Arcadia Discussion Zone

The Lady in the Tower
Many of the thirteen miracles in a 15th-century French version of her story turn on the security that her devotees would not die without making confession and receiving extreme unction.[2]



Death is the treasure
Well Roger I do understand what your saying
A older gentleman who was tour guide to this church explained the skull and crossbones symbolism and the butterfly in the church

He said this reminded all of us that Death brought on a transformation thus the butterfly
So Death was to be looked on as a gift from God

by the way this church was specifically saved by late Pope John Paul II

But what about Limbo?
Did the Christa work on taking the babies and suicides from Limbo?
or was it just Purgatory
Who goes there? and does it help those going to hell

Someone explain the whole after death thing
I'm confused
process of purification in which the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven. believed in an intermediate state between death and the final judgment and in the possibility of "continuing to grow in holiness there",
n addition to accepting the states of heaven and hell, Catholicism envisages a third state before being admitted to heaven. According to Catholic doctrine, some souls are not sufficiently free from sin and its consequences to enter the state of heaven immediately, nor are they so sinful as to be destined for hell either.[13] Such souls, ultimately destined to be united with God in heaven, must first endure purgatory—a state of purification.[14] In purgatory, souls "achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven

Here is a decent opinion/analysis/explanation:

http://books.google.com/books?id=C5w8U6OFuOkC&lpg=PA94&ots=8ZN3yZCMCN&dq=francis%20i%20as%20a%20god%20athena%20hermes&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q=francis%20i%20as%20a%20god%20athena%20hermes&f=false

and relative to Francis, this portrayal and Transubstantiation
http://books.google.com/books?id=2LLkEV ... on&f=false

I have just started to think that particular word & what it means and to whom may be at the center of all this...

It's called the Bardo Thödol. It lasts for exactly 49 days (7 weeks). The deceived meets all his demons, and the friend from this world who's guiding helps him to confront them and not run away in panic.

Tim Leary once adapted it for the western world. Not the worst thing he'd done.

Well ... Aldous Huxley did it his own personal way.

The Tibetans have a saying: "Learn to die daily and you will live forever."

Means: leave your body at will ... and do what you willth (shall be the law).

I'd put it the other way round. Life is our treasure. Death is a threshold and very very gracious because it helps us to forget all this weird shit that happened in in former lives. We couldn't concentrate if we had all this troubles in mind that happened in that life before this one.

Remember the Grateful Dead?

Good morning Eginolf, i've written elsewhere on the forum about the 49 days (and got shouted down btw) but basically to quote Rick Strassman from DMT: The spirit molecule...

"The human pineal gland becomes visible in the developing fetus at seven weeks, or 49 days, after conception. Of great interest to me was finding out that this is nearly exactly the moment in which one can clearly see the first indication of male or female gender. Before this time, the sex of the fetus is indeterminate, or unknown. Thus, the pineal gland and the most important differentiation of humanity, male & female gender, appear at the same time.
I already knew that the Tibetan Buddhist Book of the Dead teaches that it takes 49 days for the soul of the recently dead to "reincarnate." That is, seven weeks from the time of death of one person elapses until the life-force's "rebirth" into its next body. I remember very clearly, several years later, feeling the chill along my spine when, reading my textbook of human fetal development, I discovered this same forty-nineday interval marking two landmark events in human embryo formation. It takes forty-nine days from conception for the first signs of the human pineal to appear........ Thus the soul's rebirth, the pineal, and the sexual organs all require forty-nine days before they manifest."

I guess you're just joking.
In 1993, Graham Simmans wanted me to join him for a trip from RLC towards Toulouse to look for this treasure. Unfortunately I did not want to join him but headed for Girona and Barcelona instead.

... or just like Jean Giono in his 1937 book "Les Vraies Richesses".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Giono

Interesting how a conversation evolves but to rewind a bit...



