An Obsession For Beauty ... and Blood

Time for some history. Personally, I’m not a fan of this subject. But this particular story got me hooked. Enjoy!

A woman named Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) believed that beauty was very important. She would do anything, even cruel things, as long as her actions could make her beauty imperishable. 

As the daughter of the most famous and rich royal family in Hungary at that time, Bathory needed to always look beautiful and charming. However, when she turned 40 years old, Bathory realized her beauty starting to fade. Her skin showed signs of aging resembling wrinkles and black spots.

These changes are very common for woman her age. But, to Bathory, she couldn’t accept that. In her perspective, her beauty had to remain in any way that could be done.

One day, a housemaid accidentally pulled Bathory’s hair while brushing. This made her very angry and slapped the poor housemaid in the face. Blood came out of the chaste virgin’s nose and a few drops fell into Bathory’s hands.

Oddly, as bathory saw the virgin’s blood, it was as if she was possessed and she started believing that the blood emitted a light of ‘youth’. She instantly ordered to of her workers to tie the girl’s hands above a bath tub and slit her wrists.

After the bath tub was full of the virgin’s blood, Bathory immediately went in and bathed in the in it. From that very day, she was sure that the secret of youth that she had been looking for was discovered, a virgin’s blood would make her young eternally.

As a result of that particular belief, all the girls that worked for her were murdered. As if that was not enough, she also invited girls to work in her palace and they were turned into victims as the girls before.

Not satisfies with only bathing with blood, she also drank the victim’s blood, in her perspective it was for inner beauty. Soon, Bathory felt that the quality of the village girls were very low, she started targeting on noble girls.

The disappearances of these girls soon began to spread and captured the attention of many noblemen and family of the royal. An investigation was done upon these disappearances and soon was lead to Bathory as a suspect.

On the 30^th of December 1610, King Mathias directed an invasion into Bathory’s place. They were instantly stunned in the view of the horrifying situation in that palace. A pale faced girl was lying on a dining table. Whilst another girl was still alive but her wrists had been slit and her body was tied to a pillar in the bathroom. Dozens of other victims were also found in other rooms in the palace, waiting for their turns to be murdered.

A further investigation was made in the basements. Over 50 bodies were discovered. Many were already starting to rot. Given this evidence, Bathory and four of her workers were arrested. They were sentenced to death except for Bathory. Because of her royal status, she had immunity to the law. Instead, she was punished jail in her own room for the rest of her life.

Slaves were commanded to close all the doors and windows in Bathory’s room with walls. What was left was only a small hole to put through food and drinks every day. However, this case wasn’t closed just yet. The police were still investigating and gathering over 300 witnesses including palace guards and saved victims from 1610 until 1611.

According to all witnesses, normally Bathory would kill her servants with beating, burning, letting them starve, slitting wrists, biting the face, arm, and other parts of the body. The most shocking thing was, in Bathory’s 32 paged diary that is now keeped in the Hungary national archives in Budapest, at least more than 650 girls have been a victim, of her obsession for beauty.

The amount of these victims had angered many citizens. These inhumane actions have brought up many questions about why the woman would do such a brutal thing. If the reason was just to maintain her attractiveness, this belief was very muddled and a waste of time.

Could it be that her actions were effected by a devil or could she be mentally disordered? In the end, many people believed this widow whose husband passed away in the age of 20 was disturbed or crazy. 

In the year 1614, exactly 4 years after Bathory had been imprisoned, she was eventually found dead in her locked room with her face to the ground. However, even after her death, this mysterious women was still remembered as the “Blood Queen. Her habits of drinking blood even gave her the nickname “Vampire”. In these modern days, Bathory is still labeled as the most cruel serial killer in the history of mankind.  

(KP)

Ahhh.. If only History could always be this interesting, maybe I could actually get more than a C. Still, I personally Think Bathory was possessed. What do you think?

Water: A Living Thing?

