Podcasts about zoroastrian

Questions? Comments? Text Us!Jerry shares his fascinating revelations during prayer concerning the prophet Zoroaster's profound encounter with the divine.Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest known monotheistic religions, but few know its rich history—largely preserved through oral tradition—that allows us to understand what God was communicating to Zoroaster through the cosmic battle between good and evil.In this powerful narrative, we're introduced to the figure of Ahura Mazda—the embodiment of wisdom and goodness—and His counterpart, the Hostile Spirit, often perceived as God's “evil twin.” This story dives into the eternal struggle between light and darkness, a central theme in Zoroastrian belief and one still deeply relevant to the modern spiritual seeker.Join us as we explore these ancient revelations and how they continue to echo in our understanding of the divine, the nature of evil, and the choices our souls are called to make.Are you paying attention? Visit godanautobiography.com for more information and to get your copy of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher — the true story of an agnostic philosopher who heard the voice of God and recorded their conversations.Other Series:The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:Life Wisdom Project: How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You: Calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind: What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "You Could Be Wrong."FROM GOD TO JERRY TO YOU PLAYLISTWould you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God!#fromgodtojerrytoyou #FGTJTY #godanautobiographythepodcast #experiencegod #SpiritualAwakeningShare Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Welcome to the Psychedelic Conversations Podcast!Episode 156:In this episode, we explore the powerful concept of "Endarkenment" with philosopher Alexander Bard and artist Owen Cox. Together, we dive deep into the cultural, historical, and spiritual forces shaping modern psychedelic and artistic movements, including the emergence of a "Dark Renaissance." We unpack Britain's unique relationship with psychedelics, reflect on the decline of urban centers, and question conventional spirituality through the lens of shadow, myth, and radical transformation. From cybernetics to Celtic paganism, from Zoroastrian insights to gender dynamics in spiritual practice—this is a rich, unfiltered dialogue about embracing the darkness as a necessary path toward true integration and awakening. Join us for this provocative and inspiring conversation that challenges mainstream narratives and opens new portals of thought.About Alex:Alexander Bard is a philosopher, artist, songwriter and music producer, author of six books with Jan Söderqvist, living in Stockholm, Sweden. Bard built his career as a philosopher in parallel with a highly successful 25-years-plus career in the international music industry. Bard & Söderqvist's philosophy concentrates on the relationship between human beings and technology, using human beings as the constant throughout civilization, with technology as the ever faster changing variable. Their work takes inspiration from thinkers like Hegel, Nietzsche, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Eastern philosophy and spirituality, in the latter case adding Persia to the well known triad of India, China and Japan. They are convinced philosophy will be the last human activity to ever be affected by AI.About Owen:Owen Cox is a British artist and one of the creative leaders of the Dark Renaissance. He works primarily with text, music and more recently theatre, weaving themes of body horror, esotericism, classical culture and electronic media. Connect with Alex:Website: http://syntheism.com/Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/alexander.bard?_rdc=1&_rdr#Speakersnet: https://speakersnet.se/speakers/alexander-bard/Thank you so much for joining us! Psychedelic Conversations Podcast is designed to educate, inform, and expand awareness.For more information, please head over to https://www.psychedelicconversations.comPlease share with your friends or leave a review so that we can reach more people and feel free to join us in our private Facebook group to keep the conversation going. https://www.facebook.com/groups/psychedelicconversationsThis show is for information purposes only, and is not intended to provide mental health or medical advice.About Susan Guner:Susan Guner is a holistic psychotherapist with a mindfulness-based approach grounded in Transpersonal Psychology, focusing on trauma-informed, community-centric processes that offer a broader understanding of human potential and well-being.Connect with Susan:Website: https://www.psychedelicconversations.com/Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/susan.gunerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-guner/Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/susangunerTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/susangunerBlog: https://susanguner.medium.com/Podcast: https://anchor.fm/susan-guner#PsychedelicConversations #OwenCox #AlexanderBard

