The Secret Meaning of the Auguries of Innocence

A Dream in the Appenine, by Samuel Palmer

The poet William Blake was familiar with the visions of Emanuel Swedenborg, and was perhaps attracted to him as he had visions of angels as a child.  This is described in the biography of William Blake:

From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions—at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to discourage him from “lying," they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend conventional school.

Later he trained his younger brother Robert in drawing and painting, but fell ill in the winter of 1787 and died.

As Robert died, Blake saw his brother’s spirit rise up through the ceiling, “clapping its hands for joy.” He believed that Robert’s spirit continued to visit him and later claimed that in a dream Robert taught him the printing method that he used in Songs of Innocence and other “illuminated” works.

The latter part of William Blake's life was spent in poverty, but met a group of young artists who known as "The Ancients" who started to support him and promote his works.  He also influenced their own works.  One of them was the painter and writer Samuel Palmer, but many of his works met an unfortunate fate:

Samuel Palmer was largely forgotten after his death. In 1909, many of his Shoreham works were destroyed by his surviving son Alfred Herbert Palmer, who burnt "a great quantity of father's handiwork ... Knowing that no one would be able to make head or tail of what I burnt; I wished to save it from a more humiliating fate". The destruction included "sketchbooks, notebooks, and original works, and lasted for days".

Here is a painting by Palmer called The Harvest Moon:

This pastoral scene, with the Moon, the mountain, and the harvest, repeats in one of Palmer's paintings is Cornfield by Moonlight with Evening Star, the Evening Star being Venus:

The theme repeats again in Coming From Evening Church:

The mountain is replaced with the steeple of a church.  The evening star Venus, the cross-like star in Cornfield by Moonlight with Evening Star is replaced by a cross on the top of the steeple.  Note that in Cornfield by Moonlight with Evening Star there are three triangular shadows; these are replaced with three triangular rooftops in the immediate foreground from the steeple.  This again repeats in another painting by Palmer, A Hilly Scene:

The moon becomes a crescent, the corn field is back, and hidden among the trees is the evening star Venus.  In the foreground, a singular steeple now looking like a pyramid, with a cross on the top.  Perhaps Palmer found inspiration from one of Blake's poems, To the Evening Star:

HOU fair-hair'd angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And then the lion glares through the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover'd with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

As the sun falls asleep in the evening, resting on the mountains, the evening star becomes visible in the night sky.  The setting sun can also be seen in A Dream in the Appenine, up above, and flocks of sheep under the moon appear in other paintings by Samuel Palmer.  These paintings of Palmer may have been influenced by one of William Blake's most famous paintings, The Ancient of Days:

At first it looks like the man in the sphere is putting his hand on top of a pyramid, but in reality he is holding a compass.  The painting is said to have been influenced from Proverbs 8:27:

When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth

One interesting fact: the Great Pyramid of Egypt is placed as if someone used a compass to measure the Nile Delta, and it is also placed at the center of the land mass of the entire earth:

This is expressed in a different way in this image of the continent of Africa, from the web site, The Great Design:

THE POEM AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

One of my favorite poems is Auguries of Innocence, by William Blake.  It begins as follows:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

A major theme in Blake's words is transcendental vision, to see beyond what we perceive with our senses.  For what we see in front of us can often blind us, unless we look at the clues.  To see a world in a grain of sand is to recognize the image of the universe in the smallest of things; that every part reflects the larger whole, ad infinitum.

Here is another portion from Auguries of Innocence:

Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly 

For the Last Judgment draweth nigh 

He who shall train the Horse to War

Shall never pass the Polar Bar

So what in the world is the "Polar Bar"?  To some, it means "ultimate goal" or "great heights."  To others it may mean "the bar exam for polar lawyers" (seriously, see the forum at William Blake Question).  One would wonder what these polar lawyers do.  However that is not the meaning - here is an interesting discussion from Kerie Davies at ‘He who shall train the Horse to War’: anti-war sentiment in Auguries of Innocence:

Most writers follow Foster Damon in reading "pass the Polar Bar" as meaning to escape to the spiritual world. They draw attention to a similar expression in The Book of Thel:  

The eternal gates’ terrific porter lifted the northern bar: Thel entered in and saw the secrets of the land unknown, 

and suggest that this passage draws on The Odyssey, Book xiii, where Homer describes the two entries to the Cave of Phorcys, one for the gods, the other (the northern entry) for human beings. The Homeric myth was given a symbolic reading by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, interpreting it as referring to the descent of the soul into the body. Even if we accept Neo-Platonism as relevant to discussion of Thel, its application to this distich from Auguries involves a kind of critical sleight-of-hand. 

