Workin' Man Blues by Merle Haggard

Berne, Switzerland,, And, Egypt..?..

BEARS, AND, BEAR ,SHAMANISM, HAS, BEEN, ON, MY, MIND, FOR QUITE, SOME, TIME..

CELTIC BEAR ,MUSIC, ALBUM COVERS?..AND, 'ARTEMIS', THE ROMAN 'GODDESS'..?

BUT, THERE, ARE, NO BEARS, IN,EGYPT? ARE, THERE?..

WELL, MAYBE, IN, A MYTHOLOGIC, SENSE...?

'COPT', IS , AN, OLD WORD, FOR, 'EGYPTIAN'...HENCE, 'COPTIC CHRISTIANS', ETC..

I, WAS READING, ABOUT, THE HISTORY, OF, ST MORITZ...IN ,SWITZERLAND...

Saint Maurice (also Moritz, Morris, or Mauritius) was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms. He is also a highly revered saint in the Oriental Orthodox churches.

[Wikipedia]

Biography

Maurice was born in AD 250 in Thebes, an ancient city in Egypt near the site of the Aswan Dam. He was brought up in the region of Thebes (Luxor—Egypt) and became a soldier in the Roman army. He was gradually promoted until he became the leader of the Theban legion, formed of 6600 soldiers.^[4] Maurice was an acknowledged Christian at a time when the Church was considered to be a threat to the crumbling Roman Empire. Yet, he moved easily in the pagan society of his day.^[5]

According to the hagiographical material, the legion, entirely composed of Christians, had been called from Thebes in Egypt to Gaul to assistMaximian to defeat a revolt by the bagaudae.^[3] The Theban Legion was dispatched with orders to clear the St. Bernard Pass across Mt. Blanc. Before going into battle, they were instructed to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods and pay homage to the emperor.^[5]

However, when Maximian ordered them to harass some local Christians, they refused and Maximian ordered the unit to be punished. Every tenth soldier was killed, a military punishment known as decimation. More orders followed, they still refused, partly because of Maurice's encouragement, and a second decimation was ordered. In response to their refusal to use violence against fellow Christians, Maximian ordered all the remaining members of the 6,600 unit to be executed. The place in Switzerland where this occurred, known as Agaunum, is now Saint Maurice-en-Valais, site of the Abbey of Saint Maurice-en-Valais.

So reads the earliest account of their martyrdom, contained in the public letter Eucherius, bishop of Lyon (c. 434–450), addressed to his fellow bishop Salvius. Alternate versions^{[citation needed]} have the legion refusing Maximian's orders only after discovering a town they had just destroyed had been inhabited by innocent Christians, or that the emperor had them executed when they refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods.

Counterarguments

One of the strongest arguments against the story is the fact the Romans did not execute entire legions for insubordination.^[6] Decimation had not been used to discipline a Roman legion for centuries: the previous documented execution of this sentence was in the reign of Galba, who ordered this done to a formation of marines that Nero had formed into a legion, and who demanded an eagle and standards. The monastic accounts themselves do not specifically state that all the soldiers were collectively executed; an eleventh-century monk named Otto of Freising wrote that most of the legionaries escaped, and only some were executed.^[6] It's possible that the legion was simply re-organized during Diocletian's re-organization of units (breaking up legions of 6000 men to create smaller units of 1000), and that some of the soldiers had been executed, and that this was where the story of the legion's destruction originated from.^[6]

Henri Leclercq suggests that it is quite possible that an incident at Agaunum may have had to do not with a legion, but with a simple vexillatio.^[7]

Further, the military staunchly followed Isis or Mithras (Sol Invictus), until Constantine's time at the earliest, making it unlikely they filled an entire legion.

Some^[who?] suggest that the statement that the entire legion was Christian was a pious fabrication by Theodore, bishop of Octodurum, sometime between 388 and 394, whom Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, cites as his source for this story, to encourage his contemporary Christians serving in the Roman army to ignore the orders of their pagan superiors and instead side with the Church. This view is not accepted by Church historians, who assert the authenticity of the account. If it was a later fabrication, by Eucherius himself, its dissemination was certainly successful in drawing pilgrims to the abbey at Agaunum. That institution was created ex nihilo from 515 onwards by Sigismund, the first Catholic king of the Burgundians. The abbey was unique in its time as the creation of a king working in concord with bishops, rather than an organic development that occurred round the central figure of a holy monk.

[WIKIPEDIA]

STRANGE...EGYPTIAN ,ROMAN SOLDIERS, IN, SWITZERLAND?...

