Eclipse 9541 is the central eclipse of the rare blood moon tetrad. It was a solar eclipse.
From the day of the stone of destiny to the day after the eclipse is 23,456 days
The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.
The claim of a blood moon being a sign of the beginning of the end times originates in the Book of Joel, where it is written "the sun will turn into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/27/blood-moon-apocalypse-nasa-lunar-eclipse-supermoon
The Scorpion in the garden
We left Iraq for a year and a half but my dad didn't like his new job, he was in a better position in a better firm in Iraq and besides, moving from Iraq was not part of the plan!
I was six and a half when we arrived back in Baghdad, in June 1972. Later that evening I went out into the beautiful dark Baghdad evening, the garden alive with the sounds of crickets. I looked down at the ground and there on the lawn was the most amazing little creature looking up at me, shiny black and with two pincers on long arms and a long tail with a spike. As I moved it turned with me, such alertness!
My second cousin cautioned me with alarm "la, la" it was dangerous he said. It was a lethal back scorpion! My dad came out just as I was grabbing the hose to kill it, so alarmed was I at the thought of the harm it nearly caused me. I heard my dad and cousin saying "no don't kill it!", but my mind was set and I gave that amazing Scorpion a jab with the end of the hose and crushed it to death. My dad was disappointed, "why did you do that? It wasn't harming you"
I didn't feel sad for that Scorpion till about forty years later.
An omen on my first night back in Baghdad.
The bird which fell out the nest
Weeks later, a young fledgling sparrow fell out of its nest in the tree. My uncle or aunts made a small place for it and some milk and bread and it slept in the same bedroom as me. I woke to a lovely morning and immediately remembered and was surprised it wasn't in its box. I caught sight of it as it disappeared down the side of the mattress and so I knelt on the mattress to catch it but the compression of the mattress against the side of the wall, just a couple of inches squashed it dead.
I had done something unimaginable! I had killed an animal, a creature with the god given right to life, I was inconsolable.
The Iranian agent
We stayed then at my grandparents house which was close to the kings old palace and Baath headquarters. Our neighbour was Ayad Alawi's parent's house, he became the first Iraqi prime minister after the occupation. He and my uncle used to go out nightclubbing and gambling and arriving back home in the early hours. He became high up in the Baath party but would fall out later with Saddam Hussein who he knew from its earliest days.
By September, three months back in Baghdad, my sister and I were saying what a boring place Baghdad was. Soon, the old woman from next door came through in a panic to use our telephone, she said a strange man was hiding in her garden.
Sammy, the eighteen year old servant and I went out into our garden to investigate. Down at the end of the garden was a wall separating the two gardens and just beyond was a concrete out shed with a square construct on the roof, and crouching beside it could be seen a man with a moustache, at a distance of maybe 70 feet.
I darted forward like a trooper, as I ran towards the man I heard Sammy shouting at me to get back. I approached to within a few tens of feet and I heard the crack of a gunshot. Panicked, I did a U turn and started running back, there was another crack!
I got back, a bit in shock and after gathering my senses hung about the front garden as the police started to arrive, surrounding the properties. I chatted to a relaxed young Bedouin looking policeman with curly hair coming out his hat. He was kind enough to let me look at his machine pistol which I'd never seen before.
Later I went inside to watch Star Trek, me and my sister took it in turns to keep watch and while I was off duty the news came from my aunt who told me that it turned out to be an Iranian spy and that he shot himself dead in the heart, shooting twice but missing the first time. An Iranian Passport as well as an Iraqi one were found on him.
I was very upset that evening before bed, how awful for the man, but my uncle put my mind at rest by telling me that it was probably the best thing for him to have killed himself because to be captured by the secret police would be far worse, as then he would be tortured and then killed.
I didn't realise till twelve years ago that the two shots I had heard were in fact the actual shots and it wasn't that he killed himself an hour or two later! Those were the two shots. The first as a warning to the little blonde haired boy (sun bleached) to save me the agony of seeing his death and after I had turned my back he shot himself.Over the wall!
A couple of years earlier, I climbed over that neighbours wall, and was stunned by what I saw at the other side. Instead of it being a beautiful garden like ours it was paved, and with little plant pots every few feet in place of a tile and a white garden table and chairs.
I went over the wall again shortly after and this time I didn't look down, I just pivoted and dropped and as I stood I was surprised to see two men sitting at the table. One was Ayad Alawi looking relaxed as he looked back at me. He said to the other man its the Engleezi boy from next door. The other man who had a moustache had his hand on his gun at the ready.