A recent critic has seen the term "polar bar" as referring to the contemporary search for a North-West Passage, linking exploration with militarisation. If Damon and his followers have given us an excessively metaphorical and decontextualised reading, this writer’s interpretation, to my mind, seems over-literal. 

So it refers to a secret world, spiritual or perhaps physical.  The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry went the allegorical route, giving a metaphysical interpretation.  He pointed out there was no such physical location for the cave in Ithaca Greece.  The passage he tries to interpret from the Odyssey is from book 13 and runs as follows:

High at the head a branching olive growsAnd crowns the pointed cliffs with shady boughs.A cavern pleasant, though involved in night,Beneath it lies, the Naiades delight:Where bowls and urns of workmanship divineAnd massy beams in native marble shine;On which the Nymphs amazing webs display,Of purple hue and exquisite array,The busy bees within the urns secure Honey delicious, and like nectar pure. Perpetual waters through the grotto glide,  A lofty gate unfolds on either side; That to the north is pervious to mankind: The sacred south t'immortals is consign'd.

Porphyry points out that a cave of the earth in ancient times was a metaphor for the soul becoming immersed in the material world. From ON THE CAVE OF THE NYMPHS IN THE THIRTEENTH BOOK OF THE ODYSSEY:

The ancients, indeed, very properly consecrated a cave to the world, whether assumed collectively, according to the whole of itself, or separately, according to its parts. Hence they considered earth as a symbol of that matter of which the world consists; on which account some thought that matter and earth are the same; through the cave indicating the world, which was generated from matter.

The interesting point here is that this symbolism is present in the spiritual sense of scripture: Swedenborg was shown that the "earth" in scripture does not refer to our physical earth, but rather to our material bodies.  "Heaven" is not the sky above, but the spiritual realm, in which our soul resides.  However we are presently trapped in the material world, blind to the spiritual world, and this blindness is indeed represented by a cave. In scripture, to be in a "pit" represents being imprisoned by falsity, for falsehoods limit the thinking of the mind.  Indeed, this is the motto chosen by Blake for the book of Thel:

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

The meaning is explained from The Book of Thel:

Since Thel’s Motto is clearly an afterthought to the Book, one can connect the final plate, plate 6, and Thel’s Motto. The connection between the mole’s pit and the subterranean area that Thel enters in plate 6 suggests the disparate knowledge between beings in separate domains. The eagle knows only the sky and must ask the mole to gain knowledge about the pit; likewise, Thel knows only innocence and eternity and must be endowed mortality if she wants to learn about the ways of the mortal beings on Earth.

Returning back to Porphyry, he discusses the rites of the ancients, in which things were used from the material world to represent spiritual ideas.  According to Swedenborg these ancient rites which preceded Judaism were originally pure and monotheistic, but in the process of time degenerated into idolatry:

Thus also the Persians, mystically signifying the descent of the soul into the sublunary regions, and its regression from it, initiate the mystic (or him who is admitted to the arcane sacred rites) in a place which they denominate a cavern. For, as Eubulus says, Zoroaster was the first who consecrated in the neighbouring mountains of Persia, a spontaneously produced cave, florid, and having fountains, in honour of Mithra, the maker and father of all things; a cave, according to Zoroaster, bearing a resemblance of the world, which was fabricated by Mithra. But the things contained in the cavern being arranged according to commensurate intervals, were symbols of the mundane elements and climates.
After this Zoroaster likewise, it was usual with others to perform the rites pertaining to the mysteries in caverns and dens, whether spontaneously produced, or made by the hands. For as they established temples, groves, and altars to the celestial Gods, but to the terrestrial Gods, and to heroes, altars alone, and to the subterranean divinities pits and cells; so to the world they dedicated caves and dens; as likewise to Nymphs (note 4), on account of the water which trickles, or is diffused in caverns, over which the Naiades, as we shall shortly observe, preside. Not only, however, did the ancients make a cavern,as we have.said, to be a symbol of the world, or of a generated and sensible nature: but they also assumed it as a symbol of all invisible powers; because as caverns are obscure and dark, so the essence of these powers is occult. Hence Saturn fabricated a cavern in the ocean itself and concealed in it his children. Thus, too, Ceres educated Proserpine with her Nymphs in a cave; and many other particulars of this kind may be found in the writings of theologists. But that the ancients dedicated caverns to Nymphs and especially to Naiades, who dwell, near fountains, and who are called Naiades from the streams over which they preside, is manifest from the hymn to Apollo, in which it is said: " The Nymphs residing in caves shall deduce fountains of intellectual waters to thee (according to the divine voice of the Muses), which are the progeny of a terrene spirit. Hence waters, bursting through every river, shall exhibit to mankind perpetual effusions of sweet streams". From hence, as it appears to me. the Pythagoreans. and after them Plato, showed that the world is a cavern and a den.