I found out about this discovery on the newspaper a few days ago. Many of you maybe have already heard about it. Just out of curiosity, I tried to find out about it as much as I could. This is just an amateur article about Dr. Emoto’s discovery.

All this time we see water as the main source of life on this planet. But, a research that was resolved by a scientist at the Yokohama University, Japan, Dr. Masaru Emoto surprised the world when he claimed to find water to be alive and have a memory of it’s own.

In the year 2005, Dr. Emoto started thinking about water, and whether it was just a plain liquid with no smell, no color, no flavor, and no specialty at all like other living things. Just out of curiosity, he was determined to start a research about water and its behavior.

The process of this research was very affordable and simple. First, Dr Emoto took a sample of water from various locations and placed them into 100 testing equipments. These samples were frozen at a temperature of -25ºC. After 3 hours, the samples were taken out and put under a microscope complete with a camera at the temperature of -5ºC. As soon as the top fraction of the sample started dissolving, he was surprised to see that the water was able to respond and change according to the words he said.

As Dr Emoto says, if we say something like “love and thankyou”, the photo result was the water molecules arranged to shape a hexagon crystal or pentagon, beautifully shaped and shining like a diamond. What was found to be more peculiar was that if a word like “stupid” was said, the water molecules would change to an odd, ugly and even frightening shape.

Strange, how could this occur? Dr. Emoto explained that the changes occurred because of the behavior of the water that can record a message or it could be thought of as a tape recorder. He said, the higher the level of concentration of the message provider, the clearer the message can be “pictured” in the water.

Can this research explain why a glass of plain water read prayers to can heal various diseases? Dr Emoto in his book titled The Hidden Message in Water, believes that the nature of water, supposed as tape recorder will capture a positive energy from the prayers. The prayers are saved in the water molecule and will enter the patient’s body.

Dr. Emoto’s water research didn’t only use words but also music. When classic music was turned on, again Dr. Emoto was fascinated by the result. The water molecule suddenly changed into a crystal shape almost like a flower. But a different thing occurred with hard metal music, the flower-shaped molecules spoiled and shaped a less interesting crystal shape. This phenomenon was clearly the same as the changes of molecules following words.

 

The question is, how far is the authenticity behind this fascinating research? A lot  of people are curious in the scientific truth about this subject. One of them is Kristopher Setchfield from the Natural Science Department, Castleton College, AS. He came out to research more about Dr. Emoto’s theory.

However, according to his results, Setchfield stated that Dr. Emoto may have made a mistake in his previous research. In his opinion, it is nearly impossible for water to actually have a memory, as water does not have a brain like humans. So how could the liquid remember, or respond to the mind, words, and the feelings of human.   

There is a possibility that Dr. Emoto’s discovery was affected by the cameraman’s breath as he was taking the pictures. If this is true, it could have caused an increase in the heating of the frozen sample and the temperature of the molecule crystal transformation, thus effected the structure of the water molecule produced.

Setchfield also questioned the test that Dr. Emoto performed, the cameraman took many pictures out of 100 samples. But, only one image was shown to the world. What happened to the other photos that were not shown to public? Is Dr. Emoto trying to hide the pictures of his failed experiments? Only Dr. Emoto knows the truth.

Despite these facts, many believe that it is not fair if Dr. Emoto’s discovery is 100% rejected. Maybe his discovery is just nearly impossible to be scientifically proved.

Nevertheless, it should be known that in the crystal theory itself has never proved that water has a memory, let alone react to the mind, words, and the feelings of human.

Scientifically, water is just an atom structure, a molecule combined by two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. The crystal itself is shaped according to the atoms in the water. The crystal created has no connection to the memory that Dr. Emoto explained.

Yet, there a few possibilities why Dr. Emoto stated that water could change and respond. One of them is the temperature changes and environment. Besides those possibilities, the discovery is very difficult to be verified according to the scientific base.

(KP, various sources)

Wouldn’t it be great if it was true, though? Just saying :D Thanks for reading

Love, Kiky.