This notion that out of death
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Comes life
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Becomes a very important theme
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In the later
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Religions of the world
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«He who loses his life»
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«Shall find it»
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Is a spiritualization
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Of this idea
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Then
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When the
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First cities appear
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In Mesopotamia
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About 3000 B. C
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Large communities grow up
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Based on agriculture
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Planting has to take place at a certain time
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Reaping, a certain time
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And there are professional priests watching the heavens
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To know when those times were
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When those times came
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And those men became aware
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Of the movement of the planets
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Through the fixed stars
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And they calculated and recognized that these planets were moving in
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mathematically inevitable courses
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And the idea came into being
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Men became aware
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Of the movement of the planets
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Through the fixed stars
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Of a cosmic order
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Of mathematical
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Precision
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Men became aware
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Of the movement of the planets
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Through the fixed stars
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The neighbors now
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Were the stars
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And the planets
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On and on
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As the day comes and goes
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The year comes and goes
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The eons come and go
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And the whole society must go into accord
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With that
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This idea that the human society should reproduce the heavenly order comes in
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The neighbors now
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Were the stars
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And this
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Still lives with us
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In our religions
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All of our religions have inherited
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This motive
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From the old Babylonian world
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It went out with the higher civilizations
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To India
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To China
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Even across the Pacific
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To Mexico and Peru
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And you see these great towers, these great temple towers
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That represent
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The mountain of the world
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It’s the axis of the world around which the world turns
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As it does around the pole star
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The whole world
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And society
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And the individual in it
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Are like the planets
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Moving
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In a great course
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And society
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And the individual in it
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Are like the planets
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Moving
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In a great course
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Men became aware
|
Of the movement of the planets
|
Through the fixed stars
|
Of a cosmic order
|
Of mathematical
|
Precision
|
Men became aware
|
Of the movement of the planets
|
Through the fixed stars
|
The neighbors now
|
Were the stars
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And the planets
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Now in the 1920s
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Sir Leonard Woolley, excavating in the graveyards of Ur
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Found graves
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In which there were thirty
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And forty people buried
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All of them in court
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Attire
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Who had been buried
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Alive
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When the King
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Died
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Or was killed
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At a certain time
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In the movement of the planets
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When the Moon goes down
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And the planet Venus along with the Moon
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That was the end of an eon
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The King and his entire court
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Walked
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Into
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The grave
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They were playing
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A game
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Just as the hunters
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Were imitating animals
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Just as the planting people were imitating plants
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So the high civilizations began
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With princely
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Aristocratic
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Little groups
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Imitating the stars
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To the death
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Going all the way
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The whole court, at the end of an eon
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Went in the grave
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So that another court
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Could come
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Men became aware
|
Of the movement of the planets
|
Through the fixed stars
|
Of a cosmic order
|
Of mathematical
|
Precision
|
Men became aware
|
Of the movement of the planets
|
Through the fixed stars
|
The neighbors now
|
Were the stars
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And it’s a very poetic thing really
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The little girls who played the harps
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We have these harps
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They have been excavated and restored
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These little skeleton hands
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The girls' hands, were still on the harp strings
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The women
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In one of the graves had
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Golden hair ribbons
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One girl didn’t have
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Her golden hair ribbon on
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It was found
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In her pocket
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She had been late for the party
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And hadn’t had time to put her ribbon on
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Well now, we don’t do that anymore
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That kind of action
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Has fallen
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Into desuetude
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Nevertheless
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The king still wears the golden crown of the sun
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The sense has gone yet the poetry somehow
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Echoes |