That ancient Greek myths do contain ancient wisdom, hidden from the public, was shown also to Swedenborg.  It was known among the ancients that a horse was a symbol of the power of understanding:

"From the Ancient Church the signification of the horse, as the power of understanding, was extended to the wise round about, even into Greece. From this it came to pass that when they described the sun, by which love was signified (n. 2441, 2495), they placed in it the god of their wisdom and intelligence, and attributed to him a chariot and four horses of fire; and that when they described the sea, because by the sea were signified knowledges in general (n. 28, 2120), they also gave horses to it; and that when they described the rise of knowledges from the understanding, they represented a flying horse which with his hoof broke open a fountain, whence sprang the virgin goddesses of knowledge; and by the Trojan horse nothing else was signified than a contrivance of their understanding, for destroying city walls. Even at this day the intellect is often described, according to the custom received from those ancient people, under the figure of a flying horse, or Pegasus, and learning is described as a fountain; but scarce any one knows that a horse, in the mystic sense, signifies the understanding, and a fountain truth; still less that those significatives were handed down to the Gentiles from the Ancient Church." (Heavenly Arcana, n. 2762.4)

Poryphyry continues to discuss the spiritual symbolism of this passage in Odyssey.  So what does the Odyssey mean, where it says the entrance to the underworld for mortals is in the north, but the entrance to the underworld for the gods is in the south?  He comments:

With respect, however, to the Ithacensian cave, Homer was not satisfied with saying that it had two gates, but adds that one of the gates was turned towards the north, but the other which was more divine, to the south. He also says that the northern gate was pervious to descent, but does not indicate whether this was also the case with the southern gate. For of this, he only says, "It is inaccessible to men, but it is the path of the immortals."

So are the two entrances related to the north and south pole?  It is tempting to think that, but Porphyry does not relate the entrance of the immortals to the south pole.  Instead he states the northern entrance is the Tropic of Cancer and the southern entrance is the Tropic of Capricorn:

Since, however, a cavern is an image and symbol of the world, as Numenius and his familiar Cronius assert, there are two extremities in the heavens, viz., the winter tropic, than which nothing is more southern, and the summer tropic, than which nothing is more northern. But the summer tropic is in Cancer, and the winter tropic in Capricorn. And since Cancer is nearest to us, it is very properly attributed to the Moon, which is the nearest of all the heavenly bodies to the earth. But as the southern pole by its great distance is invisible to us, hence Capricorn is attributed to Saturn, the highest and most remote of all the planets.

This symbolic association of the tropics with the nearest and furthest planets is perhaps the original rationale for assigning different planets to each sign of the zodiac, but in modern times this rationale has been completely lost.  The Tropic of Cancer is the most northerly latitude at which the Sun appears directly overhead at its culmination which occurs once per year on the summer solstice.  Here is a map showing the present latitude of the Tropic of Cancer:

The Tropic of Capricorn is the opposite, it is the most southern latitude at which the Sun appears directly overhead at its culmination during the winter solstice:

Thus in classical times the entrance to the underworld for the immortals was South Africa.  This is surprising - perhaps they mapped the world at that time, and knew of South Africa?  There is evidence for this in Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, by Charles Hapgood - which strangely shows a map of the land mass of Antarctica, before it was covered by its southern ice cap.  This map is the Piri Reis map, dating from the 16th century:

Charles Hapgood concluded:

‘the surprising proposition that Antarctica was visited and perhaps settled by men when it was largely if not entirely non-glacial. It goes without saying that this implies a very great antiquity ... [Indeed] the Oronteus Finaeus Map takes the civilization of the original map-makers back to a time contemporary with the end of the last Ice Age in the northern hemisphere.’

And this goes against everything that is taught concerning our history.  Our historical records are rather sparse, much knowledge has been lost from ancient times.

This was unknown to Poryphry, who continues with his allegory concerning the northern and southern entrances to the underworld, but relates it to astronomy and the rites of the ancient world:

