Category Archives: Spiritual

On the Origen of the “Hebrews”

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In many senses, the “Hebrews” are an enigma.  They’re the principal cultural component of the Abrahamic cultures which encompass Europe, the Middle East and the Americas but their origins although purportedly well documented in sacred scriptures are historically shrouded in mystery.  Hebrew mythology, as improbable as any mythology, is frequently, perhaps too frequently, considered not only history but sacrosanct notwithstanding obvious historical evidence which discredits it.  Today’s Jews claim descent from the ancient Hebrews but in many instances that is clearly inaccurate as the vast majority of modern Jews are converts from Turkey, Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, especially among the variant known as Ashkenazi who account for approximately 80% of modern Jewry.  The closest genetic descendants of ancient Hebrews ironically exist, in all likelihood, among Palestinians, most of whom religiously profess Islam, albeit with significant Christian minorities.

So, about the different possible origins for the “original” ancient Hebrews who first came into historical contexts approximately three millennia ago?  There are a number of hypotheses that we will briefly examine, hypotheses because there are not enough supporting facts to qualify any of them as theories, and for purposes of this article we will label them as follows:  the Sumerian hypothesis; the Moses hypothesis; and, the Habiru hypothesis.  Of course, there may well be many other hypotheses and one of them may someday even evolve into a theory.  This is a very brief survey, admittedly inadequately documented, but which may hopefully serve as a catalyst for further objective research.

The Sumerian Hypothesis

The traditional religious view is that the ancient Hebrews are descendants of the Talmudic patriarch Noah through his purported descendant, the Sumerian Nahor, a resident of Sumerian Ur, through his son, Terach, a pagan priest of the Sumerian moon god Nanna, and an idol maker (Hebrew: תֶּרַח Teraḥ).  Terach was purportedly the father of the rebellious Sumerian expatriate, Abram, from whom all three of the Abrahamic faiths in one sense or another, mainly another, are said to descend.

Rather than following what would normally have been, at least from a historian’s perspective, their Sumerian history or mythology, Terach and his descendants are described in the Hebrew Tanakh, in the Christian Old Testaments and in the Islamic Quran as having been descendants of Noah’s grandson Arpachshad, the son of Shem, and thus “Semites”.  Noah, of course, was the purported survivor of a divinely orchestrated genocide.  That is telling given that Sumer had its own great flood epic but, rather than Noah, its protagonist was Ziusudra (also referred to in related cultures as Utnapishtim or Atrahasis), the king of Shuruppak, a primordial Sumerian city located in what is now Tell Fara.  Shuruppak was located approximately thirty-five miles south of Nippur and eighteen miles north of ancient Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates (today in Iraq’s Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate). 

Following the Sumerian version of the great flood, one visited on humanity by a council of Sumerian divinities including Enlil and Inanna but excluding Enki, the genocidal flood meant to destroy all of humanity was launched purportedly because humanity was too noisy and disrupted the Sumerian divinities’ slumber.  However, Ziusudra and his wife survived having been warned of the flood by the god Enki and were subsequently granted relief from death by a repentant Enlil who, in penance of sorts, permitted them to reside in Dilmun, the paradisiacal garden of diverse families of Sumerian divinities.  Enki had created humanity from the blood of the demon (or divinity, there frequently being little difference) Qingu, a spawn and lover of the Creator divinity Tiamat, and was thus not anxious to see his creation destroyed.  Violating his duty to his fellow divinities, Enki had warned Ziusudra in a prophetic dream of the plan to eliminate humanity, a dream with very specific instructions concerning an ark which was to be built in a manner virtually identical to the ark which Noah was charged with constructing, and for a similar purpose. 

Following the instructions provided in the dream by Enki, Ziusudra invited his family and the laborers who had assisted in the ark’s construction, as well as diverse goods and many species of animals to join him on the ark which survived the great flood in a manner very similar to the ark on which Noah and his family and their goods and many species of animals also survived.  Interestingly, those same gods, who are collectively referred to as the Anunnaki (descendants of the Sumerian divinity An or Anu), in their youth, had also been threatened with destruction for being unbearably noisy by their own progenitor, their great, great, grandfather, Abzu.  One supposes that Nahor and his descendants, assuming they in fact existed, were all well familiar with the Sumerian flood epic and they and their descendants modified it to fit their specific cultural needs.  The same is true with respect to the Biblical Garden of Eden and the two primordial sacred trees contained therein as well as the serpent who dwelt in one of them.

At the time during which Terach and his sons purported lived, the diverse city states that had once comprised the area we refer to as Sumer (the land of the black haired people) had greatly declined and its people were ruled over by Babylonia, although a segment of Babylonia may, at the time, have included the Kaśdim (כשדים; Chaldeans) whose reigning monarch, according to the Hebrews (but to no one else) appears to have been someone referred to as Nimrod.  Nimrod might, perhaps, have been Naram-Sin of Akkad, grandson of Sargon, a ruler of the Akkadian Empire.  Of course, the Hebrew Tanakh’s genealogical reference are tied to Noah and incoherently ignore the existence of Sumer or Akkad.  Interestingly though, it was purportedly Nimrod who set out to build the infamous Tower of Babel so, if Nimrod ruled at the time, at least according to the Tanakh and to some sort of logic, all humans would, at the time, still have spoken the same language.

Until Terach’s departure from Ur with sons Abram, Haran, and Nahor II, and one daughter, Sarai, the family had been longtime residents of Ur and, assuming they were real historical figures, Ur may well have been their ancestral home.  Their sudden departure may have had something to do with opposition to Abram’s infatuation with his sister, who he took as his wife, rather than with Abram’s opposition to his father’s religion and profession, although in either case, it seems odd that Terach accompanied his sons, indeed led them in their exodus from Ur heading for the lands occupied by the Canaanites, lands which a divinity unnamed at the time had purportedly promised them in exchange for their worship.  In any event, according to the Tanakh, Terach and his family initially settled in the City of Harran where Terach died, whereupon his family, then led by Abram, moved on.  In some versions of the Abrahamic odyssey, prior to the family’s departure from Ur, Terach had sought to have Abram executed for destroying the religious items Terach fabricated only to have Abram rescued by the Canaanite divinity, one of the seventy sons of the Canaanite god El, whereupon there was a reconciliation of sorts with the patriarchal role eventually passing from Terach to Abram.  In any event, Abram’s divine Canaanite rescuer promised Abram dominion over Canaan if he abandoned all the Sumerian divinities who his ancestors had worshipped (perhaps Enlil and Enki and Inanna and An, etc.), something to which Abram, apparently a somewhat disloyal and avaricious individual, readily agreed.

