Arizona L.O.W.F.I

Archive for the ‘mysticism’ Category

     If you suffer with Paraskevidekatriaphobia I bet you stayed in bed today because it’s Friday the 13th. People who suffer from this phobia have an innate fear of Friday the 13th. in fact Dr Donald Dossey a psychotherapist who specializs in treatment of phobias figures that as many as 21 million people in America suffer from this phobia. So how did all this fear and superstition get started? Let’s take a look and see shall we?

     One explanation comes to us from the early 1300’s when the king of France, Philip, had sent his country into economic chaos. He had angered pope Boniface VIII to the point that the whole contry was near to being excommunicated. That had the people on the verge of revolution. Philip the put the pontiff under house arrest but, was saved by the local people. A month later Boniface was dead. The new pope, Clement the V was a little more cooperative with Philip.

     As a means to get some money into his coffers Philip took out a loan from the Knights Templar. When it came time to pay back the loan Philip cooked up an evil plan to get out of it. On September 14th 1307 he sent sealed orders to every deputy, bailiff and officer in the country that were not to be opened untill Thursday night October the 12th. On the morning of Friday October the 13th the arrest of thousands of Knights Templar was underway. only 20 escaped and fled the country. In the weeks and months to follow many were killed in horrifying ways or, recanted and joined other orders.

     Some say that all this about Friday the 13th sttarted with the last supper when Jesus and his 12 desciples made it 13 at the table. the superstition behind this is the first one to leave the table will die within a year or less.

      Even ancient mariners believed that it was bad luck to set sail on a voyage on Ffriday the 13th. Lloyds of London in the 1800’s wouldn’t even insure any ship that set sail on Friday th 13th. One ancient myth orgin put forth by author Charles Panati, “The actual orgin of the superstition, though appear also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. when Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mmountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil…a gathering of thirteen…and plotted ill turn of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as the “Whitches Sabbath.”

     According to thomas Fernsler, associate policy scientist in the Mathematics and Science Education Resorce Center University of Delaware. “The number 13 suffers because of its postition after 12. Numerologist consider 12 a “compleat” number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by 1, 13’s association with bad luck, has to do with just being a little beyond completeness. The number becomes restless or squirmy.”

     So I guess it’s impossible to pinpoint the true beginnings of the tradition of Friday the 13th being a bad luck day. Either way you look at it it’s still just a superstition that’s been around since ancient times. Since this is the only Friday the 13th this year some people will fear it, others will ignore it, and some just might throw a party. I’m just hoping that having typed the number 13, 13 times it won’t be unlucky for me. Anyway good luck to you all today.  

　

　

 

The speakers are,

Christopher Moon: Lecturing on his ghost hunting techniques. Followed by a Ghost hunt.

Scotty Roberts: His lecture Nephilim: The Genesis of Extraterrestrial Origins.

Michael Polani: Lecturing on Crop Circle research.

Christopher Mancuso: His lecture The History of Spirit Communication.

Brian Cano: Paranormal investigator.

Paul Bradford: A member of the TAPS Ghost Hunters International team.

Debe Branning: Her lecture Dowsing For Spirits.

Heathyer Hoffman: Her lecture Is It All In Your Head.

Larry Flaxman: His lecture Science and the Paranormal: When Worlds Collide

More information can be found at http://www.azparacon.com/

 

 

Here’s a cool tale I became aware of just a few years ago.

When Missionaries first arrived in this area from New Spain (Mexico) they set about to convert the locals in the usual ways, sometimes quite heavy-handedly. The reaction to this was succinctly put by the Elders of southern Arizona tribes.

 ”The Lady in Blue has already told us about this Jesus, and she is why we have sought you out to know him better, and be baptized, as she instructed.
It does not seem to us that their ways are yours. You beat us to believe,

when we already do. Lighten up.”.

They did, and continued East, only after establishing missions along their route.
Kino and company were clueless about “La Dama De Azul” until they reached the New Mexico/Texas region,
where virtually every tribe they met told of the Blue Lady and her appearances to them, preaching and healing, always disappearing into the air when done with the task at hand, but returning frequently.
Farther to the East, around 1639, fifty members of the Jumano Indian tribe came to Mission Corpus Christi de la Isleta south of El Paso and asked for instructions in the Catholic faith.

When the astonished padres asked the Indians what motivated them to come to Isleta, they said their people living in East Texas had been visited by a beautiful lady who always wore a blue habit and taught them religion in their own language. The lady in blue, they said, urged them to search out missionaries to hear the word of God and be baptized.

At the time, Isleta and another mission, Nuestra Senora de Socorro, were originally in Mexico, but a change in the course of the Rio Grande River placed them on Texas soil.

Through his work, Father Alfonso de Benavides learned that Mother Maria de Jesus de Agreda, a cloistered abbess who lived in Spain, was the lady in blue.

 

A Catholic nun of Jewish descent, Sor María de Jesus of Agreda  authored Mystical City of God, an 8-book narrative of her direct revelations from Mary, mother of Jesus. Commanded to burn her writings because “surely God would not chose a woman for such an important work,” María, a controversial 48-year old cloistered abbess, was seized in 1650 from her sick bed and carried to the feet of a Spanish Inquisitor. Although ultimately acquitted, the interrogation covered her mystical experiences and missionary work in the American Southwest, events corroborated by witnesses in Spain and as far as Texas,  New Mexico and Arizona, where she is honored yet today as the legendary missionary known as the Lady in Blue.

Often consulted by King Phillip IV, Mother Maria said she visited the new world in a manner known as bi-location, a phenomena that allows one individual to appear personally in two places at the same time.

 

Maria de Agreda had always wished to come to the New World as a missionary, but her vows in Spain prevented her. While praying for the welfare of the Indians, she often fell into a trance and was taken by God, without her awareness, to a different place where Indians lived. She said she saw the Indians, heard them speak and felt the difference in the climate of the land. All told there were more than five hundred visits by her to the Native Americans of over thirty tribes.

After a life of service, both mundane and sublime, she passed away in Agreda, Spain, never having corporally visited the New World.

 The last reported appearance of the lady in blue was in the 1840s when a mysterious young woman wearing a long blue dress came into the homes of families stricken by a “black tongue”  epidemic at old Sabinetown on the Sabine River.

She remained in the community for days, brewing a tea from forest herbs, tending to the ill, weeping over the dead, and never sleeping. When the epidemic ran its course, she disappeared as mysteriously as she appeared.

Although it is uncommon, bilocation is an ancient phenomenon. It is claimed to have been experienced, and even practiced by will, by mystics, ecstatics, saints, monks, holy persons, and magical adepts. Several Christian saints and monks were adapt at bilocation such as St. Anthony of Padua, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Severus of Ravenna, and Padre Pio of Italy. In 1774, St. Alphonsus Maria de’Ligouri was seen at the bedside of the dying Pope Clement XIV, when in fact the saint was confined to his cell in a location that was a four-day journey away.

A pioneer psychical researcher, Frederic W. H. Myers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in England, along with others collected and studied reports of bilocation, however the phenomenon has received little interest in modern times.