http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2011/03/15/dreamcatchersindex_1.jpg

One of the most fascinating of all Native American Traditions is the dream catcher. It is widely believed the legend of the dream catcher came from the Sioux with their tales of spiders, webs and bad dreams. But deeper research into the storytelling and oral histories passed down from parent to child gives a clearer picture of how the dream catcher came into use.

Long ago when the world was young with old traditions, all the Clans of the Ojibwe were located in an area known as Turtle Island. This is where the ancient stories of the dream catcher originated.

Asibikaasi (Spider Women) carefully and lovingly watched over her children, the Ojibwe Clans. Every dawn her task was to capture giizis (the sun) and bring its light back to her people. The miracle of her work could be seen in the sparkles of the sun off the dew dampened earth.

One of the Seven Prophecies of the Ojibwe was the scattering of the clan to the four corners of North American. In time this prophecy became a truth. With her children so dispersed Asibikaasi found it hard to bless them with the brilliance of the sun.

She tasked the mothers, sisters and grandmothers of the tribe to weave magical webs for their children and themselves. These webs were to be made in the shape of the sun to represent how giizis traveled across the sky to them. The number of points in the web should number seven or eight, for the Seven Prophecies or the eight legs of the Spider Women. Asibikaasi promised to only allow good dreams or thoughts into the lodge, while catching all the bad ones in her web and perishing them in the pure dawn of giizis.

Dream catchers for infants and children were made of willow and sinew, and not meant for permanence. The willow eventually dried out and the tension of the sinew collapses. This represents the temporary state of youth. Adult dream catchers were made of woven fibers to last many years and reflect the strength of their dreams.

It was traditional to weave a feather in the center of a child’s dream catcher; it means breath or air which is essential for life. It was thought a baby watching the air playing with the feather would be entertained and learn the importance of good air. The feathers were gender specific, an owl feather for females (for wisdom) and an eagle feather for males (for courage). Gems woven into the fibers represented the four directions of the wind.

If you believe as the Ojibwe did, that the night is filled with good and bad dreams, then place a dream catcher over your bed. Allow it to swing freely in the air with the feathers floating down, to guide good dreams into your sleepy mind. Then sleep well knowing your nightmares will perish with the dawn.

Dream Catchers over my bed. One for me and one for my husband. Photo owned by PR Mace

Dream Catcher in my guest bedroom. Photo owned by PR Mace

Stonemasons were the founding fathers and original members. Today, it is not a requirement to be a true Masona member of the Brotherhood of the principles of social work, self-improvement and self-awareness are. They were behind the creation of public schools in America and Europe.

In selecting the membership of a Masonic lodge, there are a number of Masonic jewels that a member may have and take. The classic traditional piece is the signet ring, but there are other alternative options. For the member who already has a ring Lodge, other gift options are twins, pocket watches, tie pins and even what to do. These can all carry the same value and emblems as the rings. Symbols are very important in Freemasonry and the degree of group member ordered the lodge and what the member wants to say about its membership. The most common signs and symbols of the compass and square, to represent the foundation of Freemasonry.

The main focus of these tools is the letter G which means and stands for geometry, a principle of Freemasonry, and also for God, the original makers and manufacturer. Some other tools of the trade are found in Jewelers Masonic trowel, the level of lead and Columns. There are many kinds of symbols, choose the design of various pieces.

Only group members are allowed to wear the jewelry, but there are some cases where it is passed like antique jewelry Masonic family heirlooms. As for how to wear accessories or the rings around, there are no specific rules on the right track. Some members like to wear emblems of them, but others like to wear them outside to see just for others to see it. Married men usually wear their Masonic rings on the ring finger of his right hand.

By Mr Ghaz, August 14, 2010

Image Credit

From The Grave: A week after Raymond Lodge died in 1915; his spirit allegedly began to communicate with his family. On one occasion, the spirit was able to tell his mother of existence of a photograph (above) that was unknown to her. (Raymond is in the front row, second from right.) Raymond also pointed out an error on his memorial plaque (right): he had died on a Tuesday, not a Wednesday.

Proof From The Beyond? Did Raymond Lodge Communicate With His Family from Beyond The Grave?

Image Credit

Raymond Lodge became more famous after his death than he had ever been in life. In a best-selling book published in 1916, Sir Oliver Lodge, Raymond’s father and one of Britain’s most prominent scientists, claimed that his son was regular communication with him from beyond the grave.

Raymond Lodge was Sir Oliver’s youngest son. He enlisted in the British Army in September 1914, soon after the outbreak of World War I, A little more than a year later; the 25-year-old officer was dead, killed by a shell fragment in the front line trenches in Belgium.

Image Credit

Yet within days Raymond, who had been close to his family and sent home many letters from the front, was apparently in touch with his grief stricken parents. But this time his communications were through mediums: men and women who profess to be able to communicate with the dead.

