The power of Symbolism

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The first noticeable thing about the torch is of course, the flame. Fire has always held significant meaning for people. It has been known to be the symbol of life, and can also help keep us warm, as well as light our way in the dark. In Ancient Greece, fire was revered even more. This was because the mythical god Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to the humans. To celebrate the fact that they now had fire, the Greeks would hold relay races that contained many runners. At the end of each of their legs, one runner would pass a fire-bearing torch to the next runner so that the second runner could then begin his leg of the race.

The first Olympic Games were held in 776 B.C. The games were held every four years in Olympia, Greece and they honored Zeus and the other Greek gods. But these games held other significance as well. The games were also a time that peace was called throughout the world. The states of Greece would often be at war with each other, and each year before the games were held, runners would run through the states. These runners were called “heralds of peace” and they signified that a time of “sacred truce” had been declared. This truce would be in effect for the entire time the games were on.

But the Olympic flame certainly wasn’t the first flame to keep burning in Greece. Because the Greeks paid such special attention to fire, they had many cauldrons set up that would continually burn. The Greek gods had altars that would often have flames burning in them in honor of that god. Hera, the goddess of birth and marriage, also had a cauldron. And it was this altar that the Greeks would place a cauldron on in which a flame could be lit. A large hollow disc or a mirror called a skaphia would be used to light the cauldron. This would collect the sun’s rays into a single stream so that it could light the cauldron. This flame would then burn for the entirety of the games to symbolize peace, purity, and reason.
The Greeks only held their Olympic Games for about a thousand years. Because of this, the torch relays and the ceremonial lighting of the flame was also discontinued. The Olympic Games did make a comeback though in 1896 in Athens, Greece. However, getting the torch relay back as part of the ceremony and the games wasn’t reinstated right away.

In 1928, the Olympic Games in Amsterdam brought back the tradition of including the symbol of fire with the Olympic Games. A cauldron was lit but there was no relay beforehand. The first modern day Olympic Games relay wasn’t held until the Berlin Summer Games, which took place in 1936. Carl Diem, who was Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of the Games reintroduced the relay as part of connecting the current day’s games to its historic roots. To tie the modern day games into the ones that took place in Ancient Greece, the flame was first lit in Olympia, Greece and then carried to Berlin.

However, it still wasn’t until the 1952 winter games in Oslo, Norway that the relay of the flame was introduced. This was the only event where the torch was not first lit in Olympia, Greece. Because Norway is the birthplace of skiing, the flame was originally lit in the same place where the games would take place. And it wasn’t until 1964 at the Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, that the flame started being lit in Olympia. Ever since then though, the flame has started being lit in Olympia, Greece, without missing a single year!

The Lighting of the Torch

Finally, after all the design elements are in place, and the torch has been tested to make sure it has all the necessary components, and all the replicas are made, the torch is finally lit. It’s lit at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece, and this is actually done months before the games even begin.

It all starts with an actress, dressed in ceremonial Roman garb just like they were the first year the Olympics was held, long ago in the times of B.C. The torch is also lit the way it has been traditionally, using a mirror to redirect the sun’s rays. The mirror has a concave shape and at the center, there is so much heat produced that it can actually light the fuel coming from the torch. However because of this process, the sun must be shining fairly brightly on the day of the torch lighting. But there is a backup plan should this happen. Several days before the official torch-lighting ceremony begins, another Olympic torch is lit with the mirror. This torch can light the official Olympic torch on the day of the ceremony should it not be sunny enough for the mirror to light it.

Once the torch has been lit, it is then carried to a cauldron that sits on an altar in the ancient Olympic stadium. There it is used to light the first runner’s torch and the relay will officially begin. The torch the first runner is carrying will then light the next torch, and so on until the Olympic torch reaches its final destination. For the winter games, the relay is actually started at the monument to Pierre de Coubertin, who is the founder of the first Olympic Games.

Olympics in Berlin

Carl Diem became the secretary of the all-German sports organization Deutscher Reichsausschuss für Leibesübungen (DRL) the forerunner of the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, the Sports Organ of the Third Reich.