The man with the moustache beckoned me to sit on his lap and quizzed me about England (in Iraq the whole of the UK is England) and what it was like. He asked me if I liked Iraq and I told him I did but England was much better more modern. He told me that Iraq too was a very good country and had a great history. He let me look at his gun but wouldn't let me hold it. He had a very powerful charisma and fatherly manner, very engaging, not patronising and very much in command.
The Pencil (Yet who of his generation protested?)
I have told you little of myself and that's the way I like to keep it, even my words are few in this article of 16321 words that would fit into a 63 page book without the pictures included. What I have told about myself is what's necessary to show you the divination.
Here though I am going to tell you my innermost secret.
Weeks after the spy incident, at school one day, the boy who was starting to be my friend told me that the other boys were angry at another boy because had snitched on someone. I said that surely he had just told the truth so why were the others angry with him. He explained that the point was that he had betrayed his friends, a terrible thing to do. I accepted that this was indeed an unacceptable thing to do.
Shortly after, maybe the same day, I was finishing up in class and as I packed my books away, I thought it silly to also pack the pencil away into its case and then decant it at the next classroom, just a few metres away, so I had it in my hand as I excited the classroom. As I left the room there was a hurricane of movement in the corridor, from my right came running at full speed a boy, followed by a group of maybe a dozen or so boys feet behind him. I heard a voice saying "look its the boy who snitched!". I Took up chase and after a few seconds, one or two boys gave up chase, followed by another three, and soon everyone had stopped chasing after the boy, except for me, I was dogged and my brain not as fluid as it should have been.
The boy ran into a classroom and I followed, he overturned a table to get passed it and thrust it in my path, automatically I lunged towards him with my right arm to close the distance, I stabbed the pencil into the top of his arm near the shoulder. We both stopped dead in shock, he said "you stabbed me", I was mortified, he then opened his mouth wide and started bawling, tears flowing.
Next time at school, no one would talk to me, it was as if I was a ghost. My friend told me that he shouldn't be talking to me because it was decided that no one should speak to me, I had been sent to Coventry. He explained that although he knew the truth of the matter, and that the decision was unfair, nevertheless he could not be seen talking to me as he this would be condemned and that he was very sorry. With that he stopped speaking, I had questions to ask him but he had now become like everyone else, pretending I wasn't there.
My mother was washing the dishes and I stood behind here and asked her what did being sent to Coventry mean. She told me she was busy, so I asked my aunts and uncles, no one knew but one suggested it might be a British army base. They got the encyclopaedia out they even phoned someone and at last someone had the answer, no one was to talk to me.
To send someone to Coventry is an idiom used in England meaning to deliberately ostracise someone. Typically, this is done by not talking to them, avoiding their company, and acting as if they no longer exist.
I found my father in an out shed and told him what happened, he was angry with me and angrily told me "if I was you I would lick his boots!". Lick his boots, what a very strange thing to do, obviously some sort of custom, yes, I was to supplicate myself to him by means of penance, forfeit something to pay for my terrible crime, after all had I not pierced his flesh no less and drawn blood?
I looked at my shoes and I thought shoes will have to do, they were clean and the boy looked like one of those spic and span types, his were shiny.
Next day it was decided that as the boy was guilty of a crime that I would be offered a chance to apologise to him and that a council of boys would decide my fate. A line of around 8 or more boys judged as I told the boy I would lick his shoes if he accepted my apology. He said okay maybe, as I got on my knees i glanced at the boys, on the right they looked horrified and said no, while the ones on the left all had crooked smiles and nodded eagerly, I licked on small lick of his shoe and stood up and he said, "I still don't forgive you" and had a sickening smile on his face.
I told my father what happened and he exploded and even more so when I told him it waas his suggestion.
From then began my total ostracization at school till we left Iraq two and a half years later. I became good at seeking out places in the school yard where there was no one to close, in order to hide my shame to myself. I would sit on a wall as the children played in two groups, the boys and the girls, or I would walk.
From then on I kept to the shadows.
The day I met another Layth!
When I was nearly five my mother decided to take me meet her acquaintance Anna, an expat British woman and her son Layth. I had never met another Layth before, although a very old Iraqi name, it was not too common. I said I would go and tell my sister so she could come but my mum said it was okay as she had taken her out the week before.
I asked my mum if he was like me, she said yes, well no not really. "He is a year older than you and he's started school, but no he's a good boy and he's clever and very well behaved" and she gave me a withering look.
