Ring of Fire

Science and religion have rarely made the best of bedmates, but when the two worlds are merged into a single entity you find yourself in the presence of greatness. Giordano Bruno was one such man. The mixture of religious doctrine and scientific genius created one of the brightest sparks of mankind. So advanced was his thinking that the Church feared he would bring about their Armegeddon.
Yet, as much as they feared him, they made no immediate attempts to contain his brilliance. One must ask the question, why then after so many years of Giordano Bruno's scientific heresies, philosophizing, womanizing, and contempt for the robes he wore as a Dominican priest, did Pope Clement finally have him burned at the stake. What was it that prevented Clement's predecessor, Sixtus V, a pope notorious for his murdering of close to thirty thousand opponents that he had labelled as brigands from doing so much earlier. And why was it only after Bruno spent two years in Prague, as friend and sometimes confidant of the Emperor Rudolf II, (a man also despised by the Church until they removed him several years after burning Bruno by forcing him to abdicate and naming his brother as Holy Roman Emperor) that the Church finally felt it had to act?
Even then, they could only find the courage to sentence him to death only after eight years of imprisonment. And then the charges by which they convicted him had nothing to do with science but was the result of a new charge, that of denying the Trinity. What exactly did Giordano Bruno confess to that they felt it necessary to extinguish his exceptional brilliance? History is not without its sources that escape the book burnings and bannings in spite of the Church being very thorough in its eradication programs. Many of the clues as to what Giordano Bruno did during those two years in Prague that finally sealed his fate can be read in the book Shadows of Trinity released by Eloquent Books. Bruno was a complex and complicated man, who took a path which led him to his own personal salvation. What he learned about the Trinity in Prague sealed his fate. The two men he befriended while there were feared by the Church as much as he was because they had the capacity to teach Giordano something not even science could provide; the Truth. One was a Karaite Prince, the other the son of the famous seer Nostradamus. United, they were the Trinity. The book is available at the publisher's website http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html or from Amazon Books and Barnes and Noble. Two years in Prague that ultimately changed the world and only then can you appreciate and understand the man, the genius, and the reason the Church feared him most. Once you've read Shadows of Trinity, then the secret that led to his final comment to his inquistors as the flames ringed his body when he stated, “I believe you fear me more than I could ever fear this sentence?”

Celebrating Murder

As extreme as the title might appear, that is exactly what will be happening in the beautiful city of Prague in September of this year. It's not a theatrical production, or a Mardis Gras, or even a Cinco de Mayo type celebration, it is the celebration of what everyone presumes to be a myth, but in reality was a series of murders conducted over a couple of years which have now been overlayed with a legend of mythical proportions in order to protect the people involved.

This year is the 400th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Judah Loew, often referred to as the Maharal, a kabbalistic master that has been credited with the saving of the Jewish community of Prague in the sixteenth century by magically creating a Golem. For those that don't know the Kabbalah, that is the same Jewish mystical arts that Madonna is both student and adept at. A golem was an artificial human created from clay that could be brought to life through the use of magical arts. Having suffered through several persecutions, the worst being a mob led by the priest Taddeush that tore apart not only the Jewish Quarter of Josefov but several of the Jews residing there as well, Rabbi Loew and his son-in-law, along with several others decided to create the Golem. The story goes that at first he would only strike at those that tried to harm the Jewish community but then something went wrong and it started to attack innocents as well. Rabbi Loew then had to stop the creature by rubbing one of the letters (aleph) off its forehead, which caused it to die (if an artificial human can die) and then concealed its body in the synagogue attic where some say it still rests today.

Strangely, the claim today is that no one knows why this story came about nor why Rabbi Loew was attributed to have made a Golem. A story which has been fairly common for the last two centuries and is now widely distributed. There really is nothing strange about it. Why do we have any of the many legends that surround famous people from the past? Because they did do something at least similar to the myth that's being told. King Leonitis did take on a massive Persian army with only 300 Spartans. Course there were several thousand others from different Greek cities but we won't destroy a good legend by mentioning them. And Helen did have a face that launched a thousand ships, but we won't mention that it was her infidelity that practically destroyed all of Greece with ten years of bloodshed. The point that I'm making is that we have our modern day myths as the result of actual historical events and the Legend of the Golem of Prague is no different.

The actual events are historically recorded, with the killing of the priest Taddeush, as well as the Archbishop, the nephew of Pope Sixtus V, and several other prominent people. These all were attibuted to a terrifying protector of Josefov that had been conjured from the dark arts by its kabbalistic master. For those interested in reading the story behind the myth, I suggest you pick up a copy of Shadows of Trinity, which can be found at the publishers website at http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html or from places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble on their websites. Truth makes a great story and as they say is often stranger than fiction.