"Theologists therefore assert, that_these two gates are Cancer and Capricorn; but Plato calls them entrances. And of these, theologists say, that Cancer is the gate through which souls descend; but Capricorn that through which they ascend. Cancer is indeed northern, and adapted to descent; but Capricorn is southern, and adapted to ascent. The northern parts, likewise, pertain to souls descending into generation. And the gates of the cavern which are turned to the north are rightly said to be pervious to the descent of men; but the southern gates are not the avenues of the Gods, but of souls ascending to the Gods. On this account, the poet does not say that they are the avenues of the Gods, but of immortals; this appellation being also common to our souls, which are per se, or essentially, immortal. It is said that Parmenides mentions these two gates in his treatise "On the Nature of Things", as likewise that they are not unknown to the Romans and Egyptians. For the Romans celebrate their Saturnalia when the Sun is in Capricorn, and during this festivity, slaves wear the shoes of those that are free, and all things are distributed among them in common; the legislator obscurely signifying by this ceremony that through this gate of the heavens, those who are now born slaves will be liberated through the Saturnian festival, and the house attributed to Saturn, i.e., Capricorn, when they live again and return to the fountain of life. Since, however, the path from Capricorn is adapted to ascent, hence the Romans denominate that month in which the Sun, turning from Capricorn to the east, directs his course to the north, Januanus, or January, from janua, a gate. But with the Egyptians, the beginning of the year is not Aquarius, as with the Romans, but Cancer. For the star Sothis, which the Greeks call the Dog, is near to Cancer. And the rising of Sothis is the new moon with them, this being the principle of generation to the world. On this account, the gates of the Homeric cavern are not dedicated to the east and west, nor to the equinoctial signs, Aries and Libra, but to the north and south, and to those celestial signs which towards the south are most southerly, and, towards the north are most northerly; because this cave was sacred to souis and aquatic nymphs. But these places are adapted to souls descending into generation, and afterwards separating themselves from it. Hence, a place near to the equinoctial circle was assigned to Mithra as an appropriate seat. And on this account he bears the sword of Aries, which is a martial sign. He is likewise carried in the Bull, which is the sign of Venus."

Whether or not all of this was known to William Blake in his poem Auguries of Innocence is unknown.  But a later line of his poem does mention South Africa:

The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun 

Palsied strikes the Summers Sun

The poor Mans Farthing is worth more

Than all the Gold on Africs Shore

A farthing is one fourth of a penny.  The "Summer's Sun" is perhaps a hidden reference to the Tropic of Cancer in the north, which marks where the Sun is overhead on the Summer Solstice. On the Winter Solstice, the Sun is overhead in South Africa.

Some may question what all of this means, to which Blake answers:

The Questioner who sits so sly 

Shall never know how to Reply 

He who replies to words of Doubt

Doth put the Light of Knowledge out

And this:

He who Doubts from what he sees

Will neer Believe do what you Please 

If the Sun & Moon should Doubt 

Theyd immediately Go out 

And this portion of the poem is interesting as well:

We are led to Believe a Lie

When we see not Thro the Eye

Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night 

When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light 

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day

Poryphry concludes:

"But as the south is attributed to the Gods, hence, when the Sun is at its meridian, the curtains in temples are drawn before the statues of the Gods; in consequence of observing the Homeric precept: "That it is not lawful for men to enter temples when the Sun is inclined to the south, for this is the path of the immortals. Hence, when the God is at his meridian altitude, the ancients placed a symbol of midday and of the south in the gates of the temples, and on this account, in other gates also, it was not lawful to speak at all times, because gates were considered as sacred. Hence, too, the Pythagoreans, and the wise men among the Egyptians, forbade speaking while passing through doors or gates; for then they venerated in silence that God who is the principle of wholes (and, therefore, of all things)."

The Nostradamus Prophecy of the Japanese Tsunami and the War in Syria

The civil war in Syria is just never ending, and in the last few days I realized that there is a prophecy of Nostradamus predicting this event.  Most of the prophecies of Nostradamus are written in an obscure style, and as most do not include a date the recognition of the fulfillment of the prophecy takes place after the event (however there are exceptions, see Nostradamus and the Year 1999 for a prediction of America as the king of terror).  Obscure names are mentioned throughout the quatrains, but after the event takes place the name makes perfect sense - often referring to a key personal name, or key geographic place name that is just beyond coincidence.  I covered many of these, beginning with the religious wars of the 16th century up until the French Revolution in my book, The Decoded Prophecies of Nostradamus.  The prophecies always cover key events or turning points, and as the civil war in Syria has escalated I thought I would get this particular prophecy out now in public view, because the media is full of propaganda and does not tell the public what is really happening in front of our eyes.

I should point out here, that from my biographical research into Nostradamus, he did not always personally know of the future.  This becomes readily apparent to anyone who examines his yearly almanacs.  Many assume he used astrology to make his predictions but that is not the case - he would enter a trance like state, and out came these strange writings from his visions which did not always make sense to him, as they are highly symbolic.  The quatrain I wish to discuss is I-87 - below is the original French, followed by the English translation:

1:87
Ennosigée feu du centre de terre
Fera trembler au tour de cité neufve:
Deux grands rochiers long temps feront la guerre
Puis Arethusa rougira nouveau fleuve.

Earth-shaking fire from the center of the earth
Will cause the tower of the new city to tremble:
Two great rocks will make war for a long time
Then Arethusa will redden a new river.

