FROM WHERE I’M SITTING: Sacred Mountains and Earthquakes

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It is inevitable that, having been a magistrate for so many years, this blog will contain a fair bit of comment on legal matters, including those cases which came before me in court. However, it is not restricted to such and may at times stray ‘off-topic’ and into whatever area interests me at the time.

All comments are moderated but sensible and relevant ones, even critical ones, are welcome; trolling and abuse is not and will be blocked.

Any actual case that was once involved in, and upon which I may comment, will be altered in such a way as to make it completely unidentifiable.

While it might well not be the done thing in Malaysia to get your kit off on a mountain top but do the good people of Malaysia really believe that doing so causes earthquakes?

About the scales:

The scales, as a symbol of justice, date to at least 2500 BC and can be found in Egyptian Old Kingdom pyramid texts which describe Maat, who was both a goddess and the personification of truth and justice, weighing the hearts of the dead against her ostrich feather, representing truth, to determine whether the souls (considered to reside in the heart) would reach the paradise of the afterlife successfully.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (1375 B.C.), shows the weighing of the heart against the feather of truth with Anubis, the jackal-headed god, performing the measurement that determined the worthiness of the deceased to enter the realm of the dead.

The figure of Lady Justice, herself an amalgam of various Greek and Roman deities and found atop the Old Bailey and numerous other court houses, is usually shown holding in her right hand the sword of retribution and in her left the scales, to represent the balance of arguments for and against.

FROM WHERE I’M SITTING

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Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Sacred Mountains and Earthquakes

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