The
Republic of Cyprus is an island situated in the northeastern
Mediterranean Sea, about 40 miles south of Turkey and 60 miles
west of Syria. Cyprus, 3,578 square miles in area, is the
Mediterranean Sea’s third largest island. The capital
is Nicosia. Two main mountain ranges dominate the island:
the Kyrenia ridge in northern-central Cyprus and the Troödos
Mountains in the southwest, including Mt. Olympus (6,403 ft).
Between these rugged ranges lies the fertile Mesaöia
plain. The island’s climate is predominantly dry, with
mild winters and hot, sunny summers. The sparse remains of
ancient forests of evergreen oak, Aleppo pine, and cypress
cling to the rocky mountain slopes, but centuries of timber
cutting have almost stripped Cyprus of its native forest cover,
largely replaced by poor pasture.
* * *
Two:
Past and Present
Aphrodite
was the goddess of love, one of the 12 Olympians. Some legends
say she was brought forth from ocean foam near Cyprus or Cythera;
others that she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. One of
the most celebrated deities of the ancients, she was known
as the goddess of beauty, mother of love, queen of laughter,
mistress of the graces and pleasures, patroness of courtesans.
Zeus was refused by her and for her obstinacy gave her in
marriage to his ugly and deformed son Hephaestus (Vulcan).
As she was notoriously unfaithful, her intrigue with Ares
(exposed by Apollo) is famous. The mother of many—Deimos,
Eros, Anteros, Hermione, Phobus by Ares; Hermaphroditus by
Hermes; Priapus by Dionysus; Eryx by Poseidon (according to
Apollodorus); Aeneas by Anchises. Paris gave her the Apple
of Discord, and she helped him win Helen. She abandoned Olympus
because she was partial to Adonis. Her mysterious girdle Cestus,
gave beauty, grace, and elegance to the most deformed, excited
love, and rekindled extinguished ardors. Not an exciting figure
in Homer, she is even wounded by Diomedes in the battle at
Troy. The Homeric Hymns, Hesiod, Homer, Ovid, Vergil, Pausanias,
Europides—many others—tell her story. Shakespeare,
Venus and Adonis; Spencer, The Faerie Queene, Epithalamion,
Prothalamion, “An Hymne in Honour of Beautie: ; John
Peele Bishop, “When the Net was Unwound Venus Was Found
Ravelled with Mars”; many allusions in Byron, Donne,
Milton, Pope, Rosetti, and so on (J.E. Zimmerman: Dictionary
of Classical Mythology).
* * *
St. Hilarion Castle, North Cyprus
Neolithic
farmers lived on the island as early as 6000 B.C. Around 1200
B.C. Greek-speaking traders arrived, followed by the Phoenicians.
Both peoples set up city-states, and Cyprus developed a cosmopolitan
Eurasian culture. In 708 B.C., however, Cyprus submitted to
Assyria, and from then on was largely dominated by foreign
states. The Ottoman Turks (1570-1878) established this own
Muslim culture alongside the Christian one that had flourished
since A.D. 45. After Britain gained Cyprus in 1878 (making
it a crown colony in 1925), conflict between Turkish and Greek
Cypriots became a major issue, especially in the 1950’s
when Archbishop Makarios led the powerful movement for enosis,
political union with Greece. Also in the 1950’s, Col.
Giorgios Grivas headed EOKA, a guerrilla movement aimed at
forcibly freeing Cyprus from Britain.
Though
we called your friend from his bed this night,
He could not speak to you,
For the race is run by one and one
And never by two and two.
(Rudyard
Kipling 1865-1936)
In
1960 Britain granted Cyprus its independence. The new republic
tried solving its Greco-Turkish problem by constitutional
compromise, which failed. Fierce inter-communal fighting and
the threat of intervention from both Greece and Turkey led
to the arrival of a UN peacekeeping force in 1965. Subsequent
talks between President Makarios and Turkish leaders were
frequent but fruitless. In 1974 a military group organized
by Greek army officers ousted Makarios, whereupon Turkey invaded
the island, setting up a “Turkish Federated State of
Cyprus” under Turkish occupation in the northeastern
third of the island, but it is recognized only by Turkey.
Although the island remains divided, it is regarded as a Greek
nation by the U.N. About 80% of the Cypriots are of Greek
extraction; the rest are predominantly Turkish in origin.
