Apple #666: The Mark of the Beast

I could not let Apple #666 go by without talking about the number itself: 666.



(Image from The Daily Cannibal)


I was going to change my template so it was all in red & black with fangs and snarling noises and the like.  But nothing was legible.  I mean, you couldn't read anything.  I had to squint to make out the words.  Very unpleasant.  So, since I was monkeying around with changing templates, I just, picked something I did like.  What do you think?  Keep it or go back to the outdoor picture thing?

Anyway, back to the mark of the beast.  (I'm not half so threatening now, am I?  Rar.)

• The whole mark of the beast/666 thing comes from the Bible.  Revelation, chapter 13.  (Hah, now there's another numerical coincidence.)

• John, who is narrating all the things he saw in his vision, says he saw an awful beast.  It's got 10 horns and 7 heads and each head is marked with blasphemous names. It's like a leopard, but it's got paws as big as a bear's and a mouth of fangs like a lion.  This beast is, according to most readings, Satan.

• The 7-headed beast is given charge of the world, and people are going around awestruck, doing whatever the beast says.  The beast does nothing but say blasphemous things against God, wage wars, conquer people, and generally cause all kinds of havoc and destruction.

• The beast does have a wound in one head, which the footnotes say means that each head represents a Roman emperor, and the wounded one represents Nero.  More on him in a bit.

One rendering of the 7-headed leopard beast, along with some explication.
(Image from 4thewordofgod.com)

• So then John says he saw a second beast emerge from the ground.  This one had only 2 horns like a ram's.  It was in league with the first, 7-headed beast, and it got all the people of the world to worship the first beast, whose wounded head had been healed.

• The second beast was given its power by the first beast, and it used all those powers to lead people astray, and forced people to worship 7-headed beast #1, and to kill anyone who wouldn't worship beast #1.

• Now, here we come to the part about the number:

 (16) [The 2nd beast] forced all men, small and great, rich and poor, slave and freee, to accept a stamped image on their right hand or their forehead. (17) Moreover, it did not allow a man to buy or sell anything unless he was first marked with the name of the beast or with the number that stood for its name. (18) A certain wisdom is needed here; with a little ingenuity anyone can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a certain man.  The man's number is six hundred sixty-six.

• So, 666 is the number of the beast who is going to force all people to worship his more evil and terrible master, Satan.

• In verse 18, John all but comes right out and says, "Come on, people, it's obvious who this is.  I'll tell you, but in code."  

• How to beak the code?  It was the custom of the day to assign numbers to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  If we were to do the same thing to our alphabet, it would go like this: A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on.  

• In the Hebrew alphabet, once they got to 10, they counted by tens, and once they got to 100, they counted by 100s.  So it goes like this:

alef = 1; bet = 2; gimel = 3; dalet = 4; hey = 5;
waw = 6; zayin = 7; chet = 8; tet = 9; yod = 10;
kaf = 20; lamed = 30; mem = 40; nun = 50;
samek = 60; ayin = 70; pey = 80; tsadeh = 90;
qof = 100; resh = 200; shin = 300; taw = 400

Pictorial form of the same thing.
(Image from Dial-the-Truth Ministries)

• How you go from letters to numbers seems pretty clear.  But how you go backwards, from numbers to letters is less clear.  So you get lots and lots of theories.

• Over the centuries, people have argued, depending on their religion or their politics, that the beast is the person who personifies some focus of their particular hatred.  Catholics have said the number works out to be Martin Luther.  Protestants have said it equates to the Pope, or the Pontiff.  Democrats have argued that it is George W. Bush.  Republicans have said it was John F. Kennedy, or Bill Clinton, or Hillary Clinton.  You see how it goes.

• But most Biblical scholars think that 666 is code for the Emperor Nero.  In Hebrew, those two words translate to Nun-resh-waw-nun Qof-samek-resh. In numbers that is 50+200+6+50 (306) and 100+60+200 (360).  Add the two together and you get 666.

Nero. The original 666 guy.
(Image from Biography)

• Revelations was written during the reign of Emperor Domitian.  So why would it be a big deal to say that Nero, who had been dead 13 years, was the handmaid of the devil?

• Because Domitian had revived various persecutions of Christians and Jews (the Romans regarded Christians and some wacko Jewish cult) which had not been in force in the days of Nero.  So it is possible that, in pointing the devil-finger at Nero, John was thereby also pointing the devil-finger at Domitian.  Naturally, he wouldn't want to come right out and say it so directly or he might get all sorts of people executed for his trouble.

• I really want to interject some little facts I learned about both those emperors.  They're just too good to let them lie quiet.

• OK, so Nero was actually kind of normal and helpful at first.  It was his mother who was whacked.  She married her uncle, the then-emperor Claudius.  She talked him into naming her son by a previous marriage as his successor.  This was Nero.  Then she poisoned Claudius and Nero became emperor.  He was 17.

• Nero fell in love with a slave, his mother didn't like her, they had a falling out, and he spurned his mother. She got pissed, then started telling everyone Claudius's son should have been emperor, not Nero.  Then, mysteriously, Claudius's son turns up dead. Hmm. Wonder how that happened.

• Nero's mom still went around saying that Nero shouldn't be emperor, so he kicked her out.  Then he decided he was sick of being with the slave whom he had married, he wanted to marry someone else instead, but Nero's mom went around saying he couldn't do that because divorce was bad, so Nero had her killed.

• That's right, Nero had his mother murdered.

• After that, he went right off the wagon.  He got drunk all the time, went around performing his own poetry and music, he had wives he was sick of executed and married new ones, he turned tyrannical against all sorts of people, etc etc.

Nero. With the thumbs down, saying someone ought to be killed for sport.
(Image from Listverse)

• Then came that business of Rome burning that you've heard so much about.  Nero did not stand around fiddling, but the fire did go on for 10 days.  75 percent of the city burned down.