The Moses Hypothesis

A further historical incoherence is presented in the Tanakh concerning the origins of the Hebrew’s monotheistic religion.  Based on the Abram-source-hypothesis, Abram was given the Hebrew’s religion directly from an egotistical unidentified Canaanite divinity but when, thereafter, Moishe (Moses) is introduced into the Tanakh, it appears that Moishe was the source of that religion, having ironically obtained it from descendants of the Biblical villain, Cain, descendants who had evolved into the Kenites (although sanitized narratives insist that the Kenites, also known as the Midianites, were really descendants of Abraham and his second wife Keturah).  In this latter variant, it was Moishe who imposed the religion he had adopted while wandering in the dessert (having fled Egypt, where he was a sort of adopted prince, after murdering a slave overseer) on the Hebrew tribes he had purportedly liberated from slavery in Egypt.

Many, perhaps most historians have come to consider the “revelations” in the Tanakh, especially the “revelations” in the Torah which comprises a component of the Tanakh, as a mythology neither more nor less credible than Sumerian mythology, noting that, based on linguistic analysis, the Torah was in all likelihood composed, not during the middle of the second millennium prior to what has become known as the “common era” (the Common Era), but rather, after the sixth century preceding the Common Era, a period referred to as the Persian[1] period following the “Babylonian” captivity, a diaspora of sorts, and that the Tanakh was periodically “editorialized” in a manner seeking to impact the tension between Hebrews who had remained in what is today Palestine and who traced their claims to ownership of the land from their purported ancestor, Abram (his name having evolved into Abraham), and the more sophisticated returning “exiles” who countered such claims basing theirs on the purported Mosaic Exodus from Egypt, traditions of the people who had taken to calling themselves “Israelites (Ska, 2009).  Ironically, that is a situation eerily similar to the current conflict between Palestinians, genetically linked to the Hebrews at the time of the Hellenic and Roman conquests, and the European and Turkish converts to Judaism since the eighth century of the Common Era who are known as the Ashkenazi and who invaded the Levant starting in the nineteenth century.

The Habiru Hypothesis

The Hebrew Tanakh is not the only source of information concerning the origin of the ancient Hebrews.  Indeed, perhaps much more accurate historical information than the Abrahamic myths is available but, for predictable reasons, is not easily accessible.  A number of historians assert that “Habiru” was the ancient term for the nomadic tribes that eventually came to be known as “Hebrews” and particularly, the term for the early Israelites of the period of the “judges” who “appropriated” the fertile region of Canaan for themselves.  According to some historical traditions (e.g., the Amarna letters, a collection of diplomatic correspondence between Egyptian rulers and their vassals in Canaan), the Habiru or (in Egyptian, Apiru) became the people we know today as the ancient Hebrews, some of whom are the ancestors of today’s Palestinians and of the Sephardim among modern Jews. 

The Amarna letters are an archive written on clay tablets primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and the Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders during a period of no more than thirty years during the middle of the 14th century preceding the Common Era (the New Kingdom era).  Most experts who hypothesize concerning the “Habiru” believe that they were more a social class than an ethnic group, a group originally comprised of diverse ethnic groups of brigands who may have at one time led a settled life somewhere but who, due to the force of circumstances, became a rootless population of roving mercenaries who hired themselves out to whichever local mayor, king, or princeling would pay for their support.  One analysis proposes that the majority were Hurrian although there were a number of Semites and even some Kassite and Luwian adventurers amongst their number.  It was probably in that manner that they first came to Egypt, either as mercenaries or more probably raiders.  If accurate, that would explain how, as described in Exodus when writing about YHWH’s demands for his arc and tabernacle, a group of purported slaves escaped from ancient Egypt laden with gold, silver, precious jewels and woods and cloth.  Thus, rather than having been enslaved, they may well have been pursued after having engaged in a series of raids similar to those engaged in much later by Vikings in Nordic regions, Europe and the British Isles.

If the foregoing hypothesis is accurate, then Abdi-Ashirta and his son Aziru (rather than the Sumerian Abram or his purported descendant Moishe) would have been the catalytic leaders among the Habiru who they consolidated from diverse roots into the social unit that eventually made its way into our history as the Hebrews.  Abdi-Ashirta was a contemporary and vassal of the monotheistic Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten which may explain religious innovations attributed to the Hebrews.  Thus, it is very possible that, rather than descendants of the Sumerian exile Abram, the Hebrews of the Tanakh were a composite group of marauders.

Concluding Observations

During the last three quarters of a century the purported Holy Land, that land purportedly taken by the Hebrews from the Jebusites and the Canaanites, then conquered by Babylon and Persia, then by Alexander and then Rome, and which subsequently became a Christian and then a Muslim domain, has been a cauldron of inequity, something not historically unusual there, but in this instance, largely based on fallacious hysterical rather than historical arguments concerning ancient ownership rights.  Turko-Europeans who converted to Judaism during the eighth century colonized Palestine during the past century insisting that the inhabitants of Palestine during the past two millennia, mainly the descendants of Hebrews most but not all of whom converted from Judaism, first to Christianity and eventually to Islam, must, at the least be ethnically cleansed but if necessary, exterminated.  Exterminated as the Canaanites in Jericho and other parts of the Levant were exterminated, men, women, children and even livestock, by the Hebrew hordes purportedly led by Joshua.  Thus the relevance of this article in raising the question as to just who the Hebrews were and who their descendants are?

That is not the case with Ashkenazi Jews, today grown from a tiny minority of Jews in the ninth century to the largest segment of modern Judaism, the segment that today controls the modern State of Israel.  They may well have little to no relation to either the purported descendants of Abram or of the Habiru but rather, may well be the progeny of Turko-European converts to Judaism descended from the Khazars[2].

But that’s another story and just as controversial as this one.

Limited References[3]:

 K. L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction, A&C Black, 2001 p. 164: “It would seem that, in the eyes of Merneptah’s artisans, Israel was a Canaanite group indistinguishable from all other Canaanite groups.” “It is likely that Merneptah’s Israel was a group of Canaanites located in the Jezreel Valley.”

McNutt, Paula (1999). Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-664-22265-9.

Ska, Jean Louis (2009):  The Exegesis of the Pentateuch: Exegetical Studies and Basic Questions. Mohr Siebeck; Tübingen, Germany.

 Tubb, Jonathan N. (1998). Canaanites. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-8061-3108-X.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.  Paper originally published in Academia.edu.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Ironically, given today’s Middle Eastern realities, it was the Persians, the descendants of today’s Iranians, who liberated the Hebrews from their Babylonian captivity.  Something one would assume the descendants of the Persians might rue.  Of course, the same is true of Muslims.  What Americans may rue in the future is, of course, yet to be determined.

[2] Zionists detest references to the Khazars as the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews claiming that such references involve antisemitic plots to discredit the current State of Israel and, who knows, in today’s atmosphere were verity is an irrelevance, they may or may not have a point.

[3] It is unfortunate that a great many references originally available on the Internet seem to have been removed or drastically modified, especially with reference to the Khazars, since politicized sources attained growing control over most media and Internet platforms during the past several years.

