How the Creator God looks: Book of Enoch

(TheBlackParchment) The Book of Enoch finally exposed the Creator God -- and what this God actually looks like

God: An Anatomy

An astonishing and revelatory history that represents God as he was originally envisioned by ancient worshippers—with a distinctly male body, and with superhuman powers, earthly passions, and a penchant for the fantastic and monstrous.

"[A] rollicking journey through every aspect of Yahweh’s body [the Demiurge, Gnostic Yaldabaoth], from top to bottom (yes, that too) and from inside out... Ms. Stavrakopoulou has almost too much fun.” — The Economist

• Dr. Fran: Bible, atheism, and God's wife Asherah
• Meet the real God of the Christian-Jewish Bible
• Does Buddhism have a "creator god"? Yes: Maha Brahma (but he, like all the other divinities and deities, brahmas and devas are not really "Gods" in the ultimate sense, just in a temporary Western Greco-Roman sense, long-lived but temporary light beings who imagine themselves eternal, all powerful, or all knowing when they are no such thing)

(Basically Primitive) Why did ancient humans start believing in God(s)?

Don't laugh at me! I'm your Lord and Master!!

I'm no ET. I'm Baal. Worship me!

The scholarship of theology and religion teaches us that the God of the Bible was without a body, only revealing himself in the Old Testament in words mysteriously uttered through his prophets, and in the New Testament in the body of Christ.

• The Ethiopian Bible: Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon

The portrayal of God as corporeal and masculine is seen as merely metaphorical, figurative, or poetic. But, in this revelatory study, Francesca Stavrakopoulou presents a vividly corporeal image of God: a human-shaped deity who walks and talks [in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve] and weeps and laughs, who eats, sleeps, feels, and breathes, and who is undeniably male.

Could there be a God, a real God?

(BTC) Atheist explains most convincing argument for God | Alex O'Connor

The Jewish God El

Here is a portrait—arrived at through the author's close examination of and research into the Bible—of a god in ancient myths and rituals who was a product of a particular society, at a particular time, made in the image of the people who lived then, shaped by their own circumstances and experience of the world.

From head to toe—and every part of the body in between [including the penis]—this is a god of stunning surprise and complexity, one we have never encountered before. More: God: An Anatomy (by Francesca Stavrakopoulou)

• The Anatomy of the Body of God (Frater Achad)

Aron Kiss climbs Buddhist Himalayas

(Aron Kiss) Discovering a hidden hermitage of Buddhist monks at a peaceful meditation center in the Himalayas of Tibet (which the Chinese authorities insist is part of China).

The BLACK Kings Russia Forgot

• The Abkhazians of Abkhazia (Blacks near the Black Sea)
• Dark Ages? That is when dark Black rulers successfully ruled Europe for centuries: When the Moors Ruled in Europe by Bettany Hughes and Timothy Copestake

USA was more racist than Nazi Germany to Owens

DVD DESCRIPTION: This critically acclaimed documentary explores the 700-year history of [Black] Islamic rule on the Iberian Peninsula [Spain and Portugal]. Although generations of Spanish historians have portrayed the Moors as brutish occupiers, recent research paints a much different picture. The Islamic invaders actually brought stunning advances in science and art to their territories. Oxford-educated historian Bettany Hughes gives modern viewers a rich, nuanced understanding of Islamic history and culture while visiting such sites as the Alhambra Palace and the Great Mosque at Cordoba.

REVIEW: "The drama seems infused, suddenly, with important complexity, with great questions of war, peace, civilian casualties" -- The Wall Street Journal

"highly informative and entertaining" -- Memorable TV

Is there a connection between India and Volga?

Buddhism: Trump as Anger-Eating Demon?

• Skip ahead to The Story of the Anger-Eating Demon

Anger Eating Demons | Ajahn Brahm

I can take it and grow as well as I can dish it out.

(Buddhist Society of Western Australia) Ajahn Brahm talks about the fault-finding mind that only looks at what is wrong with things. The British Theravada monk in the Thai Forest Tradition explains how life doesn’t go wrong. It just goes different or counter to our expectations. People are not "wrong" but different. He recounts two classic ancient Buddhist stories, that of the Anger-Eating Demon and "The Two Arrows."

Support the BSWA in making Buddhist teachings available for free online via Patreon: buddhistsocietywa. Copyright Buddhist Society of Western Australia (bswa.org). Originally delivered July 10, 2011.

The Sex-Crazed Royals of England (video)

Reel Truth History Docs, April 20, 2019; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Who are the real King and Queen? (British Monarchy)

British royalty is no stranger to scandal, but one unsolved mystery could prove to be the greatest secret royal scandal of all. Legend has it that King George III had a secret wife -- a commoner, a Quaker, Miss Hannah Lightfoot -- and three children before his official marriage. If it's true, has every monarch since then been a pretender to the throne? Let's let DNA decide.
 
