Oddities, curiousities and strangness in history

wow onions how cool is that. must try the onion thing in the room. btw have you sorted your weird gunge problem Petty? did you go to see the witchdoctor?

I was reading the Egyptian creation myth and was pondering this bit- where the sun and light are made-

60 of the Dwrty-Falcons, meaning "The Old Ones" perched atop 60 djed pillars surrounding the hatched central egg. The sun deity shone out from the lotus within the egg.

Now I subscribe to a theory that many old myths which contain numbers are important for the numbers- they are the real information 'for those with eyes to see' and the story provides the context.

So in this light I was musing it over, wondering what '60 old ones' could mean. And for some reason I wondered if old ones might refer to atoms (Im not sure why I had that thought as it doesnt really fit, but I did, I think I was thinking of electrons around a nucleus)- so out of curiousty I put in atoms 60 into google- which got me nowhere- so then I tried nucleus 60- which didnt get much further than a make of paddle for a canoe.
Finally I tried 60 surrounding nucleus.
And that got me this -

'The fusion of two nuclei that create larger nuclei with lower atomic numbers than iron and nickel—a total nucleon number of about 60—is usually an exothermic process that releases more energy than is required to bring them together. It is this energy-releasing process that makes nuclear fusion in stars a self-sustaining reaction.

So from a myth about Old Gods making the sun burn to this......

The number 60 is ancient in mathematics. All our astronomy is based on it, dating back to the Assyrians and Babylonians from whom the Egyptians learned to measure the stars. That's why our minutes and seconds are divided into 60's to this day. Also why hours are in dozens, and for that matter why dozens still keep cropping up in our base ten world. Their mathematics, astronomy, astrology and religion were all part and parcel.

But I believe it's far more ancient than that, probably going far back into the stone age. There is an ancient way of counting on the fingers in which each of the three fingerbones on each finger is a place counter, with the thumb moving up each of the 4 fingers in turn as a counter to keep track.

That makes a count of 12 on the right hand. The fingers of the left hand are then used to keep track of up to 5 of these dozens, totaling 60. Much more efficient than the clumsy base 10.

As a matter of fact the abacus appears to be an attempt to construct a machine that uses this old-joint counting arithmetic system on base 5 rather than base 12. Also there is a lot of symbolism around finger bones as used in augury. Like I said, this seems to be older than old.

Interestingly enough, if you use the height of your fist held at arm's length to measure the angle of the sun, moon or stars, there are approximately 12 fists from horizon to horizon. This is almost certainly the original definition of the hour. This is still used all over the world.

Does it go back to Neanderthal times, or even earlier? Hard to prove either way, but it's certainly not out of the question.

The Indians of Rajasthan count on their fingers like that, so did the Ancient Romans.

(Susan Coopers book The Dark is Rising is based on the Old Ones, kind of Druid Celtic immortals, its a great read.)

Interesting. It pops up hear and there all over the world, but because it's never written there are no permanent records to survive for historians. Like counting songs, like counting to go to sleep, this stuff is hardwired into us as human beings. It's how we understand the world, whether we think we suck at math or not. Apes understand the basics. I'd guess numbers and mysticism are as old language.

pretty sure there's been books on the history of numbers

But how many books?

don't ask me i'm not a number

But you are a sleuth and this is a clue.

*puts on trendy sunglasses or as I like to call them, shades*


i do declare 2 books have been written on thee numbers of history

There are two ancient Celtic methods- one is a series of knots on lengths of string- the other is notches on the edges of stone, with tally on both sides of the edge- it seems to have served as a dual purpose counting system and basic written language although no one can read the early stuff now.

DMT TRIP. this is an Amazing account of what happened when Terence McKenna took this drug DMT which by all accounts is found naturally in the body and in plants.

Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American writer mainly on the subject of psychedelic drugs and their role in society, and existence beyond the physical body. He was also a public speaker, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, art historian, and self-described anarchist, anti-materialist, environmentalist, feminist, Platonist and skeptic. During his lifetime he was noted for his knowledge of psychedelics, metaphysics, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, mysticism, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, biology, geology, physics, phenomenology, and his concept of novelty theory.
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''Well, I suppose it's an invitation to describe a DMT trip, which is never to be passed up. Because ... I think what we're talking about here is a continuum, I'm talking about a very narrow band of experience. A continuum of experience that comes through tryptamine hallucinogens: DMT, Psilocybin, and the DMT-Harmine combination... and that's it... Mescaline doesn't, isn't what I'm talking about. Ketamine certainly isn't what I'm talking about. Datura certainly isn't what I'm talking about. And some of these are plants, and some of them are synthetic drugs, but it's a very narrow spectrum of these highly visionary ones, and then the most visionary, the quintessence is DMT. I mean, I think that DMT is as intense as any drug should ever get; I don't ever want to be more loaded than that. I don't think you can be more loaded than that and come back. You know? What happens on DMT for me, and this is based on, you know, composite image of many experiences, and I've confirmed it to some degree with other people, but I was talking to somebody the other day, somebody who had just done it, and I said, "what did you think?" and they said: "It's the most idiosyncratic thing there is." and I thought, what a wonderful description, that's exactly what it is - it's pure idiosyncraticness. It's so idiosyncratic that's all there's there - it's like idiosyncracy without an object, is what DMT is.


When you smoke this, the onset is very rapid. 30-45 seconds, you know? There's this feeling which comes over your body - half arousal, half anaesthesia. The air appears to suddenly have been sucked out of the room because all the colors brighten visibly, as though some intervening medium has been removed. And then there's a sound, like a piece of bread wrapper or cellophane being scrunched up and thrown away. A friend of mine says this is radio-entelechy leaving the anterior fontanelle at the top of your head. [laughter] I'm not sure I want to line up with that... but a membrane is being ripped; something is being torn. And then there is a total (what Mircea Eliade called in a wonderful phrase) "a complete rupture of the mundane plane". [laughter] You know? That's like a hit and run accident except the car came from hyperspace, you know? A complete rupture of the mundane plane. And you fall back into this hallucinogenic space, and what you see is a slowly rotating red and orange kind of thing, which, over the years we've nicknamed, uh, "The Chrysanthemum." And it's.. this represents some kind of disequilibrium state that has its roots in the synapses. What's happening as you're watching this Chrysanthemum is that millions and then hundreds of millions of DMT molecules are rushing into these serotonin bond sites in the synaptic cleft and disrupting the serotonin and switching the electron spin resonance signature of these neural junctions in this "other" direction. And this is taking, you know, 30 or 40 seconds, and there's this rising hum, this



nnnmmmmMMMMMMMM



that rising tone; the flying saucer tone of Hollywood B movies... you actually hear this thing. And then, if you've taken enough DMT (and it has to do entirely with physical capacity: Did you take, did you cross the threshold?) something happens [clap]... for which there are no words. A membrane is rent, and you are propelled into this "place." And language cannot describe it - accurately. Therefore I will inaccurately describe it.



The rest is now lies. When you break into this space, you have several impressions simultaneously that are a kind of gestalt: First of all (and why, I don't know) you have the impression that you are underground - far underground - you can't say why, but there's just this feeling of immense weight above you but you're in a large space, a vaulted dome. People even call it "The DMT dome" I have said, had people say to me, "Have you been under the dome?" and I knew exactly what they meant.


So you burst into this space. It's lit, socketed lighting, some kind of indirect lighting you can't quite locate. But what is astonishing and immediately riveting is that in this place there are entities - there are these things, which I call "self transforming machine elves," I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning they're lies! Uh, it's a jeweled self-transforming basketball, a machine elf. I name them 'Tykes' because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, and I was fascinated by the 54th fragment of Heraclitis, where he says: "The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls" ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon - it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing.


There are many of these things, but the main thing that's happening is that they are engaged in a linguistic activity of some sort, which we do not have words for, but it's visible language. They are doing the visible language trip. When you break into the space, they actually cheer! The first thing you hear when you pass across is this 'hhhyeaaaaaayyy' - you know the Pink Floyd song? "The Gnomes have Learned a New Way to Say Hoo-Ray?” This has gotta be what these guys were talking about; how else could it be? It doesn't make any sense otherwise.


You break into this space... the gnomes say hoo-ray! And they come rushing forward and they, and, and the thing then that happens is... and people say "is there risk, to DMT? it sounds so intense. Is it dangerous?".


