MPJ

More and more I found myself troubled by following worldwide news on daily basis. It's not that I have lack of free time to filter them all out. More, it is that recently I started feeling certain reluctance reading the headlines filled with conflicts, wars and civil fights, religious and cultural animosities, political and all the other disgusting affairs, political elections full of poorly casted actors, stories that you have to use superb power to read them between the lines, worldwide armed conflicts and warfare in foreign countries that I have not the slightest clue what initiated them all and why, mediocre journalism and sensationalism in the worst meaning of the word, etc... The list is endless and believe me I'm not even referring to all those black chronicle stories with unappropriated articles where i.e. somebody killed his parents with an ax or mass murder of cinema crowd by a lunatic in batman suit or worse. Or in today's case and what inspired me to revive this blog post, the mass murder in Belgrade by a 13 years old.


If you read news every day then there is no reason why you shouldn't ask yourself this question: "What is wrong with the World?" Well, If I have to answer it by using the "Occam razor" logic it would be: "Sadly, everything is as usual as always. It is in human nature to act like this from the beginning of time." Its simple, before we didn't have mass media in the scope we are having today and luckily for us we didn't know much further out from our own neighborhood. Today is different. It's more like that immediately when something terrible happens, somebody thinks it is extremely important to put it into news feeds filled with dramatic plot so we wouldn't be spared the sick feeling in our stomach after seeing the photos and videos in accompanied articles. I am not trying to sound shallow and I do sympathize with all the innocent victims and I truly was on the verge of tears almost every time after those events happened. It's just too incomprehensible and over the edge of my intelligence and capacity to dazzle. Once I performed an experiment - I didn't watch or read any local, regional and worldwide news for a long period of time and replaced the activity with more work and fun stuff and only read RSS feed of chosen feeds in science, technology, environment and nature. It was just like I anticipated, I started to fill much better and it was like placing me above and outside all the world's problems. But, it was only the illusion and its not really possible to live like that or to stay hidden from the 21st century full of gadgets and information sources. Not if you are software developer fused to computer screen with fast internet running in behind. The news always finds the way to you, one way or another.

Actually, until we find the way and train our mind to pass through all unwanted news entering one ear directly toward another and out, without bothering brain cells, there is nothing we can do. The world will stay the same. Globally unhealthy from many points of view.

Unless...

Hmmm, ok, let's leave bad news aside for a moment and try something else entirely - let's try to think and enumerate all the things need to happen or invent in order for the World to be a better place. For the World to be relatively healthy and free of bad news. Impossible you say? I agree - it is totally one of those impossible missions or thought experiments if you will, but nevertheless following is the list of what should be done to make it so. I also tried to make the list "in order of importance" and it is a mix of technology achievements and social dogma we need to either invent, understand or deal with.

These seven global changemakers or wonders, once achieved, might have power of changing the World globally. Following is a brief explanation for each one.

Complete Scientific Awareness

The most important is like always, pure knowledge. What we are, why are we here, what are we made off and where are we living. Don't think of these questions spiritually, we can leave this for poets. What I meant is literally - how we came to be in the first place, what is life as we know it, what is universe we are living in made of and what is our place in it. Science is slowly advancing toward definite answers but this will take lots of time. Some areas are researched better than others but I have this feeling that science is going in right direction. Experiments are performed on daily basis, theories are proven or rejected and slowly this process is going forward. I will give you just one example to get the better picture of how hard it is. In physics, astronomy and cosmology we have learned a lot but still many theories are waiting for the right time or technology to be tested. Right now even though laws of physics apply very well in current equations we still don't have pure knowledge of the Universe itself. Is it all there is or there are others universes out there? Is space-time continuum the last frontier we need to solve or there are more dimensions above our four? Is everything made of particles or we will find strings if we dig deeper? Or the last frontier is just one tiny holographic dot placing all of us in one giant and incredible simulation?


You might ask why do we need to know everything? Who cares whether our universe is made out of nothing or it was just a side-product of some natural or artificial phenomenon? Think of it like this, one day Universe is going either to expand over the boundaries of pure existence or something unknown will happen and it will start crunching back into singularity. It is long way until that, but who knows, we might learn how to make another Universe before it happen and escape on time. The Sun is going to collapse much before Universe's ultimate fate and only pure knowledge can save us on that very day.

To conclude, we need to keep funding all kind of scientific thoughts. One day it will be literally worthwhile.

Removing Political Influences

I spent my university days in a country named Yugoslavia governed by socialism utopia. Many of my friends who live in democratic societies from the birth don't understand the stupidity of many things in former socialist societies. For example, one of those stupidity was within my university where I signed to learn electronics and computer science. Socialist government forcibly added more than couple of additional classes within first four semesters where we had to learn about Socialism, Communism and Military Defense. Imagine that. You desperately wanted to continue your education and learn to build and program computers and they forced you to learn about Lenin or Marx or tanks and rifles. I am proud to say that I have the smallest grades from those classes possible. However, one thing is still poking my mind from one "defense" lecture. Retired general or who ever he was who gave the lecture told us definition of war with exactly these words: "War is nothing else but simple continuation of politics only by using force and violence." So there you go. If you listen to him all we need to do is to get rid of politicians. You know what, sadly, even though all wars we had in the past didn't originated in bad politics, the most of them were. Actually in big percent of all military conflicts he was right. Politicians are the ones to blame fully. So how to do this small thing and remove politicians out of equation?


Actually the answer is simple, we replace them with technology. In the beginning of developing democracy, politicians were nothing more than just intermediaries between people and government. It was necessary back in Greek times but today we don't need a politician to ride a horse for days between his village and capital city in order to represent his community and vote for government's agenda. Today, people can do that by themselves by using smartphones. There will be turbulence as politicians today infiltrated every aspect of governments worldwide but sooner or later democracy will evolve and big decisions will never be in one man alone, metaphorically speaking. Even today with current technology, simple census can be organized for everything imaginable. For example, if some government comes to think into going into any war they must first ask people for approval and I can't imagine what kind of conflict must exist in order majority of voters to allow going into war and send their people into possible death.