Each group clings to its own cultural traditions; there are
two official languages (Greek and Turkish), two main faiths
(the Orthodox Church of Cyprus and Islam), and even separate
schools for Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Two flags represent
Cyprus: the white with copper-colored silhouette of the island
about two green crossed olive branches in the center of the
flat, the branches symbolizing the hope for peace and reconciliation
between the Greek and Turkish communities. The Turkish Republic
of Northern Cypress flag has a horizontal red stripe at the
top and bottom between which is a red crescent and red star
on a white field.
It
takes two to speak the truth—
One to speak and another to hear.
(Henry
David Thoreau 1817-1862)
* * *
Nicosia, Capital City of Cyprus
The
latest two-year round of UN-brokered direct talks between
the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities
to reach an agreement to reunite the divided island ended
with the Greek Cypriots rejected the UN settlement plan in
an April 2004 referendum. The entire island entered the EU
on May 1, 2004, although the EU applies only to the areas
under direct Republic of Cyprus control. At present, every
Cypriot carrying a Cyprus passport has the status of a European
citizen; however, EU laws do not apply to north Cyprus. Nicosia
continues to oppose EU efforts to establish direct trade and
economic links to north Cyprus as a way of encouraging the
Turkish Cypriot community to continue to support reunification.
The
betrothed of good is evil.
The betrothed of life is death,
The betrothed of love is divorce.
Malay
Proverb
* * *
Two:
Polarities
Noah’s Ark, floating in these waters during the biblical
inundation, was a good example of the importance of two—male
and female—the most personal of the dualities important
to mankind. Others include: war and peace, life and death,
gods and goddesses, inner and outer, light and dark, soft
and hard. The Chinese symbol for yin-yang—yin (the passive,
female—moon, shade, femininity) and yang (the active,
masculine—sun, light, masculine) is a circle divided
into two curved forms, one dark, the other light. This philosophy
rests on the idea that all things exist through their interaction,
the interaction of opposites.
* * *
Two:
Above and Below:
The earliest known attempts to raise distinctively philosophical
questions go back to the 7th century B.C., when the pre-Socratic
Greek philosophers were active. Their intellectual heirs were
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Today, Robert Sarmast, in his
book The Discovery of Atlantis: The Startling Case for the
Island of Cyprus, offers a theory that Plato’s sunken
continent Atlantis is located just off the southern coast
of Cyprus. Because Plato based his story of Atlantis on Greek
and Egyptian accounts of the disaster, Sarmast believes that
Cyprus is the only logical location for this cryptic landmass--unlike
the Bahamas, Bolivia and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,
commonly thought to be its boundaries. People of the ancient
world would have been familiar with this location and chroniclers
of the Atlantis story firsthand knowledge of the event, says
Sarmast.
Further
proof of Atlantis’ location comes in the form of oceanographic
research and sonar mapping of the bottom of the Mediterranean
Sea. Not only does the area off the coast of Cyprus fit the
dimensions mentioned by Plato, but a small mound within that
rectangular plain seems to match the description of the concentric
rings of walls and canals that purportedly surrounded the
capital city of Atlantis. Core samples from the Mediterranean
also show a previously unknown pattern of evaporation and
sudden, cataclysmic flooding within the past 10,000+ years
that could easily be evidence of not only the veracity of
the location for the story of Atlantis, but also the biblical
flood.
Two Platonic
dialogues constitute the only existing written records specifically
referring to Atlantis. Timaeus and Critias agreed to entertain
Socrates with a tale that was “not a fiction but a true
story” about the conflict between the ancient Athenians
and the Atlantians 9000 years before Plato’s time. Timaeus
and Critias are known to have actually existed in ancient
Greece. Records of their lives and deeds have been recorded
in other writings from the time period.