The word "earth shaking" is from Latin Ennosigaeus, which is actually an epithet of Neptune, god of the sea.  Nostradamus always uses Neptune to symbolically represent a sea power.  This particular quatrain was misinterpreted as referring to the attack of September 11, where "center of the earth" was taken to mean the World Trade Center.  While it is tempting to apply it to the attack of September 11, objectively the quatrain is referring to a deep sea earthquake followed by the eruption of a volcano.  Before 2011 I had written, "This will be fulfilled in a future cataclysm involving an earthquake and the eruption of a volcano."

I recently realized that Neptune is not only the god of earthquakes, but also of tsunamis which are often triggered by an earthquake.  Neptune was closely associated with Poseidon, the same god who causes the sinking of Atlantis into the sea by an earthquake.  Both Poseidon and Neptune used a trident as a weapon (from the Wikipedia entry on Trident):

Poseidon, as well as being god of the sea, was also known as the "Earth Shaker" because when he struck the earth in anger he caused mighty earthquakes and he used his trident to stir up tidal waves, tsunamis and sea storms.

Nostradamus writes on the first line "Earth shaking fire from the center of the earth,"  Here is a map showing the location of the underwater earthquake of Mar. 11, 2011 which created a tsunami which hit Japan:

Was there a volcano associated with the earthquake and tsunami?  I looked it up and found this news article from Mar. 14, 2011: As if an earthquake, tsunami and potential nuclear meltdown weren't enough... now disaster-ravaged Japan suffers a volcanic eruption:

A volcano has erupted in Japan, compounding the problems in the disaster-ravaged country.Following Friday's megaquake and resulting tsunami which took the lives of thousands along the east coast, the Shinmoedake volcano in south-western Japan erupted yesterday, sending ash and rock over two miles into the air. The explosion shattered windows as far as four miles away, adding to the terror the country has suffered over the past few days.

It states that it is not known if the volcanic eruption was associated with the earthquake.  However there could be another interpretation: the "earth shaking fire from the center of the earth" could refer to the melt-down of the Fukushima nuclear reactor itself.  Three of the four cores suffered a complete meltdown, and in fact melted down somewhere beneath the earth.  As to exactly where they are, no one knows.  From Was Fukushima a China Syndrome?

The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel, melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth. While a molten reactor core wouldn’t burn “all the way through to China” it could enter the soil and water table and cause huge contamination in the crops and drinking water around the power plant. It’s a nightmare scenario, the stuff of movies. And it might just have happened at Fukushima.

This is an example how a short four line quatrain compresses a lot of information through symbolism, containing multiple levels of meaning.  The next line states that the earthquake would cause "the tower of the new city to tremble."  And indeed, the earthquake was so strong it caused the towers in Japan to sway, here is a video of it:



Next the quatrain states that two great rocks will make war for a long time.  This could refer to the earthquake itself, where two plates collide causing the earthquake, which would be unusual because in the day of Nostradamus nothing was known of plate tectonics.  It could also refer to a war between two continents.

The last line then concludes, "Then Arethusa will redden a new river."  Arethusa was a nymph and daughter of Nereus, and thus one of the Nereids who accompanied Poseidon.  She was chased by the river god Alpheus, and was changed by Artemis into a stream which ran under the sea until its waters rose again in the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse.  However, according to the classical writer Apollodorus Arethusa was one of the nymphs called the Atlantides or Hesperides, who guarded the golden apples.  The blessed isles of Hesperides were located by some to the West beyond the Atlas mountains.  Hesperides is a term used by Nostradamus throughout the quatrains to refer to America.  This, in combination with the reference to Neptune or Poseidon, and the inference to Atlantis, shows that this is definitely referring to the U.S. as a major sea power. 

So this definition of Arethusa is well known.  What is not so well known is that Arethusa happens to be the name of an ancient Roman city.  The modern name of this city is Al-Rastan, in the Homs governate of Syria.  Here is a photograph of Al-Rastan in the background, behind the Orontes river:

Here is where things get interesting.  In 1960, this location became the site of the Al-Rastan Dam.  The Orontes river runs right through the middle of Syria:

So, why is the city of Al Rastan in Syria so significant?  Right after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, in April a popular uprising arose in Syria, which Assad suppressed blaming foreign elements, and unfortunately reacted with deadly force leading to many civilian deaths.  Later a coalition of anti-government groups formed.  Fighting continued, until everything culminated in a major battle at Al-Rastan (from Syrian Civil War):

By September 2011, organized units of Syrian rebels were engaged in an active insurgency campaign in many different parts of Syria. A major confrontation between the FSA and the Syrian armed forces occurred in Rastan. From 27 September to 1 October, Syrian government forces, backed by tanks and helicopters, led a major offensive on the town of Al-Rastan in Homs Governorate, in order to drive out army defectors. The 2011 battle of Rastan between the government forces and the FSA was the longest and most intense action up until that time. After a week of fighting, the FSA was forced to retreat from Rastan. To avoid government forces, the leader of the FSA, Colonel Riad Asaad, retreated to Turkey. Many of the rebels fled to the nearby city of Homs.