Anyway my second post in this blog was about this and you can read it entirely at Real Democracy System. It was one idea of how to expand democracy and replace politicians with technology. The same like human workers in automobile industry are replaced with industrial robots. Not a big deal. Only cars are now better and assembled with greater perfection.

Dismantling Religion

Can you imagine a world without religion?

I can.

I know this is sensitive subject so I am not going to "preach" against religious dogma. Instead, let me just tell you one story what we would be missing in hypothetical religion-free world. Couple of years ago, I was a god-father on the baptism ceremony for my best friend daughter. She was about two years old and genuinely terrified with the procedure of washing her body with cold water, cutting her cute curly cowlick out and most of all with appearance of the priest. He was truly scary character, wearing long black dress, greasy long hair and messy even longer beard. With his thick-rim black glasses and couple of teeth missing he was blabbing a prayer in a way nobody could understand. Until the very end of the ceremony when his ability to talk dramatically improved and we all understood when he said something about how primitive and impolite her parents were when they failed to raise their daughter not to be afraid from priests and house of god. Truth is, even we adults would be heavily scared seeing this guy in the middle of the night and I completely understand children suffering in his not so cheap baptisms. If you add to the scene that we had to circle three times around some totemic item in the middle of the church and in every turn forced to literally spit on the floor while saying "I hate the devil" you could probably get full understanding how ridiculous all this was. When I said earlier that not all wars are triggered by politicians and their agenda it was because I am sure that remaining wars in the past directly or indirectly are caused by worldwide religions. All the cultural conflicts, dozens of crusades and wiping out native civilizations during colonization have religion in background.


Unfortunately, dismantling religion is next to impossible or one of those Sisyphean tasks. Even if on this very evening friendly aliens land on the top of UN building and say that there is nothing up there, worldwide believers would not believe them and continue worshiping the divine, only with slightly modified prayers with heretic aliens included.

Respecting Earth and Biodiversity

Broken natural equilibrium between humans and especially degraded relationship of humans and everyone else is one of those doomsday scenarios directly caused by us. It seems that one point in time will come in the future where everything might collapse whatever we do. This is the point when natural balance on Earth will be inevitably reached. It is simply impossible to prevent the energy and the resources failure for all of us if we continue damaging local and global ecosystems we live in. In the world with billions of humans we are literally unprepared for the major collapse of the biodiversity, either caused by us directly, indirectly or by any doomsday catastrophe caused by natural phenomenon.


Simply put, if we would take care of our planet and our neighbors (and I don't mean just humans next door, but everything with DNA molecule in their cells) like we take care of ourselves, this issue would probably not exist.

Mastering Gravity

While previous four changemakers are more about how to deal with current issues or dogmas, following three are all about breakthrough discoveries in technology and engineering. There are numerous potential discoveries capable of changing the world but eventually I selected these three as all of them needed lots of more work to get in production and once they do the door would be open for many more.


Let's start with gravity. Even though it is still uncertain what it is exactly, is it another field governed by graviton bosons hinted by particle physics or it is just a property of curved space and time continuum or perhaps something else, learning the basics of gravity eventually would provide us ways of how to master it. If we succeed, the consequences would be extra ordinary. Imagine the world with new transportation capable of reaching the distant point on Earth within minutes. Astronauts would finally escape zero gravity issues and you would not have to be athlete in order to go into space. Speaking of astronauts, yesterday I was picking up my son from the school and I found him and his friend arguing about whether or not small space shuttle toy they were playing with was actually a plane or a shuttle. Boy's father ended discussion by explaining them that miniature "Discovery" is actually both since it flies in orbit like a shuttle and lands like a plane. Well, if we manage to master gravity in the future there will be no planes any more. Just shuttles.

I have to admit that this changemaker is maybe the most difficult one to achieve, but if proven possible, one day it would add additional wind blow in many other areas. Imagine construction machines with gravity drive and tools, home appliances floating around, safe space travels, weekend houses on the Moon or Mars, cheap solar system exploration, robotic mine facilities in asteroid belt and beyond.

Mastering Nano-Technology

Close your eyes and think big and imagine construction materials stronger than strongest known currently in existence. Imagine space elevators between Earth and captured asteroid acting as counter-weight on the other end. Imagine literally unbreakable bridges and skyscrapers. Now blink and now think small and imagine atom-sized semiconductor and molecule-sized integrated circuit. Imagine personal computer of the size of thimble that will never overheat and work without changing batteries. Imagine nano-robots floating in your blood stream capable of delivering medicine only to infected cells. Imagine animals tagged in a way that we would know their exact position at any times.


Now blink again and try to think big and small in the same time and spot humanoid robot with processing power larger than thousands personal computers combined with artificial intelligence programmed in its memory cells. All this would be possible when we finally end our research of manipulating one single thing. The carbon atom. The atom so powerful of making both organic molecules interacting with hydrogen and oxygen and also capable of creating perfect crystal structures on the atom scale creating the most durable and solid materials possible to create in laboratories. Contrary to gravity changemaker, scientific research advanced significantly and we might expect first results in near future, especially in construction and computer engineering.

Mastering Human Body

Finally, the area that is probably the most advanced and almost reached the title of "Mastering" is medicine. We have come long way since humans invented civilization and started taking care of each other. But we are still not there yet. Some areas in medicine like fight the simple cold is still far away from victory. There is still a list of diseases and conditions with unknown medicines and drugs. DNA sequence is still far from final decoding and understanding, especially in context of junk DNA. Perhaps further research in electronics and nano technology would provide additional tools for further breakthroughs in medicine.


When I am imagining a final understanding of humans I am thinking of body sized home appliance capable of frequent non-invasive scanning of human body in order to give us either clean bill of health or diagnose potential hazards much before it might appear.

So there you go, call it fantasy of one leisured blogger or whatever you want but I wish I could see the status of this list say 200 years from now. I am sure lifespan of one human being could be even much longer than 200 years if some or all of above changemakers came to life.