Al Fadi and Brother Mel continue their talk about the connection between Islam and the Zoroastrian religion of Persia. Today they talk about the myth of the Buraq; which Muslims believe it is a flying horse, which took Mohammad to Jerusalem to Al Aqsa mosque and then to heaven. The origin of the name is Persian which means : A riding animal, a rider or a horse. In Zoroastrianism a demon god rides on a horse. This shows the willingness of Islam to copy other religions. They also touch on the origin of the names Aisha and Fatima. They think that they are Jewish names of two wives of Ishmael according to the Jewish Tergum. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode we continue to follow the monk Xuanzang on his path along the silk road.  From Gaochang, he traveled through the Tarim Basin, up over the Tianshan Mountains, to the heart of the Western Gokturk Qaghanate.  From there, he traveled south, through the region of Transoxania to Bactria and the land of Tukhara.  He pushed on into the Hindu Kush, witnessing the stone Buddha statues of Bamiyan, and eventually made his way to the land of Kapisa, near modern Kabul, Afghanistan.  From there he would prepare to enter the Indian subcontinent: the home of the historical Buddha. For more discussion and some photos of the areas along this journey, check out our podcast blog at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-121   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 121: Journey to the West, Part 2   The cold winds blew through the travelers' doubled up clothing and thick furs.  Cold, wet ground meant that even two sets of boots were not necessarily enough after several days.  The frozen mist would often obscure everything except for the path immediately in front, hiding the peaks and making the sky a uniform white. In many places, the path would be blocked by rock, ice, or snow—the remnants of an avalanche, which could easily take an unsuspecting traveler.  And there was the elevation.  Hiking through the mountains, it was easy enough to reach heights of a mile or higher, and for those not accustomed to that elevation the thin air could take a surprising toll, especially if you were pushing yourself.  And the road was no less kind to the animals that would be hauling said travelers and their gear. And yet, this was the path that Xuanzang had agreed to.  He would continue to push through, despite the various deprivations that he would be subjected to.  No doubt he often wondered if it was worth it.  Then again, returning was just as dangerous a trip, so why not push on?   Last episode we introduced the monk Xuanzang, who traveled the Silk Road to India in the 7th century and returned to China.  He brought back numerous sutras to translate, and ended up founding a new school, known as the Faxian school—or the Hossou school in Japan.   As we mentioned last time, Xuanzang during his lifetime met with students from the archipelago when they visited the continent.  The records of his travels—including his biography and travelogue—are some of the best information we have on what life was like on the silk road around this time. In the last episode, we talked about Xuanzang: how he set out on his travels, his illegal departure from the Tang empire, and his perilous journey across the desert, ending up in Gaochang.  There, King Qu Wentai had tried to get him to stay, but he was determined to head out.  This episode we are going to cover his trip to Agni, Kucha, and Baluka—modern Aksu—and up to the Western Gokturk Qaghanate's capital of Suyab.  From there, we'll follow his footsteps through the Turkic controlled regions of Transoxania and into Tukhara, in modern Afghanistan.  Finally, we'll cover the last parts of his journey before he reached the start of his goal:  India. From Gaochang, Xuanzang continued on, through the towns he names as Wuban and Dujin, and into the country of Agni—known today as the area of Yanqi—which may also have been known as Wuqi.  The route was well-enough known, but it wasn't necessarily safe.  At one point, Xuanzang's caravan met with bandits, whom they were fortunately able to pay off.  The following night they encamped on a river bank with some merchants who also happened to be traveling the road.  The merchants, though, got up at midnight and headed out, hoping to get to the city early so that they could be the first ones to the market.  They only made it a few miles down the road, however, before they encountered more bandits, who slaughtered them and took their goods.  The following day, Xuanzang and his retinue came upon the merchants' remains lying in the road and saw the aftermath of the massacre. This was an unforgiving land, and the road was truly dangerous, even for those who traveled it regularly.  And yet Xuanzang was planning to travel its entire length until he reached India. So with little alternative, they carried on to the royal city of Agni. Agni, or Yanqi, sits on the southwestern edge of the basin, west of Bositeng lake, on the border between the Turfan basin and the larger Tarim Basin.  The name is thought to be a Tocharian—or Turfanian—name for the city, which is also known as Karashr. According to the biography by Huili, Xuanzang and his party didn't stay long in Agni.  Apparently Agni and Gaochang were not exactly on friendly terms, and even though the King of Agni and his ministers reportedly came out to greet Xuanzang and welcome him to their city, they refused to provide any horses.  They spent a single night and moved on. That said, Agni still made an impression on Xuanzang.  He noted how the capital was surrounded by hills on four sides, making it naturally defensible.  As for the people, he praises them as honest and straightforward.  They wore clothing of felt and hemp cloth, and cut their hair short, without hats or any kind of headwear.  Even the climate was pleasant, at least for the short time he was there.  He also notes that they used a script based on India—likely referring to the Brahmic script, which we find in the Tarim basin. However, as for the local lord, the King of Agni, he is a little less charitable.  Xuanzang claimed he was brave but “lacked resourcefulness” and he was a bit of a braggart.  Furthermore, the country had “no guiding principles or discipline and government orders are imperfect and not seriously implemented.”  He also mentioned the state of Buddhism in the country, noting that they were followers of Sarvastivada school, a Theravada sect popular along the Silk Road at the time.  Xuanzang was apparently not too pleased with the fact that they were not strict vegetarians, including the “three kinds of pure meat”.  From Agni, Xuanzang continued southwest, heading for the kingdom of Kucha.  He seems to have bypassed the nearby kingdom of Korla, south of Agni, and headed some 60 or 70 miles, climbing over a ridge and crossing two large rivers, and then proceeding another 200 miles or so to the land of Kucha. Kucha was a kingdom with over one hundred monasteries and five thousand monks following a form of Theravada Buddhism.  Here, Xuanzang was welcomed in by the king, Suvarnadeva, described as having red hair and blue eyes.  While Xuanzang was staying in Kucha, it is suspected that he probably visited the nearby Kizil grotto and the Buddhist caves, there, which include a painting of King Suvarnadeva's father, King Suvarnapuspa, and his three sons. You can still visit Kucha and the Kizil grottos today, although getting there is quite a trek, to be sure.  The ancient Kuchean capital is mostly ruins, but in the Kizil caves, protected from the outside elements, you can find vivid paintings ranging from roughly the 4th to the 8th century, when the site was abandoned.  Hundreds of caves were painted, and many still demonstrate vibrant colors.  The arid conditions protect them from mold and mildew, while the cave itself reduces the natural bleaching effect of sunlight.  The paintings are in numerous styles, and were commissioned by various individuals and groups over the years.  They also give us some inkling of how vibrant the city and similar structures must have been, back when the Kuchean kingdom was in its heyday. The people of Kucha are still something of a mystery.  We know that at least some of them spoke an Indo-European language, related to a language found in Agni, and both of these languages are often called Tocharian, which we discussed last episode.  Xuanzang himself noted that they used Indian writing, possibly referring to the Brahmi script, or perhaps the fact that they seem to have used Sanskrit for official purposes, such as the inscription on the cave painting at Kizil giving the name of King Suvarnapuspa.  The Kucheans also were clothed in ornamental garments of silk and embroidery.  They kept their hair cut, wearing a flowing covering over their heads—and we see some of that in the paintings. Xuanzang also notes that though we may think of this area as a desert, it was a place where rice and grains, as well as fruit like grapes, pomegranates, plums, pears, peaches, and almonds were grown.  Even today, modern Xinjiang grows some absolutely fantastic fruit, including grapes, which are often dried into raisins. Another point of interest for Xuanzang may have been that Kucha is known as the hometown of none other than Kumarajiva.  We first mentioned Kumarajiva back in episode 84.  Kumarajiva was one of the first people we know of who translated many of the sutras from India that were then more widely disseminated throughout the Yellow River and Yangzi river basins.  His father was from India and his mother was a Kuchean princess.  In the middle of the 4th century, when he was still quite young, he traveled to India and back with his mother on a Buddhist pilgrimage.  Later he would start a massive translation project in Chang'an.  His translations are credited with revolutionizing Chinese Buddhism. Xuanzang was initially welcomed by the king, his ministers, and the revered monk, Moksagupta.  They were accompanied by several thousand monks who set up tents outside the eastern gate, with portable Buddha images, which they worshipped, and then Xuanzang was taken to monastery after monastery until sunset.  At one of the monasteries, in the southeast of the city, there were several tens of monks who originally came from Gaochang, and since Xuanzang had come from there, they invited him to stay with them. The next day he met and feasted with the King, politely declining any meat, and then went to the monastery in the northwest to meet with the famous monk: Moksagupta.  Moksagupta himself had made the journey to India, and had spent 20 years there himself.  It seems like this would have been the perfect person for Xuanzang to talk to about his plans, but instead, the two butted heads.  Moksagupta seems to have seen Xuanzang's Mahayana faith as heretical.  He saw no reason for Xuanzang to travel all the way to India when he had all the sutras that anyone needed there in Kucha, along with Moksagupta himself.   Xuanzang's response seems to have been the Tang dynasty Buddhist version of “Okay, Boomer”, and then he went ahead and tore apart Moksagupta's understanding of his own sutras—or so Xuanzang relayed to his biographers.  We don't exactly have Moksagupta's side, and, let's face it, Xuanzang and his biographers are not necessarily reliable narrators.  After all, they followed Mahayana teachings, which they considered the “Greater Vehicle”, and they referred to the Theravada teachings as the “Hinayana” or “Lesser Vehicle”.  Meanwhile, Theravada Buddhists likely saw many of the Mahayana texts as extraneous, even heretical, not believing them to actually be the teachings of the Buddha. It must have been winter time, as the passes through the mountains on the road ahead were still closed, and so Xuanzang stayed in Kucha, spending his time sightseeing and meeting with various people.  He even went back to see Moksagupta, but the older monk shunned him, and would get up and exit the room rather than engaging with him, so they had no more conversations. Eventually, Xuanzang continued on his way west, following along the northern rim of the Tarim basin.  Two days out from Kucha, disaster struck.  Some two thousand or so Turkish bandits suddenly appeared—I doubt Xuanzang was counting, so it may have been more or less.  I imagine that memories of what had happened to the merchants near Agni must have gone through Xuanzang's mind.   Fortunately, for him, they were fighting over loot that they had pillaged from various travelers, and since they couldn't share it equally, they fell to fighting each other and eventually dispersed. He travelled for almost 200 miles after that, stopping only for a night at the Kingdom of Baluka, aka Gumo—the modern city of Aksu.  This was another Theravada Buddhist kingdom.  Xuanzang noted tens of Buddhist temples, and over 1000 Buddhist monks.  The country was not large—about 200 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south.  For reference that means it was probably comparable in size with Kyushu, in terms of overall area, or maybe the size of Denmark—excluding Greenland—or maybe the US state of Maryland.  Xuanzang described the country as similar to Kucha in just about every way, including the written language and law, but the spoken language was different, though we don't get many more details. From Baluka, he crossed northward through the Tianshan mountains, which are classified as an extension of the Pamirs known as the Ice Mountains.  Had he continued southwest, he would have hit Kashgar and crossed over between the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges into the Ferghana valley, but instead he turned north. We don't know exactly why he took this perilous option, but the route that may have been popular at the time as it was one of the most direct routes to the seat of the Western Gokturk Empire, which he was currently traveling through. The Tian Shan mountains were a dangerous journey.  Avalanches could block the road—or worse.  Xuanzang describes the permanent ice fields—indeed, it is the ice fields and glaciers of the Tian Shan that melt in the summer and provide the oasis towns of the Tarim Basin with water, even to this day.  In Xuanzang's day, those glaciers were likely even more prevalent than today, especially as they have been recorded as rapidly disappearing since 1961.  And where you weren't on snow and ice, the ground was probably wet and damp from the melt.  To keep warm, you would wear shoes over your shoes, along with heavy fur coats, all designed to reduce exposure. Xuanzang claims that 3 or 4 of every 10 people didn't survive the crossing—and that horses and oxen fared even worse.  Even if these numbers are an exaggeration, the message is clear:  This was a dangerous journey. After about seven days, Xuanzang came out of the mountains to the “Great Pure Lake”, the “Da Qing Hai”, also known as the Hot Sea or the Salt Sea, which likely refers to Issyk Kul.  The salt content, along with the great volume of water it possesses, means that the lake rarely freezes over, which is likely why it is seen as “hot” since it doesn't freeze when the fresh water nearby does.  This lake is the second largest mountain lake in the world, and the second deepest saltwater lake.  Traveling past the lake, he continued to Suyab, near modern Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, just west of the modern capital of Bishkek.  This was an old Sogdian settlement, and had since become the capital of the Western Gokturks.  Sogdians—like Xuanzang's guide, Vandak—were integral to the Gokturk kingdom. Their language was the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and at the time of the Gokturk Khaganate, it was also the official court language, and so when Xuanzang appeared at the court of the Great Khagan of the Western Gokturks, it was likely the language of diplomacy. When we think of Turkic people, many in the English speaking world think of Turkiye, and perhaps of the mighty Ottoman empire.  Some may think of Turkmenistan, Kazhakstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Uzbekistan, among others.  And of course, there are the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.  All of these people claim roots in the ancestral Turkic homeland in the Altai mountains, which sit largely in western Mongolia, north of China's Xinjiang region.  Much like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, they were pastoral nomads, moving their herds across the steppes, often covering great distances.  They would regularly move through different regions, perhaps returning each season, though sometimes not returning for years at a time.  They were often seen as barbarians by settled people living in cities, and yet their goods and horses were highly prized. Nomad and sedentary lifestyles would often collide.  Farmers would turn pastureland into fields, and when the nomadic people returned on their circuits, they would find walls and fences where there was once open land, and the people there would claim to “own” the land, a concept often foreign to people who were always on the move.  Nomadic people, such as the Gokturks, were not necessarily keeping vast libraries of records about themselves and their histories, and so much of what we get comes from external sources, which do not always have incredibly reliable narrators.  To many of the settled agriculturalists, groups like the Turks were marauders who raided their villages and farms.  They were a great bogeyman of the steppes, which required the firm hand of strong defenses to keep out—or so their opponents would want people to think. While they were known for their warfare, which incorporated their mobility, but they were keenly interested in trade, as well.  They understood the value of the trade routes and the various cities and states that they included in their empire.  Thus, the Sogdians and the Gokturks seem a natural fit: the Sogdians were more settled, but not entirely so, as demonstrated by their vast trade networks.  And the Sogdians also were part of the greater central Eurasian steppe culture, so the two cultures understood each other, to a degree.  They are even depicted similarly in art, with slight differences, such as long hair that was often associated with Turks over the Sogdians.  In some areas of the Gokturk empire, Sogdians would run the cities, while the Gokturks provided military aid and protection. Xuanzang's description of the people of Suyab, or the “City of Suye River”, doesn't pick out anyone in particular, and he even says that it was a place where traders of the Hu, or foreign, tribes from different countries mingle their abodes.  He mentions the people here as being called Suli, which is also the name given to the language—this may refer to “Sogdian” in general.  They write with an alphabet that is written vertically rather than horizontally—this may refer to a few scripts that were written this way, possibly based off Syriac or Aramaic alphabets that were adapted to Sogdian and other Iranian languages, but it isn't clear. We are told that the people dressed in felt and hemp clothing, with fur and “cotton” garments.  Their clothes fit tightly, and they kept their hair cut short, exposing the top of their heads—though sometimes they shaved it completely, tying a colored silk band around the forehead. He goes on to describe these people as greedy liars, possibly a reference to the mercantile nature of many of the people at the time. Something to note: The Turks of this time had not yet encountered Islam, which was just now starting to rise up in the Middle East.  The Prophet Muhammad is said to have been born around the end of the 6th century CE and was preaching in the early 7th century, though his teachings would begin to spread outward soon enough.  But that means that the Gokturks were not an Islamic empire.  Rather, their own traditions seem to have focused on the worship of Tengri, an Altaic personification of the universe, often simplified as a “sky god”.  Tengrism can be found amongst the Xiongnu, Mongols, and others, and it was the national religion of the Gokturks themselves, but there were many who also adopted other religions that they encountered, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Buddhism.  In fact, Xuanzang notes that the Turks he met in Suyab would not sleep or sit on beds made of wood because wood was thought to contain the spirit of fire, which he says they worshipped.  That sounds similar to Zoroastrian beliefs, where fire is associated with Ahura Mazda, who is also worshipped as a sky god.  These may have been beliefs inherited from their Eastern Iranian Sogdian partners. In Xuanzang's biography, we are given more details about his visit to Suyab.  Apparently, as he was headed to the city, he met a hunting party, which we are told was the retinue of Yehu Khan.  Hunting was an important part of life on the steppes, and it continued to be a favorite sport of the Gokturk nobility. Yehu Khan—possibly Yagbhu Khan, though that is up for some debate—is described as being dressed in a green silk robe, with his hair exposed, and wearing  a turban of white silk about ten feet long that wrapped his forehead and hung behind his back.  His “hunting” expedition wasn't just a couple of the guys.  It included about 200 officials, all with plaited hair and dressed in brocade robes—they weren't exactly out there roughing it.  He also had his soldiers, dressed in furs, felt, or fine woolen clothes, and there were so many cavalry that they stretched out of sight.  The Khan seemed pleased to meet Xuanzang, but his hunt was expected to last another couple of days, at least, so he sent an attendant named Dharmaja to take Xuanzang back to wait for the Khan to return. Three days later, Xuanzang was given an audience.  The khan was seated in a large yurt.  Xuanzang noted the seeming incongruity between the khan, sitting there in the tent, decorated with golden flowers, with the officials dressed in magnificent brocade garments sitting in two long rows in front of him and the armed guards behind him, compared to the simple felt walls of the tent. A ”yurt” is a common feature of nomadic life on the steppes.  It wasn't exactly a single person operation to haul them around, but they can be taken down and put up with relative ease.  And while yurts could be relatively simple, there are examples of much more elaborate structures.  There is little reason they couldn't be made larger, perhaps with some extra support.  In later centuries, there are examples of giant yurts that seem like real construction projects.  Use of tents, even in a city, where they had permanent palace buildings, was likely a means of retaining the nomadic steppe traditions, even while enjoying the benefits of city life. Whom exactly Xuanzang met with is a matter of debate.  His records seem to indicate that it was Tong Yabghu Qaghan of the Western Gokturk Khaganate, but other sources say that Tong Yabghu Qaghan died in 628, and the earliest Xuanzang could have been meeting with him was 630, two years later, so if that is the case, he must have met with Tong Yabghu's son, Si Yabghu Qaghan.  It is likely that Xuanzang, who was dictating his accounts years after, mentioned the Qaghan and then, when they looked up who it was, they simply made a mistake.  Remember, Xuanzang would have had everything translated through one or two languages.  He did know what he saw, however, and he recounted what he remembered. Tong Yabghu Qaghan oversaw the height of the Gokturk Qaghanate, and appears to have favored the Buddhist religion, though there were many different religions active in their territories at the time.  They oversaw an extremely cosmopolitan empire covering huge swaths of central Eurasia, including the lucrative silk road.  Xuanzang notes that at the court there were individuals from Gaochang and even a messenger from the Han—which is to say the Tang Empire.  One wonders if Xuanzang—or anyone at that time—realized just how tenuous the Khan'sposition was.  After Tong Yabghu's death, the Qaghanate would decline, and less than a decade later it would fall to the Tang dynasty, who took Suyab and made it their western outpost.  In fact, Suyab is thought to have been the birthplace, over a century later, of a young boy who would find a love of poetry.  That boy's name was Li Bai, or Ri Haku, in Japanese. He would become one of the most famous poets in Chinese history, and his poems were even known and studied in Japan.  And it was largely through Japanese study of Li Bai's poems that his works came to the English speaking world: first through Ernest Fenollosa, who had studied in Japan, and then by the celebrated Ezra Pound, who had used Ernest's notes to help with his own translations of the poems. This was, though, as I said, over a century after Xuanzang's journey.  At the time of our story, the Qaghan was throwing a feast, including Xuanzang and all of the foreign envoys.  Xuanzang comments on the food and drink—his hosts provided grape juice in lieu of wine, and cooked a special vegetarian feast just for him, while the other guests ate a feast of meat, such as veal, lamb, fish, and the like.  There was also the music of various regions along the Silk Road, which Xuanzang found to be catchy, but of course not as refined as the music he was used to, of course.  After dinner Xuanzang was asked to expound upon the Darma, largely about the basic principle that you should be kind to one another—I doubt he was getting into the deep mysteries of Buddhist philosophy. Xuanzang stuck around the court for three more days, during which time the Qaghan tried to get him to stay, but Xuanzang insisted that he had to make it to India.  And so the Qaghan relented.  He found men in his army who could translate for Xuanzang along his journey, and had letters of introduction written to at least as far as the state of Kapisa, in modern Afghanistan. And so, armed with the Qaghan's blessing and a fresh translator, Xuanzang struck out again.  They headed westward for over one hundred miles, eventually reaching Bingyul, aka the Thousand Springs.  This is the area where the Qaghan and his court would spend his summers, and the deer in the area were protected under his orders, so that they were not afraid of humans—which sounds similar to the situation with the deer in Nara.  Continuing on another fifty miles or so—the distances are approximate as Xuanzang's primary duty was not exactly to map all of this out—Xuanzang arrived at the city of Taras, in modern Kazakhstan, another place where the cultures of the Silk Road mixed and mingled.  Xuanzang didn't have much to say about Taraz, apparently, though it is one of the oldest cities in Transoxania, founded near the beginning of the Common Era.  A few miles south of there, Xuanzang reportedly found a village of re-settled ethnic Han that had been captured by the Gokturks and settled here.  They had adopted the dress and customs of the Turkic people, but continued to speak a version of Chinese. Southwest of that he reached the City of White Water, likely referring to Aksukent.  This is the same “Aksu” as the city in Xinjiang, both of which mean “White Water” in Turkic, but this one is in the south of Kazakhstan.  Xuanzang found the climate and products an improvement over what he had experienced in Taras.  Beyond that, he next arrived at the city of Gongyu, and then south again to Nujkend, and then traveling westward to the country of Chach, aka Tashkent.  Both Nujkend and Chach were large cities in nations of smaller, mostly autonomous city-states, which made up a lot of the political geography of Transoxania. I would note that Xuanzang's notes here are much more sparse than previously.  This may be because these were outside of the Tarim basin and therefore of less interest to individuals in the Tang empire.  Or perhaps he was just making his way more quickly and not stopping at every kingdom along the way. From Tashkent, he continued southeast to the Ferghana valley—the country of Feihan.  Oddly, this country doesn't appear in Xuanzang's biography, even though the Ferghana Valley seems to have been fairly well known back in the Tang Empire—it was known as the home of some of the best horses, which were one of its first major exports.  In fact, the Han dynasty even mounted a military expedition to travel to Ferghana just to obtain horses.  Xuanzang is oddly silent on this; however, he does talk about the fertile nature of the land.  He mentions that their language here is different from the lands he had been traveling through up to this point, and also points out that the people of the Ferghana valley were also visibly different from others in the area. From the Ferghana valley, Xuanzang headed west for about 300 miles or more to the land of Sutrushana—perhaps referring to the area of Ushrusana, with its capital of Bunjikat.  This country was also largely Sogdian, and described as similar to Tashkent.  From there, he traveled west through a great desert, passing skeletons, which were the only marker of the trail other than a view of the far off mountains.  Finally, they reached Samarkand, known as the country of “Kang” in Chinese, which was also the term used to mark Sogdians who claimed descent from the people of Samarkand. Samarkand is another of the ancient cities of Central Asia, and even today is the third largest city in modern Uzbekistan.  Human activity in the region goes back to the paleolithic era, and the city was probably founded between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.  Samarkand was conquered by Alexander the Great, and during the Achaemenid Empire it was the capital of Sogdiana.  During Xuanzang's visit, Samarkand was described as an impenetrable fortress with a large population. For all of his travel, Samarkand was the first place Xuanzang notes as specifically not a Buddhist land.  In fact, there were two monasteries, suggesting that there had been Buddhists, but if any monks tried to stay there then the locals would chase them out with fire.  Instead, they worshipped fire—likely meaning Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism.  This leads to a story that I have to wonder about, given the reliability of our narrators. It is said that Xuanzang was met by the King with arrogance, but after staying the night Xuanzang was able to tell the King about Buddhism and its merits.  The king was intrigued, and asked to observe the Precepts, and treated Xuanzang with hospitality and respect.  So when two of Xuanzang's attendants went to the monasteries to worship, they were chased out with fire.  When the king heard about this, he had the people arrested and ordered their hands to be cut off.  Xuanzang could not bear to witness such suffering, however, and he intervened to have them spared.  So instead the king had them flogged and banished from the city.  Ever since then, all the people believed in Buddhism. Some parts of this strike true.  It was likely that the king would entertain this strange wanderer who had arrived with letters from the great Qaghan—that may have even explained why Xuanzang had been encouraged to make the dangerous journey to Suyab in the first place, so that he could obtain such permission.  And it would not be strange for the king to listen to his teachings.  If Xuanzang's attendants were attacked, that would have been a huge breach of hospitality, and however the King felt about it, he no doubt had to do something about it.  And so all of that sounds somewhat believable.  Does that mean everyone suddenly converted to Buddhism?  I don't know that I'm quite willing to go that far.  It is also likely that there were Buddhists there already, even if the majority religion was Zoroastrianism. From Samarkand, Xuanzang traveled farther southwest, to the country of Kasanna, which seems to have been the edge of what we might call Sogdiana.   According to his biographers, however, there was a little more to all of this.  Rather, he headed west to Kusanika.  Then he traveled to  Khargan, and further on to the country of Bukhara, and then to Vadi.  All of these were “An” in Chinese, which was the name element used for Sogdians from this region.  He then continued west to the country of Horismika, on the other side of the Amu Darya, aka the Oxus River of Transoxanian fame. From there he traveled further southwest, entering into the mountains.  The path here was often such that they had to travel single-file, and there was no food or water other than what you brought with you.  Eventually they came to a set of doors, known as the Iron Gate.  This was a Turkic fortress.  It was no doubt fortuitous that he had come from his meeting with the Qaghan, and likely had permission to pass through.  From there, they entered the country of Tukhara. As we noted in Episode 119, Tukhara was in the region of Bactria.  It was bordered by the Pamir range in the east, and the Persian empire in the west.  There were also the Great Snow Mountains in the south, likely referencing the Hindu Kush. Tukhara had been conquered by the Gokturks just within the past couple of decades, and Xuanzang notes that the country had been split into largely autonomous city-states as the local royalty had died without an heir many years before.  With the Gokturk conquest, it was now administered by Tardu Shad, the son of Tong Yabghu Qaghan.  “Shad” in this case was a local title. Here, Xuanzang's narrative gets a little dicey, especially between his biography and his records.  The records of the Western Regions denotes various countries in this area.  It is unclear if he traveled to all of them or is just recounting them from records he obtained.  He does give us at least an overview of the people and the region.  I would also note that this is one of the regions he visited, again, on his return trip, and so may have been more familiar with the region than those areas he had passed through from Suyab on down. For one thing, he notes that the language of the region was different from that of the “Suli”, which appears to refer to the Sogdians.  This was the old territory of the Kushan empire, and they largely spoke Bactrian.  Like Sogdian, it was another Eastern Iranian language, and they used an alphabet based largely on Greek, and written horizontally rather than vertically.  They also had their own coins. This region had plenty of Buddhist communities, and Xuanzang describes the cities and how many monasteries they had, though, again, it isn't clear if he actually visited all of them or not.  These are countries that Li Rongji translates as “Tirmidh”, “Sahaaniyan”, “Kharuun”, “Shuumaan”, etc. It does seem that Xuanzang made it to the capital city, the modern city Kunduz, Afghanistan. Xuanzang actually had something specific for the local Gokturk ruler, Tardu Shad.  Tardu Shad's wife was the younger sister of King Qu Wentai of Gaochang, whom we met last episode.  Qu Wentai had provided Xuanzang a letter for his younger sister and her husband.  Unfortunately, Xuanzang arrived to learn that the princess of Gaochang had passed away, and Tardu Shad's health was failing.  It does seem that Tardu Shad was aware of Xuanzang, however—a letter had already come from Qu Wentai to let them know that Xuanzang was on his way.  As I mentioned last episode, letters were an important part of how communities stayed tied together.  Of course, given the perils of the road, one assumes that multiple letters likely had to be sent just in case they didn't make it.  The US Postal Service this was not. Tardu Shad, though not feeling well, granted an interview with Xuanzang.  He suggested that Xuanzang should stick around.  Then, once the Shad had recovered from his illness, he would accompany Xuanzang personally on his trip to India.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  While Xuanzang was staying there, he was witness to deadly drama.  Tardu Shad was recovering, which was attributed to the recitations by an Indian monk who was also there.  This outcome was not exactly what some in the court had wanted.  One of the Shad's own sons, known as the Tagin prince, plotted with the Shad's current wife, the young Khatun, and she poisoned her husband.  With the Shad dead, the throne might have gone to the son of the Gaochang princess, but he was still too young.  As such, the Tagin Prince was able to usurp the throne himself, and he married his stepmother, the young Khatun.  The funeral services for the late Tardu Shad meant that Xuanzang was obliged to stay at Ghor for over a month. During that time, Xuanzang had a seemingly pleasant interaction with an Indian monk.  And when he finally got ready to go, he asked the new Shad for a guide and horses.  He agreed, but also made the suggestion that Xuanzang should then head to Balkh.  This may have meant a bit of backtracking, but the Shad suggested that it would be worth it, as Balkh had a flourishing Buddhist community. Fortunately, there was a group of Buddhist monks from Balkh who happened to be in Kunduz to express their condolences at the passing of Tardu Shad, and they agreed to accompany Xuanzang back to their hometown, lest he end up getting lost and taking the long way there. The city of Balkh is also known as “Baktra”, as in “Bactria”, another name of this region.  A settlement has been there since at least 500 BCE , and it was already an important city when it was captured by Alexander the Great.  It sits at the confluence of several major trade routes, which no doubt were a big part of its success.  Xuanzang's biography notes that it was a massive city, though it was relatively sparsely populated—probably due to the relatively recent conquest by the Gokturks, which had occurred in the last couple of decades.  That said, there were still thousands of monks residing at a hundred monasteries in and around the city.  They are all characterized as monks of Theravada schools.  Southwest of the city was a monastery known as Navasamgharama, aka Nava Vihara, or “New Monastery”.  Despite its name, the monastery may have actually been much older, going back to the Kushan emperor Kaniska, in the 2nd century CE.  Ruins identified as this “New Monastery” are still visible south of Balkh, today. The monastery is described as being beautifully decorated, and it seems that it had a relic—one of the Buddha's teeth.  There are also various utensils that the Buddha is said to have used, as well.  The objects would be displayed on festival days.  North of the monastery there was a stupa more than 200 feet in height.  South of the monastery was a hermitage.  Each monk who studied there and passed away would have a stupa erected for them, as well.  Xuanzang notes that there were at around 700 memorial stupas, such that they had to be crammed together, base to base. It was here that Xuanzang met a young monk named Prajnaakara, who was already somewhat famous in India, and well-studied.  When questioned about certain aspects of Buddhism, Xuanzang was impressed by the monk's answers, and so stayed there a month studying with the young monk. Eventually, Xuanzang was ready to continue on his journey.  He departed Balkh towards the south, accompanying the teacher Prajnakara, and together they entered the Great Snow Mountains, aka the Hindu Kush.  This path was even more dangerous than the trip through the Tian Shan mountains to Suyab.   They eventually left the territory of Tukhara and arrived at Bamiyan.  Bamiyan was a kingdom in the Hindu Kush, themselves an extension of the Himalayan Mountain range.  It Is largely based around valley, home to the modern city of Bamyan, Afghanistan, which sits along the divide between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.  Today it is a major center for individuals of the Hazara ethnic group, one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, which is a multi-ethnic state that includes, today, the Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek people, along with a number of smaller ethnic groups.  Today they largely reside in the mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush. Bamiyan made an impact on our protagonist.   Their language was slightly different from that in Tukhara, but using the same—or similar enough—writing system.  Buddhism was thriving in the capital, and we are told of a rock statue of the standing Buddha, over a hundred feet in height, along with a copper statue of the standing Buddha nearby.    There was also another reclining Buddha a mile or two down the road.  There were multiple monasteries with thousands of monks, and the ruler of that kingdom received Xuanzang well. Xuanzang wasn't the first monk to travel to Bamiyan from the Middle Kingdom—in this he was, perhaps unwittingly, on the trail of the monk Faxian.  Faxian likely did not see these statues, though, as we believe they were built in the 6th and early 7th century—at least the stone Buddha statues.  They were a famous worship site until February 2001, when the Taliban gave an order to destroy all of the statues in Afghanistan.  Despite this, they were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Fortunately, we have images from before their destruction.  These statues were a blend of Greco-Buddhist and Gandharan art styles—appropriate as it stands between the Hellenistic area of Tukhara and the ancient region of Gandhara—including the modern city of Kandahar and into the Indus Valley region of Pakistan. Continuing east through the mountains, Xuanzang eventually came out at the kingdom of Kapisa.  This may have had its capital around modern-day Bagram, north of modern Kabul, but the country seems to have been quite large.  Kapisa over saw some tens of other countries, and it is thought that at one time its influence extended from Bamyan and Kandahar to the area of modern Jalalabad.  Their language was even more different than that of Tukhara, but they were still using the same writing system.  The king of Kapisa is said to have been of Suli ethnicity—which would seem to indicate that he was Sogdian, or at least descended from people of the Transoxanian region.    Xuanzang notes that the ruler, as rough and fiery as he is described—as a true warlord or similar—he nonetheless made a silver image of the Buddha, eighteen feet in height, every year.  He also gave charity to the poor and needy in an assembly that was called every five years.  There were over one hundred monasteries and some 6000 monks, per Xuanzang's recollection, and notably, they were largely following Mahayana teachings. For the most part the monks that Xuanzang had encountered on this journey were Theravada—Xuanzang refers to them as “Hinayana”, referring to the “Lesser Vehicle” in contrast to Xuanzang's own “Mahayana”, or “Greater Vehicle”.  “Theravada” refers to the “way of the elders” and while Mahayana Buddhism largely accepts the sutras of Theravada Buddhism, there are many Mahayana texts that Theravada Buddhists do not believe are canonical.  We discussed this back in Episode 84. There was apparently a story of another individual from the Yellow River being sent as a hostage to Kapisa when it was part of the Kushan Empire, under Kanishka or similar.  Xuanzang recounts various places that the hostage, described as a prince, lived or visited while in the region.  Xuanzang's arrival likely stirred the imagination of people who likely knew that the Tang were out there, but it was such a seemingly impossible distance for most people.  And yet here was someone who had traveled across all of that distance.  One of the monasteries that claimed to have been founded because of that ancient Han prince invited Xuanzang to stay with them.  Although it was a Theravada monastery, Xuanzang took them up on the offer, both because of the connection to someone who may have been his countryman, but also because of his traveling companion, Prajnakara, who was also a Theravada monk, and may not be comfortable staying at a Mahayana monastery. Xuanzang spends a good deal of ink on the stories of how various monasteries and other sites were founded in Kapisa and the surrounding areas.  He must have spent some time there to accumulate all of this information.  It is also one of the places where he seems to have hit at least twice—once on the way to India, and once during his return journey. The King of Kapisa is said to have been a devotee of Mahayana Buddhism.  He invited Xuanzang and Prajnakara to come to a Mahayana monastery to hold a Dharma gathering.  There they met with several leading figures in the monastery, and they discussed different theories.  This gathering lasted five days, and at the end, the king offered Xuanzang and the other monks five bolts of pure brocade and various other gifts.  Soon thereafter, the monk Prajnakara was invited back to Tukhara, and so he and Xuanzang parted ways. And it was about time for Xuanzang to continue onwards as well.  From Kapisa, he would travel across the “Black Range” and into Lampaka.  This may refer to the area of Laghman or Jalalabad.  Today, this is in modern Afghanistan, but for Xuanzang, this would have been the northwestern edge of India.  He was almost there. And so are we, but we'll save his trip into India for next episode. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