And so begin's Turkey's support for the rebellion against Assad in Syria.  And Russia has concentrated on bombing the Homs Governorate.  But where is America in all of this?  The U.S. is right in the middle of this war, and is directly responsible for allowing it to continue this long rather than seeking a diplomatic settlement.

U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN THE SYRIAN UPRISING

U.S. policy has been to repeat the mantra "Assad must go."  But there is no viable candidate to take his place.  Look at what happened in Iraq and Libya, how destabilized they became after their dictator was overthrown.  U.S. policy is the same for Syria.  From U.S. Caught Faking it in Syria:

The US strategic goal in Syria is not as your faithful mainstream media servants... might have you believe  to  save the Syrian people from the ravages of the long-standing Assad dictatorship, but rather to heighten the level of internecine conflict in that country to the point where it will not be able to serve as a bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony for at least another generation.

This policy actually originated from a 1982 military plan from Israel.  From “Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, it is known as the "Yinon Plan":

The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.

To quote directly from Yinon, in an article published in the 1980s:

The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.

Moreover, the Yinon plan calls for the dissolution of Iraq into three primary states: the Shiites in the south, the Sunnis in the west, and Kurds to the north:

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.

More recently, diplomatic cables from 2006 leaked by wikileaks revealed the U.S. plans for Syria.  Ffrom OVERTHROW OF SYRIA PLANNED BEFORE ARAB SPRING, Assange writes:

That plan was to use a number of different factors to create paranoia within the Syrian government; to push it to overreact, to make it fear there’s a coup… so in theory it says “We have a problem with Islamic extremists crossing over the border with Iraq, and we’re taking actions against them to take this information and make the Syrian government look weak, the fact that it is dealing with Islamic extremists at all.”

The media makes it look like the Arab Spring was "spontaneous."  The fact of the matter is that U.S. Groups helped fund and encouraged these uprisings.  From the New York Times,  U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings:

Even as the United States poured billions of dollars into foreign military programs and anti-terrorism campaigns, a small core of American government-financed organizations were promoting democracy in authoritarian Arab states. ...as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.

After the uprising in Libya, on September 11, 2012 there was an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in Libya, which led to a lot of accusations going back and forth as to who knew what.  But what the media did not tell the public at that time is the reason it was attacked: CIA operatives were at Benghazi, arranging for the transfer and shipment of arms from Libya to Syria.  From Benghazi Is a HUGE Scandal … But Not For the Reason You Think:

A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria.

So the civil war rages on, and with Russian involvement the U.S. and its proxy allies are shipping ever more weapons to the rebels, some of whom have ties with terrorist organizations associated with Al-Qaeda.  And this, of course, goes against all international laws.  Casualty estimates range between 140,000 to 330,000, with millions of refugees displaced from their homes.

SOME WEIRD NEWS ABOUT THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI AND FUKUSHIMA DISASTER

There is this rather unusual bit of news about the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima - before the disaster, Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake:

Today, Dimitar Ouzounov at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland and a few buddies present the data from the Great Tohoku earthquake which devastated Japan on 11 March. Their results, although preliminary, are eye-opening.
They say that before the M9 earthquake, the total electron content of the ionosphere increased dramatically over the epicentre, reaching a maximum three days before the quake struck.
At the same time, satellite observations showed a big increase in infrared emissions from above the epicentre, which peaked in the hours before the quake. In other words, the atmosphere was heating up.
These kinds of observations are consistent with an idea called the Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling mechanism. The thinking is that in the days before an earthquake, the great stresses in a fault as it is about to give cause the releases large amounts of radon.

So while they theorize it was radon released from the fault stress, this is not proven.  And one would have to ask how could this happen considering the fault was underwater.  Here are images showing the images of the atmosphere heating up:

This piece of unusual data on the heating up of the ionosphere has caused some to speculate that a weapon such as HAARP was used to excite the earthquake.  From HAARP: Secret Weapon Used For Weather Modification, Electromagnetic Warfare:

Major aspects of the program are kept secret for alleged reasons of “national security.” Yet there is no doubt that HAARP and electromagnetic weapons capable of being used in warfare do exist. According to the official HAARP website, “HAARP is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, with particular emphasis on being able to understand and use it to enhance communications and surveillance systems for both civilian and defense purposes.”...
The HAARP website acknowledges that experiments are conducted which use electromagnetic frequencies to fire pulsed, directed energy beams in order to “temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere.” Some scientists state that purposefully disturbing this sensitive layer could have major and even disastrous consequences. Concerned HAARP researchers like Dr. Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa and Alaska’s Dr. Nick Begich (son of a US Congressman) present evidence suggesting that these disturbances can even cause tsunamis and earthquakes.