History Documentary | Reel Truth History: Welcome to Reel Truth History, home of gripping and powerful documentaries. Watch full-length documentaries and series that explore some of the most comprehensive pieces of world history. Be the first to watch more full length documentaries by subscribing to  youtube.com/channel/UCb7x...

Buddhist Afghanistan: Throne of Rostam

AtlasObscura.com; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Stupa at center of relief showing ancient Indian Buddhists (monastics on left, lay couple at right, statues behind) circumambulating or clockwise "walking around" at a chaitya temple.

Buddhist stupa Takht-e Rostam

Highly unusual subterranean stupa and adjacent cave monastery

Afghan Greco-Buddhist Bactrian art, Gandhara

AYBAK, Afghanistan - There are places in the world so strongly devoted to a particular religion that it is incredibly hard to believe that they have been shaped by any other faith.

Afghanistan is one of those places, a country so devoutly Islamic now that it seems that Islam has been around since the beginning of time.

 

However, before the advent of Islam, Afghanistan was an important center of Buddhist teaching.

[It is where the Buddha was born and raised and where he returned to help his family and people, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal, teaching them the path to liberation as he was teaching east in Magadha, Bihar, and northern India].

 

Site of the super "Bamiyan Buddhas"

To find remnants of this [magnificent] Buddhist past, one has to search extremely thoroughly. The once rich excavation sites have turned to rubble after decades of war and neglect.

The museum collections have been looted or irreparably damaged. And the Bamiyan Buddhas -- once the country’s strongest reminder of its [rich] Buddhist past -- were destroyed by the [CIA and Pakistan ISI-created] Taliban in 2001.

 

Is it carved out of rock or covered in accretion?

Since the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Stupa of Takht-e Rostam in Samangan Province is arguably Afghanistan’s most impressive pre-Islamic site.

Unlike other stupas [kurgans, Scythian burial mounds, relic domes, dagobas, chaityas, pagodas], Takht-e Rostam Stupa has not been mounted above ground. It has been carved into the ground, in a style that resembles the monolithic churches of Ethiopia [or Jordan's Petra or Buddhism's magnificent Ajanta Caves].

• Amazing stupas of Burma, Thailand, Laos (architectureofbuddhism.com)
• [Some stupa architecture: a rectangular box symbolizing the four quarters and the Four Great Regents of the Sky under Sakka, King of the Devas, surrounded by a stone balustrade (harmika). At the center of the apse (arch, vault) is a rock-cut relic dome, a three tiered torana above, and an anda (hemispherical egg or bell-shaped) mound. On top of the dagoba is a nine-tiered harmika, symbolic of the nine saṃsāric heavens in Mahayana Buddhist/Vedic cosmology.]

Inside cave-like Buddhist monastery at Samangam, Takht-e Rostam stupa, meditation cells

Rare hollow, cave-like stupa in Thailand based on ancient Afghan style (Wat Umong).

Perhaps Persian throne rooms were built in the style of earlier Buddhist architecture which, being carved directly in stone, may have been the work of deva architects (pin).

Still standing after 700 years, Thailand's Wat Umong shows its age, despite numerous touch-ups. But still the crumbling, weather-worn central stupa towers into the sky (CB).

  
At the top of the stupa is a stone-carved harmika building, which once held relics of the Buddha. The trench surrounding the stupa is around 24 feet (8 meters) deep. A path leads down to the bottom of the trench, where Buddhist monastics once circumambulated the stupa clockwise.

Peaceful meditation room for striving

Carved inside the outer walls of the trench is a Buddhist monastic complex with five individual caves and several monastic cells for meditation. Small holes in the roofs allow a little daylight to enter the caves, creating a peaceful atmosphere of twilight. The cave monastery is lacking any decorative elements but is impressive as a sheer engineering feat.
 
Historians have proposed two possible reasons why the stupa has been carved in the ground instead of being built above ground. One explanation is that it could have been done for the purpose of camouflage to protect the monastery from invaders. Another much more mundane explanation states that it has simply been done to escape the excessive hot/cold climate extremes of Afghanistan.
 

How could Buddhists have built this in stone?

The Afghan name Takht-e Rostam ("Throne of Rostam") refers to a legendary figure in Persian [Aryan, Indo-Iranian] culture. After the Islamization of Afghanistan, when the knowledge of the original Buddhist purpose of the stupa became lost, the site became known as the place where Rostam supposedly married his bride Tahmina.
 
The ruins are located up the hill 3 kilometers southwest above the town of Samangan. More

• Top Places in Afghanistan
• Bamyan, Afghanistan
• Site of Alexandria on the Caucasus
• Kandahar, Afghanistan
• Chilzina and the Forty Steps of Kandahar
• Bagram, Afghanistan
• More things to do in Afghanistan