Anthony Marr's CARE-7 tour blog #27
New Jersey
(Statute of Giordano Bruno in Campo-de-Fiori, Rome)
This blog is being written by Anthony Marr the man, not as the founder and president of Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE) or the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC). It is a rare blog, about a non-event. The non-event is the one scheduled for the Maple Farm Sanctuary in Mendon, near Boston, in Massachusetts. Were I there, I'd be just winding up my talk right about now. But there was a severe problem for me to make it, so I decided not even to try. The talk was supposed to start at noon today, and the drive from where I am in Middlesex, New Jersey, to Mendon would be easily 6 hours, meaning that I would have to start driving as of about 5 a.m. to get there by about 11 a.m. Or else, I would have to drive to Mendon yesterday, which would be even tougher. Under normal circumstances I'd have no problem meeting either of these challenges, but the problem is that I came down with the flu on Wednesday night, right after returning to my friend Steve's place in Middlesex, NJ, from the birthday dinner at Red Bank, NJ, in honor of my very dear friend Carol Davis. No, the flu was not contracted at the restaurant, but from Greenwich, CT, where, a couple of day prior, Natalie came down with the same symptoms, probably caught from her husband Bo who just return from Mexico on Sunday, who was not feeling well either.
Both Wednesday and Thursday night, I did not have a wink of sleep. While on Wednesday night I was very uncomfortable with a 103+F fever, and obliged in repeated visits to the bathroom, Thursday night was the worse of the two, with these symptoms continuing intact, plus a severe stomach pain tormenting me relentlessly through the night. I tossed and turned from dusk till dawn, on my back, left, right, on my stomach, sitting up, lying back down, with zero reprieve in any position. The worst was lying awake, staring up at the ceiling with my fevered imagination painting horrid scenes thereupon.
The scene, as seen through blinding pain racking my body, is also that of a ceiling, except this one is twice as high, with no light fixture, no air-conditioning vent, no slowly rotating fan, no white wash, no elaborate corner ornament, but instead, it is smoke-darkened and soot-encrusted planking, supported by thick cross-beams, in turn supported by even thicker pillars. The ceiling slopes slightly, and at its highest point where it meets the wall, there is a chimney serving as the exit for whatever smoke generated in the room. Suspended from the beams are chains and pulleys and evil looking hooks caked with a black tarry substance, some of which is my own dried and congealed blood. I turn my head and look around the walls, and see that they too are farther away, but not so far as to make indistinguishable their building material, which is blocks of rough-hewn granite, to which are attached chains and cuffs, and mounted with all manners of wrought iron tools - blunt rods, sharp spikes, pliers, pincers, scissors, blades, saws... There are no windows, but the walls and ceiling are gloomily illuminated by several candles, and somewhat localized is a flickering reddish glow originating from a mound of burning coal in an iron brazier set near my bed. And my bed is not a bed. There is no soft mattress, no futon, not even a thin layer of straw, but bare wood. And the wood is not just plain wood, but is affixed with half-inch spikes spaced an inch apart in a square grid. And it is wet, with my blood. No, it is not a bed, but a rack, to which I'm attached, on which I'm stretched - to the limit just short of having at least one of my arms torn out of its socket, and when one goes, the other will quickly follow. And where my wrists and ankles are tied, the knots are so tight that all circulation have been cut off my hands and my feet. In fact, my hands have been useless for weeks from previous rackings. They are now going for my arm sockets. Other than the excruciating pain at my shoulders and my hips, other parts of my body scream with their own agony. All the bruises, welts, burn marks, cuts, missing skin, craters where muscles had been, open wounds, festering sores... Speaking of screams, the place is hardly silent. Screams fill the gloom, day in, day out, and day and night, which I often cannot distinguish. Most of the screams are from women, just some from men. I myself screamed a lot in the beginning, but now, I have learned to bite my tongue; it will take a lot more pain to force a sound out of my throat. And speaking of pain, I haven't known a painless day, nor a restful night, not for days, weeks, months, in fact years - eight so far - years - since the year 1592, to be exact, when I was arrested in Florence - for heresy.