• Rumor had it that Nero started the fire to make way for the new villa he planned to build.  He couldn't have people saying he burned down the city, so he needed a scapegoat.  Who started the fire?  The Christians, of course!  Those people in that weird new cult, they're the ones responsible for 3/4 of Romans being burned out of their houses.  Thus began the emperor-sanctioned persecution of Christians.  He had them eaten by dogs, nailed to crosses, set on fire, or burned to serve as a light source after sunset.

• Nero did all sorts of other nefarious things, such as selling political offices to raise money for his new villa, etc., etc.  That's when the Senators began conspiring against him.  Nero found out they were planning on having him beaten to death.  Rather than face that, he decided to kill himself.  He tried to stab himself in the neck but he couldn't finish the job, so he told his secretary to do it, which he did.

• This is why people think the wounded head on the 7-headed monster is Nero. The wound was Nero's somewhat self-inflicted stab wound to his neck.

• Domitian, several years & emperors later, came to power, but he was young and inexperienced, and people weren't really accepting of him as emperor.  So he started invoking the whole I'm an emperor and therefore I'm a god thing.  He made people introduce him as the god Domitian, and they had to say certain things in a certain way to indicate that they thought he was a god, etc. etc.

• The Christians and the Jews, they didn't want to do that.  So Domitian saw them as undermining his efforts to establish his imperial authority.  So he ordered some of them to be put to death, and then after that, people started persecuting the Christians and the Jews in the way they had while Nero was running around getting drunk and shouting at people and setting them on fire and so on.  The John who wrote the book of Revelation lived during the time of Domitian.

Domitian. Later in his rule, "in fits of paranoia, instructed several murderous 'terrors'" which seem to have originated in a deep sense of personal inadequacy in the eyes of his brother & father. Aw, gee.
(Image from Roman Scotland)

• So, historically, that's what the mark of the beast is most likely about.  Indicating the emperors who were running around killing people left and right.

• But, since those verses don't come right out and say those emperors' names, and since there's that verse about people not being allowed to buy or sell anything without being marked with the name of the beast, people have read all kinds of things into the number 666.

• They have claimed that 666 stands for this person and that person, or such and such an economic thing, and so on.  Here is some of the 666-insanity:

• Barcodes are the mark of the beast

How exactly these lines represent 6s is not clearly explained, but swiping these barcodes means someone is taking money from your bank account, and soon there will be a single bank in control of everyone's money, and then the end days will be upon us.
(Image and extremely vague but exclamation-point-ridden theory from this site)

• The Beatles bear the mark of the beast

See how Paul is making the OK sign?  That doesn't mean OK.  That's the number 6 three times!  It's 666!  The Beatles are agents of the devil!
(Image and theory from this site)



See? This does not mean sex, but DEVIL!
(Image and theory from 666 hand sign)



From this moment, Michael Jackson's doom was sealed.
(Image and theory from 666 hand sign)

• The numbers on a roulette wheel add up to 666.  Therefore roulette, or maybe it's casinos, or maybe it's gambling that is the mark of the beast. 

• The Hebrew letter Vav, or Waw, which might as well be W in English, correlates with the number 6.  So web precursor www = 666, so therefore the entire internet bears the mark of the beast.

• The Washington Monument measures 55.5 ft on each side.  If you convert that to inches, each side measures 666.  Therefore the Washington Monument is an occult symbol, and a mark of the beast. (In fact, the Monument measures 555 ft. 5-1/8 in. tall.  That is 6,665-1/8 inches.  The base is 55 ft. 1-1/2 in. wide. That is 661-1/2 inches.  Not 666.)

• The Louvre has 666 panes of glass, or if you converted the doors to glass, it would have 666 panes of glass, therefore it is a mark of the beast. (Actually, the Louvre has 673 panes of glass, excluding the doors.)

 
VISA's name is the mark of the beast.
(Image from DeusILUSÃO)



Walt Disney's signature bears the mark of the beast.
(Image and a whole other theory I could not even begin to describe from Tricked by the Light)

• It just goes on and on and on. . . .

• There are some rather interesting coincidences about the number 666, numerically.

• The first six Roman numerals add up to 666: I+V+X+L+C+D=666

• The smallest prime factor of 666 is 37. If you translate the letters IVXLCD in the English alphabet to numbers (like what we did with the Hebrew alphabet) and add them, the largest prime factor of that total is also 37.

• Take the first 7 prime numbers, square them, and add them up: 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17² = 666

• And many more besides.  But, you know, look at any number long enough, and I'm sure you'll find all sorts of interesting coincidences about it.

• In response to such extensive 666-fixation, some people have come up with a joke list of 666s, which includes the following:

• 666 = number of the beast
• 668 = neighbor of the beast
• 660 = approximate number of the beast
• 665 = older brother of the beast
• 0.666 = number of the millibeast
• 1010011010 = binary number of the beast
• 00666 = zip code of the beast
• $665.95 = retail price of the beast
• $656.66 = Walmart price of the beast
• $646.66 = next week's Walmart price of the beast
• $333.00 = after-Christmas sale price of the beast
• Phillips 666 = gasoline of the beast
• Route 666 = way of the beast [actually there is a Highway 666. People keep stealing the road signs.]
• 666k = retirement plan of the beast
• 999 = Australian number of the beast
• Chanel No. 666 = perfume of the beast
• IAM 666 = license plate of the beast

• and so on. 

• Meanwhile, maybe the number of the beast isn't really 666.  Maybe it's actually 616.

• No, really.  Some people think that the text originally said 616, not 666.  A few translations even say six hundred sixteen, not six hundred sixty-six.

• In which case, all those people with their special, significant 666s need to do some quick recalculating.  And in which case, the area code for West Michigan is the area code of the beast. 

West Michigan. Den of the beast?
(Image from eachTown)

Sources

Catholic Resources, 666: The Number of the Beast

Biography, Nero synopsis 

About.com, Nero

Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and their Families, Imperial Index

Donald McFayden, The Occasion of the Domitianic Persecution, American Journal of Theology, Jan 1920

Eyewitness to History, Nero Persecutes the Christians, 64 A.D.

