M.J. Rose

Happy New Year all of our dear friends at the Museum. We are so grateful for your readership and participation, and we hope to share many more mysterious moments with you in 2017. Cheers to the future!

From Ancient Origins,

Naupa Iglesia: An Egyptian Portal in the Andes?

(…Hey! Maybe it’s a portal out of 2016! Beam us over!)

“Halfway up a near-vertical ravine in the Andes, someone carved an inverted V-shaped entrance into the mountainside. Then they sliced the bedrock with great precision to create a shallow door that goes nowhere; the same design appears in ancient Persia and Egypt. Then for good measure, they carved an additional altar with three alcoves into an outcrop of bluestone.

This sacred site is named Naupa Iglesia, or more accurately, Naupa Huaca.

Windows into Paradise
It’s not by accident such ‘doors’ are referred to as spirit doors or windows into paradise: a naupa is an inhabitant of the spirit world, and as it happens, the false door of Naupa Huaca marks the passage of the earth’s electromagnetic currents, the very forces that are known to generate out-of-body states.

It takes a hard heart to stand here and not feel the palpable energy of place. It is transfixing as much as it is bewitching. And perhaps that is the foremost reason why this site was carved in such a remote and inaccessible location in Peru. The very nature of its location makes any astronomical relationship unlikely, so we are open to entertain the idea that this temple was used for a restricted shamanic ritual. Temples of a similar nature in other parts of the world typically require a difficult access, followed by a sensory deprived environment which generates conditions for the candidate to access other levels of reality…”

For the rest, and some incredible photographs, click here.

The poor were so hungry they were willing to trade their souls for some sin-soaked bread.

The Worst Paid Freelance Gig in History Was Being the Village Sin Eater
Sin eaters risked their souls to soak up the sins of the dead.
by Natalie Zarrelli November

“When a loved one died in parts of England, Scotland, or Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries, the family would grieve, place bread on the chest of the deceased, and call for a man to sit in front of the body. The family of the deceased watched on as this man, the local professional sin eater, absorbed the sins of the departed’s soul.

The family who hired the sin eater believed that the bread literally soaked up their loved one’s sins; once it was eaten, all the misdeeds were passed on to the hired hand. Once the process was complete, the sin eater’s own soul was heavy with the ill deeds of countless men and women from his village or town.

The sin eater paid a high price to help others drift smoothly into the afterlife: the coin he was given was worth a mere four English pence, the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars today. Usually, the only people who would dare risk their immortal being during such a religious era were the very poor, whose desire for a little bread and drink carried them along….”

For the rest, click here.

The best new vocabularly word we’ve learned in a while: “Crinolinemania” —

From The Vintage News,

Crinolinemania: The dangerous Victorian fashion garment that killed around 3,000 women

“The crinoline was perceived as a signifier of social identity, with a popular subject for cartoons being that of maids wearing crinolines like their mistresses, much to the higher-class ladies’ disapproval.
Unlike the farthingales and panniers, the crinoline was worn by women of every social class; and the fashion swiftly became the subject of intense scrutiny in Western media.

The questions of servants in crinoline and the related social concerns were raised by George Routledge in an etiquette manual published in 1875, where he criticised London housemaids for wearing hoops at work.

As the girls knelt to scrub the doorsteps, Routledge described how their hoops rose to expose their lower bodies, inspiring street harassment from errand boys and other male passers-by.

Routledge firmly opined that servants ought to save their fashionable garments for their leisure periods, and dress appropriately for their work.

However, this was challenged by some servants who saw attempts to control their dress as equivalent to controlling their liberty, and refused to work for employers who tried to forbid crinolines…”

For the rest, click here.