Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (1473 – 30 April 1524) was a French knight, generally known as the Chevalier de Bayard, "le bon chevalier", or "the good knight"
A doctor of medicine at Montpellier, Champier was the personal physician of Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, whom he followed to Italy with Louis XII, attending to several battles, and finally settling in Lyon.
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Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, The Good (Holbein) |
Louis XII of France
He worked in Lyon alongside François Rabelais (who wrote satirically of him in Gargantua and Pantagruel), where he established the College of the Doctors of Lyon. There he fulfilled the duties of an alderman and contributed to numerous local foundations, in particular L'Ecole des médecins de Lyon ("The School of the Doctors of Lyon").
Champier studied Greek scholars and Arab medicine and composed a great number of historical works, including Chroniques de Savoie in 1516 and Vie de Bayard in 1525. During his last years in Lyon, he printed several medicine books against Arab medicine, a falsification of Greek science according to his judgment.
He is most famous today for his pro-woman tract La nef des dames vertueuses [The Ship of Virtuous Ladies], one of the first 'feminist' tracts written in French. This book, first published in 1503, is composed of four books. Book 4 essentially imports neoplatonism [from Marsilio Ficino] to France for pro-woman ends.
He was an extreme opponent to Renaissance occultism, and wrote in 1532 a 'Epistola campegiana de tranmutatione metallorum contra alchimistas'.
His fame was considerable in Lyon, which in the 16th century was the greatest manufacturer of medical books in France, with editors such as Sébastien Gryphe.
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The device of Sebastianus Gryphius in a 1532 book.The scholar writes, the printer diffuses and the reader discovers. At all times ...
Sebastian Gryphius was a German bookseller-printer and humanist.He was the son of Michael Greyff (Greif, Gryff, Gryph), and learned from him the new craft of printing, in Germany and then in Venice. Around 1520 he came to Lyon and settled there, on behalf of a Venetian firm of booksellers. He founded l'Atelier du Griffon, with a griffin mark. Around this time he introduced the Italic type of Aldus Manutius.In the 1540s he was the highly reputed 'Prince of the Lyon book trade'. He promoted the local humanist culture, and his books were prized for their clean lay-out and accuracy.  |
La Société Angélique
A Secret Society of Printers and Humanists in the Renaissance.
The Société Angéliqué was a group of writers and other scholars which formed around the printer/publisher Sebastian Gryphius in Lyon in the mid 16th century during the "Lyon Renaissance"
(La Société Angélique
mercredi 5 décembre 2007
par Célestin Valois)
Ixion slayed Phorbas and Polymelos, who had slain his mother, Megara, the "great one". [Also killed his father in law, of his wife Dia]...
Ixion went mad, defiled by his act; the neighboring princes were so offended by this act of treachery and violation of xenia [the ancient Greek concept of hospitality] that they refused to perform the rituals that would cleanse Ixion of his guilt (see catharsis). Thereafter, Ixion lived as an outlaw and was shunned. By killing his father-in-law, Ixion was reckoned the first man guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology. That alone would warrant him a terrible punishment.
However, Zeus had pity on Ixion and brought him to Olympus and introduced him at the table of the gods. Instead of being grateful, Ixion grew lustful for Hera, Zeus's wife, a further violation of guest-host relations.
It was stated that after Ixion fell into insanity and was ostracized by his country, Zeus sympathized greatly with Ixion and brought him up to Olympus to dine with the gods. Here is where Ixion saw Hera, Zeus' wife and queen of the gods. He instantly fell in love with her beauty and began to desire her sexually. Zeus soon became aware of the situation. He was in disbelief that Ixion would betray him and his sincere kindness so he set a trap. Zeus found Ixion sleeping in a field and created a cloud figure of Hera. Zeus laid the figure, who was later named Nephele, next to Ixion. When Ixion awoke, he thought Hera was laying naked beside him and began to have sex with her. Zeus was so angry when he saw his suspicions confirmed that he drove Ixion from Mount Olympus, struck him with a thunderbolt, and then damned Ixion to be eternally bound to a flying burning wheel that would spin around the heavens nonstop (though it was later moved to Tartarus).
The Wheel of Fire originates in Greek mythology as the punishment for Ixion, who was bound to a wheel of fire for lusting after Zeus's wife, Hera.