The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain. Local legend has it that Berchtold V, Duke of Zähringen, the founder of the city of Bern, vowed to name the city after the first animal he met on the hunt; as this turned out to be a bear, the city had both its name and its heraldic beast. However, the connection between Bern and Bär (bear) is a folk etymology.^[1] It has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern inMiddle High German.

The Bern zinc tablet, which was found in the 1980s, indicates that the former oppidum′s possible Celtic name Brenodor was still known in Roman times. Since that time, it has been supposed that Bern may be a corruption (folk etymological re-interpretation) of the older, similar-sounding Celtic name. 

The etymology of the Celtic name may have involved the word *berna “cleft”.

In the late medieval period, Berne was very strongly identified with its heraldic animal, which was used as an allegory of the military and feudal power of the canton within the Old Swiss Confederacy. The Bernese citizen-soldiers were depicted as armed bears, and from at least the 16th century also referred to as mötz, motzlin, a dialectal word for "bear". This term became Mutzin the modern language, and was in the 19th century applied to the city or canton (as a political or military power) itself.

 The City of Berne was also jestingly referred to as Mutzopolis.

[This Article, is, for, any, 'Mutz', Out there...!]

BEAR SHAMANS, IN,EASTERN EUROPE, WOULD, SACRIFICE[CRUELLY,MURDER]..

INNOCENT BEARS.

THIS, IS, WHY, I, HAVE, NO, TIME, OR, SYMPATHY, FOR, THEM.

BEARS ,ARE, PEOPLE, TOO.

EVERYONE, SHOULD ,TRY, A BEARHUG......!

THE 'GREAT BEAR', OR, 'CARLESVAGEN'....

Gayer-Anderson Cat

The sculpture is now known as the Gayer-Anderson cat after Major Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson who, together with Mary Stout Shaw, donated it to the British Museum.^[1] The statue is a representation of the cat-goddess Bastet. The cat wearsjewellery and a protective wedjat amulet. The earrings and nose ring on the statue may not have always belonged to the cat.^[2]A winged scarab appears on the chest and head, it is 42cm high and 13cm wide. A copy of the statue is kept in the Gayer-Anderson Museum, located in Cairo.

The Gayer-Anderson Cat

Year	Late Period
Type	Bronze
Location	British Museum, London

[THANKS TO WIKIPEDIA]

THE 'CULT, OF, BASTET'[CAT-WORSHIP], IS ,AKIN, TO, CERTAIN, 'AMUN-RA', SYMBOLISM.

CATS, JOKERS, AND, BATMEN?.MMM, SEEMS, I'VE, HEARD, OF THEM, SOMEPLACE..

BUT, MEANWHILE..DOWN, THE NILE...

http://isiopolis.com/2013/04/06/women-as-priests-in-ancient-egypt/

                                                     [JOHN WEGUELIN, PIC WIKIPEDIA]

Moby Dick, or, 'The Whale', selected, Chapters...

Chapter 82 - The Honor and Glory of Whaling

---

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.

The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity.

The gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.

Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda- indeed, by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it- is that famous story of St. George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the sea," said Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march boldly up to a whale.

Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists; and considering that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines, Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that honorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowers we are much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they.

Whether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit Carson- that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him for one of our clan.

But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly they are very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet?

Nor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find the head-waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;- Vishnoo, who, by the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?

Perseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but the whaleman's can head off like that?

OMD - Maid of Orleans

The Human League - The Sound Of The Crowd 1981

All The Lonely People

  

                             

The Elgins - Heaven Must Of Sent You (Swingin' Time - Sep 10, 1966)

MY, ALL TIME ,FAVOURITE RECORD...AAH!, LOVE IT!..

Mike Oldfield - The Songs of Distant Earth

The Sun Also Rises

“She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.” 
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?" 
"Yes, every once in a while." 
"Do you know that in about thirty- five more years we'll be dead?" 
"What the hell, Robert," I said. "What the hell." 
"I'm serious." 
"It's one thing I don't worry about," I said. 
"You ought to." 
"I've had plenty to worry about one time or other. I'm through worrying." 
"Well, I want to go to South America." 
"Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that." 
"But you've never been to South America." 
"South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don't you start living your life in Paris?” 
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“The road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed animals” 
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

School Days - Chuck Berry

La La Means I Love You: The Delfonics

Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance (1982)

Lighthouse Family - I wish i knew how it would feel to be free with Lyrics