....but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all. This is
a beautiful rendition. If the pictures are bothersome, shut the monitor
off!

http://www.trdaniel.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm
--
John H

On Dec 20, 1:48�pm, John H. wrote:
...but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all. This is
a beautiful rendition. If the pictures are bothersome, shut the monitor
off!

http://www.trdaniel.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm
--
John H

Nice, even if a bit over-produced.

Reminds me that back when I was a kid we used to play that as a very
slow blues song. Listen to it carefullly, and you can easily hear the
I,IV,V progression. One of my lost skills is the blues harp; and some
long, wailing, bent blue notes can just about bring tears to your eyes
in that tune. Come to think of it, a lot of people cry when they hear
me play..... :-)

I always appreciated the hymn.

Thanks John....

Chuck Gould wrote:
On Dec 20, 1:48?pm, John H. wrote:
...but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all. This is
a beautiful rendition. If the pictures are bothersome, shut the monitor
off!

http://www.trdaniel.com/Battle%20Hymn/index.htm
--
John H

Nice, even if a bit over-produced.

Reminds me that back when I was a kid we used to play that as a very
slow blues song. Listen to it carefullly, and you can easily hear the
I,IV,V progression. One of my lost skills is the blues harp; and some
long, wailing, bent blue notes can just about bring tears to your eyes
in that tune. Come to think of it, a lot of people cry when they hear
me play..... :-)

John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand shops
crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas, Undersecretary
of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I use!

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:

John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

On Dec 20, 3:39�pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar. During the Crusades, the Templars literally guarded the
Temple in Jerusalem, and were additionally responsible for the safety
of pilgrims and, believe it or not, banking. People who wanted to
travel from Europe to Jerusalem on pilgrimage were often reluctant to
carry large sums of money on their person en route. There were too
many opportunities to be waylaid by bandits, etc. So if the Herring
family wanted to travel from Paris to Jerusalem, for example, you
could go to the local office of the Templars and desposit, let's say,
a chest of 2000 gold coins. You would be given a receipt and you would
carry that with you to the Holy Land. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, you
would turn the receipt into the Templars and receive 2000 gold from
the Templars depository there, less of course a "carrying charge" of
perhaps 20 percent. Between the interest charged for banking services
and the number of people who simply died or were murdered along the
road to Jerusalem and never showed up to collect anything, the
Templars eventually got so rich that they were loaning money to
European kings.

Anyway, while hanging around Jerusalem and guarding the temple the
Knights Templar became aware of an entire school of Christianity that
had been fairly well stamped out in Europe. Gnosticism. Gnosticism was
one of two predominate forms of Christianity in the first couple of
centuries AD. Sometime around the year 300 or so, the 20-30 Christian
"gospels" were examined by a committee and four were deemed worthy to
be included in an official collection of religious documents that
would thereafter be called The Bible. None of the gnostic texts were
included, and before long gnostic groups were being
persecuted as "heretics" by the othodox church. Several attempts were
made to locate and burn every copy of the gnostic gospels, but there
were successful attempts made to hide some of them away. (see "The
Dead Sea Scrolls" as one example). Some of the gnostic texts were
found in Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Many of the Knights Templar adopted gnostic Christianity, and some of
the Masonic traditions were supposedly inspired by gnostic literature.

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:38 -0800 (PST), Chuck Gould
wrote:

On Dec 20, 3:39?pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar.

The only connection between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry is
with the Order of DeMolay which is a youth organization named after
Jacques DeMolay. It is a mentoring organization that the development
of civic awareness, leadership skills and personal responsibility.

There is a charitable organization outside the structure of
Freemasonry that is named The United Religious, Military and Masonic
Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes
and Malta which is sometimes called the Masonic Knights Templar, but
has no direct connection to Freemasonry other than the fact that the
members are all Master Masons.

There are only three degrees - Entered Apprentice. Fellow Craft and
Master Mason. Other "degrees" are declared, or to put it another way,
awarded depending on the Master Mason's involvement in the charitable
organization like the various Shrines or the Masonic Knights.

None of the Free Mason rituals are based on the rituals or theology of
the Knights Templar.

On Dec 20, 7:09�pm, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:15:38 -0800 (PST), Chuck Gould





wrote:
On Dec 20, 3:39?pm, John H. wrote:
On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar.

The only connection between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry is
with the Order of DeMolay which is a youth organization named after
Jacques DeMolay. It is a mentoring organization that the development
of civic awareness, leadership skills and personal responsibility.

There is a charitable organization outside the structure of
Freemasonry that is named The United Religious, Military and Masonic
Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes
and Malta which is sometimes called the Masonic Knights Templar, but
has no direct connection to Freemasonry other than the fact that the
members are all Master Masons.