The Wheel of Fire is part of the Aristotelian reading of a tragedy (e.g., plays), which includes the central flaw within a character [ex. Othello]
The Wheel of Fire is most commonly applied to the protagonist within a tragedy (i.e. the hero) and may aim to provoke sympathy from the audience when the hero falls from grace (this purging of emotions is known as catharsis).
Ixion
(means "strong native") was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly...son of Ares or Zeus (Illiad)
Nephele had a child from this union whose name came to be Centaurus. He was a deformed child who hunched over and found no peace amongst other humans. The only place where Centaurus felt like he belonged was on the mountain of Pelion. Here, he roamed, lived, and mated with the Magnesian mares who resided there. This resulted in the birth of the centaur race. Nothing else was mentioned about Centaurus after that.
Battle of Centaurs and Lapiths, by Piero di Cosimo
Centauromachy The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and the rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous, who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Another Lapith hero, Caeneus, who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into the earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. The Lapith Caeneus was originally a girl [tranny lore] named Caenis and the favorite of Poseidon, who changed her into a man at her request and made her an invulnerable warrior. Such warrior women, indistinguishable from men, were familiar among the Scythian horsemen too. In the Centaur battle, Caeneus proved invulnerable, until the Centaurs simply crushed him with rocks and trunks of trees. He disappeared into the depths of the earthunharmed and was released as a sandy-headed bird.
Punishment of Ixion: in the center is Mercury holding the caduceus. On the right is Juno on her throne, and behind her Iris stands and gestures. On the left is Vulcanus (blond figure) manning the wheel, with Ixion already tied to the wheel. Nephele sits at Mercury's feet. [Pompeii World Heritage Hoax]
Greek myth also has it that Nephele is the cloud whom Zeus created in the image of Hera to trick Ixion to test his integrity after displaying his lust for Hera during a feast as a guest of Zeus. Ixion failed in restraining his lust for Hera, thus fathering the Centaurs.
Nephele married Athamas, but he divorced her for Ino. Phrixus and Helle, the son and daughter of Athamas and Nephele, were hated by their stepmother, Ino. Ino hatched a devious plot to get rid of the twins, roasting all the town's crop seeds so they would not grow. The local farmers, frightened of famine, asked a nearby oracle for assistance. Ino bribed the men sent to the oracle to lie and tell the others that the oracle required the sacrifice of Phrixus. Before he was killed though, Phrixus and Helle were rescued by a flying golden ram sent by Nephele, their natural mother.
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| Crius Chrysomallus The ram had been sired by Poseidon in his primitive ram-form upon Theophane, a nymph and the granddaughter of Helios, the sun-god. In consequence of Theophane's extraordinary beauty, she was beleaguered by lovers, but was carried off by Poseidon to the isle of Crinissa. As the lovers followed her even there, Poseidon metamorphosed the maiden into a sheep and himself into a ram, and all the inhabitants of the island into animals. As the lovers began to slaughter these animals, he changed them into wolves. The god then became by Theophane the father of the ram with the golden fleece, which carried Phrixus to Colchis. |
Nephele married Athamas, but he divorced her for Ino. Phrixus and Helle, the son and daughter of Athamas and Nephele, were hated by their stepmother, Ino. Ino hatched a devious plot to get rid of the twins, roasting all the town's crop seeds so they would not grow. The local farmers, frightened of famine, asked a nearby oracle for assistance. Ino bribed the men sent to the oracle to lie and tell the others that the oracle required the sacrifice of Phrixus. Before he was killed though, Phrixus and Helle were rescued by a flying golden ram sent by Nephele, their natural mother.
Phrixus and Helle were instructed to not look down to Earth for the duration of their flight. Helle, though, did look down, and fell off the ram into the Hellespont (which was named after her, meaning Sea of Helle) and drowned, but Phrixus survived all the way to Colchis, where King Aeetes took him in and treated him kindly, giving Phrixus his daughter, Chalciope, in marriage. In gratitude, Phrixus gave the king the Golden Fleece of the ram, which Aeetes hung in a tree in his kingdom. The Golden Fleece would later be taken by Jason and his Argonauts.
Aeetes--The name means "eagle" (aietos)
Aeëtes was the son of sun god Helios and the Oceanid Perseis, brother of Circe, Perses and Pasiphaë, and father of Medea, Chalciope and Absyrtus.