"The research on Cathar families clarifies their standing in the community; they were linked by horizontal ties of family and profession rather than by vertical dependence; many families were leaders in the movement for political and economic change; they were heavily represented in certain professions: treasurers, guild priors, bankers, and artisans. These findings are significant in proving that the Cathars were intimately engaged in city affairs even though they did not hold to Catholic orthodoxy. Not only did their religious beliefs and practices not foreclose to them an active civic and professional life, but they could work to their advantage: their perfects won praise as exemplars of Christian piety and purity because in their detachment from worldliness they upheld the civic ideal of putting the common good before selfish interests."

In this book POWER AND PURITY: CATHAR HERESY IN MEDIEVAL ITALY By Carol Lansing. New York: Oxford University, 1998. , scrupulous documentation lend credence to the argument that ultimately Catharism was defined and condemned as heresy as a means for the Church to ensure and extend its political, religious, social, and economic power. In identifying and explaining the specifics of this effort throughout the 13th century in Orvieto Italy and by translating the meaning of heresy into the language of power,

........................

So from my notes it seems that in return for the Consolamentum the perfecti or more rightly their "structure" expected a bequest....either goods, horses, cash or land. While the Cathars stressed that the believer should not be turned away if unable to pay, the lay consensus was that it was appropriate for perfecti to receive something for their efforts....such arrangements required the perfecti to command widespread respect for not only did the believers themselves have to have faith in them but their relatives had also to have at least enough regard for the perfecti to hand over the bequest.The Cathar Church managed the believers' money and in this sense acted as a bank. One such organisation existed at Montsegur during the siege...apparently.

................................

"The Parfaits are always in contact with their believers and the Church is socially and economically integrated in the life of the Community. The Cathar Church did not participate in the feudal structure. It did not own vast pieces of land and had no temporal power. It did not collect taxes and had no serf. All this explains in part it success. However if the Parfaits are poor the (their) Church is rich due to the product of the manual labour and from the gifts received as donation from the Believers above all from those receiving the Consolamentum on their deathbed. This money is used to sustain their houses and the surplus is loaned for interest. During the persecution part of it was sent to the Croyants that escaped to Lombardy, to buy complicity and help and to pay for armed escorts to the Parfaits that were still travelling to bring the Consolamentum to dying believers. The Church was also managing the believers' money and in this sense acted as a bank. One such organisation existed at Montsegur during the siege."

http://www.nullens.org/content/view/256/49/

Prof -
you started quite ambitious into this wicked forum but now you are somehow loosing a foothold.
Engagement here is voluntarily. You can't force anything.

Just cool out.

BTW.
Maybe we should draw a connection between these three principles.

Thanks for coming back with some references, and good to see you playing tag team with Roger, an appealing mental image I must say.

The above says they were good citizens working for the common good. Nowhere does this say they were ripping people off for performing phoney death rites. I cannot see your point in this quotation which makes the Cathars sound the good neighbours and the sort of non-altruistic people that several times you (Sheila) have suggested in this forum we should all aspire to beThe above says the Roman Church quashed the Cathars so that it (the Roman Church) could extend its political, religious, social, and economic power. The quote says nothing at all to support the argument that the Cathers were money grubbing death rite sellersWell at least this quote mentions money, however it does not paint a particularly negative picture of the limited financial structure of the Cathar organisation, and does nothing to suggest any insincerity in the Cathars accepting donations. I would point out that the author is a just a lay person expressing opinions of very questionable value on every religion, sect, political movement and world event he can think of, and his understanding of all of them is trite, and most of it is tripe.So from my notes ... ? You appear to be quoting Contesting Christendom: readings in medieval religion and culture By James L. Halverson out of context, based on your own imperfect understanding of the subject, and again nowhere does Halverson suggest the Cathars were involved in the sort of activities The Rise and Roger is accusing them of. Perhaps it would be better if Roger the Dodger stepped up and did his own dirty work in the debating chamber?

Ivaldi, i thought the whole point of this forum was to put things up for discussion...i have no axe to grind, unlike your good self it seems.

Personally i don't know Roger from Joe Blogs, but over the past three years he has presented me with some thought provoking verifiable information that has first and foremost hastened my need to wear reading glasses, but i'm not complaining.

You were doing fine there ...until the last line...do you have a problem?

Hi Sheila, I'm sorry if I misconstrued. It seemed to me from your regular posts that you are a staunch supporter of the theory put forward in The Rise.