Brief Reflections on Extraordinary Men Rising from Very Humble Beginnings: The Case of Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

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Ever since I can remember I’ve been an admirer of Leonardo da Vinci, the bastard son of Ser Piero da Vinci d’Antonio di ser Piero di ser Guido, a successful Florentine legal notary, and Caterina di Meo Lippi.  Leonardo was apparently born in either Anchiano, a country hamlet near the Florentine commune of Vinci, or in a house in Florence, part of the ancient Italian region of Tuscany, owned by his father, in either case, seeking privacy to hide the illegitimate birth.  His mother may have been an Arab or Chinese slave although a book published by Martin Kemp and the archival researcher Giuseppe Pallanti claims that she was born in 1436 to a poor farmer, was orphaned at the age of fourteen and gave birth to Leonardo da Vinci at the age of sixteen, after which she purportedly had five other children with a different man, also a poor farmer. Leonardo was initially raised in relative poverty by his mother and her husband but eventually Leonardo came to enjoy a positive relationship with his father’s family, especially with his uncle and grandfather, although perhaps not with his father who was too busy with business matters.  Consequently, he only received a very basic and informal education in writing, reading, and mathematics, although his artistic talents were recognized at an early age and emphasis was quickly placed on their development.

It is telling and very worth considering that from such inauspicious beginnings perhaps the world’s most universally talented man arose and to ask ourselves how many other multifaceted geniuses born under comparable circumstances never had the opportunity to attain their potential.  In my own life I’ve known a number of men and women who fit that characterization.  In this regard, the world owes a great debt to Andrea del Verrocchio, an Italian sculptor, painter and goldsmith who was a master of a workshop in Florence and who apparently accepted Leonardo, first as a studio boy but when he turned 17, as an apprentice, setting him on his path to greatness, first as an artist and then, … well, as a universal genius. 

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci is one of my greatest heroes, but I admire him less for his myriad successes than because he attained them despite the humility of his origins.  One thing I have always found incomprehensible however is the fame of his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, and the worshipful claims concerning the subject’s beauty, and especially her smile.  To my perhaps jaded and certainly inexpert tastes, she is not even particularly attractive and as for the “enigmatic” nature of her smile, I find nothing at all special about it, especially when compared to my wife’s.  I assume many other husbands, boyfriends and fathers share my perspective and that some may also share my curiosity.  What most troubles me however concerning the Mona Lisa hysteria is that it obscures Leonardo’s truly great achievement, having risen from such humble beginnings to such stunning heights without the intervention of martial opportunities and successes, the more usual route to success for those born of humble origins.  One wonders how many people who might eventually have proven to be a new Leonardo we trash as we expel those desperate to become part of our society and who ask only to be permitted to work and grow among us?  “… [g]ive me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore …” indeed.

The foregoing frequently leads me to reflect on the reality that when people are not assisted in attaining their potential, it is not only they who suffer, but the whole world, and on the stupidity and cupidity of those who oppose state assistance to the most humble among us.  We certainly desperately need a world were the most humble can attain their full potential, a concept which the Athenian philosopher Plato referred to as an essential component of “justice” and understood as essential for optimal societal development, the common welfare and attainment of the best possible world.  Something which, despite the millennia since Plato, his mentor Socrates and his student Aristotle contemplated how to attain justice, we are very, very far from attaining.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Introspective Ramblings

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I started this piece in late November of 2025.  It is now mid-January of 2026.  The Ides of January in fact.  I started with a specific focus but all too quickly what I was writing mutated into a ramble.  Ramblings seem incoherent and they frequently are, but not always.  Sometimes, as in the case of poetry, there are verities to be gleaned in their tangled depths.  At the very least, within a rambling’s shadows, within its hues and tints, there may be clues as to the nature of the person rambling.  Clues that may or may not be meaningful to others but may well be introspectively important to the one who’s opened up his or her streams of consciousness which, for some reason, he or she felt compelled to share,

The following certainly shares the odor of a rambling.  Hopefully though, a benign rambling albeit perhaps a bit too long, for which I apologize.

I’m an expatriate, an expatriate squared or perhaps an expatriate unraveled.  I was born in the Republic of Colombia but soon after I turned six I “was emigrated” with my sister to join my mother and new step father in Miami Beach.  I use the phrase “was emigrated” because leaving Colombia was not my idea, I loved Manizales, the city where I was born and today recognized as one of the best places to live in the world, but I admitted that the idea of moving to the United States was exciting.

I’ve lived in diverse parts of the United States during most of my life; however, since the Ides of October in 2007 I’ve again become a resident of north central Colombia.  Now, as it was before I was six, I live closer to the Pacific than to the Caribbean.  I now, once again, live in the summit of the central range of the Colombian Andes, again in Manizales, a city blessed by perpetual spring and surrounded by snow clad peaks whilst overlooking valleys where summer always dwells, all within a ninety minute radius. 

So, … since I was six I was a Colombian expatriate in the United States, a Colombian expatriate for over half a century and, as tends to occur, in the process I acquired important links to the United States but I never lost my spiritual links to Colombia.  Now that I’m back though, and I’ve been back for almost two decades, I’m a sort of United States expatriate in Colombia. 

That’s not all that unusual.  As is the case with the Irish as well, many who leave their homes for perceived opportunities in foreign shores long to return and the lucky ones eventually do, but changed.  We tend to be twice torn, happy to have returned but longing for the many places we’ve lived while abroad.  In my case, pining for Miami Beach and Charlotte and New York and the Carolina mountains and Central Florida, but especially for Manhattan, and for Charleston.

My apartment in Manizales, one I bought within a month of my return in order to make it difficult for me to change my mind (I knew I’d miss my family and friends a great deal), occupies the entire tenth floor in a condominium set where one starts to enter the city center.  It sits across the street from a beautiful little park centered on a fountain gifted to the city by the Fourth French Republic about a century ago.  On the other side of the park is the city’s large cultural complex which features a large theater and auditorium.  There, the departmental (a mix between a state and a county) symphony frequently performs as do theater groups from diverse parts of the world.  It also features a number of event rooms and an art museum.  My apartment is a block away from the principal hub of a recently installed cable car complex that drops down to the regional bus terminal and then to a nearby city.  From the regional bus terminal, one can take bus transport to all parts of the country and, in a different direction, by cable car again, to an uptown commercial, civic and educational hub.  Because the condominium is designed with a single large apartment per floor and because I’m on the tenth floor, I enjoy unobstructed three hundred and sixty degree views of the entire city and of the surrounding mountains and of the valleys far below. 

To the west, just before twilight, I can see sunsets in brilliant scarlet fading to purple, with gold and green highlights reflected off of clouds over the distant Pacific Ocean and sometimes, during the evenings, lightning flashes over the Pacific covering that part of the sky.  Also to the west, the spires of one of the world’s tallest cathedrals, one with a very long name: “La Catedral Basílica de Nuestra Señora Del Rosario”, climb towards heaven.  On top of the tallest spire a gentle crucified Nazarene seems to be casting himself to those below, apparently having finally accepted the challenge mistakenly attributed to Lucifer (the tempter’s real name was Hêlêl).  Rippling beyond the cathedral flow what the Chilean Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda (my favorite poet), once described as “a sea of mountains”.

