Kenneth Atchity > Quotes

“If you have a dream, you have a responsibility to yourself and to us to make it come true. That’s the most important thing in your life. Don’t let anything stand in its way.”
― Kenneth John Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“the cross, from time immemorial, was universally symbolic of the intersection between earth and heaven, matter and spirit, the one and the many, human and divine.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“There’s no such thing in this world as absolute certainty. So accept that and go forward acting toward the best outcome no matter what.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“the Hall of Offerings. Isaac motioned to a wall relief covered in hieroglyphic writing. "Let me show you something I discovered recently," Isaac said. "This hieroglyphic register is a song to Augustus, King of Egypt, heralding him as 'Lord of the Dance,' meaning 'Lord of Life.' I will translate: "The King of Egypt "Pharaoh comes to dance "He comes to sing "See how he dances "See how he sings… "I remember Isaac looked at me to gauge my reaction. In truth I was spellbound. He went on to say, 'The song of Augustus eventually spread to Medieval England where a carol, called "Lord of the Dance," was sung at Christmas and is sung to this day.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“It's not the Virgin Mary," Emily said, "though it is a virgin mother. It's actually Bona Dea, the Roman goddess of fertility, healing, virginity — and of women in general. Her foot on the snake indicates her power over the phallus. She, in turn, was modeled after Isis holding Horus with the serpent of wisdom at her feet. Later Augustus allowed this antique goddess to be identified with the cult of his mother Maia, who was said to have lain with a serpent in the temple to be impregnated with the son of Apollo — and bore Augustus Caesar." She explained that the image of Bona Dea was found on many early Republican coins.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Aristotle said that the most characteristically human activity is planning your life, yet it’s amazing how few people take life planning seriously. Those who do are the productive people; those who don’t disappear under the surface without leaving a bubble behind to brighten the world. So strongly did the Greeks believe in planning that they literally planned their lives, dividing them into seven-year periods and deciding what they wanted to accomplish during each of those periods. It’s not time that’s scarce: It’s planning. The Italians say, “there’s more time than life,” suggesting that you’ll have plenty of time to do all you want to do if you take the time to plan.”
― Kenneth Atchity, Write Time: Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision—and Beyond

“It looked like a loaf of bread crossed at an angle with a fish. "Loaves and fishes? Like the miracle Jesus performed?" Ryan tried to understand. "Symbols of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture," Emily responded, "and Neptune, god of the sea — to signify that the most august emperor was the source of all sustenance, of life itself." "Couldn't the church fathers have come up with one thing that was truly original?" Emily laughed. "One thing I've learned: there's nothing original under the sun god. Really, someone should set the record straight about the early church fathers' plagiarism.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“the cave at Cumae — "the poppy fields north of Naples" — identified by Virgil as the domicile of the Sibyl, the pagan oracle who had predicted a host of momentous events in the history of Rome including the birth of the Son of the Great God, the long-awaited Messiah. Aeneas, in Virgil's epic, had convinced the Sibyl to lead him through her cave straight into the underworld; just as Dante, writing his Divine Comedy thirteen hundred years later, would enlist Virgil as his guide to the same region — that was the easy part. The hard part was finding the way back.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“though I fear I will be long consigned to the Purgatory reserved for doubters of the faith." She squeezed his hand. "It's not your faith in God that's failed you. It's your faith in the infallibility of the Holy Roman Catholic Church as an institution worthy of your unquestioned obedience." "One thing we agreed on," he admitted, his voice growing weaker, "was that organized religion was going to destroy us all.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“It almost looks like a halo of spikes," he said. "The sun crown isn't just a Christian symbol," Emily said. "In many cultures as far back as ancient Egyptian, and including Roman and Christian, crown of thorns and halo both derive from the tradition that identifies every newly-crowned king with the sun. The halo nimbus represents the rays of the rising sun. It's a sign that its wearer plays the life-giving role of the sun in his subjects' existence. The Greek sun god Apollo was driving his chariot across the heavens wearing the sun crown when Rome was just a huddle of huts.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“So, Augustus was Lord of Life? That means whenever that carol is sung, people are actually singing praises to Augustus!”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“It's the Greek letters chi and rho, found together on Constantine's military standard, the labarum." "I've seen the Chi-Rho above the main altar of nearly every Catholic church I've visited since I was a kid. But it represents the first two letters of 'Christ' — xristos in Greek." "You're right," Emily agreed. "But Xristos is an ancient word, meaning 'the anointed' or 'awaited' one; and it actually derives from Chronos, the god of Time. It goes back at least as far as Homer, who was said to have lived during the eighth century B.C.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Falsehood and error arise, not from our perceptions, but from the conclusions to which we jump about things which have not yet been established as true; in such cases further investigation may not confirm our first opinions, and may even disprove them. . . .”
― Kenneth J. Atchity, The Classical Greek Reader