It also seemed to me that you regularly claim advanced knowledge of the subject matter particularly its arcane elements only known to an inner few in the cult, such as the details of the crista.

Thus when you sprang to the defence of Roger's comments about the Cathars I figured you two were a tag team.

My apologies if I was wrong in my assumptions, and please do not hesitate to correct me if I am wrong.

And yes, I actually do have a problem with the whole construct of The Rise that a single penitentiary cult of the dead has survived in an unbroken line of initiates for 5000 years influencing world events from behind the scenes for its own evil ends and that Sauniere was a member of said cult.

I will argue against that B movie script from the Hammer Films vault circa 1960 until Frankenstein and Dracula herd your lambs down my driveway, dragging their tails behind them.

I know a lot more than most and an awful lot more than you think, but that is purely down to ground work and years of research and of course inquiring sensibly of those who do know what they are talking about. Reading & speaking french withvarying degrees of (in)accuracy (depending on the time of night & the number of empty glasses on my desk) is of course beneficial.

I totally agree, my Austrian friend. It's just that I really think what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Those who demand proof and evidence from others, should provide it when asked. To not do so shows one to be a hypocrite.

I'm sorry those are my rules of fair play, and that I get tired of people who don't abide by them.

I believe that sentence needs to be bold and in large font, because it goes back to a question I asked.

Where's the evidence this fee was OBLIGATORY? According to this, it wasn't.

I spy a comma there....and the rest of the sentence was?

comma"....the lay consensus was that it was appropriate for perfecti to receive something for their efforts....such arrangements required the perfecti to command widespread respect for not only did the believers themselves have to have faith in them but their relatives had also to have at least enough regard for the perfecti to hand over the bequest.The Cathar Church managed the believers' money and in this sense acted as a bank."

It's not "predatory" like "predatory lending" if the people who couldn't afford it were not forced to pay.

The bottom line is, it seems to me that the Cathar perfecti had a bit of a problem. They lived lives of voluntary poverty and thus could accumulate no wealth. However, a church in the material world needs funds to operate. How could the Cathar Church itself generate funds - whether to pay mercenaries for its defense or for anything else? Well, have the Perfecti collect fees from those who have the ability to pay. If the rich have a few horses & houses to give the church, well, like Thomas D says, you can't take it with you... put it to community use. Put them in a pot, and use that to keep the Church going & defended. That seems to me the best solution a religious organization can come up with who wants to eschew material wealth & worldliness but still accomodate the fact that stuff costs money to build. But not particularly "predatory" especially given if you start to look at the rich & sumptuous lives overfattened bishops & prelates of the Catholic Church were living, based on confiscatory taxation from the peasants that lived around them ... that's what *I* call PREDATORY.

Let's turn to the shoeless wanderer, shall we? (It's better than Shoeless Joe Jackson).

http://www.shoelesswander.net/papers/hst_03.htm

Out of all the heretical sects in the Middle Ages, perhaps the best known group is the Cathars. The group was found primarily in the south of France, but also branched into Northern Italy. This religious movement was highly critical of the Catholic Church and the rich lavish lifestyle of the papal authorities, as well as the monasteries and other church offices. Their disapproval of the immense material wealth of the Church led them to an extremely dualistic world view.

[snip]

Now what's interesting, of course, is our shoeless wanderer goes on to discuss how the friars' movement and the Franciscan movement were started as a response to the Cathar movement ... movements also dedicated to austerity and against worldliness & materialism.

See, here's my point -- it's very bizarre to see the Cathars accused of being the cause of something within the Church that they, and the movements they in turn influenced into coming into being (mostly as a response to their critique), arose to critique in the first place ... the over-worldliness and materialism of the church.

http://books.google.com/books?id=LIqmT6 ... q=&f=false

Well you've probably read this, but maybe read it again...from the last paragraph on Page 154 & 155.

I've read it, as I've said ... and thanks for reminding me of those pages, they more or less confirm what I said.