To the south, very far to the south, many departments distant, lies the planetary equator which crosses the southern regions of Colombia.  Picture windows in my den and bedroom overlook that southern view which also involves a sea of mountains but, in that direction, dormant volcanoes lie resting as well (well, sort of dormant).  Ironically, the tallest four peaks are crested in white reflecting snow covered glaciers (rather than sea foam); a “sea” like the one to the west, both mountainous seas dressed in myriad shades of green morphing to blues and purples in the distance.  Similar sights, but for the volcanoes and the crested white peaks, also dress the north and west.

All the windows in my apartment are wide, tall picture windows which capture entrancing scenery and a great deal of light as well.  One would have thought that having returned from the United States to the north, the north would have been the direction on which I focused and, initially, I did, always with melancholy and nostalgia.  But it was the windows that faced south, those in my bedroom and in my den, which for some reason, enchanted me.  “Enchanted” in the mystical sense as well as the aesthetic.

From the southern windows, when I first returned to Colombia I almost immediately began to engage in a ritual of sorts.  During the evenings, as the sun set just before twilight, I would “call” one of the four cardinal quarters, the one meant to open the spiritual gates to the south.  That was sort of strange as, in my case, while I’ve always been fascinated by the concepts of divinity and deities, I’ve rejected organized religion and find organized mass prayer, prayer where ritual words are repeated without reflection and introspection as to their meaning and their context, troublesome rather than inspiring, and hypocritical as well[1].  I was thus engaging in actions that seemed indistinguishable from those I found objectionable and drawing comfort therefrom, apparently drawn to a primordial need for solace when faced with profound changes for which I was not totally prepared but couldn’t avoid.  I didn’t actually believe that the ritual really had any real validity but it brought me solace nonetheless.

Anyway, … when I left what had been my life for well over half a century behind, which I did in the fall of 2007, I for, some reason, adapted as my own, aspects of rituals employed by non-traditionalist, non-Abrahamic, purportedly primordial religions; rituals used when seeking to both open and close hallowed spaces, usually in the form of sacred circles, spaces in which to commune with that which, to some, seemed hallowed.  I did so as an individual rather than as part of a group and I limited the ritual, which is normally quadridirectional, north-east-south and west, solely to the south.  The ritual I designed for myself involved opening a gate to the southern quadrant, engaging in nostalgic and melancholic reflection and introspection, and then closing it.

After I would metaphorically “open” the gate I’d reflect on my life and on what I’d left behind, most importantly, on my three sons, Billy, Alex and Edward.  And I’d think about many of the acquaintances and friends with whom I could no longer interact, at least not physically.  I’d reminisce concerning my former students, classmates, mentors and colleagues at the old Eastern Military Academy in New York and about my classmates and the stream of special people that somehow consistently flow from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, my alma mater (my son Billy’s alma mater as well).  And I’d grieve for those graduates from both institutions whose lives had been so cavalierly wasted in useless wars where all the victims on both sides were mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters of others, but rarely the relatives of those politicians and entrepreneurs who had insisted on the conflict and were made wealthy thereby.  My return to Colombia coincided with a large popular movement to end armed conflicts which had plagued the country and its people for centuries and, in part, my return was motivated by a compulsion to participate in a positive manner in efforts to see such efforts succeed.

During the ritual, I would also recall my classmates and teachers at the St. John’s University School of Law and at the graduate division of the New York University School of Law, my alma maters as well.  And I’d recall my classmates and teachers at the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies where I’d attended classes in the graduate program in linguistics and translation studies in 2005 and 2006.  I also frequently recalled Debra Allen Vazquez, a wonderful professor I’d had at a creative writing course I’d taken at a community college in Ocala in the late 1990’s, a wonderful woman who was murdered in front of the Ocala police station with her infant granddaughter in her arms by an estranged, xenophobic husband.  Xenophobia, racism and misogyny, the triple pillars that have always haunted the so called “American Dream”.

I initially focused my reflections on academic acquaintances and experiences because I’d returned to Colombia to work as a member of the faculty of the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales, first, briefly in the Language Institute but then in the Department of Juridical and Political Studies which I briefly chaired, and then in the university’s political science government and international relations programs which I chaired for a significant period.  That, of course, does not mean that I didn’t reminisce and reflect on many other people: on acquaintances, friends, colleagues and lovers.  Too many of the latter, unfortunately; I’ve emotionally hurt too many women who’ve loved me, although I never meant to.  I’ve seemingly been engaged in a quest for a perfect soulmate and perfection is not only hard to find but leaves behind too much disenchantment in its wake, on both sides.

I’d also reflect on the many places where I’d lived and worked while in the United States.  I’d reflect on Miami Beach where I’d first lived with my new family, and on Fort Lauderdale where I’d had two of my three sons much later on, and on Charleston in South Carolina and on Charlotte in the north, and of course, on New York.  And with respect to New York City, I’d recall my life in Ozone Park and Hollis and Jamaica and Queens Village and in Manhattan which I loved, and in Whitestone and, in Long Island.  And with respect to Long Island, the part of it which lies outside of New York City, I’d reminisce about Glen Cove but most of all, on the castle where I lived for so long, the castle that topped the highest point of Long Island in Cold Spring Hills in Huntington. Today the castle is called OHEKA but back then it was the Eastern Military Academy.  I loved those places and left pieces of my soul in each.

At any rate, after I was through with my reflections, reflections which too often involved a dash of self-pity (of which I’d quickly repent, or at least attempt to repent), I’d usually find the motivation I needed to restructure my life, hopefully in a better manner than I had in the past.  And then it would be time to close the gate to the southern quadrant.

I’d open and close the gate with the following ritual phrases uttered while facing the south and looking out through the large picture window in my den.  Opening the figurative gate to that quarter, I’d softly declaim (after all, I was alone):  “Spirits of the South, of fire, of heat and passion, of energy and creativity, I invite you to join with me in this space and ask that you grant me your peace, your wisdom and your protection.  Be with me now. Blessed Be.”

And later, when I was done, I’d close the gate to the southern quarter by softly declaiming:  “Spirits of the South, of fire, of heat and passion, of energy and creativity, I thank you for attending my rites and guarding this space, and now, I invite you to stay if you please or depart if you must, in either case, with my peace and blessings.  Blessed Be.”

I didn’t do anything similar with respect to the other cardinal points, the East, the West and the North, I’m not sure why.  Perhaps because the South represented the present and the future and that’s where I most needed help.

