. "One of these makes contact with the solar plexus, the other with the brain. They all may lengthen or extend during sleep or during half-sleep, for they have considerable elasticity. When a man slowly dies these threads and two cords are gradually broken. Death occurs when these two principal communicating livens with brain and solar plexus are severed."Myers went on to explain that life occasionally lingers in certain cells of the body after the soul has departed. "The double still adheres to the shell by means of certain of the threads which have not yet been broken," he continued. "The soul does not suffer in the physical sense if thus delayed in his journey. He may suffer.

Far removed from Tehran's bustling tin-roofed teashops and Isfahan's verdant pomegranate gardens, the deserts known as Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut meet at the city of Yazd, once the heart of the Persian Empire.Walking across the wind-whipped plains of the forgotten city, a young Iranian woman dressed in colorful floral garbs points out a sand-dusted tower hovering in the distance like a dormant volcano under a relentless sun. "This is where we put tens of thousands of corpses over the years," she explains with a congenial smile.The funerary tower is part of theancient burial practice of Zoroastrianism, the world's oldest monotheistic religion.

Zoroastrians (known in India as Parsis) regard sky burials, in which the bodies are exposed to natural elements including vultures in open-topped "Towers of Silence," as an ecologically friendly alternative to cremation, consistent with their religion's reverence for the earth. A Zoroastrian priest clad in a long, cotton robe explains: "Death is considered to be the work of Angra Mainyu, the embodiment of all that is evil, whereas the earth and all that is beautiful is considered to be the pure work of God. We must not pollute the earth with our remains." The priest believes that open burials are a fulfillment of the central tenet of his religion, which is to practice good deeds. With a forlorn expression, he notes that, 3,000 years after thetradition of open burials began, there are not enough Zoroastrians left alive to keep the tower in Yazd open. Instead, today's Zoroastrians who want to observe traditional burial practices must request in their will that their body is sent to a forested suburb in Mumbai, India, where the last Tower of Silence still operates. In the alabaster prayer room of the Zoroastrian temple in the center of Yazd, a handful of adherents sway to the cadence of ancient Persian prayers recited as a priest feeds sticks of sandalwood and sprinkles of frankincense into a blazing urn. Zoroastrians wear hand-woven wool cords as external symbols of their faith, and almost always pray in front of a fire, which represents purity and sustainability. In Yazd, the holy flame has burned for 1,500 years without ever being extinguished. While Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion in a swatheof t......