Deathbed donations for the consolamentum were a bit like a lot of the "free" museums I visit ... one makes a "voluntary contribution" to the museum in order to visit, rather than paying an explicit ticket fee ... however, there is quite a bit of moral pressure to make those voluntary donations ... and one can understand it as after all museums do need to pay electric bills & docents ... but the point is no one forces you to pay if you can't. And that's exactly what Lambert says. It also was quite a bit according to Marx's dictum too ... the more you accumulated the more was expected of you, indeed ... but so too did the converse apply.

I find this statement describing the consolamentum rite-ritual to b as bogus as bogus can get.


The Cathars: Cathar Beliefs: Ceremonies: Consolamentum or Consolament
The consolamentum was a spiritual baptism, as described in the New Testament, where the Jewish practice of baptism by water was abrogated, and baptism by fire implemented. (Modern Christians remember this as Pentecost and some, Pentecostalists, make it the main feature of their theology). Only a Parfait could administer the consolamentum, which meant that every new Parfait stood at the end of a chain of predecessor Parfaits linking him or her to the apostles and to Jesus himself.

It was the most significant ceremony in Cathar theology, marking the transition from ordinary believer (auditore or credente) to to Parfait, one of the elect. During the ceremony the Holy Spirit was believed to descend from heaven, and part of the Holy Spirit would then inhabit the Parfait's corporal body. It was largely because of this indwelling portion of the Holy Spirit that Parfaits were expected and willing to lead such austere ascetic lives, and why ordinary believers were prepared to "adore" them.

The ceremony was striking in its simplicity. It required no material elements such as water or anointing oil, and seems to have preserved a ceremony of the very earliest Christian Church. For Cathars this was hardly surprising, since they claimed that the the rite had been appointed by Christ, and had been handed down from generation to generation by the boni homines. For Catholics it was rather a mystery and their best explanation was that the Cathar rite was a distorted imitation of various Catholic rites.

The consolamentum was also given to sick or injured believers, in the expectation of death. As long as they died quickly this presented no great problem as they had little opportunity to fall back into sin. But if they recovered they were now Parfaits, and presumably expected to behave as such. Some authorities (notably Jean Duvernoy) differentiate between the baptism of the Perfects, from the 'Solace' baptism granted to the dying for the remission of their sins. Even though both rites are identical those who received the 'Solace' baptism and survived seem to have been obliged to then undertake the normal training and receive the Consolamentum again to became a fully functioning member of the Elect.

Becoming a Parfait or Parfaite required a long period of probation and instruction, just as becoming a Christian did in the early Church. Compare the following statements accurately reflecting three different views of how to become a member of the Church of Christ.
http://www.cathar.info/12011001_consolamentum.htm

IMHO, the problem is simply this. Unless a man be borne again by water + the Spirit he shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Since that was Jesus speaking and he Himself was baptized in the River Jordan by His cousin John the Baptist. It is lame beyond being a NO-Brainer to say Jesus was baptized solely by the ancient Judaic method. Jesus came to institute a new concept in which man's relationship to God was to go thru Jesus.

The Flames or Tongues of Fire was a Confirmation ceremony, not a Baptism of Fire. It seems the talmudic-gnostics behind the Cathars tried to flim-flam that one in as well as the ascetic life of Caballa mystics with the Parfaits. Am I the only person on the entire planet who sees the jabberwock bullshit of the Cathars?

They were no different than televangelists of today, storefront Church hucksters in ghetto's or knock on yer door, in yer face Jehovah's Witnesses. How else can ya explain how Cathar areas were as affluent as Catholic areas, same tactics, just a different brand name. Cathars made their adherents into monastics, without the formalized enclosures. A hippie commune has more in common with what the Cathars were all 'boot. The compound the Branch Davidians had in Waco was another Cathar clone. James Jones + his kool-aid kult, another Cathar clone.

When I get the ya don't know what Cathars stood for, well, I beg to differ with ya. The got sucked into a Talmudic-gnostic cult and were set up for a collision course with the Vatican. By deceit shall ye wage war. The end result was the same, a prolonged, relentless culling of the herd, attrition style. Talmudics stand by watching so-called Christians decimate so-called Christians, uh. hey folks ever heard of QUI BONO? duh...

Seeker, for all his hi-falutin' horn tootin' deliberately missed that one, how come?