The Valkyries

The Valkyries were warrior maidens who would go to battlefields and pick through the bodies of those who had fallen. After finding the most worthy of the dead, they took the warriors' souls to Asgard, where half would go to Valhalla and half to Freya's hall, Sessrumnir. Between battles, the Valkyries served Odin in his hall, serving food and drinks. They are often portrayed in art as riding on winged or flying horses, but that is due to a mistranslation of "Valkyrie horse," which was actually a metaphor for a wolf. Some of the Valkyries are given names in Norse mythology, although they seldom play individual roles.

Sigurd the Dragon Slayer

A hero of the Poetic Edda, Sigurd was born after the death of his father. Sigurd's mother gave him the broken shards of his father's sword, which later was remelded to help Sigurd kill the dragon Fafnir. The sword was so strong that it cut through the anvil used to make it. Odin told Sigurd to dig trenches to hide in as he stabbed at Fafnir. Odin also told him to bathe in the dragon's blood. Following Odin's advice, Sigurd killed the dragon and bathed in his blood, which touched all his body except for his shoulder where a leaf had stuck. Next, he drank the blood and could speak to birds. Roasting the heart and eating it, he gained the gift of prophecy.

Myths of the island Celts of Great Britain

Myths of the island Celts of Great Britain and Ireland were introduced into medieval culture and thus survived to the present day, although in a Christianized form. Parts of myths reappear in several major legendary cycles, including the Ulster Cycle about the achievements of the Irish hero Cuchulainn. The Mythological Cycle tells the stories of several prehistoric migrations to Ireland. Another important source is The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh prose. Traces of Celtic mythology can be found in all these stories in which ancient gods are now represented as various heroes. Animals play an important role in these myths and are a reminder of the special status of honor they were accorded in Celtic culture.

Although relatively recent sources are available about the Celtic people of the islands, the mythology and religion of the mainland Celts are only known from accounts by Roman authors and from archaeological finds.

The names of several hundred names Celtic gods are known from inscriptions. lt is thought that most of them were local or regional names and probably not known across the entire Celtic culture. A likely reason is that there was never a unified Celtic kingdom. Furthermore, Roman authors often compared them to Roman gods in order to illustrate their function and attributes. Very often they were associated with features of the landscape, such as rivers and mountains. Notably, animals also had a special status as companions or manifestations of the gods. It is most likely that animal, river, spring, mountain, and tree cults preceded the worship of gods. Mother goddesses and matrons also played an important part in the pantheon. The same role was later frequently taken over by Christian saints. Originally, they were associated with fertility cults. Teutates, the god of war, Taranis, the god of the sky and thunder (similar to the Roman god Jupiter), and Belenus, the god of fire (compared to the Greek-Roman god Apollo), were some of the more popular Gallic gods. The goddess Belisama reminded the Roman authors of Minerva. Epona, the goddess of the horses, later came to be worshiped in Rome. Both cultures were mixed to some extent during the Roman occupation of Gaul, which explains how the names and functions of Celtic and Roman gods came to be frequently combined.

Offerings and funeral rites played a major role in Celtic religious culture. As with many other nature-oriented religions, offerings were given to appease the gods whose territory the humans were intruding upon. Animals were commonly sacrificed or weapons offered before battles and wars. There were also various forms of human sacrifices. People believed that this would maintain the cycle of life. New life would come from death. Valuable burial objects Introduction ... were found which indicates that the Celts believed in an afterlife. Caesar also claimed in his De bello gallica that Celtic people believed in the transmigration of the soul.

What is going on?

The bird and fish kills are not, apparently, isolated incidents in the United States of America, nor indeed in the region. In recent days there have been several. What exactly is going on?
The sudden plummeting to the ground of thousands of red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year's Eve grabbed the headlines around the world. However, this came after a horrific mass fish kill of 100,000 drum fish in the same State 160 km away on December 30, and another mass bird kill on January 3 just south of Arkansas, 500 more birds.

Now we discover than on December 29 in Haiti, scores of fish were found dead in Lake Azuei and since December 24, in the area of Fond Parisien and Malpasse.

And today in Volusia County, Florida, thousands of fish found floating dead in Spruce Creek, Port Orange.  The fish were ladyfish, catfish and mullet. Conflicting reports point towards the weather (the official line is a reaction to the cold), a hypothesis dashed by locals who say it has been mild. As if that were not enough, further north in Chesapeake Bay, lying between Virginia and Maryland, two million fish are reported dead in another kill.

From Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, unconfirmed reports of a cover-up after the authorities were alerted of  a mass kill of tens of thousands of birds today, which were taken away by the authorities and the area closed down.

So, what is going on?

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

The Apocalypse, mass kills and the magnetic pole shift

The myriad of reasons given for the mass deaths of various species of animals around the world is almost as baffling as the events themselves, lending credence to the notion that something very strange is going on. The list of incidents grows by the day and reaches staggering proportions. We must find an answer, and soon.
The list of apocalyptic happenings from the end of 2010 to the beginning of 2011 is absolutely staggering:

450 birds dropped out of the sky in Baton Rouge, Lousiana (red-winged blackbirds, cowbirds, grackles and starlings). Why were they flocking together like that?

3,000 red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Askansas. Why were they flying at night when they are not night-flyers? Why were they flocking as in a migration, when they do not do this?

Thousands of drum fish washed up along a stretch of the Arkansas River some twenty miles long; the explanation was poison but surely that would have been ascertained by now; still no results are available;

Two million small fish dead in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland; the reason they gave was the cold

Thousands of fish in a Florida creek. It cannot have been the cold, the waters were mild;

Dozens of coots (around 200) found dead on a Texas Highway at Big Cypress Creek;

But the killings have not only been in the United States of America. In Stockport, Greater Manchester, England, hundreds of fish have appeared dead on a pond; several other places in north-west England have reported mass fish kills; in southern England, in the county of Kent, 40,000 devil crabs were washed up dead on the sea-shore at Thanet. The reasons given in all these cases were cold weather, but then again it is always cold in Winter and this does not happen;

In Italy, 8,000 doves plummeted from the sky at Faenza. Reason: altitude sickness, poisoning or indigestion caused by greed. But birds do not simply crop till they drop;

In New Zealand hundreds of snapper fish were washed up dead on the beach at Coromandel;

In Sweden, 50 jackdaws fell from the sky at New Year;

In Brazil a huge fish kill (100 tons) was discovered between Paranaguá, Antonina and Guaraqueçaba Pontal in Paraná State, leaving hundreds of fishermen destitute. Now surely this cannot have been due to cold water, Brazil is in mid-Summer.

The temperature argument cannot hold water, otherwise it would be valid for all the areas affected. How can some mass kills be due to temperature change when there are low temperatures every winter and when there are kills in warmer areas as well?

One theory being postulated tentatively at present is the shift of the Magnetic North Pole eastwards towards Russia. However, this does not take into account the fact that the magnetic pole is constantly shifting in loops some 50 miles wide every day although the movement does appear to be accelerating and has been doing so for several years.

Could this be the explanation? Certainly it is better than saying birds died of altitude sickness and indigestion through greed...

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

PARIS: THE TEMPLE

The Paris Temple was in the area known today as the Marais, which is on the Right Bank just west of the Bastille. The Marais is one of the most atmospheric parts of Paris; it was left largely untouched by Baron Haussmann, the nineteenth-century planner whose love of the straight line and the grand vista led him to demolish great swathes of the old city to create the long broad boulevards lined by six- to seven-storey buildings with uniform grey facades and mansard roofs that are the architectural hallmark of Paris today. Instead the Marais is a warren of enchanting narrow streets which preserve magnificent Renaissance mansions built round intimate courtyards and humbler but no less appealing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century streets of stucco facades and slatted shutters. Yet the area was nothing more than a riverside swamp (marais) until the Knights Templar drained the land in the 1140s and built their headquarters in its northern part, then outside the city walls, in what is now called the Quartier du Temple.

            Now nothing remains of the Paris Temple except the name itself. But the rues du Temple, Bretagne, Picardie and Beranger more or less define the place occupied by the Templars’ French headquarters, which was a considerable compound fortified with walls and towers to which they added, in the late thirteenth century, a powerfully built keep which was nearly twice as high as the White Tower, the keep at the heart of the Tower of London. The Templar keep in Paris was the main strongroom for the Templar bank, which was also, in effect, the treasury of the kings of France.

            The close relationship between the French crown and the Templars probably explains why King Philip IV’s officials were able to walk right in to the Temple at dawn on Friday 13 October 1307. Their action was so sudden, and the shock and surprise so complete, that there was no resistance. The keep, which had been the Templars’ stronghold, immediately became their prison, and the two thousand or so Templars arrested simultaneously throughout France were also brought here for incarceration, examination and torture.