---

Global Changemakers
Initially published in November 2012, republished and slightly edited in May 2023

Image references:

* 7th Grader Opens Fire at School in Serbia, Killing 8 Children
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/world/europe/serbia-school-shooting.html

** Pop Physics: Gravity
http://popphysics.com/chapter-3-gravity-and-orbits/gravity/

*** Space elevator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

It is hard to pinpoint the exact period in human history when religiosity we are all familiar today emerged and started to form itself with all of the colorful myths, supernatural stories, vivid deities and numerous super powered entities. It happened probably at some point around 10.000 BC in the same period of time when humans slowly progressed from being pure hunters and gatherers into next stage of civilization and started to build modern settlements with domesticated animals and cultivated plants. No doubt, religiosity, superstition and spiritualism existed all the way from the beginning in the history when our ancestors started to paint cave walls but only Neolithic revolution and invention of agriculture gave us enough free time to start daydreaming and to think outside pure survival. If we compare all previous beliefs with vignettes, we can safely say that the evolution of religiosity after Neolithic revolution began to fill volumes of graphic novels.


According to the theory, slowly after the beginning of the Holocene period, the first large prehistoric population of Eurasia that spoke Proto-Indo-European languages was formed. They were the ancestor of Indo-European languages and the source of Proto-Indo-European mythology from which all pagan religions arose in different areas of Europe and Asia. This is why we can easily compare different deities and see all the similarities they inherited from the proto times. Take for example gods of lightning, thunder and weather in general. The deity of these properties emerged in all different mythologies and Norse Thor, Greek Zeus, Roman Jupiter, Slavic Perun, Hindu Indra, Hurrian Tar and Hittite Tarḫunna and many others were no doubt based on Proto-Indo-European deity called Perkwunos.

The similarities do not end with the deities but also with other colorful characters from old myths. Last week I stumbled to one amazing piece of art in Churchill Park at Kastellet citadel in Copenhagen. It was 114 years old sculpture of Valkyrie by famous Norwegian artist Stephan Sinding. It was probably the best 3d/live action street art I have ever seen before. It reflects everything about what Valkyrie really is in old Norse mythology. The word literally means "chooser of the slain" and it is portraying a female figure guiding the souls of deceased Nordic soldiers either to Fólkvangr, Freyja's afterlife, or to Valhalla, Odin's immortality hall. Old Norse literature describes valkyries either as purely supernatural or human maidens with certain supernatural powers. Both types of beings were associated with honesty, splendor and gold, but also with bloodshed and brutality in battle.


In South Slavic mythology, a similar being vila represents a female supernatural being who is sympathetic to people, but she could also be vengeful and brutal. She is depicted as an extremely beautiful girl with golden hair, dressed in long, flowing robes and armed usually with bow and arrows. She exists on a luminal plane between nature and culture, between gods and humans constantly travelling between one realm and the other to interact with the heroes and villains of the epics. Even though both valkyries and vilas developed in different religious environments it is hard not to spot various similarities between the two. The whiteness and glowing quality of the vilas is mirrored in the description of the valkyries and both figures are to be found in the sky in most of their depictions with connection to lightning and thunder.*

The warrior aspects of the valkyrie are unquestionable, they are "vowed to war" and their role is primarily on the battlefield. The mythical vile are similarly portrayed and often described as wearing armor, with bows and arrows and envisioned as powerful, supernatural warriors. There are convincing resemblance in regards to the connection between vile and valkyries and heroes in the epics. Most often this relationship is a warrior bond, but this relationship can become both sexual and malicious. Just as a vila can manipulate heroes or villains to murder those of her choosing, so too the valkyries are reputed to play deadly games with the heroes with whom they associate.*


Although the nature of the valkyries' flight is portrayed as a magical ride on horseback whereas the vile most often fly unmounted with the use of bird wings, it is not uncommon for the vile to ride horses or deer. Both, viles and valkyries are often described to gather in groups within the epics and refer to each other as sisters. It is fair to suggest that the valkyrie and the vila are rooted in the same figure, their differences lies only within cultural difference between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. Perhaps the most likely attestable age of the two figures lies back to the 6th century CE when the south Slavic tribes were still located in the North of Europe.*

From there, we could push the date back even further to the time of Proto-Indo-European times, especially if we extend this comparison to apsarā, beings with similar traits from Indian religion and mythology. Тhe various trios of birth-fate-death-associated women in Greek and Roman folklore also appear to origin from the same source. The direct ancestor of valkyries are most likely Proto-Germanic walakuzjǭ which stands for walaz (battle wound) +‎ kuzą (choice, decision).


Historical origins of vilas include the various traditions especially Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore. The word 'vilenski' was used as an adjective, meaning "enchanted", but also became a generic term for various enchanted creatures during the late Middle English period. Nevertheless, the proto origin is no doubt the same as the valkyrie's, and south Slavic version, especially in middle age Serbia survived even the Christianizing the old beliefs and ended in colorful epics and poems of 14th century and later. Although, to be perfectly fair and precise, the mythological vila from the oldest myths and tales and folklorized one in epics and poems are somewhat different in a way that folklore is centered to human affairs, heroes, battles and supernatural beings only serve as a side story, so to speak.

Always, when I am reading or writing about old myths and tales I can't help but wonder how would one comparison be of a typical religious person from the old times and today. It seems to me that old stories were much colorful and picturesque than the ones from the religious beliefs of a singular god. Even a small things like simple walk through the woods would be different for somebody in BC times for a simple fact that from all they knew, not only natural plants and animals could be found there. For many, the forest behind the house could also be a magical gateway to the supernatural world and even the smallest unexplained event of natural behavior (like methane leak or weird animal demeanor) could be immediately linked to the supernatural. But this sounds like a nice topic for another story.

