The Greek poet Homer was born sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BC, possibly somewhere on the coast of Asia Minor. He is famous for the epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, which have had an enormous effect on Western culture, but very little is known about their alleged author.

Some scholars believe him to be one man; others think these iconic stories were created by a group. A variation on the group idea stems from the fact that storytelling was an oral tradition and Homer compiled the stories, then recited them to memory.

Further Reading:  Project Gutenberg - Homer

According to National Geographic a new study published in the Journal Hesperia reveals the painstaking work of deciphering fragments of Greek Pottery.  Linguists pieced together several languages not spoken for  2,500 years which contain the names of Amazon women.   Author Adrienne Mayor and J. Paul Getty Museum assistant curator David Saunders translated Greek inscriptions found on 12 ancient vases from Athens dating from 550 BC to 450 BC. The inscriptions appear next to scenes of Amazons fighting, hunting, or shooting arrows.

The eighth-century B.C. poet Homer was the first to mention the existence of the Amazons. In the Iliad—which is set 500 years earlier, during the Bronze or Heroic Age--

“Essentially, the ancient Greeks seem to have been trying to re-create the sounds of Scythian names and words on the Amazon vases by writing them out phonetically,” writes the National Geographic. “In doing so, the Greeks may have preserved the roots of ancient languages, showing scholars how these people sounded on the steppes long ago.” (Source:  Ancient Origins News)

While these translations get us closer to the truth about the Amazons, the preservation of ancient languages offers us a Key to future discovery. 

Further Reading:  Theoi - Amazons

Belfast Media Group: "Patrick Carberry, who’s based in Glengormley, applied to Stormont five months ago to be certified as a holy man and officials have now got back to him to say he can now carry out religious ceremonies for people who follow Irish pre-Christian religions.  Patrick, who has been attacked in the past for his beliefs, says he hopes the fact that pagans have official recognition means they will now be more readily accepted in society."

Metal Gaia: “In 2009 I set up a church called the Order of the Golden River but the members and I agreed to keep it underground because the people were afraid of being targeted.”

Apparently this fear is well founded. Patrick was assaulted at a small outlet he opened in the Park Centre last September. But he says he’s now happy to announce he is a full-time priest in the pagan religion, now that he has official recognition.

“I’m not in the slightest bit bothered. I am a full-time pagan priest and it’s as simple as that. That’s what I do. Other people have jobs and do their paganism outside of that but I am the same level as any priest or reverend and I have now been recognized as such.”


To read more on this story, you may also visit The Wild Hunt.

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. …All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

–Marx and Engles, The Communist Manifesto

"You have been telling people that this is the eleventh hour.

Now you must go back and tell people that this is the hour!

And there are things to be considered:

Where are you living?

What are you doing?

What are your relationships?

Are you in right relation?

Where is your water?

Know your Garden.

It is time to speak your truth.

Create your community.

Be good to yourself.

And not look outside of yourself for a leader.

This could be a good time!

There is a river flowing very fast.

It is so great and fast that there are those who will be afraid.

They will hold on to the shore.

They will feel that they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know that the river has its destination.

The elders say that we must let go of the shore,

push off into the middle of the river,

keep our eyes open,

and our heads above the water.

See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time we are to take nothing personally,

least of all, ourselves.

For the moment that we do,

our spiritual growth comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves!

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones that we have been waiting for."


-Cherokee, Elder, Will Rockingbear

A message regarding the 11th Hour: 
Karl Scherer, March 22, 2003

Dear Friends,

As the Hopi tradition is  probably the oldest  existing oral tradition on Turtle Island claiming the same incredible amount of historical lineage as 
does  BON, and having visited and studied with Hopi Elders in the seventies; as well as talked at length with Lopon Tenzin Namdak on significant 
similiarities both in teaching as well as ritual in the Native American and BON traditions, I feel inclined to comment on this "message" :

 It is  as highly unlikely that this mesage - nice as it sounds - originates from the Hopis, as it  was unlikely  that H.H. the Dalai Lama was the source for the 3rd re-emergence of the new age "nepali-good-luck-tantra" on the internet. As a matter of fact this "message"  seems to originate from an Cherokee elder named Will Rockingbear otherwise not noted as a spiritual Leader amongst Native Americans and seems inconsistent with authentic statements made by HOPI Lineageholders themselves except for the first 6 possibly 9 lines of the  "message".  Otherwise it seems at best a well 
meant but strongly edited and synthesized amalgam with line number (10) "DO NOT LOOK OUTSIDE YOURSELF FOR THE LEADER";  
already contradicting Hopibeliefs  in the  value and the sagacity of  the leadership of their Spiritual Elders. 