            After the abolition of the Templars, the Paris Temple became the abode of artisans and debtors eager to avoid official regulations by living outside the city walls. But a new wall built in 1357 brought the Temple within the embrace of the growing city where it remained standing for four and a half centuries more. During the French Revolution King Louis XVI was imprisoned in the Templar keep and it was from there in January 1793 that he was led out to the guillotine in what is now the Place de la Concorde. In 1808 the keep was demolished by Napoleon, who was eager to eradicate anything that might become a focus of sympathy for the royal family.

Ile des Javiaux: the Burning of the Last Templars

On the evening of 18 March 1314 James of Molay, the Templar Grand Master, and Geoffrey of Charney, the Templar’s master of Normandy, were burnt at the stake on the Ile de Javiaux in the Seine. It is said that as James of Molay was bound to the stake he asked to be allowed to face the Cathedral of Notre Dame. You can revisit the scene, but you must make allowances for changes in the river. Medieval maps of Paris show four islands in the Seine. The westernmost is the Ile de la Cité with the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The next two islands to the east are shown as uninhabited; they have since joined together to form the Ile St Louis. The easternmost island of the four, which is also shown as uninhabited, is the Ile des Javiaux–but there is no island there today. Instead the island has become attached to the north bank of the Seine, and what was once the river channel to the north is now the Boulevard Morland. Along the Quai Henri IV, which follows the outline of what was the southern side of the Ile des Javiaux, there is a plaque which reads: A cet endroit Jacques de Molay dernier grand maitre de l’ordre du Temple été brulé le 18 Mars 1314–‘On this spot James of Molay, the last Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, was burned on 18 March 1314’. The Cathedral of Notre Dame still forms part of the view.

THE TEMPLARS IN MOVIES

Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.

For decades, Hollywood’s perception of the Templars began and ended with George Sanders’ suave villainy as Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert in Ivanhoe (1952). Apart from perennial inferior remakes of Scott’s saga, the Templars did not get much of a look-in until the 1970s when Spanish director Amando de Ossorio brought the order back to life as zombies in his Blind Dead movies.

            And then came George Lucas. There is a theory that the Jedi knights in Star Wars (1977) are thinly disguised Templars and that their massacre (in 2005’s Revenge of the Sith) is a reference to the destruction of the order in 1307. There are rumours that in the original script the knights were known as Jedi Templar. The Jedi, like the Templars, were warrior monks whose behaviour was governed by a code. And the Templars–through their supposed association with the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant–are often credited with mysterious, even supernatural powers which, some Star Wars aficionados insist, resembles the Force that the Jedi knights must master.

            More easily identifiable Templar and Grail myths came to the fore in two Steven Spielberg blockbusters that Lucas produced: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). And these created something of a genre, being followed by the confused Dolph Lundgren thriller The Minion (1998), the entertaining Indiana Jones clone National Treasure (2001), the baffling Revelation (2001), Christophe Gans’ horror movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001), and Ridley Scott’s sword and sandal epic, Kingdom of Heaven (2005). Not to mention the movie version of The Da Vinci Code (2006).

            The Blind Deadmovies (1971–75)

            The Blind Dead series kicked off with Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) in which the Templars–known only as Knights of the East but identifiable from their garb–are brought back from the dead as blind mummies. Slow, creepy and bizarre–the zombie-Templars are blind so they hunt by sound–the film was successful enough for Ossorio to make three more: Return of the Blind Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974) and Night of the Seagulls (1975). The series inspired a New York punk band called The Templars.

            The Indiana JonesTrilogy (1981–89)

            ‘All of a sudden, whoosh, it was gone.’ That remark by one of the US intelligence officers who recruits Indiana Jones to save the Ark from the Nazis pretty much sums up what we know about the fate of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The Ark was supposed to make armies invincible–hence Hitler’s interest–though it mysteriously failed to prevent the occupation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and, in Spielberg’s version of history, by the Egyptians too. This first film in Steven Spielberg’s series bases its plot on the historically nonsensical proposition that the Ark was taken to Egypt by Pharaoh Shishak, which if true would have made it impossible for the Templars to have made off with it two thousand years later, as some would have us believe.

            The third film in the series, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), has a suggestively Templar theme and features a scene in which the weary Templar-like guardian of the Holy Grail looks forward with quiet relief to ending his 800-year watch. Jones (Harrison Ford) and his father (Sean Connery) combine to prevent the chalice falling into Nazi hands. Even though the sets are full of eight-pointed stars and talk of chivalrous knights abounds, the Templars are not mentioned once. Instead we get a secret military order called the Knights of the Cruciform Sword.