But back to the celebration. Here is an individual that did feel he was protecting his people from the scourge of anti-semitism. No doubt that was his motive. Noble in its intent but when the loss of innocents become involved then doesn't the solution become as bad as the cause? And what did Rabbi Loew actually achieve? Yes, for a period of 19 years, the community was protected from further threats of pogroms and riots, but not long after his death, once those hate mongerers knew he wasn't coming back from the grave, they led a massive attack against the Jews of Prague. This took place during what was a dynastic war between the Catholics and Protestants (amazing that they actually took time out from killing themselves to go kill the Jews in the city) and then to celebrate their peace accord in which both churches agreed to live harmoniously in Bohemia, they burned 86 prominent members of the Jewish community at the stake claiming that they had attempted to poison the Christian leaders of these two factions and were therefore the root cause of the actual civil uprising. The reality is that once you have a Golem, then you must always have a Golem otherwise the threat that you used to achieve your intended goal is no longer there and you've actually encourage the exact opposite to occur because of retribution. The massacre of 1611 was retribution!

And was Rabbi Loew this saint of a man that was given the accolades of being Chief Rabbi of Prague? No, there's where myth has definitely taken over from reality. Judah Loew was actually turned down twice by his own community for the position of Chief Rabbi. The first time in 1587 when Rabbi Melling was elected to the position and the second time in 1604 when they elected Rabbi Ephraim. Simply, the leaders of the community and the other Rabbis didn't want him as their spiritual leader. Not only didn't they want him, in many cases they feared him. On February 23rd, 1592 Rabbi Loew was summoned to the palace to meet with the Emperor Rudolf II. I guarantee it wasn't to talk about Kabbalah as the supporters of the rabbi claim. Within a few weeks Rabbi Loew had packed his bags, packed his family and was gone to Posen, not to return to Prague until shortly before his death in 1609. Does that sound like the act of a man that was given the keys to the city as they would want you to believe? Only after several hundred years have passed, has all this been forgotten and the same man is now being celebrated as the saviour of Prague.

So for all those intending to attend the celebrations in the Czech Republic this year, think about what I've had to say. And if you are there, take the time and search for the grave of one Yakov Kahana, the real hero behind the Golem story as you discover in Shadows of Trinity. He's buried there somewhere and that's the real mystery!

Incredible Journey:
Since the first book of the Kahana series has been published (Blood Royale) the question has been frequently asked, where do these ideas come from. The answer to that question is dealt with numerous times in conversations with John Pearce that narrate most of the stories. The tales themselves were passed down, inherited, encoded and for lack of a better word, 'infused.'
For those that have seen the family tree unrolled, it is an impressive sight. Two meters in height and almost five meters fully laid flat in length, it contains close to 50,000 names. With that many names, there's going to be alot of history to write about.
But the problem with history as we're taught it today is that it's viewed under a glass dome as if it's complete, finished; nothing more to learn about it. Sadly, that is far from the truth and most teachers can't comprehend that history is a living, breathing entity that we've only scratched the surface of. For every story of a Tacitus, Herodotus from ancient times or a Gibbons to give it a more modern spin, there are squirrled away somewhere a hundred or so other documents on the same subject, providing a vantage point from a completely different perspective. You have to remember, anything of a differing opinion was publicly burnt well into the eighteenth century. Thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and letters with differing opinions. But no matter how hard you try to eradicate those other truths, as the Nag Hamadi findings, the Dead Sea Scolls, the hidden manuscripts of Nostradamus, etc., have shown us, somewhere, someplace, are the original manuscripts just waiting to be discovered.
In that sense we are all on this voyage of discovery. How far that voyage will take us is yet to be determined. And the consequences of those future discoveries will be both amazing and world-defining.
As a young boy, my third great grandfather found a set of books that had been hidden away by his own father and a few generations that preceded him. They were a collection of books considered heretical, and a letter of introduction to the Hapsburg Royal family that was passed down from Emperor Rudolf II of the sixteenth century. A letter which he used to gain entry to the academic world by attending the University of Leipzig and then later to become of service to the Emperor Franz Josef, the decendant of that same Hapsburg family. As for the heretical books he had discovered, they were also from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Passed down by his ancestor of the time to remind him that in spite of living in a Jewish world under the influence of the Rabbis, he in turn was a Karaite and that he must never forget that. The revelation turned him into an outlaw, with an arrest warrant issued by his own hometown should he ever return. He made a decision of conscience, a decision of truth, and as he went forward in his life, becoming a professor at the University of Vienna, I doubt very much he regretted his decision.
Now oddly, I still come across the same prejudices of erroneous Rabbinical teaching that Karaites aren't Jews, Karaites don't exist, or that Karaites were the cause of all the social ills and problems that affected mainstream Jewish society. It's my turn to pick up the guantlet where my third great grandfather left off. To expose the histories that have been buried, to rewrite what currently exists in order to nullify the misconceptions. SHADOWS OF TRINITY is the first to have a major public release to do so. And as they celebrate the events of the 400th anniversary of the Maharal's death in Prague this year, let them answer the questions raised in the book regarding this highly esteemed individual. "If you create a monster to kill, does that not make you a monster in turn?" Once you've read the book, you'll have to answer that question for yourself.