An Ethiopian Journal

Great mini-documentary on the history and significance of Lalibela

While churches sought to rise to the sky in Europe, in Africa they were being carved out of the earth. In the highlands of Ethiopia during twelfth century, a man called Lalibela rose to power, was crowned King, and went on to establish a Christian empire spanning the highlands and stretching to the sea. His ambition was to build a religious state and a spiritual center to rival Jerusalem. He claimed to have been shown – in a vision – the most holy of churches in Heaven. He ordered tools be made to carve temples out of the rock like those he had seen.

Craftsmen toiled in the stony mountains for over twenty-four years to create these unique rock churches. Some of Lalibela’s motivation to build these unusual structures stemmed from a desire to claim legitimacy. He belonged to a dynasty that had seized the throne and the churches helped him gain acceptance. His efforts paid off: today he is revered as a saint and his shrine attracts a continuous flow of pilgrims. While all religions at one time or another have constructed shrines and physical symbols to serve an ideological purpose, striking awe into to the layman and establishing the clergy’s direct connection to the power of God, Lalibela clearly lacked legitimacy and used these temples to insure his leadership.
http://cgi.turnerlearning.com/cnn/millennium/ep2/ep2_sg3.html

MARY MAGDALENE was not a prostitute but a black Ethiopian priestess who was Jesus’s lover and may have borne his children, according to a book published today.

In Mary Magdalene, Christianity’s Hidden Goddess, the author Lynn Picknett says the Church of Rome may have deliberately excised references to Mary from the Gospels because she was a threat to its patriarchal powers.

She claims that passages in other ex-canonical texts, such as the so-called Gnostic Gospels, prove that Mary Magdalene may not only have been Jesus’s sexual companion but was also intended to be his successor.

Mary is a marginal figure in the Bible and was for centuries portrayed by the Churches as a reformed prostitute. In one passage, in Luke viii, she is referred to as a woman follower of Jesus from whom seven demons had been expelled.

She also makes an appearance at the Crucifixion, intending to anoint the dead body of Jesus in preparation for his entombment. According to Mark’s Gospel, she was the first person to whom Jesus appeared after rising from the dead, although she thought at first that he was a gardener.

Ms Picknett says that Mary Magdalene was treated badly by the male followers of Jesus and marginalised in the Bible because she may have been a pagan priestess and because she and Jesus were often physically affectionate in public, kissing each other.

She suggests that Mary’s birthplace or home could have been Magdala in Ethiopia, the site of a battle involving the British Army in 1868, now called Amra Mariam.

She speculates that the many statues of “Black Madonnas” around the world are not in fact of the Virgin Mary, as is commonly believed, but depict Mary Magdalene. She argues that the child these Black Madonnas are often shown holding could have been the child of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

Ms Picknett, a writer and lecturer on heresy and the occult, also co-authored the War of the Windsors, which suggested that the spy Anthony Blunt was the illegitimate son of George V and therefore the uncle of the Queen.

Leading Roman Catholics have dismissed her new book as speculation.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are.

The Book of Enoch – The forbidden manuscripts of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church