IANR 2503 011825 Line Up 3pm IAN UNPLUGGED On the “Hey, Wassup?” talk show, Jay, Sanchali and guest host Chetan Dave take up water and how the precious this is being squandered in the pursuit of fracking oil wells in west Texas. They later turn to IT professionals Anita Amin and Amit Goyal for an explanation of the AI technology that is changing how we work and think. 4-6pm INTERVIEWS (guest host Chetan Dave in for Pramod) Here's the guest line-up for Sat, Jan 18, 2025 from 4 to 6pm CST on Indo American News Radio (www.IndoAmerican-news.com), a production of Indo American News. We are on 98.7 FM and you can also listen on the masalaradio app. By Monday, hear the recorded show on Podcast uploaded on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Radio Public and Breaker. We have 5 years of Podcasts and have had thousands of hits. TO SUPPORT THE SHOW, SELECT FOLLOW ON OUR FREE PODCAST CHANNEL AND YOU'LL BE NOTIFIED OF NEW UPDATES. 4:20 pm It is often said that America is the land of immigrants, and our minds think of the European settlers that first came to this country. But many more from other parts of the world um settled here, and their descendants are the new Americans. Houston Councilwoman At-Large Position 4 Dr. Letitia Plummer is one of them, as she traces her heritage back to a Black American grandfather and a Zoroastrian grandmother from East Africa. She joins us today in the studio to talk about her mixed lineage, being the first Muslim woman on the Council. and the influence it has had in her daily life. 4:50 pm There are social drinkers among us who'll have an occasional glass of alcohol, and then there are the serious drinkers who can't control themselves once they have the first drink and become either the life or pest of the party. Many of them are alcoholics, but deny they have a problem. Dr. Pramod Anand, a retired internist, has treated many chemical addictions during his career and joins us from Arizona to explain how to spot an alcoholic and what can be done to control their addiction. 5:20 pm Alcoholism and drug addiction are rampant problems all over the world and often lead a person on a downward spiral. Their only hope is recognizing that they have a problem and then seeking counseling and maintaining lifelong abstinence. We turn to Brian Cwik, who has counseled many groups in the past 24 years, for an idea of what steps to take to break this addiction. He calls in from Los Angeles. Also stay tuned in for news roundup, views, sports and movie reviews. TO BE FEATURED ON THE SHOW, OR TO ADVERTISE, PLEASE CONTACT US AT 713-789-NEWS or 6397 or at indoamericannews@yahoo.com Please pick up the print edition of Indo American News which is available all across town at grocery stores. Also visit our website indoamerican-news.com which gets 90,000+ hits to track all current stories. And remember to visit our digital archives from over 17 years.  Plus, our entire 44 years of hard copy archives are available in the Fondren Library at Rice University.

For decades, scholars believed that ancient Hebrew letters from 419 BCE proved the continuity of Passover, but a new study shows that, if anything, Passover has Persian Zoroastrian origins. Dr. Gad Barnea from the University of Haifa joins Gil and Garry Stevens from the History in the Bible podcast to discuss his research into the so called Passover Lettersso-called.Dr. Barnea is a Faculty Member at the University of Haifa, Department of Jewish History and Thought, he is a Research Fellow  at the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, and for Project BEST at the University of Haifa, Department Of Biblical Studies, and an Associate Fellow at the Department of History of the Royal Historical Society. Join our tribe on Patreon! Check out these cool pages on the podcast's website:Home PageWho wrote the Bible: Timeline and authorsAncient maps: easy to follow maps to see which empire ruled what and whenClick here to see Exodus divided into "sources" according to the Documentary Hypothesis The podcast is written, edited and produced by Gil Kidron

A new study into the so-called "Passover Letters" reveals the depth of Persian-Zoroastrian influences. I spoke to Bernie Maopolski from the Fan of History podcast to discussRead the article about this research by Dr. Gad Barnea here Join our tribe on Patreon! Check out these cool pages on the podcast's website:Home PageWho wrote the Bible: Timeline and authorsAncient maps: easy to follow maps to see which empire ruled what and whenClick here to see Exodus divided into "sources" according to the Documentary Hypothesis The podcast is written, edited and produced by Gil Kidron

Claim to be a Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Tao, Earth Worship, Universalist, Wiccan (witch), Zoroastrian or anything else, but don't say you are a Jew or Christian because there is a great possibility you will be persecuted. This is very prophetic and we will analyze this on today's open-line edition of the Endtime Show! --------------- 📱: It's never been easier to understand. Stream Only Source Network and access exclusive content: https://watch.osn.tv/browse 📚: Check out Jerusalem Prophecy College Online for less than $60 per course: https://jerusalemprophecycollege.com 🏧: America's Christian Credit Union: Make the switch from the BIG banks: https://www.endtime.com/switch ☕️: First Cup Coffee: Use code ENDTIME to get 10% off: https://www.firstcup.com 🥤: Ready Pantry: https://www.readypantry.com/endtime ⭐️ Birtch Gold: https://www.birchgold.com/endtime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An ancient Passover letter might not be what it seems. New research suggests it could reflect Zoroastrian influences, reshaping what we know about Judaism's origins. Join me and Gil Kidron of A Podcast of Biblical Proportions as we uncover this fascinating cross-cultural connection.Linkshttps://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2024-11-04/ty-article/new-study-of-passover-letter-may-change-what-we-know-about-the-birth-of-judaism/00000192-dc36-ddcf-a7f7-dc76c3eb0000?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=emailhttps://podcastofbiblicalproportions.com/This is a podcast by Dan Hörning and Bernie Maopolski.If you like what we do you can support the Fan of History project on https://www.patreon.com/fanofhistoryContact information:E-mail: zimwaupodcast@gmail.comhttp://facebook.com/fanofhistoryhttps://twitter.com/danhorninghttps://www.instagram.com/dan_horning/Music: “Tudor Theme” by urmymuse.Used here under a commercial Creative Commons license. Find out more at http://ccmixter.org/files/urmymuse/40020 Support the show and listen ad-free to all of the episodes, including episode 1-87. Click here: https://plus.acast.com/s/history. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In response to Jesus, the Wise Men gave him generous gifts while holding nothing back. Join us this week as we discover who these wise men really were!--The PursueGOD Truth podcast is the “easy button” for making disciples – whether you're looking for resources to lead a family devotional, a small group at church, or a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org.Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at podcast@pursueGOD.org.Donate Now --I think there are 2 kinds of ppl who come to church around ChristmasPpl who are very familiar w/all Christmas stories in BiblePpl whose experience of Christmas has been a lot more secularThe kind of thing you get in stores / at schoolIn the popular Christmas movies that we rewatch every yearThis series is for everyone, but especially for those who feel far from GodBecause the people who were actually there on the first ChristmasWere not the people anyone would have expectedLast week we saw the surprising inclusion of the shepherds in the Christmas storyThey were loners and losers, on the outside of societyYet God broke his 400-year silence and declared the Good New first to them!Today: another shockerThe story of the “wise men” or “magi” Maybe you thought it was normal, naturalThey've always been a part of the Christmas storyBut actually, it makes no sense in its worldly contextToday we'll answer two questions:Who were the magi, and why are they in the Christmas story? What were their three famous gifts all about?Matthew 2:1-2 (NLT) 1 Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, 2 “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”First of all, a few trivial facts:Only mentioned in MatthewNever says there were three of them (We three Kings…)Most likely not kings (astrologers is a better translation, as we'll see)In Jerusalem because that's where they would have expected to find a king(IVP Bible Background Commentary: NT, Second Edition) The Magi had come to Jerusalem because that was where they expected to find any Judean king—but Herod had apparently not had any new sons lately.Probably alludes to Nu 24:17: "A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel."Bigger question: who were the Magi?Likely pagan Zoroastrian priests or scholars from Persia, skilled in astrology and prophecy.Zoroastrianism is one of the world's oldest continuously practiced religions, originating in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) around 1200–1000 BCE. One of the world's first monotheistic or dualistic religions.Dualism: A cosmic battle between good and evil, with human beings playing a central role.Moral principles: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds as the path to righteousness.Today primarily found in Iran, India (Parsis), and the global diaspora.Estimated at 100,000–200,000 adherents worldwide.(Here's where it...

"The first thing which struck me about the Cemetery Soundscape recording was the understated subtlety. It gave me a sense of peace as I listened; a peace I often find walking around cemeteries and graveyards in the UK. I thought about how cultural links with death has shaped these places and reflected on my own experiences of the death of family members and friends and feelings of grief and sorrow.  "It got me thinking about rituals of death and cultural ways of saying farewell to loved ones following their passing. I thought of the Zoroastrian tradition of exposing the body to the sun and birds of prey, the Ghats of Varanasi, Ancient Egyptian traditions found within the Book of the Dead or Western rituals of funeral, burial and cremation. The belief that these customs would prepare the soul for the next life and the associated importance of reincarnation and rebirth. "Whilst using the ‘Cemetery Soundscape' recording as a constant backdrop, ‘Rise' focusses on these death rituals and the comfort they offer, along with the hope that the dead find a ‘better' place as they ascend to the heavens." Indonesian cemetery soundscape reimagined by Simon Holmes.

What if a single decision could alter the course of your life forever? Join us as we explore the captivating narrative of Henry Van Dyke's "The Story of the Other Wise Man" and uncover the untold journey of Artaban, the fourth wise man. This episode unravels the origins of this timeless tale, dreamt up by Van Dyke during a period of personal strife, and considers the profound question of whether a lie can ever be justified. Through Artaban's story, we examine themes of perseverance, dedication, and the search for life's purpose, all set against the rich tapestry of ancient Persian culture.Our journey begins in the ancient city of Ecbatana, where we meet Artaban amid the opulence of his Persian garden. With fellow Parthian nobles, Artaban embarks on a spiritual quest inspired by celestial signs and Zoroastrian rituals. We share his moments of reflection and renewal as he seeks truth and purity, guided by the wisdom of ancient prophecies. Artaban's journey is not just physical but deeply spiritual, and his encounters with challenges and moral dilemmas offer timeless lessons in loyalty and faith.Follow Artaban's adventure through the rugged landscapes and historic sites, from Mount Orontes to the Temple of Seven Spheres. The vivid imagery of ancient lands and cultural wonders paints a picture of his relentless pursuit of a prophesied great king. Artaban's story is a testament to the enduring virtues of perseverance and dedication, as he forges bonds and navigates the complexities of his mission. Join us for a narrative filled with mystery and ancient wisdom, offering a captivating reflection on the spiritual connections that define our own quests for meaning.Support the showThe American Soul Podcasthttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1791934/subscribe

On this episode, I trace back the usage of fire and light as symbolism for wisdom and knowledge via bringing up Genesis, the myth of Prometheus, animism, the resurrection, Plato's allegory of the cave, and the Zoroastrian religion. This acts as the introduction to begin discussing the first section of 'Zarathustra's Prologue'. Sources Genesis - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%203&version=NIV Prometheus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus Zoroastrianism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism Zarathustra's Prologue - https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil394/Thus%20Spoke%20Zarathustra.pdf My Novel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠On Death and God⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Social Media: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Outro provided by Brock Tanya.

Send us a textOver 5,000 New Testament manuscripts exist, significantly outnumbering other historical documents like Homer's Iliad (650 copies)New Testament writings date to 1-40 years after Christ's resurrection, earlier than previously thoughtAbsence of key historical events in texts helps establish earlier datingComparatively, other historical figures' accounts emerged much later: Alexander the Great (400+ years), Buddha (400+ years)Zoroastrian texts weren't documented until AD 1278, about 2,200 years after the religion's claimed originOur Website: https://idcpodcast.co/ Check out our new Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AtlasApologia Check out our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atlas_apologia/Support the show

My special guest tonight is Dr. Stephen Flowers who's here to discuss the history of Mazdan magic from his book called   Original Magic: The Rituals and Initiations of the Persian Magi   A complete guide to the theory, practice, and history of Mazdan magic, the first organized system of magic   • Provides a complete curriculum of magical study and initiation centered on exercises keyed to the sacred Zoroastrian calendar   • Details advanced magical rituals and practices based on archaic Persian formulas, including fire rituals and divine invocations   • Explores the history and lore of Persian magic, explaining how the author reconstructed the original Mazdan system of magic   Stephen Flowers explores the history, theory, practice, rituals, and initiations of the Mazdan magical system practiced by the Magi of ancient Persia, who were so skilled and famed for their effectiveness that their name came to mean what we today call “magic.” The prestige and reputation of the Magian priests of Mazda is perhaps most iconically recorded in the Christian story of the Three Wise Men who visited newborn Jesus.   The author explains how the religious branch of the Mazdan magical system, founded by the Prophet Zarathustra, is known in the West under the name Zoroastrianism. He reveals how the Zoroastrian religion, which acts as a matrix for the symbols and formulas of the original form of magic, has existed for almost four thousand years with roots going back even deeper into the Indo-European past. The author reveals how all other known systems of magic have borrowed from this tradition, providing the clues that enabled him to reformulate the original Mazdan system. He reviews what the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, Christians, and Chinese said about the Iranian-Persian tradition of the Mazdans and their invention of a magical technology. He explains how the ultimate aim of the original form of magic was not only individual wisdom, self-development, and empowerment, but also the overall betterment of the world.   Outlining the theoretical principles of this method, which can be applied in practical ways to deepen the effectiveness of these magical operations, the author details a complete curriculum of magical study and initiation based on a series of graded exercises keyed to the sacred Zoroastrian calendar. He then offers a series of more advanced magical rituals and practices based on archaic Persian formulas, including fire rituals and divine invocations. Providing a manual for the original magical system used by the members of the Great Fellowship, this book guides you toward the comprehensive practice of the Mazdan philosophy, the ultimate outcome of which is ushta: Happiness.Follow Our Other ShowsFollow UFO WitnessesFollow Crime Watch WeeklyFollow Paranormal FearsFollow Seven: Disturbing Chronicle StoriesJoin our Patreon for ad-free listening and more bonus content.Follow us on Instagram @mysteriousradioFollow us on TikTok mysteriousradioTikTok Follow us on Twitter @mysteriousradio Follow us on Pinterest pinterest.com/mysteriousradio Like us on Facebook Facebook.com/mysteriousradio]

Iran's Religious Minorities, Part II: Status of Religious Minorities in Iranian Islam In this episode, we delve into the relationship between Iranian Islam and religious minorities throughout ‎history, focusing on their evolving status and rights. During the early Islamic centuries, religious ‎minorities such as Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians—collectively known as ahl al-kitāb (People of the ‎Book)—were granted protected status (dhimma) in exchange for paying the jizya tax and accepting ‎Muslim authority. This system, although unequal, offered some security and religious freedom.‎ As Islamic theology and jurisprudence developed, interpretations of non-Muslims' roles and rights ‎became stricter, with significant variations depending on the era and ruling authorities. In contemporary ‎Iran, the Islamic Republic's constitution, grounded in Shiite jurisprudence, institutionalizes inequalities ‎between Muslims and non-Muslims. Shiites are afforded privileges unavailable to other groups, while ‎restrictions persist on roles, marriages, and daily interactions. These regulations are influenced not only ‎by Islamic texts but also by pre-Islamic practices, notably Zoroastrian purity laws.‎ We also touch on how the Iranian Revolution of 1979 impacted minority communities, highlighting ‎issues of exclusion, discrimination, and self-preservation among non-Muslim groups. The discussion ‎offers a nuanced perspective on the complex interplay between religion, politics, and minority rights in ‎both historical and modern contexts.‎ Let me know your thoughts, or share any questions in the comments below. Thank you for listening!‎ Keywords ‎#IranianIslam #ReligiousMinorities #Dhimma #IslamicHistory #ShiiteJurisprudence #PodcastDiscussion‎ ‎#Kadivar #Sunni #Shiite #IranianIslam #Dhimma #AhlAlKitab

