@cmpm: That's a welcome and very positive approach, though I must admit, I had to think a bit before I could shift my paradigms to perceive what you describe as your perception, but I think I get it now, more or less.
If I may ask, does your perception of the meaning of the Caduceus affect you in your progress through life - or your own philosophy of life?

Where you say:

Mythology is an offshoot of truths and lies.
So I look beyond that, although it does offer insight.
Being based on other things, the mythological view is not the original intent.
But points to some definite facts that they are based on.

- it caused me to think of the Swastika.

Having been brought up on WW2 documentaries, I used to feel slightly sick at the sight of that emblem, until - years ago - I saw it painted very large on the side of a Thai Buddhist temple. After a little investigation, I realised that the symbol is named in Sanskrit as "svastika" or something, and represented extreme good luck and wellbeing. As I learned to speak Thai, I gathered that one theory on the etymology of "Sawat dee" (a polite formal greeting) was that it was derived from a corruption of "Svastik dee" ("dee" means literally "good"), so "Sawat dee" might be something of a tautological "Have a really good good luck day".

But it began with the staff of Moses

That's what I had always thought, based on this passage from the Bible. So I was going to say, I was way off, but honestly have no clue. I will read the links given and try to educate myself.

Numbers 21:4-9
New International Version (NIV)


The Bronze Snake
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea,[a] to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
6 Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.

8 The LORD said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Maybe just coincidence, and I linked them together in my mind.

@IainB

If I may ask, does your perception of the meaning of the Caduceus affect you in your progress through life - or your own philosophy of life?

No not really, it's just a picture or representation of what we see in our mind's eye.
There are many.

You don't have to be a "Christian" to have Christ or the Spirit.
Christ is just a word, there are many that depict the same thing.
Buddhism ,Tao, Hindu, whatever name they give the spirit we all have.

Some think some have it and others don't.
Spirit/God/Christ-whatever you want to call it.
Not me, and that doesn't make me a 'Universalist' either.
Too many folks want to label you one thing or another.
And include or exclude you for their own ego.

Really reaching here... where's the harm?

The pic's taken in southern India. The guy's probably a menial laborer working in the Gulf where he picked up the shirt. He would probably be dumb enough to wear it in Manhattan if someone told him it was OK. I wouldn't think too much about it, God knows he doesn't.

Here are a couple of clips of how the world responded after that event:

• Rejoicing: Fox News footage of Palestinians dancing and celebrating at the news of the fall of the twin towers on 911.

Didn't see this thread when it was posted. (New Year Resolution: read DC even more. Only good things can come from that!). I want to use my one post in this thread to say that world history did not start on 9-11, and when we reflect on certain events of that day and the days since, we do a great disservice to everyone involved if we pretend that it did. If history started on 9-11, then the footage of "dancing Palestinians" only serves to prove Palestinians are wicked people with an unexplained hatred for the US and the rest of the Western world. That, of course, is a horrible lie - exactly the kind of lie that gets whole nations cheering for murderous wars. ("Iraqi troops taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and dropping them on the hospital floor to die" was another, you probably remember that one.)

You won't see these lies unmasked on CNN or Fox (or even on BBC these days), but there's still that Internet thing. Not to justify or to sugarcoat, but to understand why: Palestinians celebrating 9/11 - a reply from The Electronic Intifada

The response of the British to 911 was to align themselves squarely alongside the US and send troops into Afghanistan and Iraq.
And look at this result: something really uplifting: Wherever You Are (Military Wives with Gareth Malone) Official Video
I've bought that single 3 times - and I suspect many people have done similarly.
Amazing. The Beeb must have made a mistake and done something positive for a change.
I don't even live in the UK - abandoned the place years ago, yet this song brought tears to my eyes.

Or, if that sort of thing is not to your taste, then maybe you might try to get your upliftment form here instead: Gotta Get Them Damn Jews In Order To Save the World
Hop on over to the Facebook link they give in that post - 100.000.000 person hate Israel and feel the lurve. You might like to report that Facebook page for racial and religious hatred, or like/friend it instead and feel like you are helping Palestine in their jihad (holy war).

Quite coincidentally, I started reading Hitler's Mein Kampf a week ago. That was because my daughter Lily had a project to do just before school closed for the Christmas holidays. It was to watch a movie - The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - and then do some research on the Nazi death camps, and then write it up as project notes.

Lily knew it was about the Holocaust. I have told her a lot about Hitler and the death camps, and she is fascinated in how he could get the German people to do such despicable and horrifying acts. She understands that it seems to be something in us all - not just those "bad" Germans, that has the potential for this sort of psychopathic crime against "other" ("not us") humanity, and that we must not forget these lessons of history.

Well, we watched the film together on a Sunday night, then she went to bed, and on the Monday she was busy, head down, working on her report and doing the research on her laptop. In the afternoon, she came and asked her mother and I if we would like to hear her report, and she read it out to us. She had apparently found the film footage taken by Eisenhower's liberating American forces, and lots of other vid clips and notes about the inhumane treatment and torture of the Jews - some of which I had known about and some I might have forgotten (I saw a lot about it on the BBC TV in documentaries when I was a child).