I don't even want to give this site any credence, 666

Rapture Ready, The Number of the Beast

666truth

Enchanted Learning, Washington Monument

The Louvre, The Da Vinci Code: Between Fiction and Fact

Prime Curios, 666

Math World, Beast Number

Apple # 625: How a New Pope is Chosen

For the second time in the life of the Daily Apple, a new Pope of the Catholic church must be chosen.

I didn't do an entry on the topic the first time this came up because a lot of people have really strong, often negative, emotions about the Catholic hierarchy, and the Daily Apple is supposed to be a place to go to get away from stressful topics.  But since the subject has come up twice, and since information is one of the best tools against pretty much all bad things, I've decided to delve into this after all.



Pope Benedict XVI announced his retirement and opened a whole new can of fish.
(Photo from Pacific Standard)

Who Decides

• The only people who have anything to say about who will become Pope are the Cardinals who are members of the College of Cardinals.  Your average everyday Catholic person has no say in the decision whatsoever.

Some of the College of Cardinals: the guys who decide who will be the next Pope.
(Photo from CathNewsUSA)

• Only cardinals under the age of 80 may vote, and only up to 120 cardinals may vote.  Some sources say there are currently 118 voting-eligible cardinals, others say 117.

• (One of the Pope's jobs is to keep an eye on the number of cardinals under 80 and appoint more in case the voting-eligible number might drop too low around the time of his death. A bit morbid, isn't it?)

• Thus, who these cardinals are turns out to be a very big deal.  In 2012, Pope Benedict inducted six new cardinals who were from North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This was somewhat radical, considering that the overwhelming majority of cardinals are European, and in particular, Italian.

• According to the BBC:

Sixty-seven of the current cardinal-electors were appointed by Benedict XVI, and 50 by his predecessor John Paul II. About half (61) are European, and 21 are Italian. There will also be 19 Latin Americans, 14 North Americans, 11 Africans, 11 Asians and one cardinal from Oceania among the voters.

Gathering to Vote

• The cardinals have to gather in Rome within 15-20 days of the announcement of the Pope's death.  This time period allows everybody travel time, and it allows for the official 9 days of mourning and all the details of the funeral.

• Although the 15-20 day period is kind of an open, gathering time, the cardinals are allowed to discuss among themselves who they might like to be the next Pope. This is reportedly a time when a lot of politicking goes on.

• Since the current Pope is retiring and a mourning period and funeral are not necessary, the 15-20 day period may be reduced.  They'd kind of like to have a new Pope in place before the extensive ceremonies beginning the week before Easter.

John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan, recently elevated to Nigerian Archbishop of Abuja, greeting his fellow cardinals.
(Photo from Sierra Express Media)

The Conclave

• Once all 120-ish cardinals have gathered and the 15-20 days have elapsed, they literally lock themselves into a room.  The word for this part is "conclave," which means locked room. 

• Absolute secrecy is absolutely required, and the cardinals take an oath to maintain it. There is to be no contact whatsoever with the outside world: no cell phones, no mobile devices,  no radio or television or newspapers, no letters or messages of any kind to anyone outside the room.  Regular sweeps are conducted to ensure the room has not been bugged.  Seriously.

• If a cardinal breaks the rules of secrecy, he is automatically excommunicated from the church. Not just de-cardinaled, kicked out of the Catholic church entirely. 

• This is because each cardinal's vote is to be guided by the Holy Spirit and no one and nothing else. 

• The room where they lock themselves in happens to be the Sistine Chapel. 

The voting cardinals used to sleep here, too, on folding cots. Now they are allowed to sleep in hotel rooms in the Vatican City. Click here for a 360-degree view of the Sistine Chapel. You'll see it's not very big.
(Photo from Our Parish Too)

The Voting Process

• The dean of the college of cardinals opens the proceedings, reminds everybody of the rules, and so on.  In this case, the current dean is 85 and therefore not eligible. So his second-in-command, a cardinal named Giovanni Battista Re, will do the honors.

• But the guy who really oversees the works is the Pope's chamberlain, or Camerlengo. He's the guy in charge of handling the funeral and running things in general after the Pope's death but before a new Pope is chosen.  I'm assuming this guy will also be in charge now, but perhaps there could be a change made.

• The voting process is referred to as "scrutiny," but it's essentially a secret ballot.

• The first day, they vote once in the afternoon, and every day after that, they vote twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, until a decision is reached.  

• After three consecutive days of no decision, they are allowed a break for a day. But then it's back to the voting again. If after 7 more votes, no decision is still reached, they're allowed another break, and so on.

• Each cardinal is given a rectangular piece of paper with the words Eligo in summum pontificem ("I elect as supreme pontiff") printed at the top. Each cardinal writes the name of his (all cardinals are male) choice on his piece of paper.

• One at a time, in order of seniority, the cardinals go up to the altar where there is a receptacle with a covering on it.  The cardinal holds up his folded piece of paper to show that he has voted, places his piece of paper on the cover, and uses that to slide his vote into the chalice.

 
About what the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals in conclave would look like.  All sorts of ceremony surrounds the casting of each of those hundreds of votes at the altar (left).
(Photo from Listverse)



Most sources say the receptacle where the cardinals put their votes is a chalice covered by a paten, but I don't see how 120 votes would fit into a cup. Vatican TV calls the receptacle pictured here an urn and says this is what will be used to hold the votes this time.
(Photo from Vatican TV, sourced from iol news)


Ah, I see.  The LA Times has a really detailed and helpful graphic depicting this entire process, including how the folded votes would fit into a chalice.

• If a Cardinal is sick, he still has to participate.  He doesn't have to sit in the locked room with everybody else; he can stay in his bed, but he will have to vote and someone from among the voting cardinals will go to his room to collect his vote.

• The votes are counted by the Pope's chamberlain along with 3 assistants, called scrutineers. 

• The first assistant shakes the chalice, then transfers the votes to an urn, making sure that the number of votes corresponds to the number of voters.