[Back to the fog Gryphe...]
Let us quote now V. Lamy: "Curious term a priori that of fog and which demands some explanations. It is the Unknown we have said, it is he who presides over the clouds of Aristophanes as well as Niebelung" . The author adds a remark that interests us very much. "Just as the Sanskrit word" Ghana "," cloud ", is applied to the primordial embryo, so in Islamic esotericism the cloud (al ama) is the unknowable state of Allah before the manifestation. LC of St. Martin that the nebulosity always envelops flashes of light that ply the human darkness because our senses can not support the brilliance. [Célestin Valois]
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| Strepsiades and Pheidippides are discussing, Socrates is hanging in the air in a basket. Scene from Aristophanes's comedy Clouds. |
Aristophanes,"The Father of Comedy"
Open your mind before your mouth. ~ Aristophanes
...(c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwrightof ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays [44] survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it.
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| Thalia, muse of comedy, gazing upon a comic mask. "the joyous, the flourishing"...the goddess who presided over comedy and idyllic poetry. In this context her name means "flourishing", because the praises in her songs flourish through time. She was the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the eighth-born of the nine Muses.According to pseudo-Apollodorus, she and Apollo were the parents of the Corybantes [the eunuch priests of Cybele]. |
The origins of the Old Comedy were traced by Aristotle to the komos or celebratory festival processions of ancient Greece, and the phallic songs that accompanied them. The Greek word for comedy (kōmōidía) derives from the words for 'revel' and 'song' (kōmos and ōdē) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually developed from song.
The Clouds can be considered the world's first extant "comedy of ideas"... notorious for its caricature of Socrates and is mentioned in Plato's Apology as a contributor to the philosopher's trial and execution.
{In an hierophantic tone} Oh! most mighty king, the boundless air, that keepest the earth suspended in space, thou bright Aether and ye venerable goddesses, the Clouds, who carry in your loins the thunder and the lightning, arise, ye sovereign powers and manifest yourselves in the celestial spheres to the eyes of your sage.
Chorus of Clouds: Oh, mortal [Strepsiades], you who desire to instruct yourself in our great wisdom, the Athenians, the Greeks will envy you, your good fortune. Only you must have the memory and ardour for study, you must know how to stand the tests, hold your own, go forward without feeling fatigue, caring but little for food, abstaining from wine, gymnastic exercises and other similar follies, in fact, you must believe as every man of intellect should, that the greatest of all blessings is to live and think more clearly than the vulgar herd, to shine in the contests of words.
Aris-Socrates: Henceforward, following our example, you [Strepsiades] will recognize no other gods but Chaos, the Clouds and the Tongue, these three alone.
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| Phrontisterion, the Thinkery |
...buggers – people schooled by Inferior Arguments – have got into the most powerful positions in Athens.
Superior Argument and Inferior Argument debate with each other over which of them can offer the best education. Superior Argument sides with Justice and the gods, offering to prepare Pheidippides for an earnest life of discipline, typical of men who respect the old ways; Inferior Argument, denying the existence of Justice, offers to prepare him for a life of ease and pleasure, typical of men who know how to talk their way out of trouble.
The Song of the Nibelungs..The Nibelungenlied
The term Nibelung is a personal or clan name with several competing and contradictory uses in Germanic heroic legend. It has an unclear etymology, but is often connected to the root nebel, meaning mist. The term in its various meanings gives its name to the Middle High German heroic epic the Nibelungenlied.
The most wide-spread use of Nibelung is used to denote the Burgundian royal house, also known as the Gibichungs (German) or Gjúkings (Old Norse). A group of royal brothers led by king Gunther or Gunnar, the Gibichungs are responsible for the death of the hero Siegfried or Sigurd and are later destroyed at the court of Attila the Hun (called Etzel in German and Atli in Old Norse).