Jay Smith, a missionary with extensive experience ministering to Muslims, sits down with Ray, E.Z., Mark, and Oscar to talk about how Christians can more effectively witness to Muslim people. Jay was born in India and initially had no interest in witnessing to Islam people.He learned that so few missionaries were reaching out to one of the largest religions in the world, and this spurred him to begin evangelizing to Muslim people. One issue he addresses is the Muslim claim that the Bible is corrupted. Jay counters by asking Muslims to provide evidence of Bible corruption and points out that the Quran itself speaks positively of the Bible. Mark asks how Muslims view grace and how Christians can discuss it with them. Jay explains that Islam, like most man-made religions, emphasizes works-based salvation. He describes how Islamic teachings about salvation are influenced by Zoroastrian beliefs. Christianity, by contrast, offers grace through Jesus' sacrifice, fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. Oscar shares his experience of the resistance Muslims show when hearing about God's love. Jay suggests that pointing out how earthly father figures reflect the god they serve can be a way to bridge the gap. He highlights that the God of the Bible, unlike the Islamic concept of God, interacts personally with His people and provides a path to salvation through Jesus.A recurring topic in Muslim-Christian debates is the doctrine of the Trinity, which Muslims often reject as a man-made concept. Jay notes that while the term itself was coined later, it reflects a concept that is clearly in scripture, much like certain Islamic doctrines that were formalized after the Quran was written. The guys, along with Jay, emphasize the importance of always steering debates toward the gospel, even when addressing objections about the Bible or the Quran. While Jay engages in historical critiques of the Quran he believes that presenting the gospel is ultimately more powerful. There is a curious phenomenon where many secular people defend Islam while viewing Christianity as dangerous. Jay attributes this to ignorance and a lack of Christian presence in public discourse. He touches on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, noting the complexities of Hamas's role and the broader Middle Eastern perspective.Ultimately, Jay's approach to evangelism centers on presenting the gospel while being prepared to break down intellectual and spiritual barriers. Despite opposition, he remains focused on his mission, trusting in God's protection and guidance, much like the early disciples.Send us a text Thanks for listening! If you've been helped by this podcast, we'd be grateful if you'd consider subscribing, sharing, and leaving us a comment and 5-star rating! Visit the Living Waters website to learn more and to access helpful resources!You can find helpful counseling resources at biblicalcounseling.com.Check out The Evidence Study Bible and the Basic Training Course.You can connect with us at podcast@livingwaters.com. We're thankful for your input!Learn more about the hosts of this podcast.Ray ComfortEmeal (“E.Z.”) ZwayneMark SpenceOscar Navarro

C.G. Dahlin | Myth, The Magi, & The Dual Natured Serpent

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the image offered by the Babylonian Talmud, Jewish elites were deeply embedded within the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE). The Talmud is replete with stories and discussions that feature Sasanian kings, Zoroastrian magi, fire temples, imperial administrators, Sasanian laws, Persian customs, and more quotidian details of Jewish life. Yet, in the scholarly literature on the Babylonian Talmud and the Jews of Babylonia, the Sasanian Empire has served as a backdrop to a decidedly parochial Jewish story, having little if any direct impact on Babylonian Jewish life and especially the rabbis.  Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2024) advances a radically different understanding of Babylonian Jewish history and Sasanian rule. Building upon recent scholarship, Simcha Gross portrays a more immanent model of Sasanian rule, within and against which Jews invariably positioned and defined themselves. Babylonian Jews realized their traditions, teachings, and social position within the political, social, religious, and cultural conditions generated by Sasanian rule. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Simcha Gross about his book Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

The author and commentator James Lindsay has constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which I am a central figure. Lindsay has asserted that the archangel Michael is actually a secret symbol that Catholics are using in coordination with the World Economic Forum to subvert the American right and trick Christian nationalists into summoning a Zoroastrian demon. I wish that were a joke, but it is not. The Prudentialist joins me to review Lindsay's long string of schizophrenic conspiracy theories. Follow on: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-auron-macintyre-show/id1657770114 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3S6z4LBs8Fi7COupy7YYuM?si=4d9662cb34d148af Substack: https://auronmacintyre.substack.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre Gab: https://gab.com/AuronMacIntyre YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/AuronMacIntyre Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-390155 Odysee: https://odysee.com/@AuronMacIntyre:f Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auronmacintyre/ Today's sponsors:  Visit https://supremecoup.com/Auron/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode Chris brings Opinion Scholarship on the ancient Persian religion--Zoroastrianism. We discuss the Proto-Indo-European people, their culture and religion and how they came down through the Indo-Iranian tribes that became both Zoroastrianism in Iran and Hinduism in India. We discuss the influence Zoroastrian ideas had on both Judaism and Christianity and explore what Zoroaster meant when he claimed to be restoring monotheistic purity to their ancient, Indo-European faith. This brings us to the Christian idea of the Logos, which compare and contrast to the Zoroastrian idea of Vohu Mana.  Enjoy ;) 

Live with Author, Marilynn Hughes, of 'The Out-of-Body Travel Foundation' on Out of Body Travel and Mysticism. Special subjects and questions answered. https://outofbodytravel.org Out of Body, Out of Body Travel, Out of Body Experiences, OBE, OOBE, Astral, Astral Travel, Astral Experiences, Astral Projection, Near Death, NDE, Near Death Experiences, Mystical, Mystical Experiences, Marilynn Hughes, The Out-of-Body Travel Foundation

Iranian Languages and Dialects, Part III: Middle Persian Before you listen to this episode, I encourage you to check my previous episodes on Iranian languages and Dialects, particularly the one on Old Persian, which serve as prerequisites for this part. Middle Iranian refers to various now-extinct Iranian languages spoken from about the 4th century B.C.E. to after the Islamic conquest. These languages include Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Parthian, Bactrian, Chorasmian, Sogdian, and Khotanese. Middle Persian, known from inscriptions and Manichean texts from the 3rd century C.E., evolved from Old Persian. It was written in scripts derived from Aramaic and Syriac alphabets. The main Middle Persian religious texts are the Dēnkard and the Bundahišn. The Dēnkard discusses theological issues, wisdom texts, and the life of Zarathustra. The Bundahišn focuses on Zoroastrian cosmology. Other notable texts include the Dādestān ī Mēnōy ī Xrad, Dādestān ī Dēnīg, Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr, and the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag. In the upcoming episodes, we will explore Iranian languages further, starting with Persian, also known as Parsi | Farsi.

TLDR;* Today, on day 67, we explored Ayah 41 of Surat al-Baqarah. * This Ayah urges the Jewish leaders in Medina to believe in the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, as the Qur'an confirms the messages in their own scriptures. * They knew about the final prophet but rejected him due to prejudice. * The Ayah teaches us the importance of not just acquiring knowledge but also putting it into practice. * Let's remember to apply what we learn in our daily lives. Insha'Allah, we'll complete this Ayah tomorrow.As-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Welcome back to BeQuranic, where we take short passages from the Quran, extract practical lessons from them, and apply these lessons to our daily lives so that we can be more Quranic.Insha'Allah, today, on day 67 of BeQuranic, we're going to explore Ayah 41 of Surat al-Baqarah. The Ayah reads: "And believe in what I have revealed that confirms what is with you, and do not be the first to disbelieve in it, and do not trade My Ayah for a cheap price, and towards Me only shall you have taqwa."This Ayah was revealed to the leaders of the Jewish tribes in Medina, the scholars among the Jews living there. In this Ayah, Allah said to have imaan in what He has revealed, meaning the Qur'an, and also in Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, because the Qur'an wasn't revealed like a book; it was revealed as a recitation, and the one spreading the message, the one teaching them the Qur'an, is Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.So Allah is saying, believe in the Qur'an; by extension, you have to believe in Prophet Muhammad. And this Qur'an, Allah says, it affirms, it confirms what is with you, meaning the message is a continuation; it affirms the message in the Torah, the book that is with you, and it fulfils the prophecy in the Torah about the coming of the final prophet and messenger.Prophet Musa said about this, Prophet Isa said about this, this message, the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad, is confirming what is with you. And we know that the Jews in Medina, they knew about the Prophet ﷺ.Of all places in Arabia, you find Jews during the time of the Prophet only in three locations: Khaybar, Medina, and Yemen. And all these three places are known for one thing: they are known for dates.And Sayyidina Salman al-Farisi, he was a Zoroastrian who then became a Christian, a Unitarian Christian, who worshipped only Allah, who viewed Prophet Isa as a prophet, not as a son of God, not divine.He said that his teachers told him that it was foretold in the previous scriptures, the coming of Prophet Muhammad in Arabia, the final prophet will come in Arabia, in a land full of dates. And in Arabia, these are the three places that were known to have plenty of dates.The Jews, when they left Jerusalem, some of them came to Arabia and settled in Yemen, Khaybar, and Medina, waiting for the final prophet and messenger to come. And what's also interesting is that the father of Sayyidatuna Safiyya Binti Huyai, she is one of the wives of our prophet, and her father, Huyai ibn Akhtab, is one of the leaders of the Jewish tribe in Medina.When Rasul ﷺ first arrived in Medina, Huyai ibn Akhtab and his brother went to see the Prophet ﷺ and listened to the khutbah, to the speeches of the Prophet. They came back furious. Sayyidatuna Safiyya related this incident to us. They came back furious, and the brother of Huyai ibn Akhtab, so this is the uncle of Sayyidatuna Safiyya, asked his father, is he the one? Is he the one that we've been waiting for?Huyay ibn Akhtab said, yes, he is the one, ayu Allah. And the brother asked, so what shall we do? And Huyai ibn Akhtab said, we shall fight him until he dies or we die. So they knew that Prophet Muhammad is the true prophet, the one they have been waiting for.But the only reason why they rejected Prophet Muhammad is because he's from an inferior race, in their opinion. The Arabs are viewed as inferior to the Jews, so they cannot accept this. So Allah says, this musaddiqalima maakum, this message is not alien to you. You know about this. It affirms what is with you. And do not be the first to reject or to disbelieve in it.There were people already disbelieving in it, in Makkah. How is it that Allah is now telling them, do not be the first to disbelieve in it? There's a different grading of disbelief. The Quraysh didn't know about books, about prophets; the last prophet sent to them was Prophet Ismail, thousands and thousands of years ago. They didn't have a scripture with them, they didn't have a book with them. So their level of rejection out of ignorance is different from the rejection by the Jews in Medina because they are rejecting with knowledge, not out of ignorance. So the level is different.In our lives, when we sin out of ignorance, it's a lesser degree of sin compared to knowing and not doing it. And this is why in one of the classical texts of Fiqh, Matan Zubad, it's a poem about Fiqh, it is mentioned in the poetry that a knowledgeable person who doesn't practise his knowledge will be punished before the worshippers of idols because rejecting while knowingly disobeying Allah is a greater sin than disobeying out of ignorance.Whatever knowledge that we have, we have to make sure, no matter how little, it is put into practice. And this is why we see the tradition of the Sahaba from Sayyidina Ali ibn Abi Talib. When he taught the Qur'an, he would teach five verses. He wouldn't teach too much. And he says, those who memorise in fives will not forget. He had students who could handle more than five. And he said, no, no, five is enough. Go and study it and practise it before you take on the next load. It's not about gathering knowledge; it is about putting knowledge into practice.There was one Sahaba who died at a very old age. In his last days, he was with his students, the Tabi'un, and they said, Alhamdulillah, today I meet Khattam of the Qur'an, finally. And these students were like, ah, is this the great Sahaba? He's 90 years old and he finally met Khattam. Most people back then would do Khattam every three days or seven days. So they found this mind-boggling; how is it that this Sahaba just finally finished the Qur'an? And they said, no, no, no, Khattam Tu bil Af'al. I finished the Qur'an with my action, with my practice. And it was this particular Ayah that finally he was given the opportunity to put into practice.Where Allah mentioned in Surah Nour, if you want to enter into someone's house, fasta nisoo, that you should seek permission and give salaam to the owner of the house, to the host. And if the owner doesn't want to host you, he says that he's tired, go home, then you should go home. That's the end of it. You should not say that I've travelled so far to come to your house.This great Sahaba, he was a Sahaba and everybody knew that he was a Sahabi. So if he were to knock on someone's door, no one's going to say go home. He did not get to apply that Ayah. Finally, on that day, someone had the audacity to say no to a Sahabi who's knocking on his door. The Sahaba had to leave and he was so happy. Finally, I get to put this Ayah into practice.So what do we learn from Ayah 41? It's not about the accumulation of knowledge. It is important that we seek knowledge, but it is equally important that whatever knowledge we have, we put it into practice. Get full access to Be Quranic at bequranic.substack.com/subscribe