Image refs:
https://vrallart.com/artworks/milos-marko_i_vila/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_Dadd...Yellow_Sands.jpg
https://www.saatchiart.com/...The-Valkyries

* A Treatise on the South Slavic Vila by Dorian Jurić 
https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/bitstream/11375/9407/1/fulltext.pdf
This article contains quotes/paraphrases from Dorian's theses

Goddess Zhiva (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2018/08/goddess-zhiva.html

Serbian Vampires (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2020/10/serbian-vampires.html

Fairies of Naissus (MPJ story):
https://www.mpj.one/2015/11/fairies-of-naissus.html

Refs
https://templeilluminatus.com/forum/topics/valkyrie?groupUrl=the-triple-goddess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie
https://www.worldhistory.org/Valkyrie/
http://www.mcurtis.net/legend-of-keres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vila_(fairy)
https://slavicmythologyandtales.wordpress.com/2020/08/15/vile-and-rusalki-part-2/
https://sr.m.wikipedia.org/sr-ec/ВилаРавијојла

Among all religious beliefs, the Greek pantheon of colorful gods is perhaps the best described in the history of all human religiosity. There is literally no piece of Greek land or portion of the sea or the tiniest island that has no origin in radiant old mythology. The island of Corfu is no exception as well. Apparently in the mythological history, it was one of those unnamed islands in the region of Scheria where the mighty Poseidon spent a portion of his eternity with fresh water nymph Korkyra. Their descendants, the Phaeacians as described by Homer in Odysseus' adventures inherited the island and named it to the Poseidon's lover. The final shape of the island owns the appearance to Poseidon as well when he separated Paxos from Corfu with his trident in order to create a love nest for him and his wife Amphitrite (sea nymph this time). I don't blame him, both Korkyra and Paxos are beautiful and colorful islands and he obviously knew his craft well. I understand his affection to nymphs as well, he was the sea god after all and in the aftermath of the mythological creation, he alone is most likely responsible for the origin of the human race on a total of 227 Greek islands including Atlantis, but that's different story.


However, the reality and history of Corfu is much different and much less idyllic. Being in the cross worlds in the middle ages between Ottoman empire and western civilization, the history of Corfu was turbulent to say the least. The island managed to survive and keep its Greek identity after numerous raids by barbarians and conquests by Europeans during the medieval period. The origin of first people on the island is not much known. According to Homer, they had some relationship with the Mycenaeans (Dorians) but it is not scientifically proved true. Furthermore, there was no ancient ruins dedicated to Poseidon at all. There are two ruins excavated so far, one of a temple dedicated to Hera and the other, the most significant temple built in around 580 BC dedicated to goddess Artemis which was monumental in dimensions for the time. In the above picture is its full, around 20 meters long, pediment portraying a living Gorgon (mythical creatures with hair made of living, venomous snakes, most likely Medusa or one of her sisters).


After the ancient times, the island was ruled by Romans first and then went under Byzantine empire. After the Byzantine period ended (around 1267 AD), Corfu was vulnerable to the constant pirate attacks and raids by its neighbors and crusaders and stabilizes only when Venetians occupied the island in 1386. These olive trees from the picture above are seeded by Venetians and considered to be more than 500 years old. The Venetians ruled more than 400 years and ended their rule in 1797. The most of the Venetian domination left a big remark in todays island architecture, including the large fortress. After that, the island was occupied by French followed by strange alliance of Russians and Turks, then British and finally on 21 May 1864 after the London treaty, Corfu and all Ionian islands united with Greece.


The most important milestone in the history of Corfu happened during the Turkish siege of 1716 when Venetians managed to defend the island and stopped the Turks in their advances toward Europe. Fighting alongside Corfiot’s were Venetians, Germans, Italians, Maltese ships, Papal galleys, galleys from Genoa and Tuscan, Spanish galleys, and even Portuguese forces. The Turkish failure in Corfu was a historical event of enormous importance - who knows what would happened if the result of the battle went otherwise. However, the other parts of Greece and their southern islands weren't that lucky and went under Ottoman occupation causing large number of refugees and migration toward Corfu. In the following centuries, more immigrants arrived from Illyria, Sicily, Crete, Mycenae, and the Aegean islands. Of course in this small blog story, I didn't mean to go much into historical events but I always like to learn a bit more about places we travel to. If you want to know more, reference links below are good point to start googling.


This summer, we visited Corfu and it's picturesque village of Messonghi. In the same point of history, the small village along with neighboring Moraitika were established by Cretans and Peloponnesians. With it's interesting feature of Messonghi river, small and nice beach, crystal clear waters and amazing people, this village was our host for 11 days of our vacation and we fully recommend the stay. Beside archaeological museum we also visited Serbian House dedicated to the Great War events and one nice museum called "Casa Parlante", dedicated to the ordinary life of one British aristocrat family from British rule in the middle of 19th century. The most impact on me personally was the traditional Corfu dishes called Sofrito and Pastitsada and their recipes dated back 200 years in the past. The last but not least our big thanks goes to Spyros, his family and their fine Georgina Apartments where we staid the entire time.

Refs:
https://atcorfu.com/corfu-history/
https://greeking.me/blog/visit-corfu/item/207-corfu-the-island-of-the-phaeacians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfu

I've always wondered what genre exactly "Star Wars" belongs to? I guess it is safe to say that the entire franchise is one giant space fantasy or space opera if you will, genuinely influenced by human history and religiosity wrapped into a futuristic world of (science) fiction. I sincerely admire George Lucas when he began the story fifty years ago, especially how he imagined a spiritual background without the need for the existence of religion we are all familiar with and without presence of actual deities. The main premise simply described as the Force gives to those sensitive to this spiritual energy extraordinary abilities, such as telekinesis, access to the minds of the living beings, potentiality of healing and what is especially interesting to me, the power of seeing things before they happen.


Even though the visions and predicting the future seem to be the most fantastic feature of the Force, it is perhaps the only fiction understandable by the real science. The physics behind it is not too complicated - the microscopic world is made of zillion of tiny particles or energy quants that are always in foreseeable motion and for one extraordinary computational device, and the Force is definitely one, predicting the future is merely nothing more that calculating the outcome of their collisions. The Jedi deflecting the blaster bolts with their lightsabers is only foreseeing the near future and the location of energy particles running toward them.