Now that pain has become an integral part of my lingering existence, I have taken to transforming it into compassion, the greater my pain, the greater my compassion, compassion for those who are just beginning to experience the hideous series tortures to which they are destined, with no happy ending, no peaceful exit. Just the agony, the severity of which unimaginable even to me, of the fiery grand finale to which I myself am fated. It is just a matter of time, and how many more torturous days to come.
Much of my compassion is given to women, those innocent women who are accused of being witches. I've come to know the system inside out by now. It targets spinsters and widows, especially those with estate. Their neighbors are encouraged to report them as witches - some doctrine of "Love thy neighbors" in the name of Christ. They would be arrested, hideously tortured until they confess to be witches, burnt alive at the stake, and their estates confiscated. How do you think the church has become to filthy rich? With what money do you think a dungeon like this is built, and the salaries of the entire Inquisition industry is paid? Yes, it is an entire industry unto itself, one developed through the more than two centuries of this most evil institution since it began in the 14th Century, comprising the full time inquisitors, the transcript scribes, the moral police, the professional torturers, the torture instrument designers and makers, the builders of torture chambers, the bribers of neighbors... Hundreds of thousands of women have been burnt at the stake thus far; some estimates go into the millions. One has to access the vault of the Vatican to obtain the accurate figures - the number of people tortured and burnt, the amount of monetary and real estate intake, the amount paid out. The only certainty is that the Church pays no taxes, but enriches itself further with tithe.
Men burnt at the stake are far fewer, but their fate is no less horrid, though their causes of arrest - the beginning of the end - is not monetary. They are the heretics, who somehow challenge the authority of the Church in some way. Theirs is a public display of the Church's absolute power over all forms and manners of dissent, open expression of doubt in its dogma and doctrine, question, disagreement, argument, challenge, innovative thought, quest for change. These men, myself included, are to serve as the medium through which the Church exercises its reign of terror over the masses, especially the intelligentia. My spiritual mentor, Nicholas Copernicus, author of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which propounds the Helio-Centric model of the Solar System (versus the Earth-centered model as upheld by the Church), upon which some of my own teaching is based, would not even dare to have his book published until his death in 1543 - five years prior to my birth.
("Nights with Giordano Bruno")
Ultimately, the Inquisition is based on Deuteronomy 13: "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known... Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people."
How ironic, that our Lord Jesus is the greatest rebel of all time, a rebel against the 1400 religious laws such as this and strove to replace them with the single, pure, quintessential LOVE. And now the Church established in His name, has reverted back to what he rebelled against.
A trio of dark figures appear, the tall one hovering over the rack.
"Giordano Bruno, wake up." A quiet command from the tall one, the one in the clerical garb. He has no need to be loud.
I make no sound, part of the reason being that it is difficult even to breath with my body stretched so taut. The swarthy one casually picks up a red hot poker from the coals and touches it lightly on my naked abdomen. A hissing sound, but not from my mouth. I twitch a little, but not by much due to my tight constraints.
"Are you awake or not?" asks the inquisitor.
"Yes," I whisper.
"Is there any change in your thinking?"
"No."
"This is your last chance to save your soul, Bruno. Unless you recant all your evil teachings right now, tomorrow will be the day when your soul shall descend straight into Hell."
I say nothing.
"And, by the way, save your body too. I myself cannot imagine the agony of death by fire. Recant, and we will relent."
"It will be sweet release."
"Very well, have it your way. Let me cover every point, just for the record. Are you ready?"
"As always."
The slender one sat at a desk behind the tall one, preparing to inscribe every word.
"Point #1: In the name of Christ. The Church teaches that the Earth is fixed at the center of the Universe, and has been steadfastly unmoving since the Creation. True of false?"
"False."
"So, it moves?"
"Yes."
"Point #2: In the name of Christ. The Church teaches that all the heavenly bodies revolve around the Earth, including the stars, the moon and the sun. True or false?"
"False."
"How so?"
"The moon, yes. The stars and the sun, no."
"How does the Earth move in relation to the sun and the stars?"
"The Earth revolves around the sun. Its movement has no significant bearing on the stars.