In the first episode of our miniseries of podcasts celebrating South Asian Heritage Month 2024, Gautam Bhattacharyya, chair of Reed Smith's India Business team, welcomes Yasmin Batliwala MBE, CEO of Advocates for International Development. Together, they explore Yasmin's career path, her mentors and inspirations, her passion for pro bono work and the significance of her Parsi heritage. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Welcome to the Reed Smith Podcast, Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast,  our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with the goal of bringing people together and learning more about others.  You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.   Gautam: Hello everyone and welcome to another of our Reed Smith podcasts and this one is part of our special mini-series to celebrate and mark South Asian Heritage Month 2024 and I'm overjoyed to have as our podcast today the incredibly impressive Yasmin Batliwala. Hello Yasmin.  Yasmin: Hello Gautam, lovely to be here.  Gautam: It's lovely to have you and I've been really so excited to do this podcast with you. For our listeners, I'm going to introduce Yasmin so you can appreciate just what an amazing person she is. Yasmin is the chief executive of Advocates for International Development, a very prominent pro bono and CSR institution with which Reed Smith has had a very long and happy relationship and association. And we continue to do so. And I've known Yasmin for many, many years. and we've had many a discussion about our shared passion for pro bono work and the importance of lawyers doing pro bono work and the impact that it has. Yasmin is responsible for overseeing the work of A4ID, as I'll call it, and she's held many prominent roles in the public and third sector over her very illustrious career. Apart from pro bono work, her portfolios have included some incredible causes. Those include HIV and AIDS, drug alcohol, dependency, and criminal justice. She has also undertaken work for the UN's Office of Drugs and Crime, and has a great deal of board experience too, having, amongst other things, been on the board of a large NHS trust. Yasmin also, to the extent she has spare time, and I'm stunned she does have spare time, has also served as a magistrate in the Youth and Adult Courts. She's also, as you can imagine, been the recipient of several honors. And amongst those, and there are many of them, she has been awarded the City of London Woman of Achievement for her public service work. And in 2022, Yasmin received an MBE for her work in human rights, the rule of law and international development as part of the Queen's New Year's honors list. So it really is a wonderful privilege to be speaking to you on this podcast, Yasmin, and I'm really looking forward to our discussions. Now, let me start with this as we get into our discussion. Tell us a little bit about your career background. I've already highlighted for our listeners a few of the roles that you've undertaken prior to your current role as chief executive of A4ID. But I wonder whether you could give us a little bit of a background about how you got to your role at A4ID and your career background, which has led up to that.  Yasmin: Thank you very much, Gautam. I'd like to start then by thanking you for inviting me to join in this podcast and for the opportunity to talk about the work of Advocates for International Development, which I know that you know that I'm truly passionate about. So to answer your question about what I was doing prior to A4ID work-wise, before joining A4ID, basically I ran my own consultancy, providing senior level support to the public and non-profit sectors. My work primarily involved problem solving, managing teams, assisting the recruitment of CEOs and other executive positions. And I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed being self-employed as it allowed me to spend quality time with my two young daughters as they were then. And I could work during their nursery hours and resume tasks when they were asleep. And incidentally, I even earned more money than I've ever done since while I was working for myself. Throughout my career, I think you've said, I have worked mainly in the public and non-profit sector. And you've indicated the background work I've done within the drugs field and also in HIV. And I've also served, as you've mentioned, on various boards, including also a university, as well as on police authority, where I briefly held position of chair. I currently chair VIA, formerly known as WDP, which is a leading charity providing drug and alcohol services across the UK. VIA is known for its quality of services and innovative approach. And I like to think that my leadership has played a role in its success. Now, in respect to other things that have brought me to A4ID, I was invited to get involved with A4ID just by chance. Someone suggested that I met the executive director at the time. She and I got on swimmingly and as a consequence of that I started to work with her to look at how we could build the organization so that's really a potted summary of my career to date.  Gautam: Well thank you and it really is I mean you know you've packed a lot in in your wonderful career today and undertaking some amazing work for lots of really important causes and you know I think I think one of the things I just want to step back to is you've had a very impressive career. Of that, there's no doubt. And it's ongoing, right? You're not finished yet. Not by a long way. But we all benefit from mentors and inspirations in the course of our career. And I wonder whether you could share with our listeners some of your biggest career mentors and inspirations so far.  Yasmin: Gautam, I think that's a really difficult question because I have been inspired by so many people over the years. Obviously, those who have supported and encouraged me stand out, ranging from my line managers and peers to various teams that I've worked with, including actually my current team. Indeed, my very first job was doing what was called action research on illicit drug use in SW5, which is Earls Court, and also the West End. Professor Betsy Ettore was my line manager at the time, and she was simply amazing. She encouraged me to think for myself and was always available when I needed her. I was at the time fresh out of university and yet she treated me like an equal and I valued that because she actually listened very carefully to what I had to say and supported my ambition for the study that we were doing. Now coming back to where I am today I suppose I especially want to mention the board of A4ID. Their support has been incredible but it's their pioneering spirit and belief that everything is possible that truly inspires me. They also believe in me personally which has been invaluable and enabled me to push forward with our vision. Roger Leese, the chair of A4ID and a partner at Clifford Chance, has perhaps been a significant inspiration throughout our time working together. We've often solved problems by approaching them from completely different perspectives, and his insights have always been spot on. Indeed, the longer I have known him, the more I've come to respect him. To me, integrity and respect are very important in those that have inspired me. And perhaps the reason I've been working in this role for so long has been mainly because of the individuals that I have been fortunate to come across over the years. Now, I've been particularly impressed by the legal profession's can-do culture and their attitude that everything and anything is possible, which happens also to be my perspective in life. This approach and their understated passion is something I greatly admire. The entire legal pro bono community, from international law firms that we work with, to in-house counsel, the judiciary, paralegals and barristers, demonstrate to me their remarkable dedication. They use their skills and intellect to contribute to the greater good, often without expecting recognition or even a pat on the back. Let me give you an example close to home. Now, you've mentioned just in your start the involvement of Reed Smith. So when I joined A4ID, Reed Smith provided us with the accommodation. At that time, A4ID was a much smaller organization with fewer staff and a smaller turnover. Right. Without Reed Smith's support, I'm not sure A4ID would have thrived. Reed Smith even contributed their staff's time to oversee the development of A4ID at the beginning, not seeking thanks or recognition, just doing what they could to help the cause. If anything was requested from them, they would think about it and come back to us with a solution about how to make it happen. So I, for one, have immense admiration for Reed Smith and the support that the firm has provided ever since our inception in 2006. Many of our law firms have also, as well as corporate partners, have also shown and continue to show some support over the years. They've supported A4ID in its journey and through us have provided expert pro bono legal advice to international development sector and have also donated funds to enable us to exist and to function. And I firmly believe that through the law, we can change the world for the greater good and that lawyers have a key role to play in making this happen. Imagine no other profession is able to achieve this, only the legal profession. What inspiration is that? So to answer your question, I would say I've been most inspired by the legal sector with which I've been fortunate to work with and why I'm still in this role after all these many years.  Gautam: Well, thank you, Yasmin. That was an incredibly impressive set of points. And I just wonder if I could dig into that a little bit. Extremely, there's a lot I could unpack there. But let me focus on what makes pro bono work so important. Now, we all know it's really important. It has real impact. And lawyers are integral to that. And so I wonder whether you could give us your thoughts on just why pro bono work is so important and why law firms and the teamwork that they achieve is so important to make that happen. You mentioned in your answer just now just how unique in many ways the legal profession is to be able to deliver those sorts of services and results. And I certainly know how enriching it's been for me personally to be heavily involved in pro bono work for so many years. But I wonder whether you could share your thoughts on that, please.  Yasmin: Thanks, Gautam. I would say that pro bono work is vital because it allows professionals and the corporates to give back to the community, promoting social justice and addressing systemic inequalities. qualities. By providing free legal services to those who cannot afford them, pro bono work ensures that access to justice is not limited by financial means. This contribution really helps to level the playing field, ensuring that vulnerable and marginalized communities and individuals can defend their rights and receive fair treatment under the law. If you look at CSR for law firms, on the other hand, I think it encompasses a broader range of activities beyond pro bono work, which includes ethical business practices, environmental sustainability and community engagement. Pro Bono also, I would say, demonstrates the company's commitment to operating responsibly and contributing positively to society. These initiatives enhance the company's reputation, build trust with stakeholders, and also we find continually that it can lead to increased employee satisfaction and retention. Through pro bono, law firms and corporates can address various social issues from poverty and education to health and environmental protection. The other thing I think that's really important with regard to pro bono, is teamwork that law firms can do. Teamwork is essential in making pro bono successful because it allows the pooling of resources, expertise and networks. Law firms possess specialized legal knowledge and skills and are crucial for tackling complex legal issues. By collaborating, firms can leverage their collective expertise to provide a comprehensive and effective legal assistance. I think this collaborative approach really does ensure that beneficiaries receive high quality support, which are tailored to their specific needs. Also, teamwork among law firms fosters a culture of shared responsibility and mutual support. And we find that when law firms work together with us on pro bono projects, they can share best practices, learn from each other's experiences, and really develop innovative solutions to very common challenges. This collective effort amplifies the impact of their work, making it possible to address larger and more complex issues than any single firm could or tackle alone. It also, I suppose, fosters a sense of solidarity and purpose within the legal community as a whole. So collaboration enhances the reach and scalability of pro bono. By joining forces, and certainly by joining forces with us, law firms can extend their service to a broader range of beneficiaries and communities. This expanded reach is particularly important in addressing systemic issues that require coordinated efforts across different jurisdictions and different sectors which apply to us at A4ID. Collaborative initiatives can mobilize more resources including funding, personnel, technological tools to support large-scale projects and long-term interventions. In fact, teamwork with law firms also provide opportunities for professional development and capacity building. We find and I find continually that lawyers engaged in pro bono work gain valuable experience and skills to enhance their professional growth. Put simply pro bono work makes you a better lawyer. The reason is obvious through A4ID lawyers are exposed to diverse legal issues and client populations broadening their perspective and very much enriching their practices. Additionally, firms that actively participate in these initiatives can attract and retain talent by demonstrating their commitment to social justice as well as ethical practices. And as I've said already, co-ordinated efforts in pro bono can lead to systemic change by addressing root causes of social issues and advocating for policy reforms, law firms can help to create a more equitable and just society. Collaborative projects that people do with A4ID often involve strategic litigation, legislative advocacy and public education concerns, campaigns that go beyond individual cases to affect broader societal change. This strategic approach maximizes the long-term impact of pro bono. So effective teamwork also ensures that pro bono is sustainable. And by sharing the workload and resources, firms can maintain those long-term communities to these projects. Sustainability, after all, is crucial for achieving lasting impact and ensuring that the beneficiaries receive continuous support. Collaborative efforts help distribute the responsibilities and costs which are associated with these initiatives, making it much easier for firms to sustain their involvement over time. So to conclude, pro bono work is essential promoting social justice, corporate responsibility. Teamwork with law firms is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness and reach and sustainability of these initiatives. And through collaboration, law firms can leverage their collective expertise, resources and networks works to make a significant positive impact on society and advance the cause of justice for all. So in a nutshell, that's what makes pro bono so incredibly important.  Gautam: Thank you, Yasmin. And you know, everything you said there, I was just absorbing and just realizing just how it all aligns with exactly how I see it. Because I can honestly tell you, Yasmin that us and you know we've had many a conversation about what pro bono means to each of us but i know that some of my most satisfying outcomes that i've achieved as a lawyer for clients for for pro bono clients have come from that sort of work it's it's not just about doing big cases as we do and as i as i do for big corporate companies a big industrial groups for governments, etc, etc. That's, of course, very important to the life of a law firm. But a law firm needs to be known for everything it brings. And I can honestly say, and I can't talk about some of these cases, but some of the most important cases I've done have involved taking on the establishment. Establishment for people who would otherwise not have access to law firms what I call big law big law firms and those law firms come together in teams like you say often in conjunction with other law firms and there are a number of examples where Reed Smith has teamed up with other law firms and it's a wonderful thing because the perception is otherwise that law firms are all competitors. They're like boxers in a boxing ring. But we're not actually. That's really a myth. We operate in a marketplace, yes, but on pro bono work, we actually come together in a very productive way. And so, no, thank you for sharing those really, really, really amazing thoughts, because I'm sure our listeners, it'll really resonate with our listeners. So thank you for that, Yasmin. I wonder whether I could just now turn to the question of heritage, because heritage is obviously a very important thing. And this podcast is being recorded and will be published as part of South Asian Heritage Month. And I wonder whether you could just share with us a little bit about what makes your heritage so empowering and so important and uplifting for you.  Yasmin: Well, Gautam, as you know, I'm a Parsi. Parsis originated from ancient Persia and fled to India, I think around the 6th, 7th century to escape religious persecution. Their successful integration and preservation of our culture and religious identity in a foreign land. For me, I think exemplify the resilience and adaptability of the community of Parsis. The religion of the Parsi community is Zoroastrianism, which places its values of saying good thoughts, good words and good deeds and doing good deeds. This provides very much of a strong moral and ethical foundation, promoting a positive and proactive approach to life and encouraging meaningful contributions to society. And despite being a small community, and I do mean small, as a number of Parsis are reducing year on year to the point of extinction, I should say, Parsis have made significant contributions in various fields such as business, science, arts and philanthropy. Indeed, social responsibility and generosity of spirit are highly encouraged within the community. So I suppose my heritage is empowering and uplifting because it connects me to a rich and a diverse cultural tapestry that informs my identity and sense of self. This connection to my roots provides me with a deep understanding of where I come from and the traditions that have shaped my community over generations. The stories, the customs and values that have been passed down to me are a source of pride and strength, offering a foundation upon which I can build my own life and my own aspirations. Considerations this cultural inheritance if you like acts as my guiding light influencing my values behaviors and perspectives cultural heritage has also paid i think a significant role in shaping my world view and moral compass the values and ethics inherited from my cultural background guide me guide my actions and decisions promoting principles such as respect as i've have mentioned before, integrity, but also responsibility. These values are not just abstract concepts. They are lived experiences demonstrated by my family members and the community. This moral grounding is empowering as it provides clear guidelines on how to navigate life's complexities and make meaningful contributions to society. And as I've mentioned, My commitment can only be demonstrated by my contribution to the various public sector boards and roles that I've had within the community in which I live. So that's very, for me, a very important part of being a Parsi and a member of a community that will disappear, I suspect, in the not too distant future.  Gautam: Yeah, no, thank you, Yasmin. I am indeed very familiar with the Parsi history. And indeed, many of my best friends in the law are Parsis. And if I just take one jurisdiction, for example, in India, right, which you, of course, know very well, there are many prominent Parsi lawyers. And there have been. One of my greatest mentors was Fali Nariman, who was India's most celebrated lawyer, who unfortunately passed away in February of this year. But many, many prominent lawyers in India are Parsis. And many of the big industrial houses, as you know, in India, are Parsi in origin and remain Parsi in management and in all that they do. And those concepts of doing business fairly and being philanthropic, like very heart of Parsi culture. So it's very interesting. And I recall also, I grew up, Yasmin, in Northwest London. And very near where I went to school, there was an old cinema that stopped showing films. And it was taken over by the Parsi community. And it became a Zoroastrian center of worship. And this goes back to my much younger days. So I'm very familiar with that. And it's very interesting how it continues to inform you and inspire you, because it should do. And I also, I'm also very familiar with the fact that the Parsi community is getting smaller. As people marry outside of the Parsi faith, that inevitably has an impact. But the pride and the history of the Parsis is so rich. And, you know, it'll always be everlasting. So, and there's a long way yet to go. So, no, thank you for that. That's really, really nice to know. And, you know, just one last question on that before we turn to the last topic. What, in terms of looking at the examples of what the Parsi tradition and faith and heritage has taught you, one of the things that I'm always very mindful of is that the pro bono tradition, as I call it, is very well developed in certain jurisdictions. Jurisdictions but it's yet to develop fully in some jurisdictions now one of the countries where it is gathering pace is certainly India but just look at the size of that country and the legal community there i mean just briefly what you know what are your thoughts about what we could do to try to expand the pro bono tradition in a wonderful jurisdiction like India,  Yasmin: Actually, I think there's an awful lot that can be done. There's certainly an interest. We have been working in India and in fact have an entity called the A4ID Foundation, which is wholly Indian. We've been working alongside some amazing lawyers. In fact, part of the board comprises of some absolutely amazing Indian lawyers who are working with us to develop this. So we are bringing the culture to the pro bono culture that already exists, actually, within India and within the Indian community. But it's about using their legal brains that we're starting to to encourage. And that's happening, happening slowly, but it is happening. And with the vast number of lawyers in India, just think what we could do. Amazing. The other thing I wanted to just mention in terms of what you said was this week I received a gift from one of my team, members of my team. He's actually based in India. And the gift was a signed copy of the constitution, Indian constitution by Nariman.  Gautam: Oh, wow. Yeah. It's a wonderful book. Yes. And so I've been dipping since he sent it to me. I've been dipping in it. It's quite a quite a tomb. And I actually thought when I saw it, oh, my God, am I going to be able to read this? Because, you know, it's quite an interesting but quite a how can I put it, a dry topic.  Gautam: Yeah.  Yasmin: But having looked at it and read through it, it's actually brilliantly easy to read. He simplifies things because he knows the subject area so well that it's so easy to read. And I would thoroughly recommend if you have the opportunity to do so. And that includes your the people listening to this. I would thoroughly recommend it. It's a fantastic read.  Gautam: I agree. And, you know, the whole concept of the constitution is so important because it comes down to fundamental principles of fairness and doing things in an orderly way, in a proper way, and upholding that separation of power and not enabling things to just become merged as one. And that independence of thought is very very important now that's well i i think you're very fortunate to have a signed copy of that of that tome um i'm sure it'll be well thumbed in days and weeks to come as you read it so yes we've come almost to the end of our podcast and i've enjoyed, as i always do speaking to you i've had as i've said in the introduction i've had many a conversation with you over the years. I've always come away a much better person after each of those conversations, and this conversation has certainly been no exception to that. One of the traditions that we have in this podcast series, and I'm going to maintain that tradition even though this is a mini-series for South Asian Heritage Month, is to ask you a few more lighthearted things, to get to know the non-pro bono chief executive, Yasmin Batliwala. And so I want to ask you three very, very simple questions. Nothing mean, because I'm not a mean person, as you know, Yasmin. I want to ask you three little questions. First of all, have you got a favorite sort of music?  Yasmin: So on that question, I'd say, where do I start? I like all sorts of music. I have a particular preference, I should say, for classical music. Anything, anything at all by Mozart or J.S. Bach are things that I would be listening to regularly. I also like opera. In fact, I love opera. And I'm also a fan of David Bowie, I should say. But recently, Gautam, I've discovered a new genre of music, and that's heavy metal and electronic music.  Gautam: Amazing.  Yasmin: I've discovered a band called Disturbed, who are amazing. So to all your listeners, I encourage you to listen to their rendition of Simon and Garfunkel's song, Sound of Silence, which is absolutely mesmerizing and haunting.  Gautam: I'm going to check it out myself.  Yasmin: So let me know what you think. I've also discovered a band called Rammstein. I think that's how you pronounce it, which is a German heavy metal group of the 1990s. And I think, I think, and I seem to be listening to them quite a lot. And finally, I've also discovered, recently discovered, Mongolian electronic throat music. And that's totally blown me away. So I've been listening to that. So in terms of my musical taste, it's slightly expanding.  Gautam: That is incredibly eclectic. And I'm going to check out the German metal band and the rendition of Sound of Silence. I'm going to check those out. And I must tell you just very briefly on the Mongolian throat music. Many years ago, I was very fortunate to do a case for the government of Mongolia. It was a litigation in the English courts. And it went all the way to the Court of Appeal here. And I'm very happy that we won in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal. And I had the very good fortune to get to Mongolia twice on that case and to the great city of Ulaanbaatar. And I got introduced to Mongolian throat music. Now, the first trip was 2002-2003, around about then. I've not heard the electronic version as yet, but I'm certainly aware of the more basic classical rendition of throat singing. And also on that trip, I also learned about the eagle dance, which is a very famous dance that they do because the eagle and horses are very revered in Mongolia. And there's a dance which the wrestlers, Mongolian wrestling is also very popular and the wrestlers before they start the bout do this thing called the eagle dance. It's, I mean, I'll tell you more about it when I see you next. Okay, just two more quick ones and then I know we'll wrap. But have you got a favorite holiday destination or place that you just love to visit?  Yasmin: I, yeah, I like it. I love Italy. I don't think I've ever been to any single place And I like to travel around and visit different places that I haven't liked. So I like Italy. I like Italy also. But not only its beauty, its architecture, but the food and the people. So it's not far too far away from the UK. And so if ever I have an opportunity, I've gone to Italy. Recently, though, I went to Sicily. And that was a real find because it's obviously, I mean, talking about cultural traditions and cultural heritage, it seems to have been basically every country has stepped foot on it and taken it over. And it's left these amazing it's the amazing footprints so we've got the Greeks we've got the Normans we've got the various Moors as well all of them make it such a very interesting place.  Gautam: Absolutely. It just shows how cultures have moved around the world. One last question. We are recording this podcast during the European Championships in football. And this is not a leading question. And I am a lawyer. So this is not a leading question. Who's going to win the European Championships? Which country?  Yasmin: I'm afraid I don't watch football. So I can't answer that question. I have been to football matches, Gautam, and I haven't known what's been going on. This was during my time at the police authority, where I went out with the police at Watford to observe how policing was done. It was a lovely day, although we got up incredibly early, I seem to recall. But I had no idea what was going on in the pitch. Um it was slightly tribal in terms of the shouting. It was Manchester and Watford Manchester not sure if it was City or United. I think it was City it had um one of the Gallagher um one of the Gallagher  Gautam: Yeah it's Man City then  Yasmin: Yeah so just to watch that whole kind of tribal way was quite fascinating so i'm afraid i can't answer your question.  Gautam: That's quite okay you um you've answered many many questions in the course of this podcast yasmin thank you very much for doing this podcast it's been a delight to do it and to speak to you and um I could literally have asked you lots more questions and spent more time but these podcasts unfortunately would go on for a very long time if we did that but thank you very much indeed and thank you particularly for doing all the wonderful work that you continue to do on the the pro bono side and the great example you set through your leadership. So thank you very much.  Yasmin: Gautam, thank you so much also for inviting me to this podcast, which I must say I've enjoyed immensely. And if anyone listening out there is interested to work together with us at A4ID, please do contact me. And who knows what we can achieve together.  Gautam: Thank you, Yasmin.  Outro: Arbitral Insights is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. For more information about Reed Smith's global international arbitration practice, email arbitralinsights@reedsmith.com. To learn about the Reed Smith Arbitration Pricing Calculator, a first-of-its-kind mobile app that forecasts the cost of arbitration around the world, search Arbitration Pricing Calculator on reedsmith.com or download for free through the Apple and Google Play app stores. You can find our podcast on Spotify, Apple, Google Play, Stitcher, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers.  All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.

J.J. and Dr. Shai Secunda set Talmudic discourse ablaze. They put the Talmud in its Zoroastrian and Sasanian context, and have bloody good discussion about how Judaism interacted with its socio-religious environment in the first few centuries of the Common Era. Don't forget to rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsDr. Secunda is a religious studies scholar who has taught at universities in Israel and the United States, including the Hebrew University and Yale University, where he was the Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow. He previously served as a member of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lecturer in the university's comparative religion and Hebrew literature departments. His academic interests range from rabbinic and Middle Persian literature to classical Jewish history, the Babylonian Talmud in its Sasanian context, Zoroastrianism, and critical approaches to the study of religion, including gender and religion.Professor Secunda is the author of The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (2014) and The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context (forthcoming with Oxford University Press); and editor of Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman (with Steven Fine, 2012) and Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians in Antiquity (with Uri Gabbay, 2014). He has also contributed book chapters to the Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, and Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism. He is a member of the Association of Jewish Studies and the International Society of Iranian Studies. Professor Secunda has taught at Bard since 2016.