So why target Japan?  To take out its nuclear reactors?  From LNG-Dependent Japan Tries To Gain Leverage Over Pricing:

Japan’s record purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) show no sign of slowing as the country continues to try and fill the energy shortfall created when it took its nuclear plants offline three years ago.
With its lack of substantial domestic sources of fossil fuel, Japan is cripplingly dependent on imported oil, coal, and natural gas. Before the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan was the third largest nuclear generator in the world, behind the United States and France, with 54 reactors.   
Those reactors were critical to cutting Japan’s fuel import bills, and accounted for 20 percent of the country’s electricity generation. But post-Fukushima, the sum total of Japan’s nuclear power plants were shuttered and imports of fossil fuels, particularly LNG, have skyrocketed.

Interesting indeed.  Reminds me of these scenes concerning Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings (see also The Hidden Prophecy of the Lord of the Rings):

UPDATE (10/19/2015): EVIDENCE OF HAARP SPIKE DURING JAPANESE EARTHQUAKE

Just discovered this: Why the US Used HAARP to Create the 9.0 Magnitude Japan Earthquake.  They produced this chart of HAARP activity at the time of the quake:

And would be the motive?  The author concludes this:

Why would the US attack Japan using HAARP?
Japan is producing vehicles that don’t use any gasoline – not a drop.  No gasoline means zero emissions and zero oil revenue.  The US attacked Iraq and Libya for one reason only – OIL!
Why spend $trillions on wars of terror to seize control of the oil in the Middle East if the demand would drop drastically with the introduction of vehicles that uses zero gasoline?
The US used HAARP in an attack against Japan to protect its financial interests in the Middle East. The Japan Earthquake was created to kill the production of Japan’s all-electric and hydrogen fueled cars.

A Divine Revelation concerning Abortion

Here is a very unusual story from a four year old girl, who slipped from a ladder to a pool slide and fell 9 feet onto solid concrete.  She survived - and what is amazing - she just had a scrape on her elbow from the fall.  Her grandfather, who was in the pool at the time, saw that she seemed to levitate right before she touched the concrete.  She was unconscious, but when she came to she said she saw that she was caught by six big angels, and at that moment was brought up into heaven.  Not only that, she was given knowledge of some factual evidence that was later verified, for she was given the details of the circumstances of the deaths of the children she met in heaven - including the ones who were aborted.  The details of this story are described in the book 6 Big Big Big Angels, which describes a view of heaven through the eyes of a four year old.  Here is an interview of her grandmother:




She described how she was taken up out of her body, and ascended high above the earth, above the stars, until she was taken to a heavenly realm.  She saw angels, who eventually led her to Jesus.  She was then taken to a room where babies were being cared for.  However, these babies were very small - no bigger than the size of one's hand.  She was told by angels that these babies were "squeezed" out of their mother before they could live. In this room they were being cared for, and healed and made whole again. This completely surprised her grandparents, for this was a four year old child who knew nothing about abortion.

In her visitation to heaven, she met eight boys and eight girls who had died while they were young.  One of them was named Michael, who described to her in detail how he died - he died in a car accident, which involved a monster truck, and described the position of the car as it crashed (it was turned upside down) and the color of the car.  Not only that, she was shown the position of his grave, which she saw was near a white tent in the graveyard.  After this her grandmother took her to lay flowers at the grave of a relative, and suddenly she decides to go looking for this boy's grave.  They look to no success and were going to give up, but then she said if they wait the white tent would no longer be there.  They eventually find the white tent, she turns around from it, and walks straight to the grave - the grave of a boy named Michael. They look up the records in the school, and eventually found newspaper clippings describing how he died - in a car accident, confirming the details relayed to her in her vision of heaven.  And it was from a monster truck, but that detail was left out of the newspaper stories.

There are other details provided by others.  Another boy said he was shot in the head by his stepfather, who had also killed three police officers.  This they were also able to track down.  Not only that, he said his favorite toy was this orange squirt gun.  Before he died, he had told a relative to send him his toy, which she did, but he was killed before he received it.  He was buried in his coffin with this squirt gun.  After all that, this girl then told her grandmother that she saw her son in heaven - at this she was shocked.  For long ago, she herself had an abortion, and the only other person who knew about it was her own mother.