In May 1932, again largely due to the reputation and lobbying efforts of Diem and Lewald, Berlin was selected to host the 1936 summer games; Diem was named Secretary General of the Organizing Committee. He attended the 1932 games in Los Angeles, carefully observing the host city's preparations and facilities, committed to meeting or outdoing the American accomplishment in Berlin four years later.

The rise of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933 once again threatened Diem's dream of a Berlin Olympiad: Nazi nationalism did not embrace international sport, and Hitler himself had dismissed the Olympics as a project of "Jews and Freemasons."After Hitler took power, Diem expected him to cancel the Olympics. But Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, convinced him that the games would be an excellent showcase for German organization and pride. At a March 1933 meeting, six weeks after taking power, Hitler informed Diem and Levald that he would support the games. Six months later, after touring the construction sites for the sporting arenas, he told Diem that the German state would pay the bills.

The Nazis embraced the Olympic Games not only because they promised to be a unique opportunity to extol the virtues of their "reborn" state; as a celebration of physical prowess, the games also dovetailed neatly with the Nazi idealization of youth, fitness and athleticism. Further, according to Nazi racial theories, their own Aryan "superiorities" were descended from the great achievements of ancient Greece.

Despite the official Nazi support for the games, Diem's position as organizer was at risk, mostly because his Hochschule employed Jewish teachers and Diem's wife, Liselott, came from a Jewish family. He himself was classified, for these reasons, as a "white Jew."Diem managed to hold on to his job and solidify his position with his Nazi patrons. His partner Theodor Lewald, who had been removed by the Nazis from his post as President of the German Sports Body in 1933 because his paternal grandmother was Jewish, was appointed president of the Organizing Committee of the Berlin Olympic Games by the leader of the Nazi Sports Body, Hans von Tschammer und Osten.

Some sources later claimed that during this time Olympic officials threatened to pull the games from Berlin if Jews were excluded and that the protests from the IOC forced the Nazi leadership to reinstate Lewald –although only to the minor post of "adviser" to the games.[citation needed] The Nazi establishment went out of their way to assure the world that "non-Aryan" participants were being allowed to compete –however those assurances were less than truthful. In particular, the American Olympic Association remained skeptical about the Nazis' openness to non-Aryan competitors, and a movement to boycott the Berlin games began to gather steam among U.S. Olympic officials. Diem's old friend Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee, was dispatched to appraise the facts; in Berlin, Diem convinced Brundage that Jews were not being excluded, though he likely knew otherwise. Brundage returned to the U.S. and, defeating the boycott-supporters, helped to ensure that a full American athletic delegation would attend the games in Berlin.

Carl Diem held high posts in the Third Reich's sports organization (NSRL) even after the Olympics, becoming the leader of the Foreign Department of the Nationalsocialist Sports Office in 1939. As such he was responsible for the issues of German athletes in foreign countries, as well as for the international affairs of the NSRL.

The day and generation in which we live pulsates with power, the world is held in place by dynamic appositions, the universe is vibrant with force and man is a part of the Divine energy. The greatest thing in God’s created universe is man. In him, according to the teachings of Freemasonry, is the Eternal Flame, the indestructible image of the living God. The power of man cannot be defined, cannot be fenced in, because it transcends all finite standards of measurement.

