Was the �Good Lord� on Ormus?
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Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
The white powder of gold may account for those “miracles”
In The Jesus Papers series of sixty-four articles, we spoke at length about a reclusive Jewish sect known as the Essenes. The Essenes, among whom numbered Jesus and John the Baptist, had set themselves apart from the mainstream Jewish community to establish their own settlement in the Judean wilderness. The settlement was known as Qumran and it overlooked the Dead Sea.
Now, conventionally speaking, the Dead Sea is indeed dead. It has one of the saltiest waters on Earth and therefore no plant thrives in it and no fish flourishes in there. Its salinity is such that nothing sinks in it: everything floats, including swimmers. Moreover, the area around the Dead Sea is one of the most arid on the planet, with annual rainfall averaging only 100 mm in the north, where the Essenes were based.
That is not conducive to agricultural activities at all. Nor does sea water support irrigated agriculture. So why did the Essenes settle in such an existentially incongruous environment? Why didn’t they opt for the banks of the more amenable Jordan River?
The answer is a simple one although it has escaped our mainstream historians. It all had to do with Ormus, a substance in which the Dead Sea was and still is very rich. Dead Sea precipitate has been assessed to contain about 70 percent gold in a monoatomic state. In fact, most of the US-based companies who market Ormus make it plain that they extract their Ormus from Dead Sea salt. It turns out the Dead Sea is not actually dead but in fact bristles with life-giving Ormus.
The great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote of the Dead Sea’s remarkable healing properties. Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt (69-30 BC) was so smitten it was rumoured she prevailed over her mighty husband Mark Anthony to invade the region so she could have limitless access to its health-promoting waters and mud.
Even today, a bucket of Dead Sea mud fetches about $100 a pop in some nearby bazaar. During his reign (67 BC to 4 AD), Herod the Great built arguably the world’s first health spa on the edge of the Dead Sea. Clearly, the sea had something that was not known to the common man and of course this was Ormus, the monoatomic white powder of gold.
How do we know the Essenes used Ormus? First, it is common knowledge that the Essenes were famed for their healing powers. Their very name Essenes – essenoi in Greek – apparently derives from the Aramaic term assaya, which means “physician”. The legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus says the Essenes, “received their medicinal knowledge of roots and stones (minerals such as gold) from the ancients”.
Ormus confers that by the truckload. Second, Josephus tells us that the Essenes were noted for their extraordinary lifespans. They could live up to 100 years at a juncture in history when the average lifespan was 45 years. Ormus enables more than ordinary lifespans as we have already demonstrated. In fact, a metallurgical foundry has been excavated at Qumran, which obviously was used to process Ormus from monoatomic gold obtained from the Dead Sea.
One of the most recurring terms in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a work of the Essenes, is “Teacher of Righteousness”. The term alternatively refers to a person or an object. When it refers to a person, the most apparent candidate is John the Baptist, who was the dynastic Melchizedek, meaning “Righteous Priest-King”.
The Melchizedek was the head of the Essenes although John declaimed the title, opting for a reclusive life in the Judean wilds. When it refers to an object, it is, according to David Hudson, who researched the Dead Scrolls, talking about Ormus. A statement in one scroll says, “The High Spirit swallowed the Teacher of Righteousness,” meaning he ingested Ormus.
DID JESU EMPLOY ORMUS?
In the course of The Jesus Papers, we underlined one particularly pertinent point. This was that the Jesus story had elements of fact, fable, allegory, and cryptogram. A little known fact about the Bible as a whole is that it has multiple layers. The Bible is written not so much in straightforward language as in coded language. Thus a statement or story that appears to mean one thing to the ordinary reader may carry a radically different or a simply additional underlying meaning to initiates to the code.
For example, the statements attributed to Jesus are pregnant with encrypted communication. Some of these statements were veiled references to Ormus. Firstly, Jesus called himself “The Bread of Life” (JOHN 6:35) and “The Water of life” (JOHN 4:14). Both these terms referred to Ormus. Intriguingly, Jesus did not endorse Ormus: to the contrary, he spoke against it. Listen to what he says in this passage: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
But here is the bread (he himself) that comes down from Heaven, which anyone may eat and not die” (JOHN 6:49-50). Jesus contrasts the Ormus (manna) the Israelites were fed on at Mount Sinai with the Ormus that he embodied as a man who came straight from Heaven (the Astral plane).
What Jesus was simply saying was that his teachings were much more spiritually illuminating and nourishing than the partaking of Ormus, that his teachings were superior to Ormus, which the Essenes called “The Teacher of Righteousness” as we saw above. In other words, Jesus was saying, “stop using Ormus for God’s sake and just listen to me. Whatever Ormus is capable of doing to you my teachings can do ten-fold.”
