Bhutan's Queen Mother on Elvis, Buddhism

Margherita Stancati (Wall Street Journal, online.wsj.com)

Bhutanese author and conservationist the Queen Mother, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, keeps a grip on the secluded nation's rich traditions while embracing the future.

Bhutan, the tiny, secluded Himalayan Buddhist country nestled between China and India, has long been known as the "Forbidden Kingdom."

First-time visitors could be forgiven for thinking that Bhutan's roughly 700,000 people, including its royals, were living in a time warp. After all, the Internet arrived here before television -- and that was in the late 1990s.

Men typically wear medieval-looking robes, known as gho, and women don a kira, the female equivalent. In their free time, the country's elite regularly gather for archery tournaments, Bhutan's national and widely practiced sport.

So outsiders would be justified to expect the members of its much-revered royal family to be as inaccessible as the country may appear. Meet Queen Mother Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, and you'll soon realize you couldn't be further from the truth.

True, Queen Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck is a real conservationist when it comes to her country's Himalayan culture and Buddhist heritage. But she is also well-traveled, a literary enthusiast and loves Elvis Presley.

Queen Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck is one of four sisters who married Jigme Singye Wangchuck, Bhutan's former king, who abdicated in favor of his eldest son a few years ago.

Today, the queen mother, a youthful 55-year old, embodies her country's efforts to reap the benefits of modernity while protecting its traditions.

Queen Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck, who was schooled in India's region of Darjeeling, is the patron of Thimphu's Mountain Echoes literary festival that brings together Indian and Bhutanese writers.

An accomplished author herself, in Treasures of the Thunder Dragon: A Portrait of Bhutan she retraces the country's recent history... More

Venus the Comet and its Serpent tail (video)

In ancient times, the planets themselves were the "gods" (Image: redicecreations.com)

“From the smallest particle to the largest galactic formation, a web of electrical circuitry connects and unifies all of nature, organizing galaxies, energizing stars, giving birth to planets, and on our own world, controlling weather and animating biological organisms. There are no isolated islands in an electric universe” (David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill, Thunderbolts of the Gods).

(Tbolts Interviews) The Thunderbolts Project's Wallace Thornhill (holoscience.com) is an Australian physicist. His work on The Electric Universe provides the broadest synthesis of electrical principles to date. It covers solar system history, planetary cratering and scarring, the electrical dynamics of the Sun, and the nature of galaxies. He is co-author of Thunderbolts of the Gods.

Multicultural Mythology Explained

RedIceCreations

The Vedas [India's ancient scriptures] said that the star Venus looks like fire with smoke. The star had a tail [a flying serpent], dark in the daytime and luminous at night. This luminous tail, which Venus had in earlier centuries, is mentioned in the Talmud: "Fire as hanging down from the planet Venus." Described by the Chaldeans, the planet Venus was said to have a beard. "Beard" is used in modern astronomy in the description of comets.

The Mexicans called a comet "a star that smoked." What was the illusion of the ancient Toltecs and Mayans? What was the phenomenon, and what was its cause? A train large enough to be visible from Earth and giving the impression of smoke and fire hung from the planet Venus.

Venus, with its glowing train, was a very brilliant body. Therefore, it is not strange that the Chaldeans described it as a "bright torch of heaven" that "illuminates like the Sun" [a second, lesser sun]. They compared it with the light of the rising Sun.

At present, the light of Venus is less than one millionth of the light of the Sun. "A stupendous prodigy in the sky," the Chaldeans called it. The Hebrews similarly described the planet: "The brilliant light of Venus blazes from one end of the cosmos to the other end." Chinese astronomical texts refer to a time in the past when "Venus was visible in full daylight and, while moving across the sky, rivaled the sun in brightness." More