Hoping to Bear

Image Credit

Image Credit

Sir Oliver was an experienced researcher into paranormal phenomena and a former president of the British Society for psychical Research. He needed no convincing that communication with the dead was possible. He and his wife, Lady Mary, began a series of sittings with mediums, hoping to receive a message from Raymond.

Image Credit

They seem to have had little trouble making contact with their son, who painted an extraordinary picture of the spirit world. He called it Summer-land and said it was a place where the dead were allowed time to recover from the shock of death. The deceased were reunited with relatives who had died earlier. Raymond himself, the medium reported had found a brother and sister waiting for him, and the first person to welcome him to his new existence had been his grandfather.

Image Credit

Raymond’s surrounding seemed to be much like those on earth. He described hoe he lived in “a house built of bricks – and there are trees and flowers, and the ground is solid.” There were libraries and rivers, and newcomers were allowed to wear earthly clothes, although most people were dressed in white robes. Even cigars and whiskey were available for those who craved them.

Intimate Details

Image Credit

Sir Oliver approached the sittings in a scientific manner, taking careful notes and visiting mediums anonymously to prevent any charlatans among them from gathering information about him in advance. Gradually he accumulated the proof, he believed, that his son did continue to exist and was communicating with him.

Image Credit

In many instances Raymond the spirit seemed to display an impressive knowledge of details of his earthly life. Mediums told Sir Oliver, correctly, that Raymond had been nicknamed Pat by his brothers, and that he had been in the habit of calling his teammates Norman during hockey games. He also accurately described the drawing room of his home, which the medium had never visited. He even knew the name of the family’s pet peacock and was able to describe a tent and a sand yacht that he and his brothers had built during their seaside holidays.

Image Credit

Sir Oliver admitted that many of these facts about Raymond could have been unconsciously transmitted to the mediums by living people through telepathy. One piece of evidence, however, could not be explained away so easily.

Image Credit

On September 27, 1915, a medium told Lady Mary that Raymond was talking about a photograph in which he was one of a group. Lady Mary did not remember such a photograph and assumed that the medium had made a mistake. But two months later Lady Mary received a letter from the mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers. The woman wrote that Raymond had been photographed with members of his regiment a few months before his death, and asked if Lady Mary would like a copy of it.

Image Credit

Before the picture arrived, Sir Oliver asked a few questions about it at a séance. Through the medium, Raymond told him that the photograph had been taken against “a black background with lines at the back of them.” Raymond also said that while they were posing “someone wanted to lean on him, but he was not sure if he was taken with someone leaning on him.”

Image Credit

When the photograph arrived, Raymond was seen with a group of officers in front of a wooden building: the roof timbers formed vertical lines behind the group. Far more astonishing to Sir Oliver, however, was that the officer sitting behind Raymond appeared to be leaning on him. Why had Raymond been uncertain as to whether or not this had happened when the picture was taken? The group had been photographed three times; in one of the frames no one was leaning on Raymond.

Proof from the Beyond?

Image Credit

Did Raymond communicate with his family from beyond the grave? Although the spirits Raymond did seem to have intimate knowledge of parts of his life, he was surprisingly vague about many important details. And skeptics point out that the incident of the photograph may have been no more than the result of a couple of lucky guesses on the part of the medium.

Image Credit

But Sir Oliver and his family had no doubts. And the story of Raymond is still quoted by spiritualists as irrefutable evidence that the human personality survives bodily death.

On October 5, President Kennedy issued a final policy directive that remained in effect until the Diem coup on November 1:

“President today approved recommendation that no initiative should now be taken to give any active covert encouragement to a coup. There should however be, urgent, covert effort…to identify and build contacts with possible alternative leadership…Essential that this effort be totally secure and fully deniable.”

On October 24, Lodge sent CIA contact Conein to meet with General Don one more time to discuss progress of the coup, which now was planned for the week leading up to November 2. The coup had entered its final stage and Lodge had one more meeting to attend to: that with the President of the Republic. Lodge met Diem on October 28. He described him as “very likeable.” In an act of extreme duplicity Lodge responded to Diem’s accusations, that anti-GVN activity was being conducted by agencies of the American government, by coldly insisting that should he have any proof of “improper action by any employee of the U.S. government…I will see he leaves Vietnam.” Presumably, he was not referring to himself.

On October 30, Lodge sent one more cable about an imminence of a coup, concluding once more that the U.S. was in no position to stop or delay a coup. While the President’s security adviser William Bundy cabled a response denying that this was the case, the window for action had been closed and the coup was imminent. On November 1, General Harkins received the first report of the coup taking place, with “with the central police station being seized. Diem, upon hearing of the coup, called the ambassador asking him what the opinion of the U.S. government was:

• Diem: Some unites have made a rebellion and I want to know: What is the attitude of the U.S.?