 Additionally Hopis are not inclined to authorize Native Americans of other tribes as their spokesmen simply because almost all of them have resorted 
to war in the past, whereas Hopis are bound by their vows to never resort to violence. According to Hopi beliefs to truly be a HOPI you have to undergo at least a 12 year course of intense initiations, retreats and ritual practices and then prove your understanding in  action for  at 
least a few more decades before being capable of representing the teachings...

The  "message" appears to be a part of the partially well meant yet in effect destructive , but ongoing re-design and appropriation that many ancient and authentic traditions suffer from  attempts made by the dominant culture to "fit for our modern world".
In fact it downplays and contradicts in part the powerful spiritual message the Hopi tradition has to offer to the world. In this and in many other respects  it shows the same tragic pattern in the 
fate of Tibetans and Native Americans, being marginalized in their own countries and facing ongoing genocide - both physical and spiritual - by 
the hands of their invaders.

So as most people on this newsletter are both U.S.citizens and  followers of BON - being another tradition facing extinction in its homeland -  I 
apologize to take your time to draw your attention to such issues as the one at hand. Small as it may seem it shows that even in such small issues core spiritual beliefs are excerpted, taken out of context and re-framed to fit the liking of the "Zeitgeist". In effect it is as imperialistic in spirit as when  the 
people who invaded it,  named the continent  America  and did not even pause to ask the people they stole it from what the name of  their homeland had been for millenia...

In any case this   "message"  was also featured on a website of the so-called "Rainbow Tribe" and an anti-globalisation group called  "The Tribal Messenger"  which otherwise  certainly makes a laudable effort to present the real message of the Hopis as told to them on various rainbow gatherings.

The Hopis do in fact  have a  powerful message for the world as which guardians they perceive themselves - but it is much more dire and speaks of 
major ethical self-restraints and personal and global sacrifice (quite in the sense of the paramitas being accepted as the universal code of ethics worldwide) that need to be made to avoid catastrophe.

As it makes specific references to the "Cosmic Egg" and the "Swastika" symbolism also known in BON and speaks of an invasion from the "west" - possibly the Far East - and hopes for help from a man with a "Red Hat" or "Red Robe" and the land becoming "red", I feel it justified to send a few excerpts and links to the followers of BON being another one of these ancient lineages protecting all beings and leading humanity in its quest forrealization.

In  short excerpts the message of the Hopis has been summarized in issue # 37 of Techqua Ikachi - their own newsletter - as this PROPHECY.

According to Live Science:

Researchers have identified what is believed to be the world's earliest surviving Christian inscription, shedding light on an ancient sect that followed the teachings of a second-century philosopher named Valentinus.  Officially called NCE 156, the inscription is written in Greek and is dated to the latter half of the second century, a time when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power.

Gregory Snyder, of Davidson College in North Carolina said:  ""If it is in fact a second-century inscription, as I think it probably is, it is about the earliest Christian material object that we possess."

As translated by Snyder, the inscription reads:

To my bath, the brothers of the bridal chamber carry the torches, [here] in our halls, they hunger for the [true] banquets, even while praising the Father and glorifying the Son.  There [with the Father and the Son] is the only spring and source of truth.


Margherita Guarducci, a well-known Italian epigrapher who passed away in 1999, proposed a second-century date for the inscription more than four decades ago. She argued that the way it was written, with a classical style of Greek letters, was only used in Rome during the first and second centuries.

Snyder essentially added more evidence to Guarducci's theory. He analyzed a 1968 catalog of more than 1,700 inscriptions from Rome called "Inscriptiones graecae urbis Romae." He found 53 cases of Greek inscriptions with classical letterforms.

The author of the inscription likely followed the teachings of a man named Valentinus, an early Christian teacher who would eventually be declared a heretic, Snyder said. The presence of the inscription suggests that a community of his followers may have lived on the Via Latina during the second century.

"We know that Valentinus was a famous Gnostic teacher in the second century (who) lived in Rome for something like 20 years, and was a very sophisticated ... poetic, talented, thinker, speaker, writer."

His teachings are believed to be preserved, to some degree, in the Gospel of Philip, a third-century anthology that was discovered in 1945 in the town of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. That gospel is a collection of gnostic beliefs, some of which were probably composed in the second century, that are written in a cryptic manner. However, like the inscription, it also refers prominently to a "bridal chamber."

One example, near the end of the gospel, reads in part:

The mysteries of truth are revealed, though in type and image. The bridal chamber, however, remains hidden. It is the Holy in the Holy. The veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation, but when the veil is rent and the things inside are revealed, this house will be left desolate, or rather will be destroyed. And the whole (inferior) godhead will flee from here, but not into the holies of the holies, for it will not be able to mix with the unmixed light and the flawless fullness, but will be under the wings of the cross and under its arms...

(Translation by Wesley Isenberg)