October 29, 2005

Greetings all, 

Thank you for praying.  The plan to establish a religious hatred bill in England has suffered a massage defeat in the House of Lords as there was an introduction of an amendment that will provide safeguards in the bill.  This is a good result but the fight is not over yet.  Voting is still ahead in the Commons, where they could possibly reject the amendment.  The vote will likely take place sometime in the next three weeks.  Please continue to pray. 

As Martha, Sharon and many others continue the tour of England and move toward the gathering in London, it is “interesting” to see what is scheduled in the nation.  Below are excerpts from a website that describes the annual procession hosted by the Lord Mayor of London (see http://www.lordmayorsshow.org/ for more details).  This year's show is on Saturday 12 November.  Gog and Magog, the traditional guardians of the city of London are near the end of the procession.  This is definitely an annual open door to these spirits!  The spiritual forces behind Gog and Magog likely are preventing England from supporting Israel.  Please continue to pray. 

 

Blessings and thanks to all,

Dana 

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From http://www.lordmayorsshow.org/ 

The Lord Mayor's Show winds through nearly 800 years of London's history, marching unscathed through everything from the black death to the blitz. In the 17th century it was inconvenienced by the building site that would later become St Paul's Cathedral. In the twentieth it was the first event ever to be broadcast live on television. In the 21st, it's a day out for half a million people, with 3 million more watching on the BBC.

history of the Show  

There has been a Lord Mayor of London ever since 1189, when Henry Fitzailwyn first held office.

It wasn't until 1215, when King John granted a Charter allowing the City's citizens to elect their own mayor, that the Lord Mayor's Show actually came into being. The Charter stipulated that the new Mayor must be presented to the Sovereign for approval and to swear fealty to the Crown, so each year the newly elected Mayor had to travel from the City to Westminster to pledge allegiance. 

The Lord Mayor has been making that yearly journey for 783 years, surviving plague and fire and countless wars and insurrections. The modern Lord Mayor's procession is a direct descendant of that first journey to Westminster and the pageantry of Pepys and Canaletto is recognisable today. 

Over the years the Mayor's Journey became so splendid that it became known as the Lord Mayor's Show. Today's Shows are a wonderful mixture of past, present and future with today's businesses, Livery Companies, charities, Her Majesty's Forces, the City Police and Londoners from all walks of life coming together to enjoy a splendid celebration of the City's tradition and future.

 

Towards the head of the procession you will see two enormous but benevolent giants. They are Gog and Magog, the traditional guardians of the City of London who have been carried in the Lord Mayor's Show since the reign of Henry V. They are descended from the pagan giants of early English pageantry and their history is buried in the mysterious world of myth and legend. 

The story goes that Diocletian - the Roman Emperor - had thirty-three wicked daughters, for whom he managed to find thirty-three husbands to curb their unruly ways. The daughters were dismayed, and under the leadership of their eldest sister Alba they plotted to cut the throats of their husbands as they slept. 

For this crime they were set adrift in a boat with half a year's rations, and after a long and dreadful journey they arrived at the islands which came to be named Albion after the eldest. Here they stayed, co-habited with demons, and produced a race of evil giants to inhabit the wild, windswept islands. 

Many early peoples regarded the original inhabitants of their territory as giants, and the memory of these early races was preserved in mythology. Heros became giants in the popular mind. They were often large and powerful men, and their physical strength and stature became exaggerated as their deeds passed into legend. The pagan giants were not ugly or deformed, they were simply giant men inhabiting a golden age of might and simplicity. 

The story continues: Brutus, the great-grandson of Æneas, fled from Troy and by way of various scrapes arrived in these islands, which he renamed after himself; Britain. With him he brought his most able warrior and champion, Corineus, who fought the leader of the giant brood in single combat and eventually slew him by hurling him from a high rock into the sea.

The name of the giant was Gogmagog and the rock from which he was thrown became known as Lango?«nagog or "The Giants Leap". As a reward Corineus was given the western part of the island, which became named after him; Cornwall. Brutus travelled to the east, where he built a city which he called Troya Nova, or New Troy, which eventually came to be known as London.

Today's magnificent giants were funded by LIFFE, the London International Financial Futures Exchange, and made by Robin Harries of Air Artists from a design by the Pageantmaster, Dominic Reid, based on the 1708 sculptures.   

You can find a lot more on the battle of gogmagog and corineus online. 

At one time human sacrifice was common, but as times grew more civilized, images of men were burned instead of the men themselves. Finally the figures received the name of the divinity in whose honour the feast was held; and in time these became saints' images. The custom of carrying effigies at various festivals became widespread, not only in England but on the continent. These giants of pageantry that you will see today are the last vestiges of the pagan effigies. Our giants have no trace of the supernatural about them, they originated in folk custom, deriving their names from historical or pseudo-historical characters like Gogmagog, from Biblical history like Samson, or from classical mythology like Hercules. They are a part of a tradition in English pageantry which pre-dates Christianity. 

Another version of the story has it that these two giants were the last two survivors of the sons of the thirty-three infamous daughters of Diocletian, who were captured and kept chained to the gates of a palace on the site of Guildhall to act as guardians. Whichever way, they got there, we know that by the reign of Henry V, there were giants residing in Guildhall. And when in 1554, they appeared in the Lord Mayor's Show, the names Gogmagog and Corineus were attached to the London giants for the first time. The giant of folk-custom made an admirable champion and it was natural to develop a champion into a local hero. 

In 1605 the Pageantmaster of the day alluded to the giants who appeared in the Procession on Lord Mayor's Day as Corineus and Gogmagog. And later in 1672, the Pageantmaster Thomas Jordan referred to them as "two exceeding rarities", and stated that "at the conclusion of the Show, they are to be set up in Guildhall, where they may be daily seen all year and I hope never to be demolished by such dismal violence as happened to their predecessors." He was referring to the destruction of much of the City by the great fire in 1666. His giants however only lasted a few years being made of wickerwork and pasteboard, in common with their sacrificial forebears, and were eventually destroyed by mice and rats.

They were replaced in 1708 by a magnificent pair of wooden statues carved by Captain Richard Saunders. These giants on whom the versions you will see today are based, lasted for over two hundred years before destruction in the blitz. They, in turn, were replaced by the pair which can now be seen in Guildhall, and which were carved by David Evans in 1953 as a gift to the City by Alderman Sir George Wilkinson who had been Lord Mayor in 1940, at the time of the destruction of the previous versions. 

Gog and Magog symbolize one of many links between the modern business institutions of the City and its ancient history. This is but the most recent of their various re-births, which have long been symbolised by the phoenix on Magog's shield, representing return after fire. Today, the words of Thomas Boreman in his "Gigantick History" of 1741 are as appropriate as ever. He declared that "Corineus and Gogmagog were two brave giants who richly valued their honour and exerted their whole strength and force in the defence of their liberty and country; so the City of London, by placing these, their representatives in their Guildhall, emblematically declare, that they will, like mighty giants defend the honour of their country and liberties of this their City; which excels all others, as much as those huge giants exceed in stature the common bulk of mankind."