We watch mesmerised as the robotic arm beavers away, the drill bit on the end painstakingly incising the precise lineaments of a 1,800-year-old monument that was blown up last October.Meanwhile, Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz in Breaking Israel News breathlessly reports Temple of Ba’al Replica Arrives in London Just in Time for Ancient Pagan Festival. It seems that the reconstructed arch will be on display in London at a time coinciding with the beginning of an occult festival (one I've never heard of) whose end culminates with May Day/Walpurgistnacht/Beltane. In my view, that's a pretty tenuous connection. I don't doubt that any day of the year could be traced back to some such occult connection with a little effort. This is what I call the Illuminatus fallacy: anything can be connected to anything else if you keep the parameters flexible and allow a few steps in between. Sometimes 19 April is just 19 April.
The monument in question is the Arch of Triumph of Palmyra, destroyed by Isil forces as they spread across Syria in the summer of 2015.
For the past two months, in a mountain workshop right next to where Michelangelo quarried a block of finest-quality white marble for his David, a new arch has been rising, and the week after next, in a culminating flight of fancy, it will touch down in Trafalgar Square.
In any case, Mr. Berkowitz, as well as Michael Snyder of Charisma News (see here), will presumably be somewhat relieved to hear (as above) that it is the Arch of Triumph that is being reconstructed, not the entrance of the Temple of Bel. That should make for a less "eerie coincidence" and a less threatening portal.
Cross-file under Palmyra Watch. More on the reconstructed Arch is here and links. Additional background on the long, sad story of Palmyra, one that I hope is now moving to happier times, is here and here and links.
