The New Temple

The global Hindu movement

Toronto inaugurated its largest Hindu temple last Saturday.

It was an event full of dignitaries, with the Toronto mayor, the Ontario Premier and Prime Minister Harper himself making speeches.

The building cost around $40 million of private funds (as the Hindu community was so proud to point out - not multicultural grants) and had around 400 volunteers to help with the project.

All of the carving was done by Indian craftsmen (back in India) with first class material of limestone from Turkey and marble from Italy.

This particular project is not isolated. The organization that planned this temple, the BAPS Swaminarayan, has also built similar giant buildings around the world. The first in the West is the London Temple, and only last year another was built in Houston.

While the Muslims are noisily going about making their presence known, the Hindus have been quietly working behind the scenes changing the Canadian landscape just as effectively.

Recently, the "Canadian" victims of Air India Flight 182, which exploded in mid-air over the Atlantic in 1985, and is considered the work of Sikh separatists, received another dignitary-worthy commemoration to inaugurate a memorial in Toronto. No-one of course asks what this has to do with real Canadians. The Sikhs blew up a plane full of Indians traveling to India, for a particularly Indian grievance.

Well, this time, the funds for the public inquiry initiated by Harper do come from the government.



BAPS Swaminarayan clone temples in Chicago, Toronto and Houston. Comfort in numbers? Strength in size?

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Apocrypha in the Ethiopian Bible

The inspiration of Enoch

There's been an interesting discussion going on at Bad Eagle on Apocrypha.

My take on it, regarding the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is part of the discussion.

The comment on the Book of Enoch, which is only found in the Ethiopian Bible, that it is a serious pre-Christian Jewish thought, theology, cosmology, eschatology, etc. ties up my theory that Ethiopian Christians had to rely on the Old Testament in order to survive those isolated years of Christianity. So, it is not surprising that the book of Enoch is included.

Why this reliance on the Old Testament?

Well, the alternative would have been to turn to pagan and Islamic sources for inspiration and validation. But, as true Christians, the Ethiopians knew that the God of the Old Testament was the same as the God of the New Testament, whereas the other gods were alien. And in order to avoid contamination they turned to the Old Testament.

Also, the Old Testament, amongst other things, is a book of rules, clearly stated. "You shall not eat this", "you shall dress in this manner", etc.

It is also a book of a people, chosen and separate from others. And these Ethiopians felt themselves chosen and separate (from all their ungodly surroundings).

So, their best recourse was to behave like the chosen people of the Old Testament, and thus to get closer to God.

Now, this mixing of the Old and the New is clearly demonstrated in this illuminated manuscript.


Presentation of Christ in the Temple, late 14th, early 15th century
Parchment, 14 15/16in X 10 1/4 in from the Monastery
Dabra Hayq Estifanos


As I wrote at Bad Eagle:

It follows the description of St. Luke (2:22-38). But, there are a few anomalies:

- In the Luke story, Hannah is present, as well as Simon.

- In the Ethiopian version, Hannah is absent, and instead there is a bearded man identified as Habakkuk (from the manuscript he's holding which says: "I have heard report of thee and was afraid" from Habakkuk 3:2).

- This transforms the Presentation into an Ethiopian baptismal ceremony (following the law of purification from Leviticus 12:1-8, where a boy is baptized forty days after birth - girl is eighty). Habakkuk becomes the godfather.

- Habakkuk returns the Presentation to the Old Testament, as well as the rituals for the Presentation are turned into a baptism, following the Old Testament purification rules.

Finally, this painting is a "revers" copy of an illuminated Macedonian manuscript from Mount Athos. Hannah and Simon are on the right, Joseph, Mary and Jesus are on the left

Presentation of Christ in the Temple, from Byzantine Gospel Book at Mt. Athos, Iviron, ca. 1400-1500


The reference to a Byzantine illuminated manuscript was another way the Ethiopians maintained their religion - by reaching out to other Christian lands. But the methods by which they did this, despite many difficulties, is worthy of another blog.

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The Pleasures of Botany

Getting nature right

I have just had a short essay published in a botanical artists' newsletter.

The article is a survey of botanical art and the decorative arts over the centuries (Greek all the way to the modern world). But, my point was even bigger: that people have always used nature as a creative source, and that the modern day artists' attempt to get everything from their internal perspective, which they call self-expression, is unprecedented, and in my rather strong conclusion, detrimental to art. The same is true of the decorative arts. Why not use the flowers of the wild as a jump start for our imagination?

Of course, I didn't say any of that when I wrote the piece, because botanical artists do use nature as an inspiration, and they try in fact to get every single detail as perfect as possible.

You can read the article here... (just scroll down a little).

Hopefully, I will also do a few projects with these accomplished illustrators.

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The Limitless Sky of the Desert

The Assurance of God



Many important moments of revelation, or self-examination, in the Bible occur in the desert.

- That is where Moses first encounters God, who assigns him as the leader of the enslaved Jews

- When the Jews reject God's Torah by worshiping the golden calf, they are sent out to the desert for forty years.

- Jesus spent forty days and nights in the desert, where he had to contend with and battle, the manipulative Devil and his temptations.

As one Rabbi described it, in the desert, with its immense sky, we can fully realize that there is one God. This enveloping and endless sky acts as our metaphor for the infinite and omnipresent God.

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