• Lodge: I do not feel well enough informed to be able to tell you. Also, it is 4:30 a.m. in Washington and U.S. government cannot possibly have a view.

• Diem: But you must have some general ideas. After all, I am a chief of state. I have tried to do my duty.

• Lodge: You have certainly done your duty…I admire your courage and your great contributions to your country…Now I am worried about your physical safety…

• Diem: You have my telephone number?

• Lodge: Yes. If I can do anything for your physical safety, please call me.

• Diem I’m trying to re-establish order.

After the phone call with Diem, Lodge sent a cable to Washington describing events so far. Diem never did re-establish order. He escaped with his brother Nhu from the besieged Presidential palace and fled to a hideout in Dalat, the same city where Lodge and Diem had dedicated a nuclear reactor only three days earlier. Diem was subsequently captured by the army at a Catholic church in Dalat. He was killed soon after.

President Kennedy, upon hearing the death of Diem, “leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face…he always insisted that Diem must never suffer more than exile. In a taped recording on November 4, President Kennedy took personal responsibility for the death of Diem and added that Lodge had been inclined from early august to remove Diem from office. For Lodge, the coup provided him an opportunity to reflect on the events of the past three months in Vietnam. It also allowed Lodge to defend his role to the Kennedy administration and to reassure himself that he had made the right decisions:

“At the time of the pagodas raids of August 21, U.S.G. and GVN seemed to be totally deadlocked…We were being totally taken for granted by the GVN…There is no doubt that the coup was a Vietnamese and a popular affair, which we could neither manage nor stop after it got started…But it is equally certain that the ground in which the coup seed grew into a robust plant was prepared by us and that the coup would not have happened [when] it did without our preparation…All this may be a useful lesson in the use of U.S. power for those who face similar situation in other places in the future…Perhaps the U.S. government has here evolved a way of not being everywhere saddled with responsibility for autocratic governments simply because they are anti-communist…Clearly the coup has brought about change; let us hope it will turn out to be a great improvement…Our actions were not ‘colonial’ and when Madame Nhu accused me of acting like the Governor General of Indochina, it did not ring true.”

In the next three years, South Vietnam experienced four more coups. Relative stability returned only with the regime of Thieu in 1967. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And Ambassador Lodge continued his term as ambassador until 1964 and was re-elected to that position by President Johnson in 1965.

In response to Lodge, the State Department approved what became known as the “August memo,” a highly controversial shift in policy that elicited disagreements immediately after it was first drafted and denials years later. The memo, drafted August 24th, is quoted here extensively given its importance in narrowing the plane of possibilities and subsequent rhetoric, from tolerance of the Diem regime to a Coup as an only acceptable alternative:

“U.S. government cannot tolerate situation in which power lies in Nhu’s hands. Diem must be given chance to rid himself of Nhu and his coterie and replace them with best military and political personalities available. If, in spite of all your efforts, Diem remains obdurate and refuses, then we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved…Concurrently with above, Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem’s replacement.”

It did not take long before sharp disagreements erupted within the top echelons of the Kennedy administration, primarily from the military establishment. General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1962-1964), thought the memo did not give enough opportunity for Diem to reform, that the various departments did not have enough input into the writing of the memo and finally, that the memo reflected “the well-known compulsion of Hillsman (assistant Secretary of State) and Forrestal (member of the National Security Council) to depose Diem.” Indeed, this memo hinted at a schism that would exist throughout the Kennedy administration’s involvement in Vietnam: the State Department and other civilian officials on the one hand, with the Military leaders and the CIA on the other.

Lodge himself addressed the memo later by offering a partial repudiation of it. Writing in his memoir The Storm Has Many Eyes in 1973, Lodge referred to a 1967 Defense Department study which quoted the August memo, concluding that the U.S. had “variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged” a coup. Lodge denied this, claiming that that memo had not been approved “at the highest levels” and that in any case, a subsequent memo on August 30 had in effect cancelled any previous instructions about launching a coup. Lodge did not specify in his memoir which memo he was making reference to. But surveying the documents from the day in mention, one can find no such repudiation; in fact, one memo dated August 29th sent to Lodge from the DOS specifically stated that the United States government would support a coup if it had a good chance of succeeding. Furthermore, there really was no doubt whether the memo had been approved “at the highest levels,” given that President Kennedy himself subsequently regretted having approved it to begin with.

The August memo, in retrospect, was a point of no return. While concretely, it could have been easily reversed by a simple pronouncement from the President (this would never be forthcoming in any event), it had done its damage by legitimizing a Coup as a possible course of action to be taken. The rhetoric of a Coup had now been introduced and it served to remove any remaining psychological barriers to its use. The irrevocable slide towards the events of November 1st began and Ambassador Lodge wasted no time.