Today we're back again with New York Times best-seller and star of Ancient Aliens David Wilcock. David's recent event unfortunately did not sell very many tickets. Luckily, he's back with another cooky lecture. This time David breaks down some Hindu and Zoroastrian nonsense. At one point, he tries talking to the turkeys. If you enjoyed the show, please Like & Subscribe to our channel and share the links. This show can be found @hiddeninplainsightradio on Instagram and @thehiddenpod on Twitter. iTunes Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-in-plain-sight/id1488538144?i=1000459997594 Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zsntvl63Do7m9gNTD8Za2?si=MczvbuMlRuCbmWChclVUZA YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNRejWJs0hn8pefj5FiE7ZQ Rumble Link: https://rumble.com/c/c-389525 If you want to support the show, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hiddeninplainsightpod --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hiddeninplainsightradio/message

This is a recap of the top 10 posts on Hacker News on May 4th, 2024.This podcast was generated by wondercraft.ai(00:36): I don't want to fill out your contact formOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40256868&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(02:07): In Praise of Idleness (1932)Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40257677&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(04:19): How to build a $20B semiconductor fabOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258037&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(05:59): Does the American Diabetes Association work for patients or companies?Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259196&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(07:37): Verified Rust for low-level systems codeOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40259185&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(09:20): Vulture shortage threatens Zoroastrian burial ritesOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40257064&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(10:47): Atari's Mike JangOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40260210&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(12:32): Automated integer hash function discoveryOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40261681&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(13:53): The Matrix: A Bayesian learning model for LLMsOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40256173&utm_source=wondercraft_ai(15:16): Spotify getting into enterprise IT toolsOriginal post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40258315&utm_source=wondercraft_aiThis is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC. Text and audio generated using AI, by wondercraft.ai. Create your own studio quality podcast with text as the only input in seconds at app.wondercraft.ai. Issues or feedback? We'd love to hear from you: team@wondercraft.ai

Multidimensional wellness expert, Zoroastrian, and lifelong student Chervin Jafarieh helps us  unravel the complexities of our time. We delve into the depths of materialism's hold on society and its impact on our spiritual evolution and discuss how to awaken the spiritual warrior within, learning to defend against dark forces that seek to drain our life force energy. We also contemplate the profound concept of free will and its role in shaping our destinies. We explore the mysterious realm of DMT and its ability to awaken the soul, and confront the societal implications of alcohol, examining its detrimental effects on consciousness and spiritual growth. This episode is a deep dive into the core issues facing humanity today, offering insights and strategies for navigating the complexities of our spiritual journey. This episode is sponsored by: HELIX Go to HelixSleep.com/AMP for 20% off all mattress orders AND two free pillows! RAICES INKA Helping to raise one more person‘s consciousness, which ultimately raises global consciousness. ⁠www.raicesinkas.com/⁠ SAYU Go to ⁠Sayu.Earth⁠ to discover our new collection of magically potent essential oil blends made from the purest organic and wildcrafted ingredients. Use the code AUBREY for 15% off your first order.  | Connect with Chervin | Website | www.chervinjafarieh.com/ LinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/in/chervin-jafarieh Instagram | @chervin333 Facebook | www.facebook.com/chervin.jafarieh.1 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To partner with the Aubrey Marcus Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Connect with Aubrey | Website | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/2GesYqi ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/2BlfCEO ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/2F4nBZk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ http://bit.ly/2BlGBAdAd⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out "Own your Day, Own Your Life" by Aubrey Marcus | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/2vRz4so⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the Aubrey Marcus newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.aubreymarcus.com/pages/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the Aubrey Marcus podcast: iTunes | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://apple.co/2lMZRCn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Spotify |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://spoti.fi/2EaELZO ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Stitcher | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://bit.ly/2G8ccJt ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ IHeartRadio | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ihr.fm/3CiV4x3 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Google Podcasts | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/3nzCJEh ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Android | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2OQeBQg⁠⁠⁠

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have Pablo Vazquez. Visit his website and follow his journey.  http://www.mazdayasni.com

Show Notes and Transcript The current Israeli-Gaza war has sparked much debate focussing on geo politics and historical land disputes.  But few dare ask if Islam is the root cause of the ongoing tension.  Robert Spencer has studied Islam for 3 decades. His dozens of books and the Jihad Watch website are all go to sources of background information on Islam and the history behind it.  He returns to Hearts of Oak to ask if this is a religious problem and we start by looking at what Islam actually says about the Jews.  The aggression and vitriol throughout Islamic text and the history of behaviour towards the Jewish people is an eye opener to all of us.  Armed with this deeper understanding Robert then touches on how the term Palestinian was invented. The history, leader, flag and culture had to be invented as it was all non existent before.  His short book "The Palestinian Delusion" goes into much more detail and is a recommended read.  Enjoy the interview and get ready to see this current conflict in a whole new light. 'The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process' on Amazon https://amzn.eu/d/cPigAab Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of twenty-seven books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, The Truth About Muhammad and the bestsellers The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS and The Critical Qur'an: Explained from Key Islamic Commentaries and Contemporary Historical Research. His new book is Empire of God: How the Byzantines Saved Civilization. Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department's Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community. He has discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He is a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy. Connect with Robert and Jihad Watch... X                                x.com/jihadwatchRS  @jihadwatchRS WEBSITE                   jihadwatch.org/ Interview recorded  26.3.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... WEBSITE            heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS        heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA   heartsofoak.org/connect/  SHOP                  heartsofoak.org/shop/ TRANSCRIPT (Hearts of Oak) It's wonderful to have Robert Spencer back with us again. Robert, thank you so much for your time today. (Robert Spencer) Always good to talk to you, Peter. Thank you. Great to have you on. Always good to have guests on talking about their books. We'll get into a book that I've been delving into and got a couple of months ago, but only picked it up recently and have read it. We'll get into that in a moment. But obviously, you can find Robert: that is his Twitter handle, @jihadwatchRS. And obviously jihadwatch.org is the website. You can find everything in the links below. Make sure and use it. Make sure and sign up to it. One of the latest, I think the latest piece on that, and we're doing this just two days before the video goes out, is the U.S. Supreme Court gives Hamas-linked CAIRE a 9-0 thumbs up. And CAIR obviously is the Council on American Islamic Relations. I encourage you to delve into that, which gives some of the geopolitics, I guess, that lies behind some of the difficulties that the U.S. Faces as it engages and grapples and understands Islam, which is a massive subject. But the book that I've been delving into and enjoying is The Palestinian Delusion. Short book, 200 pages. And if you want to understand what is happening at the moment in the Middle East, I would encourage you to get a hold of a copy. Available US, UK, wherever you are. The links are in the description. Grab it. And I know you'll want to get it after this interview. But , I do want to get into modern day; what is happening? But right at the beginning, chapter two; chapter one is about the formation of Israel. If we just go on to chapter two, does religion, specifically Islam, lie at the root of the problem? What are your thoughts, Robert? And of course, you delve into this in chapter two. Yeah, absolutely, Peter. Islam is what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about. If you look at the messages from Hamas, from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, from Fatah, from the Palestinian Authority itself, they are all about Islam all the time. Yet that is the one aspect of this conflict that is universally ignored by policy analysts and by policymakers in the West. Every attempt at a negotiated settlement initiated by the President of the United States or any other entity over the last 50 years has completely ignored, 100% ignored, Islam as a factor in this conflict. And yet, from the standpoint of the Palestinian Arabs, that's what it is all about, and we ignore it to our own detriment. Now, chapter two is entitled The Roots of the hatred of Israel. Hatred is a very strong word, Robert, is it not? Yes, but it's entirely accurate in this case, because what we are dealing with is not only a hatred, but what has been termed the longest hatred, that is the hatred of the Jews, which of course is not solely the province of Muslims or Islam, but, many people in the West don't realize that there even is such a thing as Islamic anti-Semitism. Yet, it is very real and it is at the roots of the problem between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs today. Now, we all hear the term Islam being one of the great Abrahamic religions, and yet there doesn't seem to be a lot of love for the Jews in Islam in the text and the history. Do you want to just let us know; because that is a different side that many people will certainly not hear in the legacy media. Yes. Islam, the Quran teaches that Islam is the third revelation after the revelation of the Torah and the Gospel. That is the core scriptures of the Jews and the Christians, and that it confirms the message of the Torah and the Gospel. And that Moses and Abraham before him, and Jesus after him, and all the other prophets in the Bible, in both the Jewish and the Christian scriptures, are people who taught Islam. Islam was the original religion of all the prophets. We can see this particularly in chapter 3, verse 67 of the Quran, which says Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian. He was a Muslim. And you might wonder, well, this doesn't make any sense. How could Abraham be a Muslim when Muhammad is the originator of Islam in the 7th century and Abraham is many, many centuries before that? The Islamic answer is that Islam is the original religion of all the prophets and that it was their followers who twisted their teachings to create Judaism and Christianity. The only legitimate expression of the true teachings of the prophets is Islam. And that being the case, the orthodox mainstream understanding among Muslims of Judaism and Christianity is that they have no legitimacy at all. Now, this is a very important point because, then the Quran commands Muslims to fight against and subjugate the Jews and Christians, among others. And it's in part because of their rejecting the true faith and corrupting their scriptures, although that part comes from Islamic tradition. Now, the difficulty that people have with this arises from the fact that Islamic spokesmen in the West very deceptively, frequently, refer to how much they as Muslims revere and respect figures such as Abraham and Moses and Jesus himself himself. And so Jews and Christians who are uninformed about Islam hear this and they think, isn't that wonderful? How generous and open-minded and ecumenical they are. And we should do the same. We should reciprocate by acknowledging Muhammad as a prophet. And they don't realize that the Muslims do revere and respect Abraham and Moses and Jesus and the rest of them, but as Muslims, not as they are portrayed in Judaism and Christianity. I mean, everything seems to be on the terms of Islam. I knew your book: Did Muhammad Exist? Actually, I think we need to remind ourselves of the world that Muhammad, if he did exist, was born into, which wasn't an Islamic world as we know today. It was a very different world. Yes. North Africa, the Middle East, what we think of today as the heart of the Islamic world, those were Christian lands. They were 99% Christian from Morocco all the way across North Africa and throughout the Middle East. And so it was the conquest initiated by the Arabs beginning in the 630s that ultimately led to the Islamization of those various nations and the steady diminishment of the Christian population. But, it's important to keep in mind, Peter, that the Christian population did not decline because the Christians were gradually convinced of the truth and beauty of Islam. Rather, they were subjugated, as the Quran directs, under the hegemony of Islamic law and denied basic rights in the societies that had been conquered. And the only thing they had to do to free themselves from the oppression of living with this denial of rights was to convert to Islam. And so many people did over the centuries, such that, for example, Egypt was 99% Christian when the Arabs invaded, and now it's about 10% Christian. The Christians didn't all leave. They just converted to Islam over time, because of the pressure placed on non-Muslims. Well, maybe as the world talks about repatriations, especially in the BLM movement, maybe Christians need to get some of that from Egypt. Yes. If there were real reparations for slavery and for oppression, then yes, the Christian population of the entire Middle East and North Africa would be owed an immense amount of money. But nobody's talking about that. I guess we hear the term anti-Semitism and we're told that any feeling of anti-Semitism from Islam is purely misplaced and doesn't lie at the heart of it and this seems to be this distinction between kind of rogue Islamic preachers, but actually key text and that seems, I think commentators seem to want to make a wide gap between that. Yet, as you point out, this term anti-Semitism, it lies right at the basis of Islam from 1300, 1400 years ago. Yes, absolutely. The Qur'an says in chapter 5, verse 82, that the people who are most intense in hostility to the believers will be the Jews, as well as the polytheists. Now, what this works out to in practice is that the Jews are the recipients of the most hostility from the Muslims. This is also because this is not an isolated passage, but the Quran is full of passages depicting the Jews in a negative light, depicting them as schemers who plot against the plans of Allah himself and try to foil them. Who crow about the limits on the power of Allah, saying Allah's hand is chained. That's chapter 5, verse 64. They were transformed into apes and pigs by Allah for their disobedience. That's chapter 2, verses 62 to 66, rather. Chapter 5, 59 and 60, and 7, 166. and many, many, other passages all the way through the Quran depict the Jews as being rebellious against Allah and essentially enemies of Allah. Then the Islamic tradition is even worse and the Jews are depicted as plotting against Muhammad, trying to kill Muhammad, being massacred by Muhammad and punishment for their plots to kill him. Jewish woman poisons Muhammad and this ultimately leads to his death and so on. They're the real villains of the entire tradition. And this carries through to the modern age where Judaism and Jews are so stigmatized in the Islamic world that several ex-Muslims have spoken about moving to America or moving to Europe and encountering actual Jews for the first time and being shocked that they were not evil, horned creatures, devils in human form, trying to disrupt human society in every way, but just ordinary people like everybody else, some good, some bad. And they had no frame of reference to understand this, because Islam is so unanimous and monochromatic in depicting them as evil. I think if someone is watching this as a Christian, they will understand the Bible as the text that they live by, which is full of stories, explains things, not really chronological, but actually, you can read it and you can grasp a lot of its meaning. And that stands by itself outside the Christian traditions, really. Islam seems to be quite different. It seems to be not not only is the Qur'an actually impossible to understand, but actually seemingly is only supposedly, understandable. With a wealth of other writings, which seems to confuse things massively for anyone coming from a Christian background or from the West. That's right, Peter. The Qur'an in the first place is written, in many cases it tells the stories that it tells. In a way that makes it clear that it assumes that the hearers have heard them before and are familiar with the general outlines of the story. So, it leaves out important aspects of the stories, and many times it is speaking about incidents, and events, and not explaining what incident or event is involved. It's as if you were talking to a friend and I walked up and I didn't know either of you very well and didn't know what you what incidents you were talking about, and you didn't pause to explain it to me. I would have no idea what you're what you're discussing, and that's what reading the Quran is like in many ways. So, you have the voluminous hadith literature: hadith means report and it's the reports of Mohammed's words and deeds. In the hadith literature you find what is known as the Asbab al-Nuzul which is the circumstances of revelation that tells the stories of what was going on at the time among the early Muslims. And Muhammad that led to the revelation of this or that passage of the Quran. And that's all very well, but this material comes from a couple of hundred years after Muhammad is supposed to have lived. And there's no trace of it existing before that. And so, it's an open question as to whether these things really give the circumstances of revelation and the Quran passage follows from that, or if these stories were put together in order to explain what is essentially a gnomic, elliptical, incoherent text. And that seems, the latter seems to be more likely. Some philologists like Christoph Luxemburg have noted that if you strip out the diacritical marks that distinguish many Arabic letters from each other, because there are 22 letters in the Arabic alphabet, but 16 are exactly the same character, just with different combinations of dots above or below. And so if you take out the dots and repoint it as if it were Aramaic, then suddenly it's a whole different text and a Christian text in many cases. And so, Luxembourg contends that it was actually a Christian text that was repurposed by the early Arab conquerors in order to create the religion of Islam. And they did this because this is actually the fundamental thesis of my own book: Did Muhammad Exist? They did this because in those days, religions were what cemented political unity. There were no parliaments or constitutions in this era when Islam arose. And you had two great powers in this region, the Byzantine Empire, which was Christian, and the Persian Empire, which was Zoroastrian. They were held together by those religions. The idea was that to be a Roman citizen at this time, a citizen of the Byzantine Empire, meant that one was a Christian and adhered to the tenets of Orthodox Christianity. Consequently, the non-Christians were not considered to be fully citizens of the empire. And this is another story, but it was the Christian identity that was the cement that held the empire together. So, the Arabs amassed a great empire, conquering massive expanses of territory, and then they developed a religion to hold it all together. And because these were warriors who wanted to expand and defend and strengthen their empire, they made their religion belligerent, aggressive, martial, warlike, expansionist, and so on. I think in chapter two, you talk about that we all know of Muslims praying to Mecca, and only then Allah can really hear the prayers properly. But you talk in the book about initially it was facing towards Jerusalem. So, was this just Muhammad wanting to be accepted? and then later on, of course, or at that time, Muhammad wanting to be a prophet. Kind of, in my thinking, that's sheer arrogance, thinking you can be a prophet to a religion you come across. Those concepts of him wanting to be a Jewish prophet, but also praying towards Jerusalem, those are two facts that seem to be missing in any dialogue today. Yes, well, it does seem as if, at least according to the canonical traditional Islamic story; that is of questionable historical value. But there's no doubt that Muslims believe it; that Muhammad taught that he was a new prophet in the line of the prophets of the Bible. And that consequently he was the new prophet of the Jews and a new prophet of the Christians. And both groups said, you're not. The Jews said, you're not Jewish. You can't be a Jewish prophet. And the Christians said, Jesus said: it is finished on the cross. We're not looking for a new prophet. And so he was rejected by both. And this has led to the kind of cognitive dissonance that the Quran says that the Jews and Christians, the Christians in particular in chapter five of the Quran will be rightly guided if they follow the gospel. And yet the Gospel does not confirm the teachings of the Qur'an as the Qur'an insists, and it insists that it confirms the teachings of the Torah also. And so Islamic spokesmen, Islamic scholars throughout the ages have accounted for this discrepancy by claiming that the Jews and Christians corrupted their scriptures. And so, they maintain that Muhammad is indeed a prophet in the line of the biblical prophets, but that it's the Jews and Christians' fault for not recognizing him. They twisted their scriptures to erase the congruence so, that people would not see that the Quran confirms the Torah and the gospel. A s a result, the Jews and Christians are portrayed as these incredible renegades and rebels against God who have dared to tamper with the very word of God that he gave them, and created false religions of their own making. And so here again, they have no legitimacy. I do want to get on to current day but, I want to there there's another concept that comes out in your book which is a widely misunderstood word and that's the word jihad, and we are told jihad is inner struggle. It's a spiritual struggle between yourself trying to be right and to be good and live correctly. Yet, jihad is a term that's used in violence all across the world. What is this term, jihad? The primary understanding of jihad in Islamic theology is warfare against unbelievers in order to bring them under the hegemony of Islamic law. The confusion arises from the fact that jihad means struggle, and there are as many things that are referred to as struggles in Arabic as there are in English. And so you can have great struggles and small struggles. You can struggle to be on time for appointments when you're chronically late, but you can also have a great struggle between civilizations, such as World War II or something. Now, in the Islamic realm, it's the same thing. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a department of agricultural jihad, which doesn't involve blowing things up on farms. It involves trying to struggle to increase the efficiency of the farms and their fruitfulness. Whereas in Islamic theology, the principal meaning of jihad has to do with this warfare against unbelievers. So, here again, Islamic spokesmen in the West frequently confuse people. They're trying to confuse them and make them complacent about the jihad threat by saying jihad just means struggle. And it's about struggling to better yourself. And they don't tell you that Muhammad said the warfare against unbelievers is the highest understanding of jihad, that there's nothing greater than jihad in which one loses one's life and then is rewarded with paradise. In the book, you use a number of examples of what we would call hit preachers. This is in 45, the Hamas deputy minister of religious endowments on Al-Aqsa TV 2010 said: the Jews suffer from a mental disorder because they are thieves and aggressors. A thief or aggressor who took land or property develops a psychological disorder and pangs of conscience because he took someone that wasn't his. And then the next page, you have a from 2018, a program on Palestinian Authority television saying people could be deluded or think that they have no way out with the Jews. The liberation of this land is a matter of faith, which will happen despite everyone. And then the next page up, the Jews are treacherous and conniving cheaters. But again, the argument, many of the guests I have on would not look at Islam as an issue, as a problem. And they would simply say those are misguided, radical preachers, and they don't understand the true, beautiful nature of Islam. How do you speak against that criticism, I guess, that you're maybe picking things out and you're looking at these preachers that actually don't understand Islam, really? Well, in the first place, I find it difficult to believe that people who have committed their lives to understanding Islam correctly would not understand it correctly. While non-Muslims who've never picked up a Quran or have any idea what it says, they understand it perfectly well. Islam is kind of funny in that way that the more you know about it, the less you understand it. And the less you know about it, the more you understand it. We see this with non-Muslim politicians all over the West who assure us with immense confidence that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. Those are actually the exact words from Hillary Clinton a few years back, but many, many other politicians say exactly the same thing. And I know that Hillary Clinton doesn't have the first foggiest idea of what the Koran teaches, whereas I, who have read the Koran dozens and dozens of times, committed a great deal of it to memory. Published a translation and commentary of it that's my own, and have studied Islamic theology for 40 years, now. They would say, well, you don't understand Islam at all. And even more to the point, these Muslim clerics who've attended Al-Azhar or other prestigious Islamic institutions and and spend their whole lives trying to understand the Quran and the Islam properly, and they don't get it at all. So, in the first place, it's absurd. But in the second place, what these people said that you quoted, like the fellow who said the Jews are treacherous, conniving, cheaters, that's just Quranic theology. If you read what the Quran says about the Jews, just get a Quran, don't even read the whole thing. Get one with a good index and read all the passages about the Jews. And you will see that every last one of them is negative. Every last one of them portrays the Jews as scheming and conniving and cheating the righteous people. And so this is the prism through which these clerics see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They understand it through the lens of the Qur'an, because they believe that the Qur'an is the perfect word of the perfect being that is valid for all times and all places in all situations. They see the world today and they see Israel and the Palestinians. And the first place they will go to understand all that is the Quran, because they would trust Allah over any human authority, telling them what the conflict is all about. The Quran tells them over and over that the Jews are evil and enemies of Allah. So, they see Israel and they think, here are the evil Jews who are enemies of Allah. Even, the fact that they refer to Jews and not to Israelis or to Zionists or some other term of that kind indicates that they're seeing this through theological principles. And those theological principles are deeply anti-Semitic. Well, bringing us up to the present day, for over 2,000 years, the Jews did not have their homeland there in the land that is Israel. And it was under all different, we'll not go into the history, all different, I guess, occupying forces or other forces. And then 1948 happens and the Jewish homeland, modern day Israel, is founded again. And immediately, and this is chapter three, you talk about the jihad of 1948,which is an interesting term. Why that title? Well, the whole thing is a jihad from 1948, from before 1948, when the Zionist settlement began in the late 19th century. Even before that, because there there were always Jews in the Holy Land, and they were always subject to sporadic, periodic attacks. Now, after the Zionism began, these attacks intensify because in the first place, the Ottomans were alarmed when they owned the land that the Jews were moving in, because they thought that it would threaten their hegemony over it. Then when the Ottoman Empire fell, the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, gave Britain the mandate for Palestine to establish a Jewish national home. Now, why did the Arabs object to a Jewish national home? There were already large Arab states right there neighboring this territory. And so it should have been and could have been. A relatively peaceful and orderly process once the Jewish national home was actually founded. After World War II, Germany lost massive territories in the East because it fought a war of aggression and lost. And for reasons of national security, the Poles, the Soviets, and the French in the West took various territories from the Germans. The Germans who who lived in those areas, were sent to what remained of Germany. Nobody complained. Nobody raises, nowadays, some right of return or speaks about occupied German territory in Poland and Russia. It would be absurd even to think about. But it's the exact same situation with Israel. The Arabs of Lebanon, of Syria, and of Jordan are identical ethnically, culturally, linguistically, and religiously with the Palestinian Arabs. There has never been a distinct Palestinian nationality. That's a propaganda creation that was designed to be a weapon to use against Israel. So, when you have Arabs who leave, they did not actually get kicked out. They left because the Arab League told them to leave in 1948, because the Arab states neighboring Israel were going to crush it within weeks. Then they would be out of the line of fire and could return home after Israel was destroyed. It didn't work that way, because Israel actually turned out to win the war. The Arab states, after that happened, could have easily absorbed these populations. And there would be no problem today, just like there's no problem in Europe today, in regard to the German refugees after World War II. And yet they did not do that because they they wanted to keep the Palestinian refugees as stateless, as refugees, as a weapon to beat Israel with. This is what became the linchpin for what I referred to as the Jihad of 1948. The Jihad, because the Quran says in chapter 2, verse 191: drive them out from where they drove you out. It's a myth, as I just noted, it's a myth that the the Israelis drove the Arabs out. It's not a fact, but it's what the Arabs all over the Middle East and the non-Arab Muslims are taught about what happened. So, that is because it triggers the divine command, drive them out from where they drove you out. They have to have been driven out for that to kick in as being applicable. So, now millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab, are taught that they must drive out the Israelis, because the Muslims were driven out. It's a divine command, no less than the Ten Commandments for Christians. Consequently, it is a jihad because if it were not for these religious principles that are rooted in Islam and the Quran, the problem would have been solved by negotiations decades ago. But no negotiated settlement ever succeeds, because you don't negotiate away divine commandments. Well, that negotiated settlement, two-term, two-state solution is the phrase that comes up, and you touch on that in that chapter. And we're told this is the way to fix all the problems, if only we can come up with this mythical two-state solution. Why is that then not the solution to the issue that the world faces in the Middle East? A two-state solution would require two states. That requires at least ostensibly that the Arabs have to acknowledge that a Jewish state of some size has a right to exist there and they will never accept that, because the divine command has driven them out from where they drove you out. That does not admit of half measures. It might admit of partial fulfilment that they take over half of Israel and then the other half later. But it doesn't allow for the recognition of the right to exist of any non-Muslim entity on that land. Consequently, the Jewish state could be the size of my office here. The Jewish state could be the size of a postage stamp, and it would not be acceptable, because they have have to drive them out from where they drove you out without any exceptions. The negotiation, the two-state solution would quickly become, or even eventually, even slowly become, a one-state solution. The Palestinian state would make war against what's left of Israel and ultimately destroy it. There would never be two states in that land on an indefinite basis. In your book, one of the chapters talks about the naivety of Carter. Seemingly, every U.S. president has accepted this. Even Trump has accepted; has stated that actually he sees that as the best solution. Is that simply an absolute misunderstanding that this is a religious ideology that lies at the root of all this? Yeah, absolutely. It's because nobody in Washington knows or wants to know about the power and influence of Islam over political issues. They underestimated and misunderstood Khomeini when it was the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. And since 1948, they have misunderstood the Israeli-Arab conflict, because they don't understand Islam. They routinely discount it as having anything to do with this conflict. And yet, it's right there in the Hamas charter. Israel will arise and will remain until Islam obliterates it. Islam obliterates it. And yet, no policymaker, no president, not Carter, not any of the others. Not Trump. None of them have ever pondered. What does that mean until Islam obliterates it? How can Islam obliterate a country? That doesn't even make any sense to the policymakers in Washington, because they think of Islam solely as a religion, and they think of it because they come from Judeo-Christian backgrounds. The way Christianity operates in the West. They assume it's like that, and so, they have no idea of its political, aggressive, expansionist, and supremacist aspects. In chapter four, you say the Palestinians are invented. That's a very strong statement. Surely, we've had the land of Palestine back in the Roman era. That's surely 2,000 years old. So, there must be all this history and people: the Palestinians. Well, I'll tell you, Peter, you're right, and yet not. And I know you know. It's true. The Romans renamed the land of Judea, that is, land of the Jews. They renamed Judea Palestine in 134 AD. And they officially expelled the Jews from the area, although many of them stayed all the way through to the modern age. Now, Palestine was a name they had taken from the Bible, from the Philistines, the ancient enemies of the Israelites, in the Jewish scriptures. And they named it Palestine. They named Judea Palestine as a yet another taunt against the Jews as they were expelling them from the region. They renamed the region against their extinct enemies. But, there were never any Palestinians. And I would ask you, you know. You can find on YouTube, for example, the men on the street interviews, and people are even Palestinians are asked, name a famous Palestinian from history. And they all say Yasser Arafat. Okay, name another. If they were Palestinian since 134 AD, then, okay, name one. Give us one from the second century or the fifth or the 10th or the 15th or the 19th. There weren't any. It was the name of a region. It's like Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a city in the United States. And there are citizens of Los Angeles, but if we start talking about a distinct Los Angeles nationality that deserves its own state, people would laugh. It's the name of the city. And Palestine was the name of this region, but there were never any Palestinians. It was just the name of a place. The idea that it's a distinct nationality was invented by Arafat and the KGB in 1964. And they did it as a propaganda weapon because the whole world in those days was sympathetic to Israel. The Israelis, because they had faced off and defeated massive nations. Arab and non-Arab Muslim nations, and had stood against them even though they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned. They gained the sympathy of the entire world. And so, the KGB in Arafat in 1964 renamed the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Very small change and nobody even noticed, but it was a momentous change, because it indicated for the first time in history that there was a people called Palestinians. And now the whole world accepts it and takes it for granted, but this is an invented nationality that was designed to create an even tinier people that was menaced by the massive Israeli war machine. And that would take the wind out of the sails of Israel, the tiny underdog Jewish state facing off against these massive Arab states. And it's worked very well. Even the Israelis have admitted or accepted the existence of Palestinians as a distinct nationality when there has never been such a people in history. You can go to 1948. Go to the library, read the newspapers from the day. Read the United Nations deliberations when they offered the Arabs half of the area of Israel. We're going to establish yet another Arab state and a Jewish state. And the Arabs said no, because they wouldn't accept a Jewish state of any size. Nobody ever mentions Palestinians. It's funny, because they're the center of the conflict now. And yet, in those days, it was the Israeli-Arab conflict. There was not a single mention anywhere of Palestinians. I mean, Islam does seem to have a trend of rewriting history. And in the book you talk about a number of statements and articles referring to Jesus as a Palestinian. That would be news to Jesus, because I'm sure I read in my Bible that he was Jewish. Yeah, well, obviously this is another propaganda point that's designed to curry favour among non-Muslims with the Palestinians. Even from a historical standpoint, Jesus was not a Palestinian because it wasn't until a hundred years after Jesus that the Romans renamed the area of Judea Palestine. The Gospels are very clear. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. That Galilee was right there next to Judea, where he grew up in Nazareth. And he says salvation is from the Jews. A very ignored statement of his. This is very clearly someone who was operating within a Jewish framework, a Jewish culture surrounded by Jews. And even the theology of Christianity is based on the theology of Judaism, that the temple Judaism before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD was based on animal sacrifices for atonement for sins. And then Jesus is presented as being, as God become man, the eternal sacrifice and the perfect atonement for sins that opens the way of heaven for the people. This is something that really doesn't even make any sense apart from Judaism. And I think Christians nowadays are getting very carried away in this Christ is King controversy that's been going on in regard to Candace Owens and the Daily Wire and so on. It risks ignoring or denying the Jewish roots of Christianity and the fundamental kinship that Judaism and Christianity actually have, despite the undeniable antagonism and the Christian anti-Semitism that was certainly operative in Europe for centuries. Well, you're right. Without Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the stories of the Old Testament, God's promised there would be no New Testament and Jesus would not be there. 100%, Robert. Just to finish off with, the last chapter is what is to be done. And it seems from this discussion that what the conflict that we see at the moment between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israelis is just part of the wider issue of Jews and Muslims, of Islam and Judaism. So, when you say what is to be done, how do you see looking ahead? Well, looking ahead, it doesn't look good, because the American government, which is essentially the principal, if not the sole ally of the Jewish state, is betraying Israel because the Biden regime is very afraid that it's going to lose the Muslim vote, which could lose it several swing states in the November election. And end up with Biden being defeated for re-election. So, they've decided to betray Israel as a result. They're pressing for a Palestinian state. If a Palestinian state were founded, that would, as I discussed earlier, become a new jihad base for renewed attacks against what's left of Israel. They don't seem to know or care that if Israel is destroyed, then the jihadis all around the world will be emboldened like never before, and will step up their attacks in Europe and the United States. This is what we're looking at in the future unless Israel is able to destroy Hamas despite the international pressure to get it to surrender and by surrender. I mean accept a ceasefire that would allow Hamas to live and if Israel can do that then all bets are off and the post-war picture will be radically different. But right now it looks like it's going to be very tough times ahead head, both for Israel and for the West. Well, I would encourage people to get: The Passing Delusion. It's a great book and will help explain what is happening. And of course, Robert's latest book is: The Empire of God, How the Byzantines Saved Civilization. A wonderful endorsement by Victor Davis Hanson. So, if you're not sure about Robert, go to Victor David Hanson. Robert, really appreciate you coming along. Love your work over the many decades with Jihad Watch, certainly one of my go-to places on the geopolitics and deeper. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. Pleasure.