“well knew Augustus' practice of recasting ancient religions to include his coming in their traditional prophetic literature. Egomania coupled with absolute power could indeed change the world — but not necessarily for the better. Why doesn't he just write the cursed thing himself? Virgil fumed — silently.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“the verses were written no later than 39 B.C. and even as early as 42 B.C. — decades before the alleged birth of the biblical Jesus. The early church fathers wanted their followers to believe that the Prince of Peace the Roman poet referred to was Jesus of Nazareth, so the Middle Ages honored the poet as "St. Virgil," a lay prophet who had foreseen the coming of Christ.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“And when my priests and I have finished redacting the prophetic sibylline books, I shall order all of them destroyed except the re-authorized four scrolls that will be gilded and installed in the annex of the new temple I will build for Apollo in the Forum. Please, if you don't mind, insert into the story the oracle that wrote the books, the Cumaean Sibyl — as prominently as possible. Make her somehow the authorized gate to ultimate knowledge or her cave the transition by which the hero experiences the underworld.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“The word logos itself is a prime example, beginning its history as a word charged with religious power, and referring to the word of wisdom and truth. By the time of Aristotle, logos had lost its philosophical connotations and had come to mean the "study of" something: biology, the study of life; zoology, the study of animal forms; and theology, the study of God.”
― Kenneth J. Atchity, The Classical Greek Reader

“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given, And the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His Name shall be called: Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. —Isaiah 9:6”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“The greatest success I could hope to achieve wasn't necessarily to succeed in the eyes of the world, but to gain an understanding of the battle going on within me and master its forces, rather than allowing them to master me.”
― Kenneth Atchity, How to Escape Lifetime Security and Pursue Your Impossible Dream: A Guide to Transforming Your Career

“The creative spark in Augustus' eyes warned Virgil that the emperor was personally invested in these particular lines. Augustus Caesar would be the centerpiece, the awaited one, the anointed one, the savior of the world, the Messiah, the reborn Apollo, god and son of god, whose destiny it was to bring the Roman world through blood and sweat and tears to its fated greatness. His poem would make the emperor eternal.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Augustus burning all the books attributed by ages past to the Sibyl–except the ones he ordered redacted to suit his image as the Awaited One, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father, and Initiator of the Age of Gold. At the Pontifical Institute”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Discipline, not the Muse, results in productivity. If you write only when she beckons, your writing is not yours at all.”
― Kenneth Atchity, A Writer's Time: Making the Time to Write

“the verses of the Eclogue actually referred to Augustus. Virgil was clearly writing a disguised political commercial. Virgil composed Rome's great epic, The Aeneid, between 29 and 19 B.C. In the epic's vision of the future of Rome, Aeneas's guide, the Sibyl, tells him of: Augustus, promis'd oft, and long foretold, that Saturn rul'd of old; Born to restore a better age of gold. She continued, "Other verses in The Aeneid substantiate the identity of the long-expected virgin-born Messiah that Virgil referred to covertly in the Eclogue: 'Augustus Caesar… brings a Golden Age; he shall restore old Saturn's scepter to our Latin land.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“How could it be that Theophilus, one of the earliest Christian apologists, wrote nearly 30,000 words about Christianity without once mentioning Jesus Christ? How come the name "Jesus Christ," in fact, doesn't appear in any Greek or Latin author until after the Council of Nicaea? Why was it that the only near-contemporary account that mentioned Christ, a suspiciously precise paragraph known as the Testimonium Flavianum, in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, had been proved to be a patent insertion into that historical narrative? How could Jesus have been born in 1 A.D. when the Gospels say he was born before Herod the Great died — and King Herod's death could be pinpointed to 4 B.C.? Even Philip Cardinal Vasta, now known to the world as Pope Pius XIII, had lamented that the greatest obstacle for spreading the Catholic faith today was that the historical existence of Jesus could no longer be made credible.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“You in big trouble w’en you have ta apologize foh bein’ yo’self.”
― Kenneth Atchity, Cajun Household Wisdom

“divinity lies not in heavenly or earthly gods but in the immortal god within each one of us.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Augustus actually had his poets and scribes rewrite his mythic biography to fit his own agenda that included changing calendar years in order to substantiate his divinity." His face crinkled into a smile. "I'm not completely certain what my findings add up to yet. I can tell you I've found convincing evidence that there's a fundamental identification between Octavius Caesar Augustus and Christianity as we call it today. I've studied comparative religions all my life, but only recently come to the conclusion that the Emperor Augustus was a comparatist extraordinaire, albeit a thoroughly pragmatic one. He was a master of turning the common themes in the religions of the cultures he conquered to the service of his empire, and of his personal reputation. He based his own spiritual practices on the moral principles he encountered in all religions,”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“the grand Cross of Lothair, an ornate tenth-century golden cross richly encrusted with jewels and still being used to lead sacred processions like the one he had attended. But the strange thing was that a magnificent cameo of the Emperor Augustus with a crown and holding the royal Roman eagle scepter, reportedly carved during the time of Christ, graced the center of this holy cross. When he asked his Jesuit superior about the riddle of a Roman emperor honored in this way, the response had shocked and confused him. "The cameo of Augustus on the cross was without doubt meant to indicate that the emperor was the earthly representative of the almighty power of God.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix

“Isaac was seeking was the coin that I discovered two weeks ago. He was convinced historical references to it would be proved accurate by an archaeologist getting lucky someday, and—" "—And that archaeologist turned out to be you," Ryan interjected. "I have reason to believe that Monsignor Isaac thought his research was of vital importance for the origins of Christianity, and as a result there were some dangerous implications for the institutional Church and its headquarters at the Vatican." Ryan's tone was somber.”
― Kenneth Atchity, The Messiah Matrix