Despite my lack of belief in an anthropomorphic divinity, I’m not an atheist.  I am perhaps more of a curious agnostic but I do seem to sometimes need a bit of magic in my life, a bit of something still unexplained albeit not inexplicable, a bit of something supernatural, of forces beyond my ken.  In fact, I believe that questing to understand “whatever gods may be” (a quote I love from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley) is a duty and not just a curiosity.  One I’ve always taken seriously based on a pact I made with “whatever gods may be” when I was seven.  Apparently I was somewhat bold as a child, … and perhaps irreverent.  I was bathing, looking at the ceiling and trying unsuccessfully to reconcile what I was being taught in catechism classes when it occurred to me to strike a deal with the god I was being taught to worship but in whom, even then, I couldn’t quite believe but feared to disbelieve.  I couldn’t accept that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient entity would be so insecure as to insist that he, she or it be worshipped based on fear and faith rather than on real love, real love earned, and on real knowledge, gnosis some had called it but I hadn’t yet heard of Gnostics.  And so I promised to explore and research until I attained sufficient knowledge to worship the deity based on evident realities but to behave morally and ethically as if it existed, even if that existence seemed improbable.

At any rate, the foregoing is now relatively long ago. 

We tend to change and I am not the inchoate man I was as a child, or the one I was before … et seriatum, etc.  It’s been a full life so far hopefully with a good deal more yet to live although, with the world in the horrible state in which it finds itself, the future is no certain thing and the longer I live the more I learn that most of what we’ve been taught, most of what I once believed, has been false; most of what I myself taught was false, especially the history I taught when I was in my twenties.  I really believed what I’d been taught and what I in turn taught as so many still do; however, I eventually woke to the reality that most history is only propaganda and that discerning truth involves not only hard work and objectivity but also a great deal of luck.  Since my late twenties, now many decades ago, I’ve done my best to find truth, and to share it.  To share it all too often with people for whom I care but who have no interest in having their illusions shattered.  And the truth is that objective certainty concerning history is never certain.  It’s something that we can perhaps approach but never attain.  There are too many variables and too many contexts and too little time.  We can’t even successfully discern the accuracy of the news concerning current events that we’re fed daily; something many of us have come to realize as we lose faith in the media and even in the entertainment industry, both institutions used successfully to control us. 

Notwithstanding the foregoing, despair concerning the absence of verity does nothing positive.  We need to keep plugging along doing the best we can, especially those of us in academia, whether as instructors or researchers.  But we need to inform those to whom we seek to impart knowledge that we can be as wrong as those who sought to do the same with us.  That means we have a great deal of constant research in which to engage if truth matters.  And it does to me.  And a great deal of listening to do as well as pontificating.[2]

It’s long since I’ve engaged in the rituals I’ve described but such rituals seem to have worked.  I arrived in Colombia knowing virtually no one and today, almost two decades later, I have many local acquaintances, some among them friends and most of them special people.  And I’ve been very active, active in academic circles as well as in cultural, civic and political circles.  The current president of Colombia, Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego, visited me in my apartment on several occasions, albeit prior to his ascension.  In fact, seven years ago he sat granting televised interviews from the desk where I now sit and write these introspections.  Yes; I’ve been very fortunate.  Surprisingly so.  Inexplicably so.  Probably undeservedly so, especially with respect to the wonderful women with whom I’ve been involved, especially with respect to the one who’s become my wife.

For some reason I recently recalled the rituals I’ve described and after a search through my computer archives I found the specific phrases I used to evoke and invoke them, the ones I shared above.  And I decided that they deserved to be honored and that they deserved to be thanked.  The rituals were not entirely unfocused, they were directed at the evolving monist, panentheistic divinity I think may exist, one about which I frequently write and on which I frequently speculate, not always in a manner which it would find pleasing were it both sentient (possible) and anthropomorphic (unlikely).  But what I write reflects my honest opinions, always represented as such, and are never, or perhaps better said, rarely, undertaken in a quest for favor but rather, frequently, perhaps usually, to either give thanks or to attempt to attain introspective understanding.  After all, it’s what I promised a certain purported divinity many decades ago.

Anyway, … having written this ramble in the form of an elegy of sorts to rituals in which I may not really believe, an elegy written in a spirit of thanksgiving, a real spirit of thanksgiving unrelated to the celebration on the last Thursday in November involving a celebration of genocide and ethnic “cleansing”, one undertaken in the country I love but left, I’ll close, by first, acknowledging that the rituals seem to have been at least helpful in assisting me to better know the person who stares back at me from my mirrors and, secondly, as I did when I closed the gate to the southern quarter, by sincerely saying to one and all, friend or foe:

“Blessed be!”

This ramble, or perhaps rant, is too long, I know, but that is often the nature of rambles and rants.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] However, there is no denying that others find such rituals not only meaningful but essential and I strongly believe that that whatever the objective validity of our respective positions, attacking the “faith” that makes another’s life tolerable is unjustifiable.

[2] On the other hand, an ex-wife of mine used to insist that she’d rather be happy than right and that truth was relative anyway.  Most people today, it would seems agree with her.

Solstice Day, 2025

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Today, December 21st, 2025 we experience a solstice, really two: the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year, and the Southern Solstice in the South with the longest day and shortest night.  In Colombia, which straddles the equator, in its southern regions it experiences the Summer Solstice, at the equator, well, perhaps nothing at all, all days being equal, and to the North, the Winter Solstice.  As in so many other things, Colombia has it all.

Like the equinoxes, to me the solstices are days for introspection and reflection and more, so than New Year’s Day, days for refocusing and resolutions.  Our world is in terrible shape, chaos and injustice reign in a replica of what philosopher Thomas Hobbes described many centuries ago as the “State of Nature”, a phrase having nothing to do with sound ecological practices but rather, with chaos, injustice, lawlessness and impunity.  The reality is that our world has seemingly always functioned (dysfunctioned would be more accurate) this way but, we have always been successfully deluded through false and fanciful narratives into believing that there are good guys on one side who believe in truth, justice and equity, and bad guys on the other who believe in nothing at all but power and pleasure for themselves.

Historians should know differently, as should journalists, but they don’t, or they don’t care because they’re an integral part of the problem.  Reflecting on how genocide and ethnic cleansing and the quest for lebensraum have become fashionable in Western and Central Europe and in the Anglo-Saxon world, rather than anathema (as we were told following the Second World War), I’ve come to doubt everything I was taught concerning World War Two and World War One, indeed, about the American Revolution and the American Civil War, and which I then, in turn taught others.  There were no “good guys” in any of those “conflicts”, only evil politicians and sacrificial victims on all sides, sacrificial victims who along with their families provided the fuel to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. 

In what we refer to as the Western World, the purportedly Democratic World, being seen as the good guys seems existentially important despite the hundreds of millions of people who have been slaughtered through our elective wars and through our colonialism, purportedly a “burden” imposed on us in order to raise our cultural inferiors to our intellectual and moral heights.  The Romans of two millennia ago, prior to their conquest by Christianity, were just as selfishly aggressive as are we in the Western World, the purportedly Democratic World, but they were much more honest.  They had no problem at all in being seen as the bad guys but, truth be told, we have easily surpassed them in savagery and in a lack of respect for legal institutions, all the while insisting that we do what we do in the name of justice, liberty, decency and democracy.  In the name of our Abrahamic god. 