The answer is: yes, it's tremendously dangerous; the danger is the possibility of death by astonishment. And you must prepare yourself for this eventuality, because you are so amazed. Amazement seems to be the emotion that has torn loose and swamped everything else - I mean astounded? When was the last time you were genuinely 'ASTOUNDED'? I mean, I think you can go your whole damned life without being 'ASTOUNDED'... and this is astonishment, you know, raised to the N-th degree to the point that your jaw hangs...
I mean you're like this:



And it raises issues: like you say, "Jesus, ah, huhh ... I must be dead!" And you, and the weird thing about DMT is it does not effect what we ordinarily call the mind. The part that you call "you" - nothing happens to it. You're just like you were before, but the World has been radically replaced - 100% - it's all gone, and you're sitting there, and you're saying, "Jesus, a minute ago I was in a room with some people, and they were pushing some weird drug on me, and, and now, what's happened? Is this the Drug? Did we do it? Is this it?" And meanwhile, these things are saying: "Do not give way to amazement; Control your wonder." in other words, they try to bring you down. They say, "Don't just goof out on this; pay attention. PAY ATTENTION... to what we're doing." "OK, what're you doing?...



New Beginnings © Amanda SageSay this is what we're doing, and then they proceed to sing objects into existence. Amazing objects. Objects that are Faberge Eggs, things made of pearl, and metal, and glass, and gel, and you, when you're shown one of these things, a single one of them, you look at it an you know, without a shadow of a doubt, in the moment of looking at this thing, that if it were right here, right now, this world would go mad. It's like something from another dimension. It's like an artifact from a flying saucer. It's like something falling out of the mind of God - such objects DO not exist in this universe, and yet, you're looking at it. And they're clamoring for your attention. " 'k at this! 'ook at This! Look at THIS!" and they pull these things... and each one, you look into it and it begins to open into this wonder that you must fight. You say "No, don't look at it, look AWAY from it!" because it's so wonderful that it's swamping my objectivity and destroying my ability to function in this space.



Well, then they say "do"...


And the objects that they make have the peculiar ability to themselves generate this linguistic "stuff" which condenses as other objects. So beings are making objects, showing you objects, the objects are turning into beings and making other objects, these beings and objects, they jump into your chest - and then they jump back out. They jump into your body and disappear into your body, and then they jump back out, waving these things, just throwing this stuff in all directions. They are - the word that comes to mind is: they are Zany. It's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, uh, gone mad. And all of this energy - they are elves. This is what elves are. It's this weird thing, where they love you - or they like you a lot, but you can tell that their sense of humor is Weird. And that you must be very careful of the deals you cut with these things, [...] in fact I've spent so much time trying to understand what this is. It has different kinds of feelings about it. One is (and this really threw me for a loop when I figured this out) after many many of these trips, and analyzing this place I kept going to, I finally realized: "this place is... somebody very weird... it's their idea of a reassuring environment for a human being! It's like a playpen. It's this warm. well lit, secure, womblike environment, and when I break into it they these things, the elves and the toys, are toys! These are things to amuse me. The way you would hang, uh, cubes and blocks above a cradle... a playpen, you know? Because children are supposed to coordinate shapes and bright colors. That's what these things are: they are toys to try and get me to coordinate my perception in this place. It's a holding area of some sort - someone's created this and is watching me.



OK - that's one metaphor for what it is. Another metaphor is... I took this stuff to Tibetans, to the Amazon. I gave it to Tibetans, they said "this is the lesser lights, the lesser lights of the Bardo. You cannot go further into the Bardo and return. This takes you as far as you can go." When I gave it to shamanss in the Amazon, they said "It's strong - but this is, these are the ancestors. These are the spirits that we work with. These are ancestor souls. We know this place." Well then, the third and final metaphor, because when you're in that place you have such complex emotions - very complex emotions - something weird is going on with time, because you perceive your body image as infantile. You seem to have a very large head, and a very small body, and very short limbs. And, you know, I dunno what that's about...



Then the last facet of it that I want to mention is: there is this "you must be on your toes" thing - don't let these guys get behind you. They are tricky. And their elfin humor may not be your idea of a good time.