We got the bus to another part of town, she was very silent on the journey. We got to Anna's apartment, and after a short while Layth asked if I wanted to play with his toys. As we were about to leave the room Anna called Layth back and gave him a huge hug, just like my granny would give me. My mum called me back and uncharacteristically gave me a huge wide armed scissors hug, it felt very awkward and unnatural. We got upstairs and Layth said "your mum's strange", to which I immediately retorted "your mum's strange", he took it kindly and we played the next hour.
On the way home that evening we crossed a big modern bridge across the river Tigris with cool looking street lights. It's sad that when I think of it now, that was punishment for my temerity to say that day (in righteous indignation!) that my sister was not as all perfect as my mum and dad thought, and treated her.
I don't require your sympathy, I tell you to decipher the divination.
A few months earlier, my mum was reading my sister her bedtime story, "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". I lay in bed half listening. My imagination perked when Lucy walked through the wardrobe, discovering another world behind it. Through the next few chapters I would ask questions and make comments. One day my mum pulled me aside and said that I was ruining the story for my sister and that she didn't want me involved. I was told to stop being selfish and I must go to sleep when she was reading.
I lay in bed pretending to sleep and listened to the story. We got to the bit where Aslan the supernatural Lion king willingly submits to being bound and humiliated before being killed by the wicked witch and her minions. I tried to stifle my sobs. How could Aslan die? It was terrible. Then Aslan came back to life! "Aslan's alive!" I declared as I sat up like a bolt. My natural exuberance softened the hearts of my mum and sister and I was invited to partake in the reading by being offered to sit on top of the covers of my sisters bed as my mum read. I remember how exuberant I felt at the warmth, this was how it should be!
One day, three chapters later, I was standing close to my mum and she told me that my sister from now on would start to read her own stories as she was such a clever girl and a sign she was on her next milestone. I turned to my mum and said "That's great! Now you can read to me!", "Pffft, get lost! Why would I want to read to you? I've just been through all that reading to your sister!" She said sardonically, blowing cigarette smoke out her mouth. Exuberantly I said "because you love me!". Now I hit a funny switch when I said that. I visibly wrong footed her and her cocky composure dropped. She assumed the air of one wounded and said "eh? How do you know I love you? In fact maybe I don't love you!" and then she got frustrated that she had let slip. I immediately felt a shocking lurch inside and found myself consoling my mother and apologising for upsetting her. She immediately recovered her composure, said a platitude or so. The whole interaction lasted just seconds really.
Later as I lay in bed I remembered the interaction and wondered to myself if my mum loved me. I replayed the interaction and at the end I was honest with myself, she didn't love me I realised. I went to sleep and never really thought about it again, apart from now in my older years.
The Mad Axemen
I was a seven year old half Iraqi/Scot boy living in Baghdad during the time of the "mad axemen". It was an exciting and terrifying time. Early 1973 things came to my notice as the axemen upped the ante.
Sammy, our 18 year old servant told me that a family had been chopped up in the neighbourhood and a body left in a bath of boiling hot water, turning it into a Kofta kebab!
We moved back to the grandparents house, where my aunts and uncles lived and we slept on the rooftop even though it was not yet warm enough. One evening Sammy revolted and refused to go down by himself to make a pot of tea, so my dad and two uncles armed with pistols and automatic escorted him.
My sister and me discussed what we would do if they struck, we decided better to jump and risk broken legs though my aunt said she would wait her fate.
On terrifying afternoon there was a red Volkswagen beetle (like the secret police used) parked near our house, a false alarm. One night a tank and troops came down the street telling people to go back to bed, it surrounded a house but it was a false alarm.
I remember coming back from Baghdad library and my father was kicking the doors of the house open and doing a james bond with his automatic as he searched for lurking axemen.
People hired off duty soldiers though two of them were found dead and the occupants also.
President Saddam said in his 1974 book of speeches that people though the secret police top guy Nadhim Kzar was a hero but Saddam said in fact he was the culprit and backed by CIA.
The Teacher
I was very ill with asthma in the Summer of 1973. Weeks in bed struggling to breath. When I went back to school I realised I was now not just struggling (my concentration was suffering) but completely out of my depth! The teacher asked me a question which i couldn't answer. "Ah, but you see you haven't been here for weeks, you've been ill. Of course you don't know the answers!", he said, looking pleased with himself. "copy the notes from a friends book". Of course I didn't have any friends and didn't know what to do. The next day he asked to see my notes and exploded with anger when he saw that I hadn't copied the work, "What's the meaning of this, i asked you to copy the notes from a friend. A classmate said "but sir, he hasn't got any friends, not even one", everyone looked at me. "Ehab, loan him your book". Ehab was furious and threw the book at me.
For some reason I procrastinated with copying the book and the next day the other boy snatched the book back when i asked if i could borrow it a bit longer. Weeks later it was end of term, the end of primary three.