Danny Boyle has now given the game away to anyone who is interested, that he is probably a Freemason . The opening ceremony at the London Olympics titled “The Isles Of Wonder” will be based on “The Tempest” and the largest bell in Europe has been cast whose ring will open the ceremony . The lines “Be not afeard : the isle is full of noises” from the Tempest are to be engraved on the bell .
Freemasonry claims William Shakespeare as one of their own and the choice of using The Tempest is predictable for anyone who has researched the esoteric influences in the ceremonies for the Olympic Games . Without going off on a tangent, it has been claimed by some that Shakespeare was the founder of modern Freemasonry . Whatever the truth about this, Freemasonry positively drools over The Tempest and see it as one of the finest works in relation to Freemasonry .
From Shakespeare And Freemasonry by mason, William Norman M’Daniel, written in 1912 in relation to The Tempest :
Professor Henry Van Dyke has made the splendid generalization that the aim and purpose of the Shakespearean dramas also is to teach the Majesty of the Moral Law. It will be found, when the plays are studied from this viewpoint, that they form a comprehensive and consistent body of ethics or moral philosophy, the term being used in the Baconian sense as embracing politics, ethics, as commonly conceived, and logic; and that this system is entirely in harmony with the teachings of Freemasonry.
It may be more exact to say that Freemasonry is a training school to make the realization of this philosophy possible. Perhaps the simplest and yet most satisfactory definition of Freemasonry is Dr. Hemming’s, that “Freemasonry is a beautiful system of morals, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” Shakespeare may be also defined as a beautiful system of morals, veiled in allegory and illustrated by fictitious and historical personages.
Further, one play, The Tempest, which stands first in the collected plays, is an epitome, a miniature of the whole. The argument of our main proposition – the identity of Shakespeare and Freemasonry – may be based upon the proper interpretation of this play. One primary idea must be kept in mind: these plays are works of art; works of literary art, which, next to music, is the highest art; and again, in the form of the drama, which is the highest form of literary art. And as Alfred Noyes has so aptly expressed it, “The content and import of a work of art are not to be weighed in the same way as those of a philosophic system or a work of science.”
It is to be realized more as a personal experience, not so much comprehended by the mind as apprehended by the soul. Let it not be thought strange, therefore, if for many persons The Tempest has little significance. For that matter, to how comparatively few persons is Shakespeare anything more than a name. The reason is to be found in our one-sided, unnatural and, in many respects, false education. Others can place themselves where Shakespeare and Freemasonry meet, if they but free their minds from traditions and prejudices.

The Tempest is viewed as the most esoteric of Shakespeare’s plays . It has been claimed John Dee, the famous alchemist and creator of the Enochian alphabet was the inspiration for the character of Prospero but the esoteric nature of The Tempest is for another post .
From the Olympic flame, the Rainbow motif and ‘All Seeing Eye’ used for the Wenlock and Mandeville mascots and now the use of The Tempest in the opening ceremony, the London Olympics will be full of masonic symbology and the opening and closing ceremonies should include further occult symbology .

In Greek mythology, the original “torch-bearer” was Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods in order to give it to humanity. Fire was considered by ancients as being a tiny spark of the sun, which was considered to be the physical manifestation of deity (see Sun Worship). By bringing fire to mankind, Prometheus has therefore enabled humans to partake in “all things divine” and even allowed them to aspire to become gods themselves. For this reason, Prometheus is particularly revered in secret societies, as his myth is the ultimate representation of the philosophy and the goals of mystery schools: ascension towards divinity and immortality through man’s own means.

In esoteric teachings, the act of “carrying the torch” is symbolic of man’s awareness of his own “divine spark” and represents his aspiration to become “one of the gods”. This is, in a nutshell, the core philosophy of the world’s elite, which is heavily influenced by the hermetic teachings of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and Illuminism. For this reason, Prometheus’ Torch of Illumination is often found in the occult elite’s symbolism.

“All the supposed abominations, the skeletons and death’s heads, the coffins and the mysteries, are mere bogeys for children. But there is one dangerous element and that is the element I have copied from them. They form a sort of priestly nobility. They have developed an esoteric doctrine not merely formulated, but imparted through the symbols and mysteries in degrees of initiation. The hierarchical organization and the initiation through symbolic rites, that is to say, without bothering the brain but by working on the imagination through magic and the symbols of a cult, all this has a dangerous element, and the element I have taken over. Don’t you see that our party must be of this character…? An Order, that is what it has to be — an Order, the hierarchial Order of a secular priesthood… Ourselves or the Freemasons or the Church — there is room for one of the three and no more… We are the strongest of the three and shall get rid of the other two.”
- Hermann Rauschning, “Hitler Speaks”

Parabola is a conic defined by its focal property: there is a point - focus - and a line - directrix - and parabola is the locus of points equidistant from the focus and the directrix.

One thing is for sure, all this olympic torch ritual and games are generating incredible attention and energy which for most people is merely directed at the exoteric olympic build up and games event