We are masters of hypocrisy.  For example, followers of the Christian branch of the Abrahamic triad abhor the economic theses on which their religion is purportedly based, which ironically coincide with the premises underlying communism, i.e., not only political, social and economic equality and equity, but a dedication to lift up the poorest and most humble among us while preventing the accumulation of massive wealth by the few (remember the camel and the eye of the needle).  Among the followers of the Judaic branch of that triad, people who for millennia were victims of intense social and legal injustice, post-eighth-century Eurasian converts today purportedly acting in the name of all Jews have become oppressors and mass murderers in an apparent quest for political and economic hegemony.  The Islamic branch meanwhile looks on: Palestinians (descendants of real Jews) are sacrificed while wealthy Arab leaders pretend to care but at best, do nothing and at worst, secretly collude with Christian and Zionist Islamophobes.  Ironically, the atheists among us are those most inclined to avoidance of state sponsored murder and most supportive of equity, equality and social justice.

Reflecting on the foregoing on this day of solstices, a movie from the late nineteen thirties, the old movie version of the Wizard of Oz, one of the first to use color, comes to mind, specifically with reference to one of its final scenes.  The scene in which its purported villain, Elphaba, the fictional Wicked Witch of the East, exclaims (after she was accidentally soaked with water by the heroine, and began to melt), “what a world, what a world”!  That metaphor was certainly prescient, not only with respect to today’s world, but to our world since significantly before history was first recorded, perhaps since we first evolved as purported Homo Sapiens.

Anyway, … enough reflection and introspection.  What about resolutions?  Is there anything we can do to change the inequity that surrounds us? 

Well, maybe not.  But we can at least try.  The strange thing about we humans is that in large collectives we tend to be horrible while individually, although some of us are indeed horrible, the majority are decent albeit incredibly gullible and all too ignorant.  Thus, perhaps the first thing we need to do is to help each other shed our blinders by realizing that virtually everything we’re taught is false and then, by following our more humane instincts, for example, the so called Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, rather than its perverted analog, “do unto others whatever you can get away with before they do it unto you”.  Perhaps then, hopefully blinder free and well intentioned, we can reject leadership by all those who seek dominion through violence and deception, and who follow the creed of perpetual greed and perpetual war, albeit in disguise.

Anyway (again), … these are my reflections after a good deal of introspection on a shortest day and a longest night high in the central range of the Colombian Andes.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Divine Quandaries

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Divinity, at least according to followers of Abrahamic religions, involves five essential attributes: eternal existence, the divinity must have always existed and will always exist; omnipresence, i.e., the divinity must be ubiquitous, concurrently everywhere; omniscience, the divinity must have permanent and eternal knowledge concerning absolutely everything not only with respect to the past and the present, but also the future; omnipotence, the divinity must necessarily be all powerful, capable of anything and everything without reservation; and, the divinity must be omnibenevolent, all good without a trace of evil or negativity.

Other religions, more ancient religions as well as contemporary religions have been more realistic.  Deities, where they existed, were just more powerful than humans albeit not omnipotent, especially when they were plural.  If not ubiquitously omnipresent, they were perhaps not bound by the rules concerning time and space that apply to us and could show up when least expected.  Omniscient?  Not at all, although perhaps they, or some of them, were more cognitively gifted, at least sometimes.  Eternal?  Nope, they somehow came into being, usually sequentially, and in most cases, eventually expired, although the expiration was sometimes temporary.  And omnibenevolent?  Hell no!  They were willful and selfish and prone to emotional outburst.  Hmmm, that all sounds a great deal like the Abrahamic YHWH.

Still, to be fair, omniscience and ubiquitous omnipresence would seem possible if one eliminates time and space, treating them as illusions.  If time did not exist, then eternity would be either irrelevant or merely a natural state.  Perhaps in that context, since nothing would really exist, omnipotence might also be possible although not all that potent. But omnibenevolence is subjective although, in the absence of time and space and anything at all (other than perhaps, a sentient singularity), it might well be either irrelevant or natural, there being no choices to make.  In the foregoing context, an idealized divinity such as that imagined in Abrahamic religions might be possible, but only until time and space arrived, only until decisions became, not only possible, but necessary, even if any such decisions were merely illusions.

So, where does that leave us? 

Perhaps pondering on the nature of quantic phenomena and how they might impact the foregoing.  As I understand it, everything and anything is possible at a quantic level, sort of like the concept of chaos where, rather than consider it a negative, chaos is merely the confluence of every possibility; however, quantic activation would require an observer which would create a sort of bootstrap cosmogony.  Kind of like the ones were it is the worshippers who create the worshipped.

Or would that involve cosmology?

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on Thanksgiving Day 2025

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I am drawn to the concept of giving thanks rather than asking for boons from the divine.  It was something I felt strongly at times of spiritual longing while I was still more of a traditional believer, times long gone.  I am still drawn to the concept, albeit in a more generic form while concurrently more specifically.  While reflecting on towards what and towards whom my thanks should be directed.

A deity is evoked by most for purposes of giving thanks on this holiday, at least in the parts of the world where I’ve lived, in Europe and in the Americas.  It is an Abrahamic deity worshipped by three antagonistic branches, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that deity is purported to possess five principle unique attributes.  He (the deity is identified as masculine for the most part) is eternal, he has always existed and will always exist; he is omnipresent, i.e., he is ubiquitous, concurrently everywhere; he is omniscient, knows absolutely everything not only with respect to the past and the present, but also the future; he is omnipotent, all powerful, capable of anything and everything without reservation; and, he is omnibenevolent, all good without a trace of evil or negativity. 

I guess, if we humans did not exist, if our world did not exist, the concurrence of such attributes might conceivably be possible.  But we do exist, our world exists, and evil certainly exists and, on this Thanksgiving Day, evil seems to predominate, especially in the so called Western World.  And that evil seems to emanate directly from the purported Abrahamic Holy Land in the Middle East.

Today and for many years, decades really, It has been difficult, actually, impossible for me to be thankful to that incoherent complex of attributes that purportedly constitute “our” deity.  Or to believe that such an entity exists.  The three attributes most impossible for me to reconcile are the “omnis”: omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence.  When effective, logic, a premise based form of analysis that purports to lead to accurate conclusions, could accept an evil or amoral omniscient, omnipresent omnipotence; or, it could accept an omnibenevolent, omnipresent and omniscient but impotent reality.  But not the confluence of all three attributes.  In general, the logical exercise in which we claim to believe and which we use, or more accurately, misuse and abuse, rarely works because, when its conclusions are put to the test and fail, rather that reexamine the premises and the analysis which led to the deficient conclusions (as tested against reality), we rationalize and make excuses.  We do so with respect to our Abrahamic concept of divinity by introducing the concept of purported “free will”, an oxymoronic absurdity when its exercise is subject to horrific and perpetual punishment.