Anyhow, the Force portrayed in 'Star Wars' as a metaphysical and ubiquitous power created by life itself is the most fascinating quality of the franchise and is definitely the main motive for me to eagerly wait for new movies, tv shows and in today's blog story, the book series with the Force stronger than ever and described in greater details than ever before.


The books are of course "The High Republic" recently published with high expectations and power to boost 'the galaxy far, far away' into another trilogy of potential movies and shows. The set is staged 200 years before that 'a long time ago' in the recognizable opening crawl and within the golden age of the Galactic Republic with most active Jedi and the period of expansion and exploration in the Outer Rim Territories.

In the nutshell, with the planets in Colonies, Core Worlds and Mid Rim overpopulated or in constant danger coming from galactic gangsters like the Hutts, there was a migration of citizens toward the dangerous Outer Rim territories overseen by the Republic and protected by the Jedi. Just like in the Earth history of the trans-Atlantic migrations, the new and unexplored territories were not without numerous dangers in a face of piracy and unpredictable natural hazards. Traveling long distances within the hyperspace paths added another level of unease and all these combined provided the plot for the start of the new amazing adventures.


All three books in the phase 1 series, "Light of the Jedi", "The Rising Storm" and "The Fallen Star" gave us fair amount of understanding of what was going on in those times of peace with the dominance and expansion of the Galactic Republic. They also gave us the glimpse to all the dangers within and the Nihil, a group of marauders who were based in the Outer Rim Territories, who caused havoc throughout the galaxy without hesitation to come into conflict with the Jedi themselves. But the story is only at the beginning and I will be eagerly waiting for the next adventures.

Without getting into any details or spoilers, I will only conclude that novels definitely belong to those page-turners filled with amazing and believable action we are used to, all with new characters we will grow to love. With a lot of characters this new Star Wars era from the history of the far away galaxy is going to need decades of various media to cover and choosing books this time seems to be the right decision to me.

Books:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09BVJXJDS?ref_=dbs_p_mng_rwt_ser_shvlr&storeType=ebooks

Refs:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/High_Republic_Era

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire 

In pre-Christian mythologies of the western and northern tribes and their pagan beliefs, female deities were not uncommon. Take for instance old Gaul's Matres or Valkyries of the old Norse mythology and of course all the goddesses from the history of all polytheistic religions around the globe. But perhaps the most interesting of them all are, you guessed, the fairies. They are not actually deities per se and rather belong to the spirit realm of the afterlife and dead, but still you can find them, in one form or another, in almost all religious legends and myths. The city where I was born, the valley it resides and the river that splits it in half are no different. The history of this area is, metaphorically speaking, very colorful and full of wonders, all the way to the beginning of the Neolithic era, and over the centuries this valley literally saw lots of different cultures and deities. One of them, originates way back to the Celtic Gauls and their tribe named Scordisci who lived in this neighborhood almost 24 centuries ago. They were the one who named the river and the first settlement as Naissa/Navissos, which pretty much means river and town of fairies. Whether or not this area in the BC was flooded with fairies or perhaps the geographic of it resembled to their beliefs, or even the very "Celtic Otherworld" was pictured and portrayed like our own neighborhood, the name survived for centuries and despite numerous conquerors and different cultures, the fairies staid in the name and the 'spirit' of the town all the way till today. Perhaps first document that 'officially' coined Celtic's name was published in Alexandria by the famous Claudius Ptolemy in his master piece 'Geography' (around AD 150) in which he mentioned Ναϊςςός (latin: Naissus) as 'first among four largest towns in Roman Dardania'*.


When I said the town inherited not only the 'fairy tale' name, but also the spirit that it still living in legends and myths, what I really had in mind was one particular spot on the northern hill named 'Metoh' and outskirt of the town where almost entire millennium stands a ruin of an old temple built on that particular spot by one of Byzantine emperors in 11th century. The official name of the temple was 'Holy Trinity Church' but over time it earned prefix 'Rusalija' which pretty much originated from old Serbian folklore, and, no doubts, connects the church with Rusalkas, mythical water nymphs or a female spirits from old pagan Slavic mythology. In some of Slavic languages, Russian included, word 'rusalka' translated to English literally means 'mermaid'. This variation of immortal creatures from the spirit world are completely opposite from the 'Tinkerbell' kind of fairies - instead, they could be very malevolent and dangerous young undead girls who died in or near a river or a lake and spend eternity haunting the waterway. With their long red hair and beautiful appearance and singing, they lure young men into the depths to their death. In Serbian stories even hearing their song results in immediate deafness. They are the most deadly one entire week, 50 days after Easter, which comes in late May or early June every year. As it seems, legends say that they are only afraid by wormwood and garlic, so try to have them with you if you are true believer.


Well, we didn't have any garlic in our pockets last November when we visited the church and I truly hated my curiosity when I read about Rusalkas before we drove there. Sometimes it is extremely wise to read about horror myths after you visit the spot where this malicious fairies live. Firstly, the site was eerie - the church is abandoned and to get to it you have to drive through the old graveyard people seem to visit only once a year, during 'Holy Trinity' week. Secondly, the weather was way to windy and spooky and I had to engage all my driving skills to enter the church yard - the car simply didn't want to enter due to poor quality of the stone entrance and kept rolling backwards. Thirdly, it was almost a sunset, part of the day usually identified with 'twilight hour'. When we finally got inside, my wife refused to get out of the car and in a couple of minutes of intense bravery only Viktor and I went out to take couple of photos. Needless to say, the feeling was truly cheerless and the only bright of the site was the view. The location was perfect and we glimpsed entire city with large orange sun on the horizon and I finally took one of the best sunsets in our collection along with great shots of the little temple itself. Confidentially speaking, if Viktor didn't bring his plastic gun-toy, we would probably stay less time listening that spooky Rusalka's song ... or heavy wind whistles... or whatever it was.. Although, I would be feeling much safer with couple of garlic cloves ... Ahem ...


