I posted a short story concerning Giordano Bruno and have often mentioned this fascinating philosopher of the late Renaissance. I thought, today ,I would post considering my schedule, just Four quotes of his I found on the Web. I have read the books mentioned and I am familiar with the context of all the quotes :

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."

"There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being."
~The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1582

"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature, from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things."
~ On Cause, Principle, and Unity

"In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns, no worse and no less than this globe of ours. For no reasonable mind can assume that heavenly bodies that may be far more magnificent than ours would not bear upon them creatures similar or even superior to those upon our human earth. "
~On the Infinite Universe and Worlds

"Circles the sun and seeks whence he hath come;
And wandering lights make ever for their source;
The child of earth returns to earthly home;
From sea to sea again, the waters course;
Divine desire, wherever it may roam,
Soars ever upward, of its native force.
        'Tis thus the soul, born of my lady fair,
        Turns back to find that goddess past compare."
              - Gli Eroici Furori

Why do old childhood ditties always go through my head when it snows?
"Its snowing, its snowing
the old man is snoring
He went to bed, hit his head
and never got up in the morning!"

Well, it was bound to accumulate a little, today - its been snowing here from very early morning and shows no sign of changing to rain... but it must be warm at ground level, compared to the clouds and isn't making much show on the ground. Its hard to imagine such an unlikely thing. I've been thinking what a hoot it would be if Al Gore & his scientist friends were wrong - what if we weren't going into a warming period but a cooling? The sun is supposed to be in an upswing of its spots but the sun is nearly as clean as a new virgin - a minimum of sunspot activity has always been a sign that an ice age was approaching - do research on the "little Ice Age" if you don't understand this aspect of climate. I am not saying we don't need to watch ourselves and become conservatives in the sense of caring for the Earth, we very much must conserve, recycle and care for our dear mother, the earth Mother Terra - she is the only real mother the human race has - unless you count our beloved Lady Mary, the mother of Jesus. Must love your mothers, friends.
I just don't think environmentalism is a good religion - or any religion - for me, caring for the land, my home, cats, husband and the little bit of land our house stands on just makes good sense -- take responsibility for yourself and what you love and the things, people and animals will last.

I have lost another two pounds - 160, our scales this morning. I am wearing a size 18 Petite down from a size 22-24 petite.

I am writing ... its doing strange things to my head. I feel like the energy in my head is going to explode. I don't know what I mean - Just "BOOM" Its like a dam breaking in my head. I have forgotten how much I love writing.. so afraid of offending someone... of saying the wrong thing... of being hurt, persecuted, hated for my words.. and, yet loving writing.. loving the words, the wonderful images flowing through my pen. I am not going to worry any longer about offending anyone - just create, write, love my life and what I can create.

The Organization of the notes is driving me nuts though, the process of organizing them is confusing and challenging me ... so many notes over the years... so much lost, too. I've never been good at organization.  I am just working - trying to find ways of making it a whole fabric. It reminds me a little of beading, actually -- you take all these little things and try to compose a big, beautiful thing from all of them.
I've got to go. Always so much to do - I need to write a little more on this blog, too.
Please take care, everyone. Talk more later.

Evil walks our land, we invited the evil man here, we listened to his lying words and we praised ourselves for our openness and love of freedom of speech. He threatens us with war and destruction, he says we must convert to Islam or die. This man who hates everything we love: the rights of man & women, freedom of speech, the enlightenment, democracy, freedom of religion, in short : everything we have built here in the West. We hate our own hard working men and women who do their best to serve us but we adore the enemies of our country, is this sane or right?
Will this be believed in the future when this era is played out to its sorry end ? Will those who welcomed this evil man to the university hang your heads in sorrow and embarrassment in some future era when all his victims are dead and buried or will you congratulate yourselves still for your insight and intelligence in inviting an important monster to your hallowed halls ?

The president of Columbia university has said he would welcome Hitler, if he still lived to the University. Madness, true and honest madness. All the victims of Hitler should haunt this insane man until he recovers his good sense --- showing him their wounds in his dreams that would soon become nightmares. He has forgotten the blood that flowed for years all over the globe because of Hitler. He has forgotten. He is brilliant but foolish and arrogant. The wise are not necessarily intelligent and the intelligent are rarely, also, wise.

As Bruno said so often, the fact that the majority believe something has nothing to do with whether it is true or not. He fought men like the president of Columbia University his entire life. He was not a popular man among his fellow intellectuals, ever, because he did not bow to the intellectual gods of his times.
He didn't win but history won for him. There are idiots by the ton in higher education, brilliant idiots, I suspect it has always been so.

People say that people like myself are stupid, ignorant because we value traditions and conservatism, we love God and believe in less government being better than a powerful central one but I am not stupid enough to invite a murderer who plans to kill me to dinner, are you?
Update : there is news that the president of Columbia university actually challenged Ahmadinejad about his actions and country's efforts to perfect the bomb - if this proves true I will apologize , at least to a degree. I have only heard one thing other than this - that there are no homosexuals in Iran or in Islam? Heavens, Sir, at least say no living homosexuals. I have seen the pictures of the hangings.
This is an article concerning the hangings.
Here is the picture I saw eariler. God knows how many are killed by their own families, just as women are when they 'misbehave'.