• Then the scrutineer draws out the votes one at a time. He looks at it, then scrutineer #2 looks at it, then scrutineer #3 looks at it and finally reads the name aloud. My sources disagree about whether it's one scrutineer who writes down the names on a tally sheet or if all of the cardinals do it, but anyway, the voted-for names get written down and tallied.

• Scrutineer #3 then runs a threaded needle through the piece of paper--specifically through the Eligo--so that by the end of the process, a kind of necklace of votes is created.

• After each vote is cast and counted, the rectangular pieces of paper are burned. They used to add wet straw, but now they add special chemicals so that the smoke will be black, meaning no decision has been reached, or no straw & white smoke, meaning a new Pope has been chosen.

• [Edit: I looked all over for information on what they put in the smoke to make it turn white, and all anybody said was "special chemicals." But as of March 12, 2013, the NYT is saying the Vatican made a statement which details the chemical composition of the smoke:

• For white smoke, they use potassium chlorate (helps stuff like matches & fireworks burn), milk sugar (lactose, which burns easily), and pine rosin.

• For black smoke, they use potassium perchlorate (like potassium chlorate but a little less reactive), anthracene (from coal tar), and sulfur.  So the black smoke would be stinky as well as black.]

• At the election of Pope Benedict, they decided they would also ring the bells of St. Peter's Basilica, just so there was no confusion about whether the smoke was white or black.

When a Pope is to be elected, an extra oven is built and attached to the regular furnace. In this oven (right), the ballots are burned.
(Photo from Smoke Machines)


Temporary scaffolding holds up the special temporary flue that will carry the black or white smoke up and out of the Sistine Chapel. Until the name of the new Pope is announced, this is the only communication allowed with the outside world.
(Photo from Smoke Machines)

White smoke issuing from the chimney on top of the Sistine Chapel, announcing the election of a new Pope--in this case, it was Benedict XVI in 2005.
(Photo from The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia)

How the Winner is Determined

• It used to be that a two-thirds majority vote had to be reached.  With 120 people voting, it can take forever and a day to get that many people (~80) to agree, so this rule has been relaxed a bit.

• If after 30 ballots have been cast and no decision has been reached, a simple majority only is required (61, assuming 120 people are voting).

• Here is one person's take on what this change in the rules means:

In the past, it has often been the case that a particular candidate has had solid majority support but cannot garner the required two-thirds majority, e.g., because he is too conservative to satisfy the more moderate Cardinals. Therefore a compromise candidate is chosen, either an old Pope who will die soon and not do much until the next conclave (which is what was intended with John XXIII!), or someone not so hard-line wins support. The difference now will be that if, in the early ballots, one candidate has strong majority support, there is less incentive for that majority to compromise with the cardinals who are against their candidate and they simply need to sit out 30 ballots to elect their man. This may well see much more "hard-line" Popes being elected. 

• I don't know how reliable that assessment is.  Mainly it reveals how much politicking can be involved in this process.

Who May Become Pope

• Theoretically, the cardinals may choose anyone. Well, as long as he's male and baptized in the Catholic church.

• But he does not have to be a cardinal or a bishop or even a priest.  He can be a layman, and in fact, laymen have in the past been chosen to be Pope.  But since about the 15th century, it is Cardinals who have been chosen.

• Whoever is chosen is informed of the choice, and he may decline.

• If he accepts, he is quickly ordained a priest, if necessary.  If he is not a bishop, he is quickly ordained to be one of those, too.  However, from the moment he accepts, he is the Pope.

• The cardinals pledge their support to him, and they ask him what name he chooses.  Once he says what he wants his Pope-Name to be, the news is then announced to the public: Habemus Papam! (We have a Pope!)

John Paul II, newly announced as Pope in 1978, saying hello.
(AP Photo from Love&Life Centre)


Sources
American Catholic.org, Papal Conclave: How Popes are Chosen
Paul McLachlan, catholic-pages.com, Electing a Pope
John Thavis, Catholic News Service, Election of new pope follows detailed procedure
Quora, Forbes, How Is a New Pope Elected? February 12, 2013
BBCNews, Conclave: How cardinals elect a Pope, February 12, 2013
Wise Geek, How is a New Pope Chosen?
ABC News, How a New Pope Will Be Chosen to Replace Pope Benedict XVI, February 11, 2013
Philip Pullella, Irish Examiner, New pope may be chosen by mid-March, February 18, 2013 
Henry Fountain, Vatican Reveals Recipes for Conclave Smoke, New York Times, March 12, 2013

Apple #578: What Does "Easter" Mean?

As you may recall from my last entry, I am in the midst of answering a multi-part question from Daily Apple reader Roxanne. But before I continue with that, I have to address the fact that today is Easter

Word-curious Apple Lady that I am, I naturally wondered, why is it called "Easter" anyway? The Christian celebration has to do with Jesus being raised from the dead, but the word for it seems to have nothing to do with any of those concepts. So where does the word "Easter" come from?



This is about our how culture celebrates Easter: a little bit Christian, a little bit pagan.
(Photo from Discovery News)

• The answer, I'm afraid, is rather iffy.
  

• I consulted my compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (my favorite reference tool ever), and it gave me an uncharacteristically confusing answer. I'll spare you the heavily abbreviated and perplexing details and rather summarize the illuminating explanations provided elsewhere.

• The word "Easter" comes from a whole lot of old Germanic words that, in lower case form, refer to the place where the sun rises, or the dawn itself.

• The Venerable Bede, or Baeda, who was a priest living in a monastery in Northumbria, England around 700 A.D. provided an additional definition. He wrote a number of books, some of them histories, some of them Biblical commentaries.

Venerable Bede, or Baeda, a priest from Northumbria who wrote down a lot of stuff.
(Image from NNDB)

• In one of his books, he said that back before his time, before there were any monasteries in Northumbria, or before there was much practice of Christianity there at all, the month of April was called Eosturmonath, or the month (monath) of Eostre.