Sub to the Patreon in time for "Paranoiacost" Sermon #3: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping If you'd like to support our ministry further, you can also make one-time donations at: ⁠Ko-fi.com/parapowermapping⁠ "Smoke goes out of (Leviathan's) nostrils, As from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth." "He makes the deep boil like a pot; He makes the sea like a pot of ointment" (oil in other vers.) —Book of Job, Ch. 41 on LEVIATHAN Welcome back, brothers, sisters, & siblings. It's sus-olalia time once again. Things pick up in a major way in Part B of Sermon #2, as we continue our localized history of Houston oil's influence on the Osteen dynasty & the Prosperity Gospel and begin to lay bare how Christian-Z***ist Wildcatters + oilmen link the Lone Star State to Israel... We talk: how it appears Lakewood "shooter" Genesse Moreno's in-laws were Lakewood congregants; how her father-in-law worked for Houston Lighting & Power on the Texas Nuclear Project (

Faith leaders including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Vincent Nichols have welcomed a new report which calls for better support for asylum seekers. It comes from a commission set up to consider how refugees might be helped to integrate into society more easily. It makes a series of recommendations and suggests that the current system creates barriers to asylum seekers who want to quickly make good use of their existing skills and qualifications. The government says it's committed to ensuring refugees can take positive steps towards integration as they rebuild their lives in the UK.It's 300 years since J S Bach's setting of the Passion narrative from St John's gospel was first performed on Good Friday at the St Nicholas Church in Leipzig. This week many of the UK's cathedrals and churches will be marking the anniversary by performing it. The composer, conductor and singer, Bob Chilcott celebrates the work and reflects on what is one of the most revered of all musical settings of the Passion. Does religious education at school help young people when they get a job? Lord Karan Bilimoria, a former president of the CBI, thinks it can. He believes RE helps young people to navigate the complexity of modern belief and the diversity of worldviews in the UK today. The businessman, who is from the Zoroastrian tradition, has launched a campaign urging employers to support higher standards in religious education. We hear from Lord Bilimoria, and also from the National Secular Society who feel there are better ways to equip young people for the workforce.Presenter: Edward Stourton Producers: Jonathan Hallewell and Alexa Good Editor: Dan Tierney

Known as one of the last Zoroastrian dynasties to exist prior to the Islamic Iranian dynasties, the Qarinvand Dynasty ruled parts of the Tabaristan highlands in today's northern Iran. Tabaristan was ruled by the Dabuyid Dynasty through Dabuyid Ispahbads. As one of two Dabuyid vassal kingdoms, the other being Bavand, the Qarinvand Dynasty ruled from the 550s until the 11th-century, persisting even after the Abbasids defeated the Dabuyid ruler and annexed Tabaristan. Little is known about Tabaristan's history under the Dabuyid Ispahbads, especially the Qarinvand Dynasty. Nevertheless, its history can be understood through linked dynasties including the Bavand, Abbasid, and Dabuyid dynasties. Thank you to Courtney Blankenship for this article.

Sub to the PPM Patreon to hear the entirety of Sermon 2.B: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping If you'd like to support our ministry further, you can also make one-time donations at: Ko-fi.com/parapowermapping "Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook, Or snare his tongue with a line which you lower? Can you put a reed through his nose, Or pierce his jaw with a hook?" "Smoke goes out of his nostrils, As from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, And a flame goes out of his mouth." "He makes the deep boil like a pot; He makes the sea like a pot of ointment" ( 'oil' in other versions ) —Book of Job, Ch. 41 on LEVIATHAN Welcome back, brothers, sisters, nonbinary siblings. It's sus-olalia time once again. Things pick up in a major way in Part B of Sermon #2, as we continue our localized history of Houston oil's influence on the Osteen dynasty & the Prosperity Gospel and begin to lay bare how Christian-Z***ist Wildcatters + oilmen link the Lone Star State to Israel... We talk: how it appears Lakewood "shooter" Genesse Moreno's in-laws were Lakewood congregants; how her father-in-law worked for Houston Lighting & Power on the Texas Nuclear Project (