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| Gundobad (c. 452 – 516 AD) was King of the Burgundians (473 – 516) The Lex Burgundionum code was compiled by King Gundobad (474-516), very probably after his defeat by Clovis I in 500...the law code of the Burgundians. It is influenced by Roman law and deals with domestic laws concerning marriage and inheritance as well as regulating weregild-- man price, was a value placed on every being and piece of property, for example in the Frankish Salic Code. If property was stolen, or someone was injured or killed, the guilty person would have to pay weregild as restitution to the victim's family or to the owner of the property.  Saint Sigismund of Burgundy  The Salic law or the Salian law, was the ancient Salian Frankish civil law code compiled around AD 500 by the first Frankish King, Clovis. The written text is in Latin, or in "semi-French Latin". It remained the basis of Frankish law throughout the early Medieval period, and influenced future European legal systems. The best-known tenet of the old law is the principle of exclusion of women from inheritance of thrones, fiefs and other property. The author adds a remark that interests us very much. "Just as the Sanskrit word" Ghana "," cloud ", is applied to the primordial embryo, so in Islamic esotericism the cloud (al ama) is the unknowable state of Allah before the manifestation...
Ghana (घन) is the name of a cloud (megha) associated with Aṭṭaṭṭahāsa: the north-eastern cremation ground (śmaśāna) according to the Vajravārāhī-sādhana by Umāpatideva as found in te Guhyasamayasādhanamālā. As a part of this sādhana, the practicioner is to visualize a suitable dwelling place for the goddess inside the circle of protection which takes the form of eight cremation grounds.
These clouds (eg., Ghana) are known as cloud-kings (megharāja) and have names that are associated with the loud noises of thunderclouds and the noise of rain, according to the Guhyasamayasādhanamālā 11.77. Their presence in the cremation grounds may be connected with the nāgas, for they are known to be responsible for the rain.
The term sādhana refers to “rites” for the contemplation of a divinity.
(Vajrayana or tantric Buddhism) Tantric Buddhism and Esoteric Buddhism Buddhist traditions of Tantra and "Secret Mantra", which developed in medieval India and spread to Tibet, Bhutan, and East Asia. Vajrayāna is usually translated as Diamond Vehicle or Thunderbolt Vehicle, referring to the Vajra, a mythical weapon which is also used as a ritual implement.
A vajra is a weapon used as a ritual object to symbolize both the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible force); the Sanskrit word has both these meanings.
The vajra is the weapon of the Indian Vedic rain and thunder-deity Indra, and is used symbolically by the dharma traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, often to represent firmness of spirit and spiritual power. According to the Indian mythology, vajra is considered as one of the most powerful weapons in the universe.
In Buddhism the vajra is the symbol of Vajrayana, one of the three major branches of Buddhism. Vajrayana is translated as "Thunderbolt Way" or "Diamond Way" and can imply the thunderbolt experience of Buddhist enlightenment or bodhi. It also implies indestructibility, just as diamonds are harder than other gemstones.
According to Vajrayāna scriptures, the term Vajrayānarefers to one of three vehicles or routes to enlightenment, the other two being the Śrāvakayāna (also known as the Hīnayāna) and Mahāyāna.
Śrāvakayāna "vehicle of listeners [i.e. disciples]" is the path that meets the goals of an Arhat—an individual who achieves liberation as a result of listening to the teachings (or lineage) of a Samyaksaṃbuddha.
Indian Buddhist arhat
Yāna (Sanskrit and Pāli: "vehicle") refers to a mode or method of spiritual practice in Buddhism, and in particular to divisions of various schools of Buddhism according to their type of practice.
The earliest explicit Buddhist use of -yāna in a metaphorical sense of a journey to awakening may be the term dhammayānam, "dharma chariot" (SN IV.4), where the vehicle itself serves as an extended metaphor for the Eightfold Path. Various parts of the chariot represent aspects of the Path (magga), e.g. axles represent meditation, the charioteer represents mindfulness, and so on.
 Dharmachakra [Wheel of Fire?]Mahāyāna ("Great Vehicle") was originally an honorary synonym for Bodhisattvayāna ("Bodhisattva Vehicle")...refers to the path of the Bodhisattva seeking complete enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, also called "Bodhisattvayāna", or the "Bodhisattva Vehicle".
[Ghana in Mahayana glossaries]
Ghana (घन) refers to one of the embryonic stages according to the 2nd century Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (chapter VII).—“According to some, at the moment of reincarnation (pratisaṃdhi), all beings have a disturbed mind; but since the Bodhisattva has no loss of mindfulness, it is said that he enters his mother’s womb with an undisturbed mind. When he is in the stage of the K’ie na (ghana), he knows that he is in the ghana stage, i.e., three weeks after conception, he resembles frozen cream”.