At this, she asked, "Do the babies hold it against their mothers?" The girl replied, the mother always love their babies, and the babies always love their mother.  They are all taught forgiveness by Jesus.  However, they had this to say: they want their parents to know that they are not non-existent.  They not only exist, but they are given to know who their parents are.  They do not hold any hatred, but they want their parents to think of them, for they look forward to meeting them.  I take this to mean if we mention them in prayer, they will know about it.

I have seen other revelations concerning abortions similar to this one, but this is the first time I have seen one that contains specific factual details that were later confirmed.  And this from a four year old girl, who had no information on the matter of abortion.

SWEDENBORG'S VISIONS OF CHILDREN IN HEAVEN

Swedenborg was shown in his waking visions that all children who die at a young age go to heaven.  In the afterlife, after one sheds one's physical body, one becomes aware of one's spiritual body which has all the senses of the physical, except now one is in the spiritual realm outside of time and space.  This little girl also confirmed that the children she met have a full body, with all the senses.  Swedenborg took this further, and was shown that there is no angel that exists that did not first exist in the physical realm. This is the true origin of angels, and it is also our spiritual destiny.

Swedenborg stated that all children are taught about the Lord, how he died and rose from the dead, and this is the first thing that is taught before they enter heaven (see Heaven and Hell, n. 335).  This little girl saw exactly the same thing - the children were shown how Jesus suffered, was crucified, and rose from the dead.  She saw how the children were at first sad, but when they saw how Jesus rose from the dead, they were overjoyed and saying, "He is alive! He is alive!"  As to why this is the first thing they are taught, is because all of heaven originates from the Lord, which is His kingdom.  Swedenborg saw others who thought of the Lord as another man, and tried to find a heaven where He was not present, and could not find one.

This little girl interacted with Jesus, who brought her to the throne of God.  At one point she saw God's rainbow, and the rainbow of Jesus, and these merged together and became one.  Jesus took her out to a crystal sea, and there they danced to a Hebrew song.  After this heavenly visit, this girl was brought to a Messianic Jewish synagogue, where they were dancing to a Hebrew song, where they were doing twirling motions. This is exactly the dance she had done with Jesus. They then began to sing a Hebrew song, and to everyone's shock this girl began to sing as well - in Hebrew, a language she did not know.  When asked how did she know the lyrics, she said she had been taught this song in heaven.

One other point she was shown in heaven, was that love is a substance.  Whenever love is shared between people, or a person and God, that substance then flows and fills you.  Swedenborg stated that love is the food of heaven, and in fact, whenever food is mentioned in scripture it signifies a certain aspect of love.  Not only that, but Swedenborg stated that ultimately, all substance originates from love itself, and the form of that substance is truth itself:

"...the substances and forms which are love and wisdom are not visible to the eyes like the organs of the external senses. And yet no one can deny that those things of wisdom and love which are called thoughts, perceptions, and affections, are substances, and forms, and that they are not volatile entities flowing from nothing, or abstracted from real and actual substance and form, which are subjects. For in the brain there are innumerable substances and forms in which resides all interior sense which has relation to the understanding and the will." (Angelic Wisdom concerning Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 42)

Divine Love is substance itself, Divine truth is its form, and created beings are recipients of this love and wisdom.  This was revealed in the 18th century to Emanuel Swedenborg who discusses this concept at length in several volumes, so I was surprised to see this concept coming out of a four year old girl for very few people know about it.  When Jesus said for us to build our treasures in heaven, he really meant it - for the true spiritual treasures are those that consist of love and truth.

AT WHAT POINT IN TIME DOES LIFE BEGIN?

Since we are discussing abortion, this question will come up - at what point in time does life begin?  In the 18th century, the waking visions of Swedenborg confirmed what biology now tells us: life begins at conception.  And when I say life, I mean the living soul has become united with the body, when the cell begins dividing.  This Swedenborg mentions in several passages, which I will summarize here:

1. The soul does not come from the seed or the ovum, but from spiritual influx (Heavenly Arcana, n. 4322)
2. The seed of the father is merely a receptacle of life (Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 269)
3. Seeds are impregnated with a substance of a spiritual origin (Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 310).
4. As for the soul, we will never perhaps know of it directly, as it is composed of a substance that does not interact with light (Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 432).

In other passages Swedenborg states that the soul comes from the seed of the father, but this he drew from the science of the day - the above passages indicate the seed is the receptacle of the spiritual substance of the soul, which becomes living when united with the ovum of the mother.  Some of these points I covered earlier on the topic of reincarnation (see The Origin of the Soul, the Group Soul and Reincarnation).

So, now hopefully people can make a more informed decision.  Others, who have lost a child or a friend at a young age should be comforted to know that death is not the end, but only a transition, and that all children who die go to heaven.