• Eostre, he said, was the name of a pagan goddess of the dawn (or perhaps spring, depending on your translation of Bede), and that pagan worshippers used to celebrate her feast day on the first day of Spring.

• Well, if he's correct, that means the most sacred of days on the Christian calendar is named for a pagan festival.

Artist's depiction of the supposed goddess Eostre, by Jacques Reich, 1909. The artist associated her with all sorts of spring-like things: flower petals, babies, rabbits, the stork.
(Image from Wikipedia)

• That's not very unusual, actually; all sorts of Christian holidays are linked in some fashion with pagan celebrations. I suppose the only reason I find this startling is because I never heard anyone talk about this before. Sure, there are bunnies and egg-dyeing (as opposed to egg dying, something any expectant mother would lament) but I never heard anybody say that the very name of the thing refers to a pagan feast.

• But, as it turns out, the Venerable Bede might have made the whole thing up. Nobody can find much evidence of this supposed Eostre goddess.

• Jacob Grimm, (yes, one of the Brothers Grimm), confirmed Bede's story but only in a word-origin sense. He said it seemed like the word for the goddess came from a particular Old High German word ostar. But he did not say he saw any evidence of the existence of the goddess or actual celebrations carried out in her honor.

• Scholars still debate whether any goddess named Eostre or Ostara ever existed in the way-back day. Some say they have found evidence; others say the evidence is still rather scant.

• So the jury is still out about whether there was a goddess named Eostre.

• But our word "Easter" today does come from those original lower-case root words: the place where the sun rises, or the dawn itself. And therefore, beginnings.

Sunrise. New Day. Fresh start. Also, Easter.
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)


Happy Easter, everybody.


Sources
My copy of The Oxford English Dictionary
Association of Polytheist Traditions, Eostre and Easter Customs
All About History, Origin of the Word Easter
About.com Paganism/Wicca, History of Ostara - The Spring Equinox
NNDB, Venerable Bede

Apple #540: Kosher

A friend of mine got a box of that new Smurfs cereal the other day. I was looking at the nutrition information and the box in general when I noticed the Kosher symbol on the box. I said, "At least it's kosher."



My friend laughed and said, "Of course it is. There's no meat in there."

I said, "I think kosher is about more than just meat. I think it's actually kind of complicated."

He was skeptical, but since I couldn't remember any details, I couldn't bolster my argument further. So it was time to call on the Apple Lady. (Who is me, yes, but just go with it for the sake of the phrase.)

• Kosher, or Kashrut, is a series of dietary laws as indicated by the Torah (to us Gentiles, that's the first five books of the Bible). These laws are supposed to be kept year-round.
  

• Kosher does cover many more foods than just meat. A lot more.

• Kosher laws can be broken down into two main categories: foods you can and can't eat, and how the food you can eat must be prepared.

Foods You Can and Can't Eat

• You can eat the meat, milk, and eggs of some animals but not of others.

• Land animals are kosher if they have split hooves and chew their cud. Both of these things must be true.
• --Examples of kosher animals are cows, sheep, goats, various types of deer, and bison.
  
• --Animals that don't meet this criteria include pigs, rabbits, squirrels, dogs, cats, horses, camels, etc.

• The rules covering birds are fairly complex, but basically you can't eat predatory or scavenger birds.
• --Birds you can eat include chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and pigeons.
• --Birds that are restricted include hawks, crows, vultures, etc.

This is a sheet of stickers of kosher animals. A helpful way to remember which meat and poultry are kosher.
(Photo and 10-pack of sticker sheets from And Thou Shalt Read)

• Fish and seafood must have fins and scales.
• --Tuna, salmon, pike, flounder, carp, and herring are all kosher seafood.
• --Shellfish, lobster, catfish, sturgeon, and all water mammals are not kosher.

• No reptiles, amphibians, or worms are kosher.

• No insects, except for four types of locusts, are kosher. This last law is one of the things that makes food preparation complicated.

• From all of the above kosher animals except fish, no blood can be eaten. This is another law that affects food preparation.

• Wine or grape juices made by Gentiles are not to be eaten.
• --Long ago, lots of non-Jews used wine as sacrificial offerings to their gods. The Jews wanted nothing to do with this idolatry, so to be sure they had no part in it, they didn't want to drink any wine or even grape juice that had been made for pagan purposes.
• --Whole grapes are OK
• --Any fruit juice flavored with grape juice may not be OK; it must be certified kosher.
• --Baking powder is made with cream of tartar, which is a by-produce of wine-making. Baking powder therefore must be certified kosher.
• --Beer flavored with fruity grape products must be certified kosher.
  

Most people think of Manischewitz as the only kosher wine. But there are lots of kosher wines. Here are just a few.
(Photo from Cornichon.org)


How Food Must be Prepared

• Animals and birds that are kosher have to be slaughtered in specific ways.
• --They have to have been slaughtered; they can't have died of natural causes or have been killed be another animal.
• --The slaughter must be done using a very sharp blade with no nicks, and the animal must be killed with one quick, deep stroke of the knife across the throat. This is to ensure that the death is as humane as possible.
• --If there are any signs of disease, the animal cannot be eaten.
  
• --The animal must also be inspected for "flaws in the organs." Flaws may include adhesions or punctures in the lungs, or adhesions or holes in the stomach. If the animal has these or other flaws, the animal cannot be eaten.

The shochet, or butcher, checking the knife in between each slaughter, or shechita. It's hard to see here, but the knife is flat and broad and rectangular.
(Photo from Pidyon, which has photos of the entire shechita process)

• Since no blood can be eaten (this doesn't apply to fish), the blood must be removed from the meat.
  
• --Most of the animal's blood drains out with the quick knife-stroke to the neck.
• --Still there may be some blood left. The best way to remove the rest is either to broil, soak, or salt the meat. This has to be done within 72 hours of the slaughter.
• --No blood also means that blood spots in eggs are not to be eaten.