~ Terence McKenna
from a taped transcript
The following account is taken from a taped transcript that Terence gave on May 26/27th 1990 in New Mexico.

Never done DMT but that sounds interesting- my hallucnigen history covers LSD, salvia, magic mushrooms, fly agaric (not recommended, prepare it wrong one way its useless, prepare it wrong the other way its lethal!), banana skins (oh yeah I went there) and the one I really, really want to do but have never got round to it (but its on my 'things do to before the buckie gets me' list) is peyote.
Oddly, despite it being everyway for a while I never bothered with ecstasy for two reasons- one it can kill you first go, no matter the long odds of it and in general I try to only do natural ones that dont even have an overdose threshold let alone a potentaly lethal one (fly agaric excepted- but that was only once and stupid), and secondly because it sounded like the Hollywood equivlent of a trip- acid for people to afraid to face the real you, which is unavoidable on proper trips.
Seemed like a sort of disc acid.
Hallunegins are not, and should not be for fun-they are not recreational and you cannot do them a lot for a long time or you will lose your place.

have you seen Limitless, with Robert DeNiro and Bradley Cooper? its one of the most entertaining and interesting films I have seen in a long time. If nothing else its great fun. A guy finds a mind enhancing drug and it changes his life.

on LSD I once watched 2 films on wrong screen at drive-in & audio made perfect sense until I realized i was staring in a waffle houses window

only kidding drugs r bad #maturecc #votekafria4mayor2014 #keep#tagging

Pettytyrant101 wrote:There are two ancient Celtic methods- one is a series of knots on lengths of string- the other is notches on the edges of stone, with tally on both sides of the edge- it seems to have served as a dual purpose counting system and basic written language although no one can read the early stuff now.

Are these known through written history, oral tradition, or archaeology? Any idea how far back they go?

Tally marks and counting sticks with notches go a long ways back, but not many artifacts have survived from before 30-50 thousand years ago. All the same, it looks like people from 100 to 200 thousand years ago were doing commerce and traveling long distances. Every trading culture can count value and every traveling culture can count distance and time so the concepts are already there. And I still maintain that it's magic.

The knotted cord one I think is an oral traditon, as it could be done with anything from vine or reed twisted together or wool, basically anything you can make lengths of 'string' from. But it doesnt survive in our wet climate.

The one on stones has evidence for it on some megalithic sites around northern Britain.
There is a later, independent, version of the same idea (about 1AD) called Ogham which was probably made by Irisih Druids to communicate in secret.
But although its far later the basically principle in how to mark the stones are the same.





Other mysteries include the meaning of the spiral circles (although I personally think that ones solved even if its not yet accepted by officialdome)- and cup marked rocks.

Spiral circle from Newgrange (3200BC)-



Cup marked



Cup marked and spirals-

A base 5 system. A prime number. That simplifies some things but makes fractions harder. Do you know if there are certain numbers that seem to occur more than others?

For example 7 has a very important place in base 60 systems. It's the smallest number that doesn't evenly divide 60. 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/5 and 1/6 are all expressible as integers but 7 won't work for much of anything (though the 22/7 approximation of pi was a curiosity).
I love that my cheap digital watch calculates time in binary, then converts it to base 60 for sec and min, base 12 for hours, base 7 for days, then converts it all again to base 10 to display it in decimal characters. There's a lot of world history, culture and religion in that little thing!

So what's your theory on spirals?

its the Sun, Stars and Milky Way innit? or water swirling or the cycle of life or something twirly.

Not my theory, sadly, but a very good one.
Its good becuase you can confirm it yourself if you have the patience. It goes like this.

Get a good solid stick or a tall stone, pick somehwere you won be disturbed ever.
Put the stick/stonein the ground at the start of the year, and every mrnnig at sunrose you put a mark on the fround where th etip of th shadow from the stick is cast.
Repeat every sunrise.
After 3 months you will have a spiral.

One of the most prominant uses of the spiral emblem is known as the triple spiral- it appears on cairns and chambers associated with fertility, such as Maes Howe.
3 spirals joined therefore = 9 months.

This is the one is at Newgrange- it was the better picture-

I like it, but we don't have enough sun to test it....

i had a dream i could see all my dead pets from the past and no one believed me and i was also in a Christian cult