The Abrahamic faiths are, not surprisingly given the forgoing, fratricidal, albeit usually sequentially so.  And hypocrisy reigns among at least two of them, Christianity and Judaism, the polar aspects of Abrahamic religion with Islam, strangely, being the bridge between them but, frequently, the most despised, belittled and calumnied by the other two. 

Take Christianity for example.  It was purportedly founded by followers of a gentle and loving Hebraic Palestinian from the small town of Nazareth during its Roman era but in reality, the religion as it has almost always existed was the creation of a misogynistic Hellenized Jew, Saul of Tarsus who eventually used a more politically convenient Roman name, Paulus.  The original Nazarene variant was centered in a small communist community in Jerusalem led by a certain James, cognamed “the Just” and comprised of the original disciples and apostles of his brother, a certain Yešu (today Latinized to its Hellenic variant, Jesus). The bastard Pauline variant quickly deformed into a traditionalist hierarchical control mechanism used to accumulate wealth and power, so much so that it eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Today, “evangelical and other so called Christians have completely rejected the communist economic premises of the original followers of Yešu, in part, because of the distortion of a statement by the founder of modern communism, an atheistic Jew, Karl Marx, to the effect that “religion was the opiate of the masses”, a statement contextually related to Marxian dialectic theory concerning economic evolution rather than to criticism of religion by which he meant that, at a certain point in economic history, religion was essential to survival making terrible conditions tolerable in the way that modern medications and medical treatments aid in our survival.  Through distortion and manipulation, modern Christianity, at least in the United States, has become the opposite of what Yešu espoused.  It has become a selfishly capitalistic, xenophobic philosophy apparently enamored of mass murder under the guise of capital punishment and perpetual war.  Judaism has also undergone drastic devolution with a significant component splitting off into an atheistic political Zionist variant espousing genocide, ethnic cleansing and even rape as a legitimate control mechanism for dealing with non-Zionist dissidence.  To those Abrahamic variants, Thanksgiving Day has become a de facto celebration of injustice, inequality and inequity, but that is something the original celebrants of the holiday in New England, the religiously intolerant Puritans would likely have ascribed.

That version of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, the one celebrated today, Thursday, November 27, 2025, is not one I can subscribe to, although I do enjoy some of its incidentals, like football games designed to draw our attention and energy away from our quotidian problems.  Thus, while in my moments of most intensely positive feelings towards divinity during a time long ago when I accepted the traditional Abrahamic version of divinity as possible, back when I gave thanks to “whatever gods may be” (a phrase from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley), today, my attitude is profoundly different.  Today, my thanks are limited to more tangible subjects.  To people I’ve known and to people I’ve never met but admire.  To those among the subjected and abused and downtrodden and tortured and maimed and killed who struggle to protect those they love and to stand for principles of equity and justice and compassion and generosity and peace, today something that applies most clearly to the Palestinian victims of Zionist genocide as it once stood for the Jewish victims of Nazi genocide, or to the Armenian victims of Turkish genocide, or to the indigenous victims everywhere of European genocide.  To all the economically deprived parents who work constantly to provide for their families as best they can.  To the Quixotic who struggle for “the right” against invincible odds, knowing that they themselves will never see the fruits of their labors.  But also to those who, for whatever reason, earned or not, I just love.  Those special people who were my classmates at the Citadel, and those fellow Citadel graduates who preceded and followed me, the same being true with respect to the now long departed Eastern Military Academy.  But also to my former students and colleagues everywhere. 

Today I give thanks to and for my family, especially my late mother Rosario and my late grandmother Juanita and my late aunt Carola.  To the many fellow travelers in the quest for a more equitable, more just, more peaceful, more compassionate, more peaceful and more loving world; those I know and who I can call friends as well as those with whom I am only acquainted and those who I’ve never met but who I know exist, have existed or will exist.

That seems a great deal for which to be thankful, even in these truly terrible times where orchestrated polarization for fun and profit regardless of the cost is the rule.  When the United States I love, indeed most of the Global North, is ruled from abroad by an ethics free elite.  Perhaps it always been this way.  But perhaps, the wonderful has always coexisted with the horrendous among the strange life forms who now refer to ourselves as humans.

So, … about the poem “Invictus”, one of my favorites.  It seems appropriate to close out these reflections by sharing it, albeit reformatted into a more narrative, rather than verse format:

Out of the night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.   In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.   Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.   Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the Horror of the shade, and yet, the menace of the years finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

 
Thank you William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903).

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on Poetry and on the Nature and Uses of Prayer

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Sam Hamill

It came to me as I read indigenous reflections written in 1976, almost half a century ago, by Arthur Amiotte, then an artist and teacher who lived among the Teton Sioux in South Dakota, that I have never understood the nature or functions of prayer.  Not strange given how few if any priests or pastors or rabbis have ever grasped them.  Prayer had always seemed superficial to me, ritual repetition of sounds directed at one or more beings to whom we seemed little more than insects, inferior objects to be scorned and disdained, albeit in a strange and twisted, masochistic way, loved as well. 

An observation attributed to a gentle Nazarene whom the Hebrews and perhaps the Romans may have tortured and perhaps hung or crucified has always made a great deal of sense to me: his suggestion that direct communion with the divine, without ritual or intervention, without prayer, was really the only legitimate and effective means of touching divinity but, reviewing Arthur Amiotte’s indigenous reflections, something I’ve been doing while concurrently reading the probably fictitious writing of Carlos Castaneda (fictitious not being synonymous with useless),  another alternative occurred to me.  Ironically occurred to me who, if not an atheist am at best a panentheist.  It came to me in the form of an epiphany: Prayer may well have a positive purpose but it is unrelated to the ritual repetition of sounds the meaning of which few really consider as they utter them, and fewer still understand. 

In that instant of epiphany, it came to me that ritual prayer does have a role and a meaning and a use and a purpose but that it is very different from the meaningless collective rote exercise that takes place on designated days at designated hours in designated places under the leadership of designated men and sometimes, although rarely, designated women.  It is, or perhaps, better stated, it should be, an isolated, personal reflective instrument that properly tuned and used can lead to introspection, contemplation, meditation and self-examination, all in a quest for insight, perhaps totally novel insight, and through such insight, to both elucidation and pragmatic solutions. 

That makes sense, or made sense to me; finally.  Prayers, correctly used, can be catalysts for internal communication in which, perhaps, a spark of the divine (if a spark of the divine exists within each of us, as some among the Gnostics tend to believe), may, at times, be present.

“Poetry” Sam Hammill (a great friend, a great poet and a great translator) once told me “is meant to be spoken and heard”.  As much as I admired him and still do (though he is long gone), I did not agree.  For me, reading poetry rather than listening to it permitted me to transcend the music of the words in order to wrestle with the layers of meaning involved, not all of them layers the author intended.  In that sense, it seems that poems are “written on mirrors”, i.e., they have different meanings for everyone who really delves into their depths based on the reader’s personal experiences, context and perceptions.  I’ve shared my observation with another poet I admire but who is as different from Sam, in many but not all ways, as two poets can be.  Sam was a big man, a former United States marine, with a booming voice, an adventurer in every sense, while the second poet, Carlos Mario Uribe Alvarez, is a fairly diminutive and soft spoken Colombian, but one who annually gathers poets from all over the world to declaim and share perspectives in the sky-high Andean city where I’ve now lived for almost two decades.  Despite their differences, as is the case with many poets, they both share a taste for variety in women, each of whom they love in their own way, and for strong intoxicants, whether drunk or inhaled. 