• The sciatic nerve and its adjoining blood vessels are also not to be eaten.
• --It takes a lot of time and effort to remove these, so usually the entire hind quarters of the animal are removed and sold to non-kosher butchers.

• The fat surrounding the vital organs and the liver may not be eaten.

• Because of all the rules surrounding the slaughter of animals, in rural communities, the rabbi and the butcher are often the same person.

Anything Kosher that Touches Non-Kosher Becomes Non-Kosher

• This is another rule that falls within food preparation, but it gets so pervasive, I thought it deserved its own heading.
  

• Once you've got your kosher meat slaughtered and butchered appropriately, you then must make sure that meat and dairy are to be kept separate.
• --Fish and dairy together are OK (e.g., lox and cream cheese bagels are OK). Red meat and dairy or poultry and dairy together are not.
• --This means they can't be on the same plate at the same time, nor can they be prepared using the same utensils or pans.
• --Dishes used to prepare each must be washed in separate dishwashers, and sponges or towels used to clean the dishes must be kept separate.
• --You should also ensure that all the meat and its fats are removed from your mouth before eating dairy.
• --You can do this by rinsing your mouth, eating a neutral food like bread in between, or else by waiting three to six hours in between.

Setting up your kitchen so that it's in compliance with the laws of kosher, including the separation of meat and dairy, can be an extremely involved, extensive process. For a list of things to do to make this happen, see Chabad.org's page on Koshering Your Kitchen.

• Because separating meat and dairy becomes so extensive that it affects pretty much everything in the kitchen and in the laundry, food and utensils are often labeled to indicate to which they belong:
• --fleishik = meat
• --milchik = dairy
• --parve or pareve = neutral

• In general, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and grains are parve.

Various ways of labeling a food parve.
(Images from Anagrammer)

• Parve becomes a pretty important indication.
  
• --It means the food is neither meat nor dairy, so you can eat it between the two and allow yourself to eat one within 3-6 hours of the other.
• --It also means that this neutral food has been handled in a way that it's within the laws of kosher. That is, it hasn't touched a non-kosher food and thus become out of bounds.

• Fruits and vegetables seem like they'd automatically be kosher/parve, but bugs like fruits and vegetables too, and remember, all insects (except for 4 types of locusts) are not kosher.
• --Fruits and vegetables therefore must be inspected for bugs and carefully cleaned prior to eating.

• With modern, processed foods, you've got people making foods in huge batches in huge kitchens with utensils that could have touched all sorts of non-kosher foods, or situations in which meat and dairy products could have been prepared using the same equipment. So lots of ingredients that you might not think of as affected by the laws of kosher actually can become questionable, if not problematic.
• --Shortenings and oils. Are they animal or vegetable? Are they produced in a plant that does both? If so, are the utensils for animal and vegetable oils kept separate?
• --Emulsifiers. These may also be animal or vegetable and the same questions apply. They're named as polysorbates or glycerides or sorbitans, most often the things on a label that you can't pronounce. They're in all sorts of processed foods, from margarine to doughnuts to cake mixes to ice cream to peanut butter to breakfast cereals (ahem) to candies.
• --Flavorings. Sure, the label says "all-natural." But is it animal or vegetable? How was it prepared? Same questions apply.

The fact that this rice-based cereal has a kosher symbol on the box actually means a lot. A great deal of thought and effort and inspection is behind that certification.
(Photo by Joshua Coughlin at Flickr. He says this is the 80s version of the cereal, but it's not. It's the 2011 version.)


In sum, these laws are quite extensive. I'm sure I haven't even captured all of them here. The ramifications of the rules extend throughout kitchens and the laundry. With modern food manufacturing and processing methods, it's nearly impossible to know if a food has been prepared according to kosher standards.

There are companies whose sole purpose is to send kosher investigators to food manufacturers to inspect their methods and utensils to determine whether the laws of kosher are being upheld or not. If a manufacturer's product line passes the inspection, these companies then certify the company's product with the kosher or parve labels. This is done on a product-by-product basis.


The K in the circle is the most widely-known symbol for kosher food. But there are all sorts of symbols that indicate kosher certification.
(Image from Burton 2 at MIT)


Many of these rules turn out to be beneficial to your health, for one reason or another. Some non-Jews choose kosher-labeled packages because to them, that's an indicator that the food was made according to procedures that are healthy and clean. But the sites I consulted about this were very careful to say that health and cleanliness are not the primary reasons why Jews keep kosher. They do it because the Torah says to.

Sources
Judaism 101, Kashrut: Jewish Dietary Laws
Chabad.org, Kosher, Kosher Basics and multiple subsequent pages
Orthodox Union, How do I know it's Kosher?

Apple #375: St. Patrick's Day

I just now remembered that I wanted to do a post about St. Patrick's Day. It's a bit late, so please excuse the brevity. Soul of wit and all that.


(Photo from You're History)

• St. Patrick was born the son of wealthy British parents in 387 A.D.

• Before he became St. Patrick, his given name was Maewyn Succat.

• When he was sixteen, he was captured by several Irishmen who were raiding his parents' estate in England.

• They brought him to Ireland and sold him to a chieftain who held him captive for six years.

• He worked during his enslavement as a shepherd. He sought solace in Christianity and became a devout and prayerful shepherd.

• Finally he was able to escape. He walked something like 200 miles to get to the coast and got on a ship, making his way back eventually to Britain.

• Once there, he had a dream in which an angel told him to go back to Ireland -- the land where he was held prisoner -- and become a missionary. So that's what he did.

• As soon as he arrived in Ireland, he went back to the chieftain who had enslaved him and paid the guy the price for his freedom.

• Then he began traveling all across Ireland, speaking Gaelic and teaching everyone he met about Christianity in a way that fit in with customs they already observed.

• St. Patrick's signature prayer is all about the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He used the shamrock to represent the Trinity. The shamrock was also sacred to the Druids. Using a symbol that was powerful to them to describe Christianity was typical of his teaching methods.