            But the story does capture the Grail’s mythic significance. When the heroes and the villains find the cave where the knight keeps watch over the hidden treasure and the Holy Grail, the knight warns them to choose wisely. The shallow, mercenary villain picks the blingiest goblet and dies. Indy, who has no real interest in the Grail but knows his father is obsessed by it, drinks from a plain wooden cup–the kind of cup a carpenter might have, he suggests–and it heals his troubled relationship with his father. In spirit, the denouement is consistent with Eschenbach’s poem Parzival–a vague source for this movie–which suggests that you have to be truly selfless to be worthy of the Grail.

            The Minion(1998)

            The budget for this film was $12 million. A pity they did not spend a cent on research. Dolph Lundgren is a butt-kicking Templar monk with a spiked leather glove whose sacred duty it is to do what the Templars have always done and stop a key that has kept the Anti-christ imprisoned for thousands of years from falling into the wrong hands. The laughs start as soon as Françoise Robertson’s Native American archaeologist stares at some skeletons in a hidden chamber in New York and decides the Templar garb they are wearing was made in Ireland in the sixth century. Although ostensibly a Templar, Lundgren fails to point out that she is six hundred years out. The idea that the order was founded in the twelfth century, we are told later, is merely conventional wisdom. There are rumours, we are assured, that the Templars may have started a thousand years before and, the film suggests, it may even have been started by Saint Peter. After such revelations, we barely pause to wonder how a bunch of warrior monks in Jerusalem come to be wearing Irish weave and ended up in New York. It is those Templars, you see. They can do anything.

            National Treasure(2001)

            Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, two thirds of the trinity behind The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, suggested in their book The Temple and the Lodge that the Knights Templar survived their dissolution by hiding in Scotland and centuries later, as Freemasons, plotted the independence of the United States. The seductive idea of a Templar-mason continuum was first floated in France in the 1740s, by Scottish-born Freemason Andrew Michael Ramsay, and provides the slender hook for this Indiana Jones-style adventure in which Nicolas Cage–and eventually his dotty dad Jon Voight–seek the lost Templar treasure with the aid of a map some Templars thoughtfully drew, in invisible ink, on the back of the Declaration of Independence. The clues seem inordinately complex, as if a Templar Einstein had conceived them for other Einsteins to crack. And there is no credible reason for the treasure to be in America at all–other than box-office takings. The film also goes into the business of unfinished pyramids and all-seeing eyes as found on American dollars being masonic symbols.

            Revelation(2001)

            A sacred artefact from the time of Christ, missing for centuries, suddenly turns up in the back of a camper van and becomes the focus for a struggle between good (billionaire Terence Stamp, his son James D’Arcy and alchemist Natasha Wightman) and evil, personified by a 2000-year-old demonic Grand Master (Udo Kier) who is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching Christ’s crucifixion. The artefact is a wooden box, containing the first coded reference to Christ on the cross, which has since had all kinds of arcane graffiti carved on it. The Templars protected the box and its explosive secret but Kier is desperate to get hold of it, crack the code and use it to clone Jesus. Badly acted and scripted, exhibiting a heroic disregard for continuity, this movie draws on The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’s heretical proposition about Jesus and Mary Magdalene and the idea of a secret order that links Christ, the Merovingian kings and Sir Isaac Newton, but it adds a few more bizarre scenarios and throws in some occult lore to achieve a truly magnificent incoherence.

            Brotherhood of the Wolf(2001)

            Gans’ unusual horror movie is silly but compelling. A rogue branch of the Templars–the brotherhood of the film’s title–have been sent to France by the Pope to scare Louis XV. They take a rather lateral view of their brief, deciding the best way to frighten the monarch is to let a beast, wearing Templar armour, feast on the women and children in a small town.

            Kingdom of Heaven(2005)

            Making a film about the Crusades at the time of the war in Iraq was bound to be politically sensitive. So in pursuit of an acceptable and simplistic message–that the Christian West is not always good and the Muslim East is not all bad–director Ridley Scott revises history wholesale, or rather makes it up.