Why did Jesus denounce Ormus? Because it was man-made, whereas his Ormus, his teachings, came straight from “The Father”, that is, the First Source that created all things. But there are seeming contradictions. When Jesus sets out to teach his disciples how to pray, he recites to them the so-called Lord’s Prayer, which contains the Ormus statement “Give us this day our daily bread”. Of course we now know that the Lord’s Prayer was put into Jesus’s mouth either by the gospel writers or later redactors as it is taken word for word from Spell 125 of The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The irony of the matter though is that Jesus himself performed acts typically associated with a person who consumes Ormus. He would heal people by laying hands (LUKE 4:40) or simply speak healing from a distance (JOHN 4:43-54). Once he healed a deaf-mute (MARK 7:33) and a blind man (JOHN 9:6) using “spittle”, another term by which Ormus is known. After the resurrection, he could vanish and re-appear (LUKE 24:36/JOHN 20:26) out of the blue. He could levitate (LUKE 24: 50-51/ACTS 1:3).
He could walk on water (MATTHEW 14: 22-33). He could read minds (MATTHEW 9:4). He could remote-view (JOHN 1:48-50). He could sense evil thoughts (JOHN 13:27). He could shine like the noon day sun (MATTHEW 17:2/MARK 9:2–3/LUKE 9:28–36). He was able to go without food for 40 days and 40 nights ( HYPERLINK "http://biblehub.com/nasb/matthew/4.htm" MATTHEW 4:1-11/ HYPERLINK "http://biblehub.com/nasb/mark/1.htm" MARK 1:12, 13/ HYPERLINK "http://biblehub.com/nasb/luke/4.htm" LUKE 4:1-13).
He may not have actually done these things, but even if they were simply symbolic attributions or pure allegory, the underlying message in keeping with the Bible code points to what consuming Ormus can entail. The halo that we see around Jesus in renaissance paintings may in part underline his capacity to shine thanks to taking Ormus.
As for the contradiction (denouncing Ormus while at the same time evincing its very use), this is easy to explain: the gospels were written not by a homogeneous group but by people with often conflicting agendas. Thus whilst some writers would have loved to bring his use of Ormus to the fore, others chose to disinform about it.
THE PHARAOHS USED ORMUS
The past masters of alchemy – the art of transmuting gold or any of the ORME elements into Ormus – were ancient Egyptians. Ormus is cryptically mentioned in The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the world’s oldest book. In the book, it is referred to as, “What is it?” – the same phrase translated as manna in the Old Testament corpus.
The Pharaohs, priests, and alchemical adepts all fed on Ormus. Since Moses was born and brought up in Egypt as a royal aristocrat, he too became acquainted with Ormus. Israelite artisans and metallurgists such as Benzaleel, who constructed the Ark of the Covenant, honed the art of making Ormus whilst they were “slaves” (a scribal exaggeration) in Egypt.
In the same Book of the Dead, we encounter a passage that reads thus: “I am purified of all imperfections. What is it? I ascend like the golden hawk of Horus. What is it? I pass by the immortals without dying. What is it? I come before my Father in Heaven. What is it?”
This “question” continues ad infinitum. Although it may appear enigmatic at surface, all the utterer of the statement was spelling out were the wonders of ingesting Ormus – perfect health, clarity of thought and mind, ability to soar in the skies, virtual immortality, astral projection, etc.
Ancient Egyptians were aware that there were basically two aspects to the human body. First, there was the obvious – the physical body. Then there was the much subtler underlying body. This was the spirit body. They called this the Ka. The ancient Egyptians recognised that both the physical body and the Ka needed to be fed. Writes David Hudson: “In ancient Egypt, they said … you also have to feed the spirit body, you have to feed the Ka, so it can grow and become what it’s meant to be. And most of you are not feeding your Ka.
It is sitting there like a little runt inside your body. The texts say you must feed the Ka with the Semen of the Father in Heaven, the Milk of the Gods. And the Ka grows and grows, becoming ever more enlightened, until you reach a point where the light body exceeds the material body, you literally light up the room when you walk in.”
The “Semen of the Father in Heaven” and the “Milk of the Gods” were coded terms for Ormus. Ormus was believed to be not a physical matter but a spiritualised form of matter. It was the “Elixir of Immortality” or “Food of the Gods” – which, when ingested, would confer enormous spiritual power. As such, it was capable of teleporting one into another dimension.
