What Makes People Tick?

Mary of Magdala, or Mary Magdalene, is possibly one of history's most misunderstood women. A follower of Jesus, she is mentioned in the Christian Bible a number of times. Many think of her as a whore or a prostitute, despite the fact that she isn't actually called anything like that. Ever. I recently came across an article that described the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and was fascinated by what I read. Having read it, now it's time to share it with others. In the age of #YesAllWomen and #MeToo, I believe that it is important to look at how women are portrayed today, and how they were portrayed in the past. Mary, the Magdalene, is a woman branded by history as something she probably wasn't at all - a prostitute, an 'easy' woman, a whore as modern-day people might describe her. Yet upon reading the Gospel of Mary Magdalene , one's views may change, if only a little. While it's never been an official or unofficial gospel, the fragmented pieces of writing ...

Serabit el Khadim is a mountain in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. Near it are two other peaks with names that, to those who read the Torah / Pentateuch, may sound familiar: Jebel Saniya and Jebel Ghorabi. There is a temple to the goddess Hathor on Serabit el-Khadim. After reading about the location in a fantasy fiction book that mentioned prominent archaeologist Flinders Petrie as well as the temple to Hathor, I became intrigued and wanted to learn more about this desert location. The book also mentioned the possibility that this location had been where Moses received the Ten Commandments, something that most definitely intrigued me as well. I am personally interested in the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt and enjoy learning about the period of our world's history in which this Exodus may have taken place. Unlike many, I do not believe that Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, believing it to be much more likely that the Exodus occurred around the time of Akhenaten...

Browsing my Facebook feed today, I came across a friend's post asking if shops'd be open tomorrow in her area. I'm in Europe, my friend lives Down Under. I assumed there must be a local holiday I didn't know about until reading the comments - It's "Good Friday" tomorrow. Right. Took a while but : Click. When it dawned on me that I couldn't for the life of me remember what the whole Good Friday and Easter thing was about exactly, I checked Wikipedia. While I understand that Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia or infallible or anything of the sort, the information it provided still surprised me greatly. Source :  Wikipedia "Easter (...) is a festival and holiday celebrated by Christians and non-Christians" So, according to Wikipedia I celebrate Easter? Uh... NO. I really, really don't! I was raised secular in a mainstream 'Christian' country in western Europe. Even though my family didn't care a...

The Jewish Shema Yisrael and the Qur'an's surah (chapter) 112 known as Al Ikhlas share quite a few similarities. While in today's world many Muslims seem to believe that it is their duty to kill as many Jews as possible and the two religions don't always get on as well as they could, when one looks to the texts and the teachings of these two religions, one finds a lot of similarities. Of the world's three monotheistic faiths, Judaism came first, Christianity came second and Islam came third. While Christianity believes in a three-in-one package deal, as opposed to the only-one beliefs of the other two religions, the three religions are still considered connected monotheistic religions. While Judaism has remained a religion of roughly 20 million people or less, both Christianity and Islam have become huge religions with adherents numbering in the billions, in most countries of the world. All three religions have gone through many changes and developments since thei...

Copy of a short piece I wrote for another blog of mine. First published 12-06-2011 Happened across an article in the Daily Mail today from back in 2009 that caught my fancy. In short, it describes the find of a bunch of carved ancient stones long buried at Gobekli Tepe in eastern Turkey / Kurdistan. This site predates other ancient sites such as Stonehenge or the Pyramids by several thousands of years, meaning it is the oldest such site that has been uncovered to date. Not only does this site teach us amazing new things about our (humanity´s) past, we also learn more about the region, the practices and possible lifestyle and beliefs of the people alive at the time, and oh as an afterthought - reshapes what we thought we knew to be true about human development. Isn´t is just awesome when history, religion and science come together! Some quotes from the article: Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old. That means it was b...

Found an amazing article online at the website of the Daily Mail that has me reeling with wonder. I reckon it fits right in at a blog entitled "what makes people tick", as it sheds an amazing amount of light on what made humans tick - long before they even learnt how to write! Check it out here: Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

Happenings like the most recent quake and tsunami in Japan, the Christchurch quake in New Zealand, the draughts in Australia, widespread war, unrest, and disease in the world, the most recent uprisings in the Middle East, coupled with it now being 2011, make me think about the End of the World prophesies and how it´s all supposed to happen at the end of 2012. What if? What if pretty much every religious and spiritual system in the world is warning us in some way or another, and we are too busy with our electronic gadgets, our cars, our appearance and popularity to see these warning before it is too late? I don´t follow any one religion or system of beliefs. I believe in a higher power, a creating force that shaped the world we live on, the universe we live in, and everyone and everything we see and know. I believe that all roads lead to Rome, and that no matter what one believes exactly , eventually we all worship the same divine force and all religious systems teach the...

Reading a newspaper article about an iceberg four times the size of Manhattan that recently broke off the Petermann Glacier in Northern Greenland, the phrase “It’s been a summer of near Biblical climatic havoc” jumped off the page at me. The recent forest fires in Russia and the flooding in Asia are cited as examples. What I find interesting about that phrase is that it could refer to several different things. My first thought was that it referred to the Book of Revelation (the final book of the Christian New Testament) in which the end of the world is described. Thinking on it some more, I realised it could also refer to the Flood or perhaps even the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (both from the Book of Genesis ). Interesting how an article from a New Zealand newspaper referring to something being “biblical” straight away makes me think that it refers to the New Testament. The article continues and mentions climate change and global warming, and how the breaking off of this i...