• So the shamrock remains a traditional symbol of St. Patrick's Day.

Stained glass window of St. Patrick, holding the things that are typically associated with him: his shepherd's crook, reminding us of his early days as a shepherd, and a shamrock which was his way of teaching about the Trinity.  Sometimes he's also drawn holding a snake, but here his third item is a book. This is somewhat ironic since he grew up with little education, but here the book symbolizes the writing and teaching he did in his later years.
(Photo from St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel in Park Slope)

• St. Patrick did not drive any snakes out of Ireland. That story is a myth. It does serve a purpose, though, which is to suggest that he is responsible for making Ireland "safe," and thereby demonstrating how beloved and revered he became among the Irish.

• March 17 marks the anniversary of his death. For many years, the British did not allow the Irish to do all sorts of things, including speak their own language or have their own celebrations. So they were not allowed to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

• It wasn't until after millions of Irish had emigrated to the US that they were able to celebrate the day freely, and they did so with gusto. Even though this anniversary takes place in the middle of Lent when many Catholics abstain from meat, it became traditional to suspend all of that for one day and drink and dance and eat bacon and cabbage in celebration.

Traditional Irish breakfast.  Irish bacon is at about 1:00 on that plate.  It's made from brined pork shoulder and boiled slowly with salt, pepper, and spices.  It's thicker than the bacon we're used to and may be more like Canadian bacon.  Clockwise from the bacon are: fried egg, sauteed tomato, baked beans inn tomato sauce, Guinness brown bread with butter, and Irish sausage.
(Photo and bacon recipe from Emma Clare Eats)



More Irish bacon with a few sausages.
(Photo and bacon recipe from Emma Clare Eats)


Sources
History Channel, Who Was St. Patrick? and the History of the Holiday
Sean Markey, St. Patrick's Day Fast Facts: Beyond the Blarney, National Geographic News
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Patrick
Kiddyhouse, St. Patrick's Day Resources

Apple #292: Baptism or Christening?

Recently I was talking to someone about a new baby getting baptized. The person I talked to said "christened." Then we both agreed we didn't know what the difference is, only that my family always said "baptized," while he and his family always said "christened."

So what is the difference?

• In a baptism, a person is spiritually reborn as a new entrant in a particular religion.

• The term "baptism" comes from a Greek word which essentially means "bath."
  

• People of Christian faith use the term "baptism" for their ceremony of entry, but so do people of other faiths as well.

Beatrice, a.k.a. Trixie, getting baptized at a church in Oklahoma.
(Photo from Sean Gleeson's blog)

• In a christening, a person is spiritually reborn as in a baptism, but the term used to be a little bit more specific.

• The term "christening" comes from the concept that the person being baptized is being dedicated specifically to Christ or the Christian faith.

• The term also comes from way back in the days of early Christendom and in the beginnings of the Catholic church and the idea that when you christen somebody, usually a baby, the parents are making that decision on behalf of the child.

• So if an adult wants to join a particular Christian church, that person is generally said to be getting baptized rather than christened.

• Christening also used to be a separate ceremony when the child was named, and that happened in addition to the baptism. Now, however, there really isn't a naming ceremony, just the baptism.

This boy is getting baptized at Carver Lake Park in Minnesota.
(Photo from the Woodbury Baptist Church)

• Also, you can christen a ship or a church or other kinds of objects. In that kind of christening service, the ship or the church are dedicated to God's service.

• You know how British ships are named H.M.S. something-or-other? The H.M.S. stands for His or Her Majesty's Service. Because the king or queen was regarded since King Henry VIII's time as divinely appointed, by dedicating a ship to the service of the king or queen, you are dedicating it also to the service of God. Hence, ships can be christened.

• A lot of Catholics still prefer the term "christening" to "baptism," but some Catholics think the term got appropriated by the whole ship-christening thing, so they use "baptism" instead.
  

Vanessa is getting baptized at a church in Singapore.
(Photo from Vanessa Tan's blog)

• It's also worth noting that baptism is the one ceremony or sacrament that's recognized and accepted by any and every Christian church, regardless of who did the baptizing and under what circumstances.

• So, generally speaking, since there's no difference anymore in what happens whether you call it a "baptism" or a "christening," you can use either term depending on your personal preference, regardless of what sort of Christianity you practice.

• And I'm glad of that. We could all do with fewer shibboleths.
  

Sources
Dallas-Fort Worth Wedding Exchange, Christening and Baptism
The Free Library by Farlex, What's the difference between a Baptism and a christening?
St John's in the City, Getting Baptised at St John's
Ask the Padre, Is there a difference between Baptism and Christening?

Apple #267: Yom Kippur

I see by my calendar that Yom Kippur is coming up this Saturday. I know that it's a Jewish religious holiday, but I don't know much more about it than that.

• The words "Yom Kippur" mean "Day of Atonement."

• It is considered the most sacred of Jewish holy days, the "Sabbath of Sabbaths." People who don't usually attend services the rest of the year often attend services on Yom Kippur.

• Supposedly on this day, the books of judgment are sealed. Actually, 10 days earlier on Rosh Hashanah, the names of the chosen are written in the Book of Life. On Yom Kippur, that book gets sealed for the year. So this day is your last chance to do all you can to try to get your name entered in the Book of Life.

• To make this happen, you must atone for sins between you and God. That is essentially what the services on Yom Kippur are all about.

• If you want to atone for sins committed between you and another person, you must seek out that person before Yom Kippur, reconcile your differences, and right the wrongs in whatever manner is appropriate. The 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are especially reserved for this type of reconciliation.
  

Mushka (age 4) and Rochel Goldman (age 2) help their mother light candles in preparation for Yom Kippur. It is also customary to light candles and bless the challah (traditional bread) the night before Yom Kippur.
(Photo from CrownHeights.info)

• Atonement happens on this day in particular to commemorate the time, back in the day, when Moses yelled at the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf and threw the Ten Commandment tablets to the ground, breaking them. After Moses went up the mountain and sought and gained God's forgiveness, Moses came back to the Israelites with a list of things they should do to atone for their sins. And they had to do these things "for all time."