Indeed when Pharaohs were staring death in the face, they did not die the way we do: they simply voluntarily left the world along with their physical bodies, which explains why most of their tombs are empty (these were the earliest pharaohs, not the latter ones). Ormus translated both their physical and spiritual bodies at once. The Egyptian Book of the Dead comprehensively traces the steps the Pharaoh took in his ascent to “Heaven” after physical death.
Enki’s son Marduk (also known as Ra) as god of Egypt made it a point to urge the pharaohs to stock up with gold, convert it to Ormus, and ingest it for the betterment of both their physical and spiritual health. In The Lost Book of Enki, we’re provided a glimpse into this injunction: “Gold is the Splendour of Life, to them he (Marduk) said. The Flesh of the Gods it is! to the kings Ra said. To make expeditions to the Abzu and the Lower Domain, gold to obtain, the kings he instructed.”
By “Flesh of the Gods” and “Splendour of Life”, what Marduk was saying was that gold in the form of Ormus was responsible for the consistently splendid health of the Anunnaki and for their extraordinary longevity, which Earthlings misconstrued for immortality. It was essential therefore that the Pharaohs go and personally obtain gold from southern Africa. It was because of confiding Anunnaki secrets to mankind that Marduk was so mortally hated by the Enlilites.
EDIN IDEAL LOCATION FOR ORMUS INGREDIENTS
In The Lost Book of Enki, the story-teller, Enki, commands his master scribe Endubasar (who documented Enki’s dictation) to “eat the bread and drink the water and be sustained for forty days and forty nights” (an echo of the Jesus stint in the wilderness) prior to the commencement of his script-writing labours. What kind of bread can keep a man going without conventional food for such a length of time? Of course it’s none other than Ormus.
That Ormus was central to Anunnaki wellbeing is very cleverly encoded right in the opening passages of Genesis. Talking about the Edin (Eden in the Bible), the Anunnaki’s first settlement on Earth in southern Iraq, GENESIS 2:12 reads: “And the gold of that land is good: there is also bdellium and the onyx stone.” There’s more than meets the eye to this statement folks: it specifies the three materials fundamental to the preparation of Ormus.
Bdelium is gum resin. The Egyptian word for gum resin is kmy.t, which originally meant “black earth”. Now, ancient alchemists used code language to denote the ingredients required to make Ormus as the process was classified by the alchemical adepts. One of the three primary ingredients was antimony ore (stibnite), which is black. Bdelium was therefore a code word for black antimony.
Onyx is a semi-precious stone that can assume a dark-red colour. As such, it signifies a red stone. Needless to say, Onyx was a code word for cinnabar, the dark red rock from which mercury is extracted. To make Ormus, gold was the primary ingredient. Mercury and antimony were the auxiliary elements. The fact that these three metals are mentioned together in the inceptual lines of Genesis is no mere chance.
It is also noteworthy that all the three metals were obtainable around the Edin. The Zagros Mountain range (which straddles Iran, Iraqi, and southeastern Turkey) and the river Pishon/Uizon (GENESIS 2:11) were prominent sources of gold in antiquity. (Today the river Uizon flows past a village in Turkey called Zarshuyan, which means ‘gold washing’, which is more than a tell-tale.) In ancient times, northwestern Iran provided a rich source of antimony and eastern Turkey abounded with cinnabar ores. It goes without saying that when the Anunnaki chose Iraq as their first settlement on Earth, they took due account of its strategic location – its proximity to sources of the principal ingredients for Ormus.
It is also significant that the description of the location of the Garden of Eden (GENESIS 2:10-14) follows immediately after the first mention of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge (GENESIS 2:9). Again this is not a coincidence. In the purview of multiple encoded meanings of biblical accounts, the Tree of Life was amongst other things symbolic of Ormus, the elixir of the Anunnaki “gods”.
The “Tree of Knowledge” was symbolic, amongst other things, of the theoretical and practical knowledge required to actually produce Ormus. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden lest they partake of the Tree of Life and “live forever” may therefore be emblematic of their being forbidden access to Ormus.
The Anunnaki God of Knowledge as we have already established was Enki. Enki was also the Anunnaki’s master alchemist. It was Enki who taught Adapa, his son with an Earthling woman, and Cain the art of alchemy. From that time, Adapa and his descendents became alchemical priests. For example, Tubal-Cain, who was several generations removed from Cain, is described in the Bible as a metallurgist specialising in copper and iron.
It is small wonder Enki was so abhorred by Enlil as he gave away the secrets of the gods to mankind. He was the Prometheus who stole fire (privileged knowledge) from Mount Olympus (the abode of the ruling god Jehovah-Enlil) and gave it to the Adamite race, his creation.
NEXT WEEK: HOW PURE WAS ADAM AS A HUMAN?
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GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
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“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
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RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.