"Point #3: How big is the moon in relation to the Earth?"
"Smaller."
"By how much?"
"Maybe an order of magnitude."
"Don't use any of your jargon on me, Bruno. By how much?"
"Maybe a tenth, maybe slightly larger."
"And how big is the sun in relation to the moon?"
"Much much bigger."
"How much bigger?"
"By thousands of times."
"They look about the same to me."
"It is a matter of distance."
"What do you mean?"
"The sun is much farther from the Earth than the moon."
"Point #4: The Church teaches that the stars are pinholes in the crystalline sphere surrounding the Earth through which heavenly light shines. True or false."
"False."
"Do you believe that there is a crystalline sphere surrounding the Earth at all?"
"No."
"So, what to you are the stars?"
"The stars are distant suns."
"How distant?"
"Maybe millions of times the distance between the sun and the Earth."
"So, if there is no crystalline sphere surrounding the Earth, and no heavenly light beyond, where is Heaven?"
"Nowhere that we can see with our corporal eyes."
"And you believe that the dark sky at night is just empty, limitless space?"
"I do."
"And why is the sky blue by day."
"Due to the refraction of sunlight by Earth's atmosphere."
"And where do the stars go in the day time?"
A woman's prolonged scream through a corridor, piercing the night, followed by sobs, and moans, and indescribable sounds of sorrow and despair.
"Answer me."
"Let her go, and add her torture on to me."
"You want to die a saint? No such luck, Bruno. There will never be a St. Giordano. Your soul is damned."
The scream comes again, nor painful to my ears, and my heart, than the rack is to my body.
"Answer the question."
He nods to the swarthy one, who eagerly touches the red hot poker on my thigh, and let it linger.
"Save you pain for tomorrow, Bruno."
"The light of the stars is drowned out by the light of the sun."
"Point #5: You teach that the stars are distant suns, and that the Earth revolves around this sun. Are there, then, other Earths revolving around these other suns?"
"I believe that there are."
"If there are other Earths revolving around these distant suns, are there other creatures living on these Earths?"
"I believe that there can be."
"Are there or are there not?"
"Probably."
"And on these distant Earths, is there life?"
"Possibly."
"Intelligent life?"
"Possibly."
"Civilizations?"
"Possibly."
"These possible intelligent life forms that can form civilizations, are they in human form?"
"Possibly, but not necessarily."
"Therefore, Point #6: Could these intelligent life forms worship a universal god?"
"Possibly."
"If they do, would they believe that their god created them in its own image?"
"Possibly."
"So, are you saying that the image of God could be other than human?"
"Possibly."
"As in the image of, say, a jackal, or a bull, or a snake?"
"Possibly."
"As those of the Egyptian gods?"
"Only coincidentally."
"Do you have anything to add?"
"Truth does not change according to whether or not it is upheld by the authorities. It just is."
"Scribe, have you accurately recorded every word?"
"Yes, Your Eminence."
"Very well, Pain Dispenser, give him the penultimate treatment. Tomorrow, he will face the ultimate."
"With pleasure, Your Eminence."
He waddles to the head of the rack behind my head and is gone from view. I know what is coming, and brace myself. I hear one CLACK! as he cranks the rack lever by one notch, then another. Almost simultaneously, there come two loud POPs in quick succession, this time from my shoulders. An unbearable pain, then nothing.
My normal vision returned. The ceiling fan was still turning. The night outside the partially open venetian blinds was still pitch back. My body was still feverish. But somehow, the pain in my stomach seemed somehow insignificant, though it still kept me awake for the rest of the night.
(Giordano Bruno turned his face away from the proffered crucifix at the moment of his death)
Now that I'm well on the road to recovery, I fantasize that, if reincarnation is real, I could have been Bruno in one of my past lives. And if so, Bruno is still working within me.
