The guide to finance in antiquity, whom I has been chosen for me by a reader, tramp circumstance, and a garden, is David Astle. I seek no knowledge of this man. His work is excellent and should not be poisoned by refracted judgments as to whether I would wish him for a roommate, which is the level of discourse we now occupy in this sunken world, a world he predicted, “..an end wherein shall be silence and no song, for indeed there will be no singer, nor any to sing to…” [0]
David’s self-published book was sent to me in early 2018 with a kind handwritten letter by a reader who has been adamant over the decade of our correspondence, that he remain uncredited, even under an alias.
As I was weeding the yard of the home where this book has come to rest, having been plagued by Hesiod, Arrian and Tacitus echoing in my mind that “history” is a mask, I was fighting a battle against various vines taking over portions of an ill-tended bed. Musing upon the “extirpation” metaphor employed by Increase Mather in his book on The Indian Warr, in which entire families were wiped out “root and branch,” the father understood as the root and the children his patrimony branches, I was wondering as to why it is that the vast majority of our sharpest thinkers miss the point of inquiry in their civic religious belief that there can be no conspiracy, that all is shown and known plainly for what it is, and the work of the historian is nothing more than arranging these known facts in chronological order. I was pulling up all weeds by the root, knowing that cutting them back simply hardened them. I then dug into the ground with a spade following a thistle root to see how deep it went and noticed that, like morning glory plants, mushrooms and aspen tree clones, that the various ivy on the surface was merely an expression of that which did abide underneath. The visible leaves were merely intake ports for light, the vines the logistical networks. The leaf [actor] and vine [visible collective network] served, and were survived in seasonal dearth, by the more intricate roots [invisible collective network], energized by its visible constituents above with each May. At this very time I was considering the fate of 1770s diarist John Harrower, a fellow late come gardener, who disappeared from history while “hunting money” by way of the clothing trade, in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Might Glubb’s roughly 225 year imperial cycle merely mark the life cycle of the visible agents of an invisible and continuous life power?
To lay out the READ [not red] carpet for David Astle, let focus on quotes from his wordy, sometimes ponderous and often brilliant work. These quotes are taken from the front matter of his dart cast into the eye of Leviathan, a dart cast backstage, his sonata never permitted before the general audience upon which Her Majesty feasts.
…
Front leaf, parchment, signed in thin black marker, the letters all upright, tall and tight, with the tail of the A extending downward to separate the 1 and the 5 in the date, according to the author’s hand, the p in the date below extending straight below, the final 7 in the date bowed and backward curving down and away:
David Astle
Sept. 15th. 1977.
…
Inside Leaf, on white acidic paper showing age at the margins:
The Babylonian Woe
“By using a mirror of brass, you may see to adjust your cap; by using ancient times as a mirror you may learn to foresee the rise and fall of empires…”
Emperor T’ai Tsung
627 A.D. -650 A.D.
…
Back of Inner Leaf:
“The intellectual facilities however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of physical force, THE DIRECTION AND COMBINATION OF WHICH ARE WHOLLY AT THE DISPOSAL OF MONEY, THAT MIGHTY SPRING BY WHICH THE TOTAL FORCE OF HUMAN ENERGIES IS SET IN MOTION.”
-Augustus Boekh; Translated; The Public Economy of Athens, P.7; Book I. London, 1828
Title Page:
The Babylonian Woe
A Study of the Origin of Certain Banking Practices, and of their effect on the events of Ancient History, written in the light of the Present Day.
By
David Astle
Published as A PRIVATE EDITION
Copyright Page:
[mostly omitted]
Copyright 1975 Toronto, Canada
Facing Copyright Page:
“Demoralized our men; small pride now left!
Two useless wars! With racial kith and kin,
In battle of our Gods were we then reft…
Yes! Those who steered the wasted years of strife
Brought to the true, in death the end.
Now few their ashes watch or tend…
“Who then is left to stay our natural rule?
And who shall say to weakness: ‘No more show!’
You sheathe your sword? None but a wishful fool
Thinks thus! One World for us who were One World?
Alas! Our Gods are gone forever! So
Who then shall fight the Babylonian Woe.”
…
PREFACE
“For money has been the ruin of many and has misled the minds of Kings.”
-Ecclesiasticus, 8, Verse 2.
vii
David’s basic object is to rectify the general academic lack of interest in ancient finance.
“...the workings of that mighty engine which injects the unit of exchange amongst the peoples, and without which no civilization as we know it can come to be, is only indicated by a profound silence.”
Astle does believe that a people under a benevolent rule could mint their own currency and aims to instruct us on how this has been mostly subverted from Antiquity down to this day, and how the process is one in the same by which we have continuously been separated financially, politically and ideologically from our blood, our traditions, our homelands, and through baiting our ambitions, binding us to a malevolent and unseen engine.
The frame is the early Iron Age, that age extolled by Ovid as the curse upon humanity. Just after the Bronze Age Collapse, in about 1000 B.C., iron weapons and tools brought an increase in slaves, “...so far as mining was concerned, assessed at cost per life,” which brought a flood of silver and gold, placing international financial power in the hands of shadowy soul drivers, with banking agents pre-positioned at the sacred heart of every nation, in its very temples, the power behind every throne.
The book is well sourced and amply footnoted.
“The gates of Egypt stand fast like Immutet…
They open not to the enemy who dwells within.”
“...those semi-secret societies that controlled the material of money as its outward and visible symbols… by the will of those classes controlling the undertones of civilization, leaders of the world of slave drivers, caravaneers, outcasts, and criminals generally… The instrument of this will was precious metal, whose supply was controlled by the leaders of these classes through their control of the slave trade, since mining was rarely profitable in the case of precious metals, except with slave labor, even after the development of hardened iron tools and efficient methods of smelting… they constituted [a] hidden force deeply inimical to the best interests of mankind… this internationally minded group, from the secrecy of their chambers, were able to make a mockery of the faith and belief of simple people… not however guiding mankind into the heaven that could have been and where all would be life, and light, and hope, but into such a hell as to escape from which men might gladly come to accept the idea of Mass Suicide…”
And we are here, with tens of millions of Americans feverishly embracing terminal addiction to lethal drugs. Yesterday, having set this chapter aside to meet a friend for lunch, after the packed #54 bus passed the Parkville intersection which serves 6 mental health clinic in two short blocks, I and but one masked man remained aboard, the souls of our latest mass suicide scattering to the legalized drug dens, so there death might yield its architects’ tax.
…
Notes
-0. I do make the case that our current social media world order has achieved these lines in full spirit, if not audio fact.
-1. David has made his own free hand maps for this volume, maps which please the eye.
-2. A command of ancient sources is evident, with proper reliance on the great minds of the 1800s, and the use of Soviet sources not then generally available to Americans, placing Astle well ahead of his American contemporaries.