During
the summer of 1973, UPI reported the existence of a super
civilization which legend says sank beneath the sea thousands
of years ago. Divers found evidence of up to 30 ruins including
pyramids, domes, paved roads, rectangular buildings, columns
(as described by Plato), canals and artifacts on the ocean
bottoms from the Bahamas to the nearby coasts of Europe and
Africa, referencing the vast size of the lost continent. Dozens
of historians and famous writers wrote about the Atlantis
they believed existed; how the Mayans and Aztecs told their
conquerors they came from Atlantis and Mu; about ancient tablets
photographed in Peru showing those two lost continents, Atlantis
and Lemuria; and ancient maps clearly showing Atlantis. The
Aztecs, Mayans, Greeks, Egyptians, Spainish, East Indians,
Tibetans and islanders in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
all speak of ancient sunken continents—Mu and Mar in
the Pacific Ocean, and Lumania in the Indian Ocean. Easter
Island is thought to be a remnant of Lemuria. There were also
the lands of Thule and Hyperborea. All these lands came to
an end around 11,500 years ago with dramatic planetary events,
which sank and shifted continents and covered much of the
earth with water. (www.world-mysteries.com)
* * *
Winners
and Losers
Today’s conflicts in Cyprus are just the tip of the
iceberg of a long history of foreign domination, violence
and civil strife, apparently going back to the times of Atlantis
and earlier--Greek gods and goddesses warred. Since the 1950’s,
the soil of the island of Cyprus has been a battleground between
its two main ethnic/religious populations—Greek Cypriots
and Turkish Cypriots. Arguments today even take place about
what the word Cyprus means. One opinion is that it comes from
the Greek word meaning cypress. Another suggests that it stems
from the word for copper, because of large deposits of copper
ore found on the island. Another theory is that it was named
after the Greek goddess Aphrodite (Kipris). Homer refers to
the island of Kypron in his epics Iliad and Odyssey: “Muse,
sing to me the works of golden haired Aphrodite Cypridos”.
Two: Myth and Reality
Aphrodite is the legendary goddess of beauty, love, sex and
passion, who emerged fully-grown from the sea, where the severed
genitals of the god Uranus were cast by his son Kronos, causing
the sea to foam. Throughout ancient history, Cyprus was a
flourishing center for the cultic worship of Aphrodite. Her
birth was famously depicted by the artist Botticelli in The
Birth of Venus.
* * *
The
Cyprus soil collection for Common Ground 191 was accomplished
by Hellen Choraitis, born on June 4, 1967. Her parents are
both Cypriots born in Davlos, a small village in the northern
part of Cyprus, who went to the UK in their late teens. Hellen’s
four sisters and she were all born in the UK. When she was
12 years of age, her parents bought a very old, partially
ruined house in Cyprus, which had been owned by a doctor during
World War II. “From the first day we moved in we realized
we were not alone—furniture moving, banging, all sorts
of things—which scared us all. So we shared our home
with spirits.” In her late 20’s, Hellen went through
a horrible divorce and started blaming God for her extremely
bad luck. An “earth angel” cousin of hers said,
“If you start to believe in God, then He will help you.”
Hellen thought she had nothing to lose as she was already
going through hell. “So I started to pray regularly
and started to see a magnificent difference. My luck had changed.
Then one night I was pulled by one hand and I saw a white
figure which I thought could be an angel pull me out of bed.
I smelled burning and found my computer plug was burning,
so I switched it off. A few nights later, I was again pulled
out of bed by both hands and someone was calling my name.
I saw it was an angel again, and the room was filled with
smoke.” She was spared from a fire.
After
that Hellen was introduced to Reiki healing techniques and
is now a Reiki Usui Master/Pranic Healer/Spiritual Healer,
a skill given to her directly from a spirit named Metatron
who has eyes like fire. “He has recently visited
me and has given me a healing energy ball that I can activate
with mind control. Now I have my own Angelight Mind Body &
Spirit New Age Store in Limassol, Cyprus, where I do healing,
coaching and plan to teach shortly. When a client comes to
me I know that they are guided because I can help them, in
one way or the other. I’ve had a hard life and now I
know why—because I am here to help others!
“When I picked up the sand from Aphrodite’s rock,
I brought some back to the shop and some gemstones and crystals
I found there. Since then Aphrodite herself keeps appearing
to me and in my dreams and meditations, and I keep on getting
a lot of clients with relationship problems—strange
but true. The name Angelight was given to me by my (spirit)
guide many years ago and I used as a nickname online and for
a paper I used to write for. Angelite is known as the Angel
stone.
“My
favorite Archangels are Michael and Raphael. We have an Archangel
Michael figure in our shop that has given messages to customers.