Moses loses it.
(sourced from Graham Phillips)

• The main thing on Moses' list is to keep a full fast for 25 hours, from sunset the evening before, until nightfall on Yom Kippur.

• Not only are you to abstain from eating or drinking, you should also refrain from
• working
  
• washing and bathing
• anointing your body -- no perfumes, lotions, oils, deodorant, etc.
• wearing leather shoes (presumably because an animal had to die for them)
• any sexual relations

• Current Jewish law has added a couple of exceptions. For health reasons, children under 9 years old and pregnant women are not allowed to fast. Also, if you're especially sick or if you've just had a baby, you could be granted an exception.
  

• In addition to keeping to Moses' list, it is also customary to wear white to symbolize purity of the soul, and to spend most of the day in the synagogue.

• Yom Kippur services generally include a group confession and displaying the holy scrolls of the Torah. Because the scrolls are sacred, out of respect, worshipers stand through the entire service, which is quite lengthy.

• The majority of the service is characterized by repentance and heartfelt prayers for forgiveness.

• The service ends with a very long blast of the shofar, which is a kind of trumpet supposed to be made from a ram's horn. After the shofar blast, the people respond: "Next year in Jerusalem!"

Blowing the shofar at the end of Yom Kippur services
(Photo from Britannica.com)

As I type this, there are five days left until Yom Kippur. . . .


Sources
Judaism 101, Yom Kippur
Holidays.net, The Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur
Howstuffworks, Yom Kippur

Apple #218: Purgatory and Graupel

Purgatory vs. Limbo

Last month, I wrote an entry about the various definitions of limbo (the theological place and the dance). In response, one intrepid reader wanted to know what is the difference between limbo and purgatory. Good question, said I, and hunted for an answer.


Dante's version of purgatory, as illustrated by Gustav Dorè
(Image from Dr. Widger's Library, available through Project Gutenberg)


People use "purgatory" and "limbo" pretty much interchangeably, so it took a while before I found anything that said that there actually is a difference. And I discovered I had described limbo in my previous entry as being both limbo and purgatory, when in fact they are two different places where two different things happen (I have since corrected my error).

Only the truly perfect souls get to go straight to heaven. Purgatory is the unplottable place that is neither heaven nor hell, but someplace in between, where the less-than-perfect souls are sent to purge themselves of their sins before they're allowed to move on to heaven.

Limbo is similarly neither heaven nor hell. However, those souls banished to limbo can never get out of it. Babies who had never been baptized and Jewish, Old Testament heroes are the primary residents of limbo (although some say that after Christ died on the cross, he went down and got all those Old Testament souls out of hell and sent them on up to heaven).

Limbo came about as a way to circumnavigate Thomas Aquinas' strict assertion that if you'd never been baptized, you were going to hell and that was that. Limbo was a way of saying, "That baby doesn't really have to go to hell, does she? Maybe she can go to this other place that's not quite so bad."

Centuries later, the Catholic church now seems to be on the verge of getting rid of the concept of limbo. It no longer appears in the Catholic catechism, and Pope Benedict XVI has asked the International Theological Commission to decide whether it exists or not.

The fact that the Catholic church might be banishing limbo seems to be coming less from a return to strict damnation and more from a growing leniency. Maybe those babies not only don't get sent to hell, they don't even get stuck in limbo anymore but actually do get to go to heaven.


Graupel

This same intrepid reader also e-mailed me that she had read that Malibu was recently "blanketed with irregularly shaped hailstones called graupel." What, my reader wanted to know, is graupel?


Graupel that climber Steve Eckert encountered on his journey to the top of Lone Pine Peak, California, and back.
(Photo by Steve Eckert at Climber.org)

According to the American Meteorological Society, graupel is clusters of snow pellets covered with rime, a type of ice coating. But of course, there's more to it than that.

Graupel forms as the snow whirls around up in the cloud. It starts out as a snow crystal, the very filamenty sorts of things that we often represent by cutting shapes out of paper. As the crystal flies around up in the cloud, it encounters droplets of supercooled water. These droplets latch onto the crystal and freeze to it. The resulting ice that forms around the droplet and the crystal is kind of opaque and milky; this type of ice is called rime. If you think about what hailstones look like -- sort of like eyes with cataracts all the way around -- that's what rime looks like.

Okay, so we've got snow crystals with supercooled droplets fused to them. These things usually freeze together in some logical shape, surprisingly enough. They make branching crystals, or needle-like shapes, or one of these clusters actually looks sort of like a double-ended bolt.


Snow crystal, becoming a graupel
(Photo from Beltsville USDA ARC)

But this crystal-droplet cluster is still whirling around, still attracting more droplets. Eventually, so many droplets freeze to the crystal, there's no more recognizable shape. And the thing has become a graupel.

Another factor here is that, even though this crystal has accumulated a lot of droplets, the graupel is still very small. Graupel is very like hail and is often called "soft hail". But for a snow pellet to qualify as hail, it has to have a diameter of at least 5 mm. So graupel is smaller, and therefore less ping-y than true hail.

Skiers and people who study avalanches recognize graupel as Styrofoam ball-shaped snow pellets. They tend to roll around a lot and are therefore very unstable in a big mound of snow.


So the lesson of this Apple seems to be, don't get caught in a graupel avalanche, or you may find yourself in purgatory. Right.


Sources
Paul Collins, "Lose limbo but salvage purgatory," The Sydney Morning Herald, December 1, 2005
Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, "Limbo - What is it?"
Online Etymology Dictionary, purgatory
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica online version, Purgatory
Daily Apple, Limbo

American Meteorological Society, Glossary of Meteorology, Graupel
Beltsville branch of the USDA Agricultural Research Center, Rime and Graupel
Avalanche.org, Avalanche Encyclopedia, Graupel
Climber.org, Lone Pine Peak trip report