And there she was, this fresh-faced and serious little girl reading it all out from her handwritten notes, in a matter-of-fact way, and even demonstrating with a baseball bat, some rope and her hands some of the torture the Nazis inflicted on the Jewish victims. For example, (and this is only a small part) by binding them in such a way as to painfully stretch and deform and eventually break their limbs in max prolongation of agony; their use of clubs with pointed nails sticking out of them, to club the backs of the victims so as to inflict max pain and max prolongation of agony.
Innocence observing evil's record. I was in tears as she was reading it out.

She asked, "Daddy, why did Hitler hate the Jews so much?", and I had to explain that it was all because the Jews engineered the crucifixion of Jesus as a common criminal, over 2,000 years ago. That many Christian sects and all true Muslims could not forgive them that.
I told her that probably the only way the Nazis could have done what they did would have been if they were able to perceive the Jews as being less than human - maybe "descended from pigs and apes" as the Koran so unequivocally puts it.

She is as mystified as I am when I tell her that there are people alive today who either deny the reality or the extent of the Holocaust, calling it a "myth" or try to ameliorate it , and there are others - including the appointed president of Iran, and other leaders or religious/clerical leaders and members of the Middle-Eastern Islamic countries who apparently still hope to see themselves carrying Hitler's "final solution" to a conclusion, to avenge the sin of Christ's crucifixion and fulfil Allah's command to exterminate the Jews for their sins.

But her question - "...why did Hitler hate the Jews so much?" - was what got me reading Mein Kampf. I wanted to be able to understand his rationale for what he did, and explain it to her. I told her that was why I was reading it, and that I had not actually wanted to read it, though I had been steeling myself for the time when I would have to.
I am reading this English translation, here, if you want to take a look: Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation).pdf

I am finding myself quite fascinated by its cold, insidious horror. It seems reasonably lucid, coherent, and well-written.

I am not an American, but I have a feeling of empathy with America, because it is the source where some great minds forged the American Constitution - arguably the first major - if not finest - product of a free people, articulating the vision of their religio-political ideology for democracy, equality, freedom and liberty, and itself based on the foundation stone of the Magna Carta.
Many people might no doubt consider that America has arguably got a long to way to go before it can be seen to have achieved that vision, and others might no doubt consider that America has arguably already strayed too far off course to be able to return to the original vector.

Be that as it may, we should not forget those war-dead innocents who have died because of deliberately murderous acts of war, from other powers - whatever the reason, though the reason in this case seems to be that they would challenge the articulated vision of the American religio-political ideology.
Nor should any freedom-loving people be afraid to stand up and honour such innocent dead, in remembrance.

A people that cannot bring itself to honour and remember the war dead - whether they be dead soldiers and participants, or (as in the case of 911) a few thousand dead, innocent civilians massacred all together on the same day - would arguably be a God-forsaken and spiritually bankrupt people without any moral compass whatsoever. This is why the names of the dead are precious, and are faithfully listed on war graves - similarly on the memorial at Ground Zero, and the names of the terrorists who also died are apparently included - "Lest we forget".

When I started this thread, I was impressed with the way in which the mostly thoughtful discussion proceeded to develop in directions that I could hardly have predicted - not that I wished to see it proceed in any particular direction - and reviewing the thread today, I think it does great credit to the contributors to the thread on the DC Forum.
When I started this thread, my motivation was essentially, as @JavaJones put it:

...To me the most important thing is that those who died on 9/11 are honored and remembered in positive ways.
- Oshyan

I had held back from making any comment in memoriam of 911 this year, as I felt that someone else might want to do it, and so I was very pleased when they did - with this kind, thoughtful and rather beautiful statement: (please note that the link below is broken as the original poster self-censored the entire thread)

Quote

13 Years
13 Years ago, billions of people around the world went to sleep, completely unaware that life as we knew it was about to change.

Hundreds of people packed their bags for destinations they would never reach.

Thousands fell asleep with a loved one they would never see again.

A moment almost everybody can tell you what they were doing when it happened.

A moment of unity.

A moment the world breathed a breath of sadness as one.

A moment of darkness.

A moment of change.

A moment that would embed itself into the history of nightmares.

So, take this moment, the one right now, while you are reading this...to love the ones you love.  Tell them.  Be with them. And never forget.
Nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, so live each day like it is your last and take everything as it comes.
________________________________

To me, those thoughts by @stephen66515 would seem to be well in line with:

...honored and remembered in positive ways.
- Oshyan

Apparently, @stephen66515 was not asked to delete the thread - he self-censored it because of a vitriolic response posted by another person, and he was afraid that it would start a flame war and disgrace the Forum, or something.
I have posted this here because I insist that I and others be allowed to see this genuine, creditable and incredibly positive post by @stephen66515 for what it is - something spontaneously affirming the human life and spirit and which touches us all - and I refuse to allow fascists or the PC brigade to deny people the opportunity to get some upliftment from the whole sorry episode of 911 whenever such an opportunity may arise, such as this.

Therefore, I would request that, if anyone of whatever religio-political ideological persuasion feels inclined to vomit their personal and peculiar negativism, vitriol, bile, hatred, theories or strongly-held opinions on this matter, or otherwise defecate on it in some way, could they please refrain from doing so here and do it in the Basement thread: 911 HATE - hate what you hate or what others like or dislike about it.

(Don't worry, they have a toilet down in the Basement too, if you can't seem to stem the flow once you get started, but please bring your own toilet paper.)