Before the new term started my dad told me he had a letter from the teacher and we were going to go and meet him. I felt it was unjust that the school could intrude during my free time. We got there and the teacher said take a seat to my father and I also started to sit, "not you!" the teacher shouted. He commiserated with my dad "I am so sorry for you Mohindus (an honorific meaning engineer) Shusha that you should have such a stupid and useless son. The thing is, I know he is capable of doing better but he refuses to apply himself, he stares off into space looking out the window half the time". He told my dad I would have to repeat the year. My poor dad looked sad.
We got in the car and after a few moments of silence without the expected thunder of anger or slaps, i felt emboldened, "huh, did you see that, he told me to stand, what a nerve!". Anger started to boil out my fathers ears and he pulled up and screeched to a stop. "Shut up! You - you did this deliberately didn't you? No, your just a boy, how could you have known?". He meant, as I now know, that my mother had threatened moving back to the UK as he had been too busy to tutor me on homework. He looked at me suspiciously, then his face set, he said "from now on, you are no longer my son. I will house you, I will feed you and I will guide you, till your older", at the guidance part a sadistic sneer (Iraqi style) briefly crossed his lips, "But that is all".
As we pulled up at our house and as I opened the car door i said in tears "I'm going to tell mummy what you said". He said no don't, your mum is going to use this to get back to the UK" which she indeed did do.
Pierced Messiah controversy
In September 1992, Time magazine published an article on the War Rule fragment displayed here (object no. 12) exploring the differing interpretations.[2] A "piercing messiah" reading would support the traditional Jewish view of a triumphant messiah. If, on the other hand, the fragment were interpreted as speaking of a "pierced messiah," it would anticipate the New Testament view of the preordained death of the messiah. The scholarly basis for these differing interpretations—but not their theological ramifications—are reviewed in "A Pierced or Piercing Messiah?"
Isaiah 52/53
The Suffering and Glory of the Servant
13 See, my servant will act wisely[b];
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him[c]—
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness—
(A different interpretation: Just as many were astonished at you, so have I anointed his appearance beyond that of any (other) man, and his form beyond that of the sons of humanity [literally - of the human]) .[26]
15 so he will sprinkle many nations,[d]
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression[a] (literally prison) and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e];
by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[g]
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
The Servant’s sorrow of heart.
The remarkable expression ‘acquainted with grief’ seems to carry an allusion to the previous clause, in which men are spoken of as despising and rejecting the Servant. They left Him alone, and His only companion was ‘grief’-a grim associate to walk at a man’s side all his days! It is to be noted that the word rendered ‘grief’ is literally sickness. That description of mental or spiritual sorrows under the imagery of bodily sicknesses is intensified in the subsequent terrible picture of Him as one from whom men hide their faces with disgust at His hideous appearance, caused by disease. Possibly the meaning may rather be that He hides His face, as lepers had to do. Link
The Servant’s sufferings in their reason, their intensity, and their issue.
The same measure that was meted out to Job by his so-called friends was measured to the servant, and at the Impulse of the same heartless doctrinal prepossession. He must have been had to suffer so much; that is the rough and ready verdict of the self-righteous. With crashing emphasis, that complacent explanation of the Servant’s sufferings and their own prosperity is shivered to atoms, by the statement of the true reason for both the one and the other. You thought that He was afflicted because He was bad and you were spared because you were good-no, He was afflicted because you were bad, and you were spared because He was afflicted.
The intensity of the Servant’s sufferings is brought home to our hearts by the accumulation of epithets, to which reference has already been made. He was ‘wounded’ as one who is pierced by a sharp sword; ‘bruised’ as one who is stoned to death; beaten and with livid weales on His flesh. A background of unnamed persecutors is dimly seen. The description moves altogether in the region of physical violence, and that violence is more than symbol. Link
Make no mistake, at the start of researching this article, back in 2009 and over the next few years, I was attacked relentlessly. To begin, I was stalked and harassed by Freemasonic Edinburgh district council staff, the most sadistic and corrupt grouping within the police that this capital city has to offer, a near neighbour in every flat I moved to over the next years.
Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce[
e] my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
Psalm 22
Even my best friend, who I fed back to health when he was at his lowest with the best if food, hospitality and friendship, I gave him bread every day which I made in my breadmaker. He turned out to be a thorn placed in my side from the very beginning.
"Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me." Psalm 41
My acupuncturist and herbalist who I regarded as a dear friend turned against me. Ten thousand cursed needles did she pierce me with.
"They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst." Psalm 69
"they pierced my hands and my feet."
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