            To be fair, he might have been unduly influenced by the novels of his namesake, Walter Scott. His Saladin (charismatically played by the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud), who is wise, benevolent and omnipotent, owes more to Scott’s portrayal of him in The Talisman than to the historical character. And the film’s war-crazed Templars are partly descended from the Templar baddie in Ivanhoe. Both Guy of Lusignan, the king of Jerusalem, and Rainald of Chatillon, who are presented as unmitigated villains, are also presented as Templars, which in reality they were not. The real Templar in the film, the Grand Master Gerard of Ridefort, is presented in the worst possible terms, exceeding the most hostile accounts given of him in the more biased chronicles of the time.

            Time and again the point is made that religion is a bad thing, or at least Christianity is, and so the only really good Franks in the film are absurdly anachronistic liberal humanists and agnostics like Jeremy Irons’ Tiberias (in effect Count Raymond III of Tripoli, who was also lord of Tiberias), and Orlando Bloom’s Balian. This may help explain why Bloom has all the charisma and martial presence of a petulant office supply manager complaining about missing paperclips. Fortunately the Muslims in the film are permitted their devout convictions and come across as far more real if no less sanguinary people. Apart from some generalities–there was such a place as Jerusalem and it fell to Saladin–there is nothing that bears much relation to historical fact.

GEOGRAPHIC DICTIONARY

absolute location–exact location of a place on

the earth described by global coordinates

basin–area of land drained by a given river and

its branches; area of land surrounded by lands

of higher elevations

bay–part of a large body of water that extends

into a shoreline

canyon–deep and narrow valley with steep walls

cape–point of land surrounded by a body of

water

channel–deep, narrow body of water that connects

two larger bodies of water; deep part of

a river or other waterway

cliff–steep, high wall of rock, earth, or ice

continent–one of the seven large landmasses on

the earth

cultural feature–characteristic that humans have

created in a place, such as language, religion,

and history

delta–land built up from soil carried downstream

by a river and deposited at its mouth

divide–stretch of high land that separates river

basins

downstream–direction in which a river or stream

flows from its source to its mouth

elevation–height of land above sea level

Equator–imaginary line that runs around the

earth halfway between the North and South

Poles; used as the starting point to measure

degrees of north and south latitude

glacier–large, thick body of slowly moving ice,

found in mountains and polar regions

globe–sphere-shaped model of the earth

gulf–part of a large body of water that extends

into a shoreline, larger than a bay

harbor–a sheltered place along a shoreline where

ships can anchor safely

highland–elevated land area with sloping sides

such as a hill, mountain, or plateau, smaller

than a mountain

island–land area, smaller than a continent, completely

surrounded by water

isthmus–narrow stretch of land connecting two

larger land areas

lake–a sizable inland body of water

latitude–distance north or south of the Equator,

measured in degrees

longitude–distance east or west of the Prime

Meridian, measured in degrees

lowland–land, usually level, at a low elevation

map–drawing of all or part of the earth shown

on a flat surface

meridian–one of many lines on the global grid

running from the North Pole to the South

Pole, used to measure degrees of

longitude

mesa–area of raised land with steep sides; smaller

than a plateau

mountain–land with steep sides that rises

sharply from surrounding land; larger and

more rugged than a hill

mountain peak–pointed top of a mountain

mountain range–a series of connected

mountains

mouth–(of a river) place where a stream or river

flows into a larger body of water

ocean–one of the four major bodies of salt water

that surrounds a continent

ocean current–stream of either cold or warm

water that moves in a definite direction

through an ocean

parallel–one of many lines on the global grid

that circle the earth north or south of the

Equator; used to measure degrees of latitude

peninsula–body of land almost surrounded by

water

physical feature–characteristic of a place occurring

naturally, such as a landform, body of

water, climate pattern, or resource

plain–area of level land, usually at a low

elevation

plateau–area of flat or rolling land at a high

elevation

Prime Meridian–line of the global grid running

from the North Pole to the South Pole at

Greenwich, England; used as the starting

point for measuring degrees of east and west

longitude

relative location–position of a place on the earth

in relation to other places

relief–changes in elevation, either few or many,

that occur over a given area of land

river–large stream of water that runs through the

land

sea–large body of water completely or partly

surrounded by land

seacoast–land lying next to a sea or ocean

sea level–average level of an ocean’s surface

sound–body of water between a shoreline and

one or more islands off the coast

source–(of a river) place where a river or stream

begins, often in high lands

strait–narrow stretch of water joining two larger

bodies of water

tributary–small river or stream that flows

into a large river or stream; a branch of the

river

upstream–direction opposite the flow of a river;

toward the source of a river or stream

valley–area of low land between hills or

mountains

volcano–mountain created as liquid rock or ash

are thrown up from inside the earth