Higher Mind

I've written before (here and here) about the long vanished Merton Priory in whose grounds our offices would have stood.

It turns out that it was consecrated on May 3, 1117, so I just missed its 888th anniversary yesterday. I always find it strange as I am walking to work to imagine that there was once a church as big as Westminster Abbey on the same site as , and of approximately the same dimensions, as the enormous Sainsbury's SavaCentre that has been thrown up there now.

Henry VIII's men demolished it in 1538 as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. When you consider that Henry VIII was pretty much a contemporary of Michelangelo it really is sickening to imagine how much of our heritage was lost in the Reformation.

The Taliban's dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas seems to me to be a modern desecration on the same sort of scale as what once happened in the view from my window.

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P.S. Googling around for something fun to write about the numerology of the 888th anniversary of the consecration I have come across an embarrassment of riches.

In the Greek mysteries, the number 888 represented the "Higher Mind." The Greek variation of "Jesus," "Iesous," equals 888. The number 666 represented the "Mortal Mind." In the New Testament, 666 is called the number of "the Beast."

Which is at least vaguely diverting, but how about the following for any techies out there:

Http = 8 + 400 + 400 + 80 = 888, the number of Christ. Messiah = 888 in ancient Hebrew/Mesopotamian numerology. The internet is a false Christ. The world wide web confirms this, as www = 666.

You can read the whole batty thing at http://www.wizardofeyez.com/666.html.

I am off to record myself saying Tim Berners Lee and then play it backwards.