Archangel Raphael is always present at my healings, ready
to step into me in various difficult cases in which I radiate
green, and am full of static. My true love is for Angels;
that is what I want to teach in the future. I’m already
preaching it at my shop because a lot of people do not know
enough about them and how they changed my life and have changed
many of my customers’ lives.
“I
am now remarried to Constantinos, another English-born Cypriot,
and we have three children. I’m a great fan of Doreen
Virtue’s and have read all her books and use all her
card decks.”
Two:
Goddesses and Angels:
Around 1200 B.C., Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, emerged
from the gentle jade-colored sea form at Petra tou Romiou,
a boulder that juts up from the south coast of Cyprus. The
name Aphrodite means “foam born”. She was the
most ancient goddess of the Olympians. Eros, Aphrodite’s
son, accidentally wounded her bosom with one of his arrows.
Reeling from the wound, she took solace in her mineral pool,
the famed Baths of Aphrodite on the Akamas Peninsula of Cyprus.
The hunter Adonis was within sight that day, and the love
he inspired in Aphrodite was the greatest and most powerful
she would ever know. One day jealous Ares, disguised as a
boar, proceeded to kill Adonis with his tusks. Aphrodite heard
his cries from her swan-drawn chariot high above the island’s
highest peaks in the Troodos Mountains. Once by his side,
she summoned the nymph Menthe (the mint spirit), who sprinkled
nectar on his blood, and then by magic red anemones sprang
forth. Each spring, they rise again from the fertile soil
of Cyprus, gently moving in the wind. (Anemos in
Greek means wind.) Is it Aphrodite’s tears that coax
the anemones into bloom? In the 12th century, B.C., an elaborate
sanctuary was built in her honor at Palea Pafos (Kouklia),
the most significant of a dozen such consecrated sites in
Cyprus. Some accounts of the sacred site have young women
congregating to ritually sacrifice their virginity, however
sacred prostitution was the likelier scenario. According to
Herodotus, every girl had to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary
and there make love to a stranger. The girls would sit in
the sacred gardens wearing crowns of rope and wait for men
passing by to choose them. A man would throw an offering at
the feet of his preferred “pilgrim” and utter
the words “I invoke the goddess in you,” whereupon
the sacrificial act would be consummated.
A teacher
in two realms, goddesses and angels, Doreen Virtue’s
online newsletter was the angelic intervention in the Common
Ground 191 project that has resulted in soils being collected
from at least 10 x 2 = 20 locations. Thank you, all those
in the spirit, goddess and angelic realms. Did the reader
take note of the angels surrounding Aphrodite/Venus in the
Botticelli print?
Cyprus Ruins - Columns
In numerology,
the numbers in 191 (as in Common Ground 191), when added together,
become a sum of 11, which when again combined becomes the
number two. Two is the theme of this journal entry, because
The Republic of Cyprus embodies yin-yang of the number two
in its everyday life. Of course, our ultimate goal is to make
all the dualities, polarities and separate countries and their
soils unite into one final 50 x 50 foot fresco. If Cyprus
and all countries of the world picture the possibility of
becoming one, leading to a sense of spiritual oneness, it
will happen in fact, and common ground will have been achieved
on earth. At least that’s our theory here at Common
Ground 191=2.
* * *
In the thrice
mysteries hall where men have never entered, We have
feted you,
Astarte of the night, Mother of the world, Well-Spring
in the Life of all the Gods!
I shall reveal a portion of the rite, but no more of
than is permissible.
About a crowned Phallos, a hushed-twenty women swayed
and cried.
The initiates were dressed as men, the other in the
split tunic.
The fume of perfumes and the smoke of torches floated
fog-like in tent among us all
I wept my scorching tears.
All, at the feet of Berbeia, we threw ourselves, extended
on our backs.
Then, when the Religious Act was consummated, and when
into the Holy triangle the purpled phallus had been
plunged anew, the mysteries began, but I shall say no
more.
(The Songs of Bilitis
III,
Epigrams in the Isle of Cyprus –
www.sacred-texts.com)
Not
as their friend or child I speak!
But as on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone—
For both were faiths, and both are gone.
Wandering between two worlds, one
dead,
The other powerless to be born,
With no where yet to rest my head,
Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
Matthew
Arnold (1822-1888) – The Grande Chartreuse