There are only three degrees - Entered Apprentice. Fellow Craft and
Master Mason. �Other "degrees" are declared, or to put it another way,
awarded depending on the Master Mason's involvement in the charitable
organization like the various Shrines or the Masonic Knights.

None of the Free Mason rituals are based on the rituals or theology of
the Knights Templar.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

From Wiki:

Despite Freemasonry's general disclaimer that no one Masonic
organization claims a direct heritage to the medieval Knights Templar,
certain degrees and orders are obviously patterned after the medieval
Order. These are best described as "commemorative orders" or degrees.
Nevertheless, in spite of the fraternity's official disclaimers, some
Masons, non-Masons and even anti-Masons insist that certain Masonic
rites or degrees originally had direct Templar influence.

American Masonic youth organizations such as the Order of DeMolay for
young men are named after the last Grand Master Templar Jacques de
Molay who was executed in the final suppression of the Templar order
in the early 1300s.
The Knight of Rose-Croix Degree in the "Ancient Accepted Scottish
Rite", and honorary Orders like the Royal Order of Scotland are
interpreted as evidence of a historical Templar-Masonic connection,
though there is no factual basis for this belief.
Legends in certain degrees pertain to the involvement of Knights Under
the command of Sir John De Bermingham, First and Last Earl of Louth
aiding the excommunicated 14th Century Scottish King Robert the Bruce
at the Battle of Bannockburn; however this remains a point of debate.
Lack of documentation on behalf of the medieval Knights themselves,
and battle memoirs usually written years if not decades after the
actual engagement, have left much room for speculation. This story is
the basis for the degrees in the Royal Order of Scotland an
invitational Masonic honorary organization.
Templar connections have also been suggested through the Earls of
Rosslyn (St. Clair, or Sinclair) a family with well documented
connections with Scottish Freemasonry, one being a Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of Scotland.
Many other old and new organizations are called "Knights Templar".
However, organizations like the Order of the Solar Temple, Militi
Templi Scotia,or the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of
Jerusalem are in no way related to Masonic Knights Templar, and share
no relationship in either history, hierarchy, nor ritual.

*********

Like much pertaining to various systems of belief and ritual, few
things are reducible to absolutes and discussion continues, and
continues, and continues........ :-)

"Some Masons claim a link to the Knights Templar", but there is no
question that those Masons *could be* wrong.

On Dec 20, 8:15Â*pm, Chuck Gould wrote:
On Dec 20, 3:39�pm, John H. wrote:

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:31:28 +0000, Larry wrote:
John H. wrote in
:

but the Battle Hymn of the Republic *was* religious, after all.

More Masonic than religious....actually.
http://www.masonmusic.org/uslodge.html
They play it a lot....

Larry

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.
--
John H

The two are more entwined than you might imagine.

Masons often claim to be the philosophical descendants of the Knights
Templar. During the Crusades, the Templars literally guarded the
Temple in Jerusalem, and were additionally responsible for the safety
of pilgrims and, believe it or not, banking. People who wanted to
travel from Europe to Jerusalem on pilgrimage were often reluctant to
carry large sums of money on their person en route. There were too
many Â*opportunities to be waylaid by bandits, etc. So if the Herring
family wanted to travel from Paris to Jerusalem, for example, you
could go to the local office of the Templars and desposit, let's say,
a chest of 2000 gold coins. You would be given a receipt and you would
carry that with you to the Holy Land. Upon arrival in Jerusalem, you
would turn the receipt into the Templars and receive 2000 gold from
the Templars depository there, less of course a "carrying charge" of
perhaps 20 percent. Between the interest charged for banking services
and the number of people who simply died or were murdered along the
road to Jerusalem and never showed up to collect anything, the
Templars eventually got so rich that they were loaning money to
European kings.

Anyway, while hanging around Jerusalem and guarding the temple the
Knights Templar became aware of an entire school of Christianity that
had been fairly well stamped out in Europe. Gnosticism. Gnosticism was
one of two predominate forms of Christianity in the first couple of
centuries AD. Sometime around the year 300 or so, the 20-30 Christian
"gospels" were examined by a committee and four were deemed worthy to
be included in an official collection of religious documents that
would thereafter be called The Bible. None of the gnostic texts were
included, and before long gnostic groups were being
persecuted as "heretics" by the othodox church. Several attempts were
made to locate and burn every copy of the gnostic gospels, but there
were successful attempts made to hide some of them away. (see "The
Dead Sea Scrolls" as one example). Some of the gnostic texts were
found in Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Many of the Knights Templar adopted gnostic Christianity, and some of
the Masonic traditions were supposedly inspired by gnostic literature.

Hmmm.....


I always thought they traced their roots back to the master builder of
Solomans Temple, by a guy named Huram (Hiram) [1 kings chapt. 5-7]

Where he supposedly got the name 'Hiram Abiff' I don't have a clue.
And actually the biblical acct of "Hiram" is a bit confusing. King
Hiram of Tyre, that sent Solomon the materials for the temple? or
Hiram the master builder who was from Tyre and was the son of a widow?