He is the Living God Daniel 6:1-28 by William Klock Last Sunday we read those closing words of the fifth chapter of Daniel that tell us Belshazzar, the very night of his feast, was killed and that Darius the Mede received the kingdom.  Daniel 6 picks right up from there.  Let's look at Daniel 6:1-9. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps, to be throughout the whole kingdom; and over them three high officials, of whom Daniel was one, to whom these satraps should give account, so that the king might suffer no loss. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him. And the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. Then the high officials and the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him. Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.”   Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, “O King Darius, live forever! All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. Now, O king, establish the injunction and sign the document, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Therefore King Darius signed the document and injunction.  (Daniel 6:1-9) Darius the Mede.  You might remember that last week I said he's a bit of a mysterious character.  I think the author of Daniel does something very deliberate here that would, to the original hearers, have signalled a change in the sort of story being told.  Unless you've studied Ancient Near Eastern history, this won't seem important.  If you have studied Ancient Near Eastern history, when you hear “Darius the Mede” it's going to catch your attention.  It's not right.  Darius wasn't a Mede; he was a Persian.  And he didn't rule before Cyrus; he ruled almost twenty years after these events, after the exile was over, and after Daniel had died.  Jews would have noticed the same thing.  Darius figures heavily in the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the prophetic books of Haggai and Zechariah.  So I think that a Jew hearing this—especially as the story continues—would see it as a signal that the genre, that the type of storytelling has changed.  And there's good reason for the storyteller to make this change.  Chapters 6 and 7 are transitions in the book of Daniel from those earlier stories that were a type of wisdom literature, to Daniel's apocalyptic vision.  We're moving from the historical to the prophetic and apocalyptic and the book does that with one last story about Daniel in exile, but this time it's—well—the best thing I can think to call it is a “prophetic parable”.  It's a story that serves a different purpose than the other stories.  As we move from the historical to the apocalyptic, this story of Daniel in the lions' den makes us pause as it reminds us of the big picture, the big story about the God of Israel and his people, it reminds us that he's got a plan and is directing history towards an end goal, and it reminds his people of their place in that big story. So it begins with Darius.  On the one hand, in the previous verse he's called “the Mede”, but here he's the Darius who organised his empire into satrapies.  That's exactly what Darius the Great—who followed twenty years later and was a Persian—that's what he did.  I don't think this isn't a mistake or a historical error.  This character is a sort of a composite of pagan kings who represents, who stands for something in the story.  Again, we're moving from history to parable here.  Think of the parables Jesus told.  This character represents the faithful in Israel.  That character represents the unfaithful.  And that character represents the gentiles.  Here the king and his satraps represent the rulers of the gentiles.  And Daniel represents Israel.  Like Daniel, Israel had the Lord's favour.  She was his favourite amongst the nations and the nations became jealous.  And that's exactly what happens to Daniel in this story.  When they see how he's been elevated and has been given authority over them, the satraps chafe.  He was one of the exiles.  He wasn't one of them.  He didn't deserve his special status or his high rank or his favour with the king.  So they get together and conspire against him. There are echoes of Psalm 2 here.  In fact, I think if you wanted to turn Psalm 2—which is one of those big picture psalms that ends up pointing us to Jesus—if you wanted to turn Psalm 2 into a parable, I think it would end up looking a lot like Daniel 6.  The psalm begins: Why do the nations rage          and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves,          and the rulers take counsel together,          against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart          and cast away their cords from us.” (Psalm 2:1-3) Notice where they attack Daniel?  It was “the law of his God”.  He was blameless in everything so they go after his faith.  And in that they're not just attacking Daniel.  Through Daniel, this is an attack on God himself.  It echoes what it meant in the Old Testament to stand against Israel and, looking forward to Jesus and then to the church, to attack Jesus was to attack God himself.  Think of Jesus' confrontation with Paul on the road to Damascus: “Why are you persecuting me?” he asked Paul.  To attack the church was to attack Jesus himself.  To attack the Lord's anointed is to attack the Lord himself. So these men go to the king—all of them.  The satraps, who were viceroys over the provinces; Daniel's two fellow triumvirs; and all the other counsellors and officials.  It's quite the gang.  Everybody hates Daniel.  But they know that Daniel has favour with the king, so in order to take Daniel down, they're going to have to deceive and manipulate the king.  So they hatch this scheme to recommend a law.  This injunction will ban everyone in the empire from petitioning any god for thirty days.  For that time period, everyone will be required to petition the king and only the king.  And the penalty—you know the story—the penalty for anyone who breaks this injunction will be the lions' den. Again, the details signal that this isn't the same kind of story we've had before in Daniel.  It's a parable.  As the nations rage against the Lord and his anointed in Psalm 2, all the king's governors and counsellors rage against Daniel and, through him, his God.  The decree is not something that a Persian king would have signed—or a Babylonian or any other Ancient Near Eastern king, for that matter.  The Jews who read this would have known that.  The Persians were known for their religious and cultural tolerance—and especially their friendliness to the Jews.  Not only were they tolerant, but the Persian kings were Zoroastrians and would never put themselves in the position of the gods.  But even all that aside, to ban prayer to the gods was religious and political suicide.  Nabonidus got into trouble for downgrading Marduk and elevating Sin.  You can imagine the sort of trouble a king would get into if he made it illegal to pray to anyone but himself.  And, of course, why for only thirty days?  If you're going put yourself in the place of the gods, why not do it permanently? The absurdity of the law is meant to highlight the unhinged rage these men had against Daniel and his God and reflects the real-life experience of Israel, beginning with Pharaoh and running all the way through their story down to Antiochus Epiphanes.  Men who so hate the Lord and his anointed that they'll cut their own noses off to spite their faces.  Even the punishment seems to be deliberately over the top.  As far as we know, no one in Babylon or Persia kept lions around in a den.  Kings might catch and release lions for hunting, but they didn't keep them as pets or to execute prisoners.  But this threat hanging over Daniel represents the very real threat hanging over the faithful in Israel. And looking to pagan kings for help was hopeless.  As much as he favoured Daniel, Darius, this great emperor, is a pathetic dupe, conned and fooled by his advisors and hobbled by his own laws.  In contrast to the perfect law of the God of Israel, the great law of the Medes and Persians—like so many other human laws—is arbitrary, short-sighted, and self-defeating.  What was Daniel to do?  Look at verse 10: When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.   What was Daniel going to do?  We've seen in the earlier stories that sometimes the wise thing for God's people to do is to keep their heads down and pursue a quiet faithfulness.  Being faithful doesn't always mean sticking your head off so that it can be cut off.  But Daniel knew these guys were watching him.  He could have closed his shutters.  He could have gone somewhere out of sight to pray.  But to do that in this case would be to betray the Lord.  So he continues to pray as he always had: morning, noon, and evening.  And as he prays he does so in the direction of the temple in Jerusalem.  That was a tradition begun by Solomon at the dedication of the temple and Daniel continued it and in that he declared his hope.  For all his status and privilege in this foreign land and with a foreign king, he made it clear that his ultimate hope lay in the promises of the God of Israel to deliver his people from their exile and to return them to the promised land.  Daniel knew that God is faithful and because of that he trusted him—not only that, but he made that trust public. And, of course, the inevitable happens.  Verse 11: Then these men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. Then they came near and said before the king, concerning the injunction, “O king! Did you not sign an injunction, that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within thirty days except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions?” The king answered and said, “The thing stands fast, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked.” Then they answered and said before the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah, pays no attention to you, O king, or the injunction you have signed, but makes his petition three times a day.” (Daniel 6:11-13) So they go back to their spying on Daniel to confirm what they were already sure he would do.  And then they take their evidence to the king.  Their smarminess if palpable.  “O King!  Did you not sign an injunction that anyone who petitions anyone but you shall be cast into the den of lions?”  Like the king wouldn't remember if he'd signed such a petition.  Again, we get a sense of just how pathetic earthly kings are and how foolish it is to put our hope in them.  “Oh yes,” he says, “Of course I remember.  It's now the unchangeable law of the Medes and the Persians.”  We're left wondering how busy the king has been, because surely, if everyone had taken this law seriously, Darius would have been swamped with petitions—but we don't get the impression at all that anything like that has happened.  If these guys had been bringing their petitions to the king, they hardly needed to ask him if he remembered signing the injunction.  So either these guys have been ignoring it and praying to their gods anyway or—and this is the implication—they're a bunch of impious louts who don't pray at all.  They stand in stark contrast to Daniel, who prayed three times a day and, no doubt, used that time to lift up the king and his empire to the Lord.  These other guys show that they don't care about the king; they only care about themselves and their own power and status.  Verses 14 to 18: Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed and set his mind to deliver Daniel. And he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. Then these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king, “Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.”   Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, “May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you!” And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting; no diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.   The king now regrets his decision, but there's nothing he can do.  The greatest king, the most powerful man in the world stands useless and powerless to save Daniel or to intervene on his behalf.  Even as he exhorts Daniel to pray to his God for deliverance, the king is commanding Daniel to be thrown into this pit of lions and sealing the opening with his own signet.  But now, what the satraps and counsellors intended as a punishment and execution, the king unwittingly turns into a contest, a trial.  Will Daniel's God deliver him?  The den is sealed.  No one can intervene.  The Most High God has, in his sovereignty, used the wickedness of evil men and the foolishness of the king to orchestrate a situation that will reveal his glory.  In that, the lion's den points prophetically to the tomb in which Jesus lay.  What will the king find when the stone is rolled away?  Has evil won the day or has the living God? And, not unlike Jesus' friends, the king goes home and, too anxious to eat or sleep, he paced and prayed.  And in the next verse we can almost see the king's robes flying behind him and hear his sandals slapping as he runs—in a very unkingly fashion—to the lions' den at sunrise. Then, at break of day, the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, “O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” Then Daniel said to the king, “O king, live forever! My God sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not harmed me, because I was found blameless before him; and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.” Then the king was exceedingly glad, and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no kind of harm was found on him, because he had trusted in his God.  (Daniel 6:19-23) Unable to move the heavy stone himself, the king calls out to Daniel: “O servant of the living God, are you still there?  Has the God whom you so faithfully serve delivered you from the lions?”  That the king speaks of the living God is a powerful witness.  Living God doesn't just mean that God isn't dead.  It means that God is active and powerful, that he is awesome and mighty, that he brings judgement and blessing.  Again, the satraps and counsellors expected an execution, but Darius has turned this into a contest.  Will the God of Daniel act?  Will he vindicate himself by delivering his servant?  And, of course, God has done just that.  The king hears Daniel's voice echoing up through the stone.  “O king, live forever!  Yes, my God has delivered me!”  In an echo of the fiery furnace episode, God sent his angel to shut the lions' mouths and Daniel is alive and well.  There's not so much as a scratch on him.  The king's men roll the stone away and Daniel emerges unharmed, because he trusted in God.  The God of Israel has won the contest. The satraps and triumvirs, and counsellors of the king have lost.  So the king turns the tables. Verse 24: And the king commanded, and those men who had maliciously accused Daniel were brought and cast into the den of lions—they, their children, and their wives. And before they reached the bottom of the den, the lions overpowered them and broke all their bones in pieces.   Presumably this means that all 120 satraps with their families are thrown to the lions.  Again, the scene isn't realistic and trying to figure out how this could possibly be done is to miss the point of the parable.  This scene calls back to the Lord's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”  And to passages like Isaiah 41:11: “Behold, all who are incensed against you shall be put to shame and confounded; those who strive against you shall be as nothing and shall perish.”  And, again, I think this what Psalm 2 looks like as a parable. He who sits in the heavens laughs;          the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath,          and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King          on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;          today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,          and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron          and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” Now therefore, O kings, be wise;          be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear,          and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son,          lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,          for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:4-12) The psalm is a declaration of the Lord's intent to be glorified.  He has made a people for himself and even given them a king and through them he will be glorified.  He will be glorified in the nations and kings who see him at work in his people and give him glory and he will be glorified as he vindicates his people and judges their oppressors.  And that's just what we see as the satraps are thrown to the lions and as Darius' glorifies the Lord in the closing verses of the story: Then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth: “Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is the living God,          enduring forever; his kingdom shall never be destroyed,          and his dominion shall be to the end. He delivers and rescues;          he works signs and wonders          in heaven and on earth, he who has saved Daniel          from the power of the lions.”   So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. (Daniel 6:25-28) The historical Darius was what we might call an evangelical Zoroastrian.  History—not to mention lots and lots of his own inscriptions—show that he was single-mindedly devoted to Ahura Mazda.  But this is a parable and the king here is a composite.  He represents the gentile kings of the earth.  While the satraps represent the gentiles who will persist in their unbelief and eventually be judged, the king here represents those kings—like the ones we see in Revelation—who see the God of Israel as he vindicates his son and as he vindicates his church, and who end up believing and coming to the New Jerusalem to glorify this living God.  Darius' decree is echoed by the songs we hear in the heavenly throne room in John's vision as they acknowledge the saving power and everlasting dominion of the God of Israel.  In that I think we see the prophetic side of this parable that transitions us into Daniel's apocalyptic vision. In that, it points us powerfully to Jesus in the same way that Psalm 2 does.  The psalm is about Israel and about King David, but it points forward to Jesus who would embody Israel and Israel's king to accomplish the saving work of God and the establishment of his everlasting dominion.  Daniel's dilemma points to Jesus.  When Daniel went home to pray, he knew he would fall afoul of the king's new law.  He knew he would end up in the lions' den.  He didn't know if he would live or die.  He had the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace, but would the Lord send his angel again to deliver his faithful servant?  Miracles don't happen every day—that's why they're miracles.  What were the chances that it would happen twice?  But Daniel knew that he didn't have a choice.  He could dishonour God by hiding his prayer or he could give glory to God by showing his unwavering faithfulness to him.  Daniel chose to remain faithful and to glorify God and in that he points to Jesus.  Daniel knew with certainty that the living God vindicates his anointed.  And Jesus knew that too.  We don't always know what form that vindication may take or when it may happen.  Daniel escaped without a scratch.  Jesus was scourged, beaten, and killed.  But in the end the Lord vindicated both and revealed his glory to the watching world. And in that there's the reminder—and I think maybe the main purpose of this prophetic parable:  Brothers and Sisters, the Lord does not merely glorify himself.  He has, to use the imagery of Psalm 2, anointed a people for himself and that people—first a small ethnic group in the Old Testament, but now a worldwide family of people united to Jesus and filled with God's own Spirit—the living God has anointed a people for himself, a people full of his own life, that we might reveal and proclaim his glory to the world and that he might reveal his own glory as he vindicates us before the watching world.  There's a reason why God's people are called to a life of humility, sacrifice, and even martyrdom.  There's a reason Jesus calls us to take up our crosses if we are to follow him.  Because the Lord reveals his glory in our deliverance.  He slays the dragon and rescues his bride and becomes the hero as the world watches.  To quote the Roman scholar and priest, David Burrell, who died a few months ago, “We are never enjoined in the Scriptures to accomplish anything. The recurring theme of the psalmist, who summarizes as only poets can the sweep of God's covenanting with his people, is that we are to recount—often and loudly—God's accomplishments, his great deeds on our behalf.”  Brothers and Sisters, if we have really and truly believed the good news about Jesus and all the long history of the Lord's faithfulness to his people, if we really believe that good news, it ought to work out in our lives as we recount—often and loudly—what he has done.  Because we want to proclaim his greatness, his goodness, and his faithfulness for the sake of his glory and because we desire for the whole world know him as we have—so that one day the knowledge of his glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.  Hebrews famously speaks of the great cloud of witness around us, witness who ought to inspire us to faithfulness.  But, Brothers and Sisters, remember that you and I are, ourselves, are part of that cloud.  As those witnesses exhort us, we exhort each other and those who will come after us.  So let us be faithful in running the race that is set before us, knowing the mighty deeds of our God, knowing his faithfulness, and above all looking to Jesus who has perfect our faith by enduring the cross, despising the shame, and because of that, is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Let's pray: Heavenly Father, as we confessed in today's collect, we have no power to help ourselves.  You are the living God who, through the death and resurrection of your son, has gracious restored us to life.  Keep the cross ever before us that we might always remember our helplessness and your great grace and might and often and loudly proclaim your glory.  Through Jesus we pray.  Amen.

Subconscious Realms Episode 257 - Mithras PT1 - MettaMindcast - Sir Robby Marx. Ladies & Gentlemen, on this Episode of Subconscious Realms we welcome back the Phenomenal Sir Robby Marx to discuss, Mithras.... In PT1 Robby brings a Mind-Blowing Perspective as always

Lindsay and Barbara dig into Steven L. Peck's mind-melting tale of a Morman man in a library hell containing every book that could ever be written. Featuring: Sister tattoos, Zoroastrian traditions, and hell's greatest meat bone flutist – Lindsay.

Lindsay and Barbara discuss Ling Ling Huang's physical horror novel skewering the wellness and beauty industry. Featuring: Holiday updates, freaky beauty treatments, cannibalism, and Zoroastrian sky burials.

Three great religions have come out of Persia and all of them have influenced world history. First there was Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion, which had significant influence over Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Then there was Mithraism. It began in Persia but, through conquest, it filtered into the Roman pantheon. As a result, there are shrines to it as far away as Hadrian's Wall. Lastly, there is Manichaeism. The religion that is fundamentally rooted in the struggle between good and evil, which is itself a Zoroastrian idea. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Vesta Sarkosh Curtis to discuss Persian religion and all its influence. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: empirepoduk@gmail.com Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport + Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, David interviews Shauheen Etminan, Ph.D. and Jonathan Lu: Co-Founders of Magi Ancestral Supplements. Through studying ancient Zoroastrian writings and 2,000 year-old Chinese texts in search of compounds and formulations forgotten by history, Etminan and Lu co-founded drug discovery company VCENNA in 2019 to use extraction technology to isolate these compounds. This led to an understanding of the health properties behind beta-carbolines, which led to their nootropic company, Magi Ancestral Supplements. They talk about the early days and experimenting on themselves, how beta-carbolines create dream-like states, and how their research sent each of them further into their own heritage, and asking themselves: How do we remember what our ancestors knew?  They discuss espand, haoma, Syrian rue, and how common Syrian rue is in both Iranian culture and psychedelic history; what is a drug vs. what is a supplement; common threads they've seen across different cultures and how we may be repeating some of their mistakes; Etminan's recent ayahuasca experience with the Santo Daime church; and of course, some of Magi Ancestral Supplements' products and their expected effects – from deep meditation to lucid dreaming to even mild hallucinations. You can get 10% off any product using code PT10 here. Click here to head to the show notes page.

This is one of the most fascinating discussions I have had this year. For centuries, people have speculated as to the formulation of the legendary substance of the Gods known as soma. It's something I have kept my eye on for a couple of decades now. And, as far as I can tell, Dr Etminan's research is the best pointer in the direction of what that might have been. Even better than that? His research has developed into a completely legal product you can try for yourself today. In this show, we explore exactly who the Zoroastrian Magi were, what customs and beliefs fed into their practices and what haoma might have been and how it was used. Then we'll explore Shauheen's journey toward the development and release of the Ancestral Magi products and how they can be used today. I am particularly excited to see these in the hands of visionary astrologers. Have at it! Brilliant stuff. Enjoy!   Show Notes Get the Ancestral Magi supplements here. Watch Shauheen's presentation on Zoroastrian shamanism here. Shauheen on Twitter.

Heaven and hell, Judgement Day, monotheism — these ideas all came from one ancient Persian religion: Zoroastrianism. Also: Sky Burials. Zoroastrians put their dead on top of a structure called The Tower of Silence where vultures devour the body in a matter of hours. It's clean, efficient, eco-friendly. It's how it's been for thousands of years. Until 2006. That's when a Zoroastrian woman living in Mumbai snuck up into the tower and found bloated, rotting bodies everywhere. The vultures were gone. And not just at the tower — all across the country. In this episode, we follow the Kenyan bird biologist, Munir Virani, as he gets to the bottom of this. A mystery whose stakes are not just the end of an ancient burial practice, but the health of all the world's ecosystems. The answer, in unexpected ways, points back to us. Special thanks to Daniel Solomon, Peter Wilson, Samik Bindu, Vibhu Prakash, Heather Natola and the Rapture Trust in New Jersey, and Avir's uncle Hoshang Mulla, who told him about this story over Thanksgiving dinner. EPISODE CREDITSReported by - Avir Mitrawith help from - Sindhu GnanasambandanProduced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandanwith help from - Pat WaltersOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane Kellyand Edited by - Pat Walters Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.   Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.