In 1979, I went camping solo in East Africa, "in search of myself". Two months later, I returned to Canada with two thousand pages of hand written notes, which in the following quarter century I wrote into a 600-page book titled "OMNI-SCIENCE and the Human Destiny", published in 2003. In this book, I proposed a new philosophical system called the OMNISCIENTIFIC COSMOLOGY, where "omni" means "all-in-one", including not just the physical sciences but the biological and social sciences as well. This new system of philosophy has been assessed by over 30 scholars of 5 universities, and described variously as "original", "formidable", "revolutionary", "profound", "extraordinary", "an immensely logical construct" and "a beautiful synthesis" (see below). In 2008, I created a video based on the Omniscientific Cosmology, titled "The Meaning of Life according to Anthony Marr", with two versions - 11 minutes and 26 minutes in duration respectively, both being heretical in the extreme, especially when, in the end, they offer a new definition of God, and a new relationship between Homo Sapiens and all life on Earth, which represents a radical departure from the standard doctrine of any extant religion. Were the Inquisition still on today, I should buy myself a fire-proof suit.
(11 minute version)
The Meaning of Life according to Anthony Marr
Anthony Marr | MySpace Video
(26 minute version)
In the final analysis, our society abounds with heretics. Anti-hunting activists are heretics, who are being repressed by the hunting establishment, where asking trespassing hunters to get out of your own land subjects you to prosecution under the hunter-harassment statutes. Vegans are heretics, who are being repressed by the meat production establishment, where causing as little as $10,000's loss of revenue to a factory farm by peaceful means is punishable under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Animal rights activists are heretics, who are being repressed by the animal-exploitation establishment, where setting free a tortured or caged animal out of love, conscience and compassion could cost one his own freedom and put one behind bars among domestic abusers, child molesters, psychopaths, sociopaths, rapists and murderers.
[OMNI-SCIENCE and the Human Destiny] is available at www.Amazon.com - new price $22, used price, up to $220.
University of California, Berkeley
Biology, Prof Richard W. Holms: ... truly deserves the name OMNI-SCIENCE... great depth...
Astronomy and Physics, Prof Marc Davis: ... a forward- looking moral framework... an important contribution to society..
Anthropology, Prof Tim White: ... Anthony Marr's synthesis is formidable.
Paleontology, Prof Carole Hickman: an extraordinary intellectual undertaking a bold and eclectic piece of scholarship
Zoology, Professor Richard C. Strohman: ... original thoroughly logical might indeed fill a large gap in the way we think...
Botany, Professor Herbert G. Baker: extremely interesting... an important contribution...
Institute of Human Origins, Berkeley, Dr. William Kimbel: ... a profound contribution... implications of great depth and breadth for the future course of human actions... too important to ignore..
Stanford University
Sociology, Professor Alex Inkeles: ... impressed me not only with the quality of his presentation, but also the quality of his thinking. The range of his knowledge is broad, and for something so broad seems impressively authoritative...
Philosophy, Professor John Dupre: ... a highly intelligent, thoughtful man who has evidently acquired a thorough knowledge of the impressively broad range of topics over which his ideas range... extremely intriguing and provocative... incomparably more edifying...
Astrophysics, Prof Vahe Petrosian: fascinated... very ambitious task... a beautiful synthesis captivating... should be of interest not only to experts but to all thinking people of the world.
Anthropology, Professor John W. Rick: very thought provoking a serious, well-founded vision.
Philosophy, Professor John Bogart: ... has plainly synthesized a great deal of information in a number of distinct disciplines organized it into an interesting and coherent whole... compelling... intended to have moral import can be cast into a form of interest to moral philosophy.
Geology, Professor W.R. Evitt: ... sincerity, imagination, intellectualism and scholarship an immensely logical construct meticulously thought out, with great care majestic in scope but intrinsically simple, satisfying and optimistic important ideas with great potential for lessening the conflicts in a troubled world..
Anthony Marr, Founder and President
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC)
Anthony-Marr@HOPE-CARE.org
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.MySpace.com/AnthonyMarr
www.YouTube.com/AnthonyMarr
www.myspace.com/Anti-Hunting_Coalition
www.facebook.com/Anthony.Marr.001
www.facebook.com/Global_Anti-Hunting_Coalition
www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com (search for “Anthony Marr Heal Our Planet Earth”)
www.ARConference.orgs