However, besides city and river names, history of this area in BC is not very well documented, archaeologically speaking and even though there are plenty of evidence and finds, before Ptolemy reference, nothing is certain. But the names are always interesting and as they survive millenniums there are many speculations of their origin. Celtic 'Navissos' is no doubt related to fairies, I mean even the word 'fairy' is coined by ancient Gauls, in nowadays France, and the root is in the Old French word 'faerie' which means 'enchantment' or 'under the spell'. However, even before Celtic invasion of Balkans in 3rd century BC, this land was populated with various forms of societies and civilization. It lays on the cross roads between north and south and west and east and as I described in post Constantine & Naissus, it was always under siege or some sort of raid. Due to this geographic misfortune, one tribe never managed to rule this area for, relatively speaking, long period of time. Before Celtic tribe of Scordisci who staid here after Celtics retreated from invasion of Greece, the land was occupied with people of Dardani, who originated either from estranged Illyrian tribe or, how some scholars suggest, directly from ancient city of Dardania, located next to the city of Troy, as described in Homer's Illiad, who moved to the Balkans millenniums before AD. Even before Dardani's rule, at some point in 4th century this area was raid and occupied with Triballi tribes and if you add Greeks and Romans and constant threats from Gothics and Huns from the north and far east you'd get the picture of how unwise was to settle around here in ancient times. Anyhow, the point is that almost everybody managed to spend some time here and to contribute a little in those violent times. Or to be precise, to contribute in everything but changing the original name that staid the same from the very beginning.


So lets try to summarize the names from all those conquerors over time: Navissos, Ναϊσσός, Naissus, Nais, Niş, Niš, all of them related to fairies in different languages. Perhaps the most interesting connection with the name is during Greek ruling, especially from the golden prosperity times of Macedonian expansion in some point of centuries before Christ. In Greek mythology exists famous mountain of Nysa, which was the traditional place where the rain nymphs (Hyades), raised the semi-god Dionysus, who was one of those bad guys from the Olympus - the god of wine, ritual madness and religious ecstasy and to quote Wikipedia, Dionysus represents everything which is chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods. I guess, there is no need to add that one hypotheses of the location of Nysa (which is still unknown if it's not made up) is within ancient Tribalia or .. pretty much .. this neighborhood again. Tribalia and triballian tribes were located entirely in nowadays Eastern Serbia which borders with Niš valley and it's northern-eastern mountains. By the myth, and just like their half-sisters, sea-nymphs Pleiades, rain-nymphs Hyades were transformed into a cluster of stars that was afterwards associated with rain. So if you look up in a bright starry night and see The Hyades in the constellation of ‎Taurus, which is the nearest open star cluster to the Solar System, remember that their five brightest stars might have been living just around within my north neighboring mountains in their ... fairy existence.


Of course, Greek mythology doesn't end this story about origin of the name of my birth town with fairies. Even in the Scandinavian mythology there is a 'Nis', dwarfed male fairy in Danish Jutland (Nisse god-dreng - Nisse good lad**) who offers his help to run household and help people if, of course he is pleased by treat (groute) every evening. In the end, I am sure that Niš, or old Naissus, if you will, is one of the rarest cities on the planet with real fairy-tale in it's name origin and I would really like to see a tribute to fairies, even to the evil Rusalkas in form of some sort of street art or museum or something that could show modest traveler, tourist or web surfer not only the history of one town's name but also a hint of how once our ancestors pictured spirit world and their interaction with people. If this happens anytime in the future, this post will definitely get it's sequel with hopefully great photos and more stories.

Inage credits and direct refs:
*** https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/arts...rusalka.html
* http://www.poesialatina.it/_ns/greek/testi/Claudius_Ptolemaeus/Geographia_(lib._1-3).html
** http://www.celtic-twilight.com/otherworld/fairy_mythology/scandinavia3.htm
http://www.guideforthearts.com/renee-fleming-to-star-in-the-title-role-of-rusalka/
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://www.niscafe.com/grad-nis/
Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka
http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic/faeries.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014/06/fairies-haunt-springs-wells-and-rivers.html
http://celticruins.blogspot.rs/2014_06_01_archive.html
http://www.panacomp.net/serbia?mesto=srbija_sveta%20trojica%20matejevac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scordisci
http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-7653/2006/0350-76530637007P.pdf
http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/AnatoliaDardania.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nysa_(mythology)

I was very young when I visited Olympus for the first time. It happened during our early vacation in the region back then in eighties of the previous century. I vividly remember there was a dangerous dirt road with not much room for two vehicles to pass by, ending near to the one of the mounting homes with embedded small tavern which can really print on its portfolio that was built on the top of gods' heavenly entrances. For some fairly strange reasons, Coca Cola and Souvlaki on the tavern's terrace felt really tasty, just as the pure and clean water from the water stream just next to it. Unfortunately and despite of all of my efforts, I couldn't see or find anything divine or out of worldly items or even a glowing shiny rock. There were no gods whatsoever. Or naked muses. Or beasts with snakes instead of hair. Or horses with wings. Or mighty heroes. Nothing. Well, I was only 10 years old. What did I know.. Maybe that pair of hawks we saw flying around the highest rock across the tavern and screeching in high tones were actually Apollo and Artemis arguing about something.

On the other end, it might be that I visited Olympus during gods' withdrawal. Way too early...