Now I don't really know but, When Julia Howe was visiting a Union army
camp, and was inspired to write the words to the Battle Hymn of the
Republic, I sincerely doubt if Freemasonry was really on her mind.

John H. wrote in
:

I thought of Christ as a religious, as opposed to Masonic, symbol.


Actually Christ is the last in a long line of Astrological Symbols that
began with the Egyptian sun god, Horus, 3000 BC. All the dates of all of
them are related to the Zodiac. Born (again) DEC 25th, 3 days after the
winter solstice when the sun (son) can be detected to move 1 degree
Northward in its battle with "evil" that drove it South for the winter.
They were all crucified just in time for the Spring Equinox (Easter) when
the sun (son) wins over "the darkness" as the days are now longer than
the nights. They were buried for 3 days, then resurrected into "Heaven",
where the Zodiacals live.

Next time you see a Christian with a fish on the back of his car, ask him
what it means. JC was the sun god in the Zodiacal age of Pisces, the two
fish. He will "reign" until the next Zodiacal age, the Age of Aquarius,
the Waterbearer who brings us the spring rains every year.

http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/...s/zodiac_clock
..gif
It's hard to find a good Zodiac on the net. They are usually highly
stylized, for religious reasons, and don't show you a good clock like
this one. Notice the first (beginning) is Virgo, The Virgin. All the
Sun gods were born of virgins. There's a whole list of them between
Horus and Jesus across the planet's northern hemisphere, of course. The
solar year is one trip around the clock in the clockwise direction. The
ages, however, go BACKWARDS. Notice the time of Jesus occurs at the
beginning of Pisces. Zodiacal Ages last about 2250 years, so JC has a
ways to go, beyond our lifetimes, so we won't be here to see what
happens, "at the end of the age", so the clerics don't have to explain to
us why nothing happens for another hundred years.

This is a great time of year to see the Astrological birth of these sun
gods. On Dec 22, the "Three Kings" follow the "Star in the East" and
point to the Son...er, ah, SUN, there, that's better. You can see this
wonderful even EVERY Christmas eve for yourself if you haul your ass out
of bed a little before the sunrise that blots out the stars. The "Three
Kings" are the belt of the constellation Orion that's easier to see at
midnight directly over your head all winter. Orion, the warrior:
http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/astro/...es/orion_l.gif
has a belt of 3 stars across his waist. These are the "Three Kings". In
mid-December, if you look at the "Three Kings" upright like this picture,
and line them up in your mind from right to left, they point to Sirius,
the "Star In The East", at sunrise (or all night if you want a better
look). Sirius is the brightest star in the sky by a wide margin....a
marker in the sky.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/...8cb7917a_o.jpg
....and here it all lines up on Dec 22, the Winter Solstice, which gave
the ancients a point of reference so they could detect the 1 degree
northern movement of the sun, completely ignoring the reason why, on Dec
25th when all the sun gods were born of Virgos whos name, like the
Zodiacal sign for Virgo, all began with M....no coincidence, either.

http://www.icstars.com/CDO/photos/CD...n_11_10_04.jpg
Here's an actual photo on Dec 22nd from some amateur astronomer's nice-
looking observatory. Best picture of it that's real I've seen. Now you
can sleep in on Dec 22, WHICH IS TOMORROW MORNING!

No matter what your religious persuasion, you should really see the movie
"Zeitgeist", which gives a great explanation of all this Zodiacal
nonsense as one chapter of the larger movie about elite humans having
control over "lesser" humans.....until those humans get fed up and
something really bloody happens, over and over, in history.

The "Cross", that's so important is the Zodiacal Cross, like you see
behind Jesus he
http://z.about.com/d/gaylife/1/0/v/8/jesus.JPG
All the old likenesses of what they think he might have looked like in
their mind's eye, have Zodiac crosses behind him because the Sun...er,
ah, Son...is the center of the Zodiac. The cross part depicts the two
Equinoxes and Solstices as the sun travels through the 12 Zodiacal
constellations in a year, whos 12 months is also no coincidence. For a
long time, Church crosses had zodiacal rings and looked like this
zodiacal measuring instrument:
http://www.crichtonmiller.com/Copy%2...s%20measuring%
20Draconis.jpg
but I suspect too many people were seeing a resemblance in the last
hundred or so years, so they dumped the Zodiac Ring to reduce the
embarrassing questions about it.

Part 1 of Zeitgeist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeZB2EsPqGE
shows you this information all in one place in 3 youtube parts.

The movie is fascinating....

Larry
--
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
"I have been to several major Chinese cities and have seen first hand
shops crammed with obviously fake American products." - Jon Dudas,
Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Rights.

How can they be fake? The Chinese make all "American Products" I use!