...so in Islamic esotericism the cloud (al ama) is the unknowable state of Allah before the manifestation... "Cloud of Unknowing" 
The Arabic word عماء `amā’.
Tradition has it that the Prophet Muhammad was asked, `Where was our Lord before He created the creation?' He is said to have replied:
قال : كان في عماء ما تحته هواء وما فوقه هواء وخلق عرشه على الماء
He [the Prophet Muhammad] said, `He [God] was in عَمَاء ('amā' , a "Cloud") above it [or Him] Air (hawā') and below it [or Him] Air [hawā'), then He created His Throne upon the Waters'.
The prophetic, Islamic ḥadīth of `Amā’ reflects passages in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and select Mandaean writings in which “cloud” can indicate a primordial divine being[s]). Centrally important in this respect are the opening cosmological verses of the first biblical Hebrew book of Genesis, the pre-creation – “desolate and void (tou wa bohu) and darkness was on the face of the deep” as well as the references to the firmament and the waters in Genesis 1:6ff. The pre-creation primordial state is indicated as follows.
"The earth was without form, and void tohu wa-bohu (Hebrew: תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ; and darkness (Heb. ḥō·šeḵ) was on the face of the deep ("Deep" = Hebrew: תְהוֹם tehôm). And the Spirit of God (ruach elohim), was hovering [moving] (מְרַחֶ֖פֶת = mə·ra·ḥe·p̄eṯ) over the face of the waters." (Genesis 1: 2).
This prophetic ḥadīth of عماء `amā’ reflects passages in the Hebrew Bible about God being beclouded, hidden or enshrouded in his unapproachable transcendence.
God is said to dwell in "thick darkness" (Heb הָֽעֲרָפֶל ha-araphel Exod. 20:21b). His theophany was at times in a "pillar of cloud" (Exod. 33:9ff; cf. 1 Kings 8:12; Ps. 97:2; Jud. 13:22).
The apophatic theological speculations of the Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nyssa (d. c. 395 CE), reflect certain of the above cited biblical traditions. A few of his works were early translated into Arabic. His On the Life of Moses states that the "divine cloud" which led the Israelities (Exod. 13:31 2) was "something beyond human comprehension" (Life of Moses, tr. 38; cf. Philo, Vit. Mos. I.29.166). [credit: Stephen Lambden UC Merced.]
The Children of Israel Crossing the Jordan, Exodus 13:21-22 By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire.
The Theophanic Cloud. The most common usage of the Hebrew terms for cloud comes in the context of divine theophany. By far the largest group (about fifty occurrences) of these refer to the visible manifestation of the divine presence during Israel's exodus from Egypt and wilderness wandering. This sign of God's presence is termed variously: pillar of cloud ( Exod 13:21-22, ; plus eleven times), pillar of fire and cloud ( Exod 14:24 ); a thick cloud ( Exodus 19:9Exodus 19:16 ), the cloud ( Exod 14:20 , plus thirty-three times); and the cloud of the Lord ( Exod 40:38 ; Num 10:34 ).
Dominican Order
Although Albertus Magnus did much to instill mysticism in the Order of Preachers, it is a concept that reaches back to the Hebrew Bible. In the tradition of Holy Writ, the impossibility of coming face to face with God is a recurring motif, thus the commandment against graven images (Exodus 20.4–5). As time passed, Jewish and early Christian writings presented the idea of 'unknowing,' where God's presence was enveloped in a dark cloud. All of these ideas associated with mysticism were at play in the spirituality of the Dominican community, and not only among the men. In Europe, in fact, it was often the female members of the order, such as Catherine of Siena, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Christine of Stommeln, Margaret Ebner, and Elsbet Stagl,[79] that gained reputations for having mystical experiences. Notable male members of the order associated with mysticism include Meister Eckhart and Henry Suso.
 Don't Fear The Cloud 
It is thus perhaps about the Unknown Agent of which the Martinists speak. Grasset d'Orcet would have drawn up a list of members of this society ... We find Dante, Rabelais, Cervantes, Goethe, later Dumas, Nerval, George Sand, V. Hugo, J. Verne. There might have been Balzac too. V. Lamy shows that G. Sand marked his membership in society by the frequent recurrence of the word angel in his work.
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