But, before I continue with the actual glimpse to the modern Olympus fiction and short reviews of one hilarious book and one extraordinary comic, I think I need to write a word of two about the photo I embedded above, which might be interesting to read. This is in fact the mount of Olympus (just like the highest peak shown from the air in the post header). The most famous mountain in the entire world. The mighty one. It is not the highest of them all - just slightly lower than 3K meters and not even the highest in the entire Balkans, but it was the one chosen by gods to built their own abode during the ancient times. Sitting just next to Aegean Sea, it is the first sight you see when you travel from Thessaloniki to Athens in nowadays Greece. I took this image in 2010, from the beach in the sea resort of Leptokarya, described by Wikipedia as "the former seat of East Olympos municipality, which is part of the municipality of Dio-Olympos". During my countless visits of northern Greece in past several decades, and all of them during summer holidays, believe it or not, all of my Olympus photographs ended with similar heavy stream of clouds above mountain peaks. It is like Olympus is always hidden in clouds by some weird meteorological reasons. Well, that was not entirely true as I have seen Olympus naked in the occasion or two, but still it was not often. It's like Olympus is attracting the clouds and capturing them to stay and hide it's peaks.

This summer, almost forty years after my first excursion to the famous maintain, we took the perfect opportunity to board a tourist bus and venture their Olympian route following new paved roads carrying people to the multiple resorts within mounting base and visiting Olympus' main attractions. At least to the point where road limits heavy buses to proceed. The tour included town of Litochoro, famous Bath of Zeus, Agios Dionysios Monastery and Old Panteleimon, picturesque mountainous village on the slopes of the mountain. Surely seeing the sites with your own eyes has no alternative and the next best thing is to check couple of those travel guides and stories you can stumble online, but as far as this post is concerned, I will leave it to my son Viktor to tell you all about it in his channel's video log we both filmed this August. If you find it pleasing, you know the YouTuber's drill - please like and subscribe... ;-)


The mountain definitely contain a beautiful charm of its own, but we all know that Olympus is best known for its part in Greek mythology and with all its ancient fiction it inspires writers all over the world ever since. With some of them, the thin line between fiction and nonfiction is not really visible at once but in the case of Michael G. Munz's amazing novel called 'Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure' one would say it is all about fiction and laugh out loud (LOL) moments. The gods in this comedy returned from their withdrawal after more than two thousand years with all of their entourage and got back to the active and mutual life with mortals. And they returned with a twist.

What is the most interesting about old Greek gods, compared to all of the modern religions of today is that their godhood was not that estranged from their creation like it is now the case with all of those Jerusalem monotheistic beliefs. Greek gods loved to mingle with mortals. And by mingle, you know what I mean, which is especially true with Zeus (probably Dionysis too). In fact, within the opening chapters of the novel, Apollo defined it best when he said that "Gods are just like mortals, only ... better." And that means with everything that we can use to describe ordinary people, including conspiracies, hatred, intelligence, stupidity, love, sex, affairs, ... It's like the Greek gods possess everything good and bad we mortals experience on daily bases, only theirs is enhanced and powered off the charts. And of course, they could change appearances into hawks.. and to do other magical stuff. So, by establishing that we can safely say that all the gods in the "Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure" are more than just divine creatures. They are active characters in the story and along with amazing Michael's narrative, that is playing with the reader on numerous occasions are something that gives this book, at least for me, the originality I have never experienced before. The humor is everywhere, especially in the narrative, that on many points require fair amount of reader's geekery and knowledge of ancient mythology. I'll stop here with no further spoiler and only my warm recommendation.


As for the other media dealing with Olympian myths, there are numerous movies and among them "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson as Zeus. They were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations and best of all the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth. Of course Henry Cavill as Theseus in "Immortals" was also one of the visually great movies with heavy usage of old Greek myths and Olympian gods in main roles.

On the other hand, the world of graphic novels never disappoints and Rick Riordan's novels with Percy Jackson adventures recently, after debuts with two motion pictures, transferred into extraordinary enjoyable comics. The world of demigods in so far two graphic books looks very nice and, I have to admit, much appealing than in movies. Perhaps because reading comics was my first love from the early childhood and/or maybe because these two books were my first comics reading with Kindle way of presenting graphic novels but nevertheless if you are into Olympian myths and love great fiction emerged from old tales my recommendation for Riordan's "Heroes of Olympus" series with "The Lost Hero" and "The Son of Neptune" goes without saying.



zViktor22 YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH2BtavSrxaRyvOJS5JZaHQ

Zeus Is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure
http://michaelgmunz.com/books/zeus/

The Lost Hero: The Graphic Novel
http://rickriordan.com/book/the-lost-hero-the-graphic-novel/

My great-great-grandfather was born in 1845 and he spent his entire life through the turmoil of the second half of the 19th century. Little is known about his life - after all life in rural Serbian villages in past times wasn't really documented well and literacy among majority of people wasn't something our ancestors could be proud of. However, what was a major disadvantage for most people turned to be a great opportunity for my great-great-grandfather. Beside being literate and educated, he was gifted with a human property only few others possess. He owned a strong and melodic voice that would probably guaranty him at least a radio-host job if he was born a century later. Anyhow, one of his tasks was to read newspapers, various dispatches and communiques while standing in the center of village square surrounded with neighbors and people from nearby settlements. Soon enough he earned valuable prominence in his family and his children decided to devote our family name to him. Ever since then and after, more or less, 100 years our last name is carrying my great-great-grandfather's. Zhiva.



But his name goes even further in past. Millennium or two before my great-great-grandfather, this name belonged first to someone else entirely. Zhiva (Živa) was the name of the old Slavic goddess of life, fertility and marriage, one of numerous terrestrial goddesses. It literally means "living, being, existing" and compared to other religions of the past Zhiva was the goddess similar to Hera, Demeter and Aphrodite of ancient Olympians and very much alike goddess Sif from the old Norse mythology. Thanks to the modern pop culture, especially comics and in recent years movie blockbusters, we are pretty familiar with old beliefs of our ancestors in Greece, Rome and Scandinavia, but tremendous and equally colorful stories are hiding in old Slavic mythology as well. Like with our family name, in one way or another, old stories of ancient mythology survived all these years. And not just stories - the customs, celebrations and rituals are very much alive even today despite all the efforts from the new Christian religion that tried or still trying to eliminate old paganism from people's minds.