As it was for Sam, poetry for Carlos, at the numerous events he organizes, is an oral exercise.  I dutifully attend the readings performed by earnest and talented artists who have profound truths to share but I get little out of the readings.  Indeed, I’ve urged that each reading be preceded by contextualization and a sharing of the motives and reflections and introspection that gave birth to each poem presented.  Sam would have argued with me.  Carlos agrees, but seemingly superficially.

I now feel the same way about prayer after my epiphany.  But perhaps that’s just me.  Writing and reading call to me much more than does listening to prayers or poetic expositions.  Reading permits me to dive and delve and reflect while writing seems a means of communicating with my inner self, with the me who’s been and the me that may someday be, and perhaps, at times, with echoes and shadows of divinity that have made their way, if not to me, at least towards me.

Interesting.  But perhaps not novel except for those of us who have been long misled by Abrahamic delusions.  Perhaps my epiphany is an echo of something lost by those of us who have misplaced things that our ancestors understood well and perhaps used and perhaps some among us may still understand and practice it, albeit alone and in personal places in a manner such as that of which that gentle Nazarene once spoke.

Thoughts on a pleasant autumn day high in the central range of the Colombian Andes.
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Of Butterflies and Bibles

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I’ve frequently wondered as to what motivated the inept linguist or translator who turned the word “flutterby” into “butterfly”.  That usually brings to mind (at least to my mind) the inept Catholic “saint”, Jerome of Stridon, who made a mess of his Latin translation of the Greek version of the Hebrew Tanakh.  Poor Lucifer, demoted by the purported saint from the Roman god of truth and light into a rebellious archangel and the patron of evil (a role that belonged to a Hebrew “entity” whose name was Hel-El).

Flutterby is obviously the correct term to describe the fluttering, flying insect, often beautiful, that has nothing to do with butter but is stuck with that appellation. I don’t suppose Jerome was responsible, he knew nothing of English, but who knows.  The absence of knowledge never stopped him.

And as to the “Latin” version of the Bible on which the St. James and other mistranslations are based, what can one say other than perhaps, …

… “Oy Vei”!

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on a Conceivably Inept Creator

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Reflecting on religion this morning, specifically on the Abrahamic variants to which most of my religious friends adhere, friends I profoundly respect and generally find to be genuinely good people, it came to me that they appear to consider their creator inept. 

They obviously, albeit respectfully, consider the creator to have been incapable of creating a decent product.  Indeed, their worship is full of lamentations concerning how terrible they are and acknowledging that their deficiencies are inherent and unavoidable. Indeed, purportedly not a single one of the creator’s creations have been free from defects except, perhaps, for himself, as incarnated, but then again, can one really be one’s own creation?

Perhaps.

Don’t know why but Ford Edsels come to mind.

Anyway, “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” is an obligatory refrain by his creations when engaged in formal worship although, of course, logically, the “culpa” should really be ascribed to the entity, divine or otherwise, who designed such creations, especially if it was omniscient and omnipotent at the time.  Perhaps the refrain should more accurately be: “tua culpa, tua culpa, tua maxima culpa”.

Every time we criticize human fallibility, human frailty, the human proclivity to err against the divine will, we are criticizing, not only ourselves (the divine creation) but also the angelic supervision to which we are purportedly subject.  That concept of divinity posits not only an inept creator but one so full of hubris that it blames its errors on its creations, whether on us directly or on his angelic host, some of which also proved, let’s say … “deficient”.  Nephilim come to mind, as do their fathers.

Perhaps that explains the world in which we live, one where one branch of the Abrahamic faiths, the one involving the creator’s purportedly chosen people, engage, in the creator’s name, in genocide, massive and constant theft, justified rape, etc., (and not only recently, it’s a historical trend), and his more recent adherents in another branch, the Christians (originally Nazarenes and then Cristers) look the other way like the three famous simians who see no evil, hear no evil and certainly don’t expose any evil except with respect to whatever minor transgressions they themselves have engaged in, which they bemoan and chastise, … mainly on Sundays.

My reflections are, of course, blasphemous and heretical and somehow or other, probably evil.  Or, perhaps, the creator would agree that its followers are, perhaps inadvertently, being too critical of their creator.  Being very sensitive to any criticism (consider how it purportedly dealt with its archangel Hel-el, subsequently mistranslated by the abysmally ignorant St. Jerome as “Lucifer”; or how it dealt with almost all of its creations when, in a fit of temper, it drowned them all), … it may be worth reconsidering those aspects of its worship.  Just saying, …..

Still, as Elphaba Thropp, the purported wicked witch of the west, perhaps reflecting on YHWH or perhaps just on water, exclaimed with her dying breath in the 1930s version of the Wizard of Oz (the foregoing name is, however, as envisioned many decades later by author Gregory Maguire): …

“What a world, what a world!!!!”

_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on Apples, Karl Marx and Zionist Ethics

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In Abrahamic mythology (which billions treat as revealed truth) Eve, the primordial mother, enabled herself, her husband and their descendants to discern between good and evil, for which, the petulant Abrahamic divinity punished them by afflicting them and all of their descendants with mortality and perpetual misery. 

Strange that it was so essential to the purported Abrahamic divinity that its creations remain ignorant as to the difference between good and evil but, ironically, given Zionist perspectives, both of the Jewish and Christian variant, it seems that those two groups have taken it upon themselves to correct Eve’s indiscretion and lo and behold, evil flourishes, not only in the purported Holy Land but in Europe and North America as well.  And it flourishes purportedly in a quest to re-attain the immortality once lost.  What a strange spiritual philosophy, what a weird (in the original sense of the word) form of spirituality.

It makes some of us wonder at what motivated Karl Marx to postulate that “religion was the opiate of the masses”, today a deliberately misconstrued reflection as, when it was uttered, opiates were considered a positive blessing that permitted those afflicted with painful diseases to survive, rather than, as suggested by critics of Marx’s economic and political perspectives, as a criticism of religion.

The problem with opiates is, of course, that they distort perceptions of reality and make users numb to pain.  Does Zionism do the same with respect to morality and ethics?  Has the reflection concerning divinity by Karl Marx attained added relevance given the current Zionist proclivity for genocide and ethnic cleansing, for theft of Palestinian lands and assets, for rape of Palestinian hostages as a legitimate instrument of control and even for the involuntary harvesting of Palestinian’s human organs and skin, all purportedly in the name of a promise made by their strange divinity, although not to them but to their victims?

Or is it perhaps past time for a new mother Eve, in her gnostic variant this time, to arise and to feed us all apples?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.