People seem to think that we conservatives are just as bad as this man - do I disapprove of homosexuality? I think it is a sin. I think we must allow others their rights if we expect them to respect our rights. Therefore, while I suspect homosexuality is a sin (just as being too fat is a sin!) I would never advocate limiting their right to exist. That is what America really is... a place where you can sin if you want to !!!

Dinosaur News : OK, you all know I am a dinosaur nut. here is some interesting news for you. Big bad velociraptor actually had feathers. Why do I suspect that dinos and birds are just about the same ... ??? well, the experts seem to think so and a heck of a lot of them had feathers. This cries for a question if Mr. V. had feathers than why would he be so sensitive to climate change, wouldn't this discovery suggest that even the large dinos had some insulation as would the discovery of dinos in the far north and south ? It also makes me wonder whether they were also hot or cold blooded.... were some of them on the way to being fully hot blooded - technically called endotherm ?

Giordano Bruno said it best :
"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."

In Giordano's time the question that troubled scientists was the very nature of space : was it the Ptolemy version, or the Copernican version? Most believed in the Bible's version of the solar system and the rest of cosmos - the earth as the center of everything - even the sun, orbiting it. Copernicus suggested a new model, the one we know is true now.

I mention his observation because common wisdom is rarely wisdom.

Many are impressed with scholars and their diplomas - if an expert says something it must be true, because he/she is an expert, yet the experts have been wrong many times, as they were in Giordano's time. He went against the grain of his times. He believed in an infinite universe full of light, planets and life forms. He belongs more to us then he ever belonged to his own people and times. Today , he would be a really great Science Fiction writer/scientist/ mystic. I truly wish the dear, good man could have lived in times when his gifts and obvious wisdom would have given him a long life instead of a short, painful life.

I will say it simply : Smart does not always mean right. Wisdom is not learned in a book.

Saturday was the 406th anniversary of the execution by fire of Giordano Bruno, the Italian poet,philosopher and mystic of the late Renaissance. I seem to have a personal affinity for this dear man and find in his philosophy a great deal of my own world view & philosophy. Reading his work is not easy - it is damnably hard work, but he is well worth the effort. He will sometimes be obscene, often funny and very often, sublime. His words, at their best, soar to the gates of heaven. He is for those who do not want to reject the existence of the Divine while desiring to explore, think and examine all of nature, mankind and greater cosmos. Many of the sciences we today acknowledge as separate disciplines were speculated upon in his dialogs - bits and pieces of the future are strewed in his prose. In his philosophy you can be both mystic and scientist - something, many today,believe is an impossibility.
Born in 1548, of a poor southern Italian family, he choose priesthood as a Dominican monk instead of the sea,the soil or the sword. He was a wonderful mixture of contraries: Mystic and scientist, arguing troublemaker and moralist, believer and profound doubter, religious and spiritual, spy and wanderer belonging to no one land; he had one leg in the religion of his ancestors, one hand in the future and age of discovery, the other leg in the 20 century, the last hand in mystical, arcane and magical world of alchemy and hermetic magic. I believe he would have been at home in our own times if he didn't get too restless by its dogmatic rigidity(in every field of intellectual endeavor, including science.) - he was a scientist born too early, a science fiction writer whose imagination was quite profound before there was any call for one, a mystic who said many of the same things that got others sainthood and one very curious individual in every possible way. His life was a painful one and I doubt he ever knew much happiness or real peace. He was torn between his lady love (wisdom, science, Truth) and the Roman Catholic church that had nurtured him as a youth. He wanted intellectual freedom but he also appreciated the need for structure and traditions; attempting to return to the church several times. He believed that you could be free and be Christian. I would suggest he was a Gnostic Christian with other influences and I suspect that he would have been attracted to Buddhism if it had been more available in the Europe of his time.He appreciated the yin and loved the yang, th0ugh he did not call the Balance of universe by those names. Some experts believed he was an atheist but I do not believe it - He could hold in his deepest soul many contraries (opposites), understanding that you do not need to have certainty and can not have it as long as you are mortal. He wanted the TRUTH and he was willing to do anything to seek it. He saw no need to stay in one place for very long - this was as true intellectually as it was physically. Ultimately, his desire for the Truth above all other things was his undoing as was his inability to prevaricate.
His end was as a human candle, a fire that consumed his soul as well as his body taking both away to eternity. I think he appreciated the poetic nature of his death, which he did not fear because he knew his soul to be immortal. BUT sadly, in the end, he felt betrayed by God and Christ, for as the fires grew closer, he turned away from the cross. Death is never sad in its self, only defeat in death is sorrowful and in the end, the church had that one victory, it drove him away from Jesus Christ. We, who look on from this century can not fault him and what he must have suffered in the jails of the Inquisition, we can only guess; My suggestion is that they brain-washed him and beat him into something like acquiescence, damaging his soul. He, in short, believed their lies in the end. I must explain that I am not saying that he agreed with them about their dogma, his last statement shows he did not, but he agreed that you could not love the Divine ONE and Lady Wisdom (science, philosophy, Truth). That of course, is a lie. I can only pray in his future lives his soul will awaken again and with new eyes and a new age see the lie for what it is.
Note: The above picture is from the net, I fear I have no record of where I found it or who originally took it. It is of a statue erected on the site of his execution, the Campo de Fiori in Rome.