Contrary to the old Greeks, Romans or Scandinavians who more or less occupied smaller territories, Slavs spread to vast areas of nowadays Asia and Eastern Europe. Numerous cultures and nations emerged from several migrations and gave birth to slightly different mythology of the same deities and in different Slavic languages and history Zhiva is known with different names and the most prominent ones were Zhibog (life god), Živa, Жива, Siwa, Šiwa etc. Along with variety of names comes the variety of descriptions and searching for definite and most accurate ancient text is the mission impossible or one of those Sisyphean task, if we want to stay in the realm of old legends and stories. However, I did find one mutual description of her that pretty much covers all sources and it explains the goddess as: "Zhiva is the main female goddess in the world of the Slavs. Like the god Svarog, she covers the whole world with his light and closely following the basic laws of the Kind. Goddess Zhiva gives tenderness, care, kindness, heart and care of all pregnant women and lactating mothers." Zhiva existed as a supreme goddess and she was the offspring of main Slavic deities (Rod as a main supreme god, creator of everything, Svarog, god of heaven and three great goddesses), a sibling goddess to other female deities (Vesna, Morana, Lada, terrestrial goddesses related to Earth seasons), sister of god of thunder and lightning Perun and wife of Dabog (Dazhbog), god of sun, justice and well-being.


I can imagine that is very hard to enumerate all Slavic gods, their relations and all their pantheons due to vast diversity of Slavic people but if we consider only South Slavs who migrated to the Balkans at some point in 6th century one thing is for sure. They immediately collided with upcoming and already established Christianity that took heavy roots in Roman and Byzantine empires. Almost immediately missionaries are sent to start conversion and kill old beliefs for good. It turned out it was another wave of Sisyphean tasks that required centuries to process. Serbs accepted new religion only later in 9th century but not entirely. While god in plural ended with its existence almost fully with start of second millennium, many customs staid until today. For example Serbian people still celebrate family religious day called slava - which was dedicated to the god family had chosen to be their protector in the old days. Christianity never succeeded to eliminated this custom and only converted it into worshiping Christian saints instead. What was once a day dedicated to Perun, god of thunder, now is replaced with Saint Elijah (Sveti Ilija) which is also connected with thunders and lightnings in Christian tales. Old Serbs believed that gods could take shape of ordinary people who were visiting family homes at random times and one of the related custom was warm hospitality toward strangers who knocked to their doors. The oak was the holy tree and all the temples are built out of it instead of using heavy and everlasting stones. In the aftermath, no Slavic holy sights and temples persisted today. In temples dedicated to goddess Zhiva, high priests wore ritual hats or helmets with horns which were symbols of fertility among Slavic people and other religious folklore throughout Europe in the old times.

Aside of Slavic deities, Serbs believed in other godly creatures who had influence over nature like ghosts, fairies, demons, dragons, forest mothers and also human like creatures that originated from people like vampires, witches, werewolves... The list is endless. To better live with all those beasts and scary underworld monsters many rituals are invented and practiced all over. One in particular is still alive in Eastern Serbia in the event called Rusalje, where women falls into trans after ritually caroling and dancing and virtually connects to the ghosts and afterlife world in order to predict future events and understand upcoming dangers. Interesting facts is that many women refused to exert 'the healing procedure' in local monasteries performed by Christian priests and willingly perform the ritual every year. Of course, these were the extreme but there were other more benevolent rituals that were practiced in the past and I would not be surprised if they are still alive today. For example, if we are talking about Zhiva, human worshipers were ceremonially providing bouquets of flowers, fruits and wheat on numerous occasions but also there were a ritual of sacrificing a rooster before the time when wheat is sown and/or after the harvest is over.


If we are considering the Eastern Europe Slavic history, perhaps the strongest sites where Zhiva was worshiped were throughout lands of nowadays Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and eastern Germany but perhaps the most interesting site where the temple of Zhiva once existed was famous lake Bled in Slovenia. More precisely, the foundation of the temple, that provided the support for a square wooden house in the 8th century were excavated under the Christian church on the Isle of Bled. Attached to the foundation was square building with apse from 9th century that clearly indicates the transition from pagan temple to early Christian church. Christian missionaries dedicated of shutting down old Slavic sites and temples at the time almost always transferred the sites of worshiping of Slavic goddesses into the worship of Mother of God to ease the transition and the nowadays church on the Lake Bled is consecrated to the Ascension of Mary. The temple of Zhiva on the Isle of Bled and the waterfall on the nearby Savica river were commemorated and celebrated in the epic poem 'Baptism on Savica' by the 19th Slovenian poet France Prešeren.

Well, temples dedicated to Zhiva definitely no longer exist but it is documented that many places, at least in Serbia, with names that survived the last millennium and have words 'deva' or 'baba' in their roots (which means goddess mother) suggest sites of worshiping the female deity, most likely locations of Zhiva's temples. Couple of those places and nearby mountains have such words near the village where my great-great-grandfather lived and where our summer house still stands. Also lots of people names and surnames have word 'Živa' in root and they all originate in old Slavic beliefs. Years ago during my education within high school and faculty Živa was my nickname and I always turned around if I heard somebody called it.

Image refs:
https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2017/08/10/reanimating-slavic-gods-the-man-who-breathes-life-into-deities_820264
https://www.locationscout.net/locations/6017-lake-bled
http://www.1zoom.me/de/wallpaper/156998/z349.2/

Refs:
http://www.starisloveni.com/Bogovi.html
https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/550443944/goddess-zhiva-wood-birch-statue-slavic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deities_of_Slavic_religion
https://www.rasen.rs/2017/01/rusalje-ili-zene-padalice/#.W26_Kegza00
https://www.srbijadanas.com/vesti/info/misterija-istocne-srbije-ko-su-zene-koje-padaju-u-trans-i-predvidaju-buducnost-2017-05-20
https://vesna.atlantidaforum.com/?p=3916
http://lifestyle.enaa.com/horoskop/Kdo-je-bila-Ziva.html
http://vladimir-uno.blogspot.com/2015/09/ziva-goddess-of-living-water-life-love.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_Pre%C5%A1eren