Tuesday, March 7

My nicknames

So over the years I have had a few nicknames, some have stuck longer than others. But here is a quick run down on the main two names that have stuck. Enjoy :)
"Ra"Ra was regarded as the creator of everything, the god of the sun. Ra is usually represented with the body of a man and the head of a hawk, holding an ankh & sceptre. The chief location of Ra worship was Heliopolis (a Greek word meaning city of the sun).

"Ra-Ra-Rasputin"

Grigory Rasputin (1872-1916), Siberian peasant and self-proclaimed holy man, whose friendship with Russia’s last emperor and empress wrecked the Romanov dynasty’s prestige and contributed to the coming of the Russian Revolutions of 1917.

Born in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye, Rasputin attended school but remained only semiliterate. He married, probably in 1889, and had four children. He left home in 1901 to become a pilgrim and soon became known both for his alleged healing powers and for his scandalous sexual exploits. In 1903 Rasputin arrived in Saint Petersburg, where he owed his entry into high society to the fad for spiritualism, exoticism, and popular religion fashionable in some circles at that time. Although he was unordained, Rasputin enjoyed the favor of some prominent leaders in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Rasputin first met Russian emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra in the autumn of 1905, when Russia was in the midst of an uprising against the monarchy. The imperial family was also shaken by the discovery that Alexis, the heir to the throne, had hemophilia. Rasputin seemed to embody the simple peasant faith in the monarchy that Nicholas saw as the chief support for his dynasty and the main justification of his role as autocrat and protector of his people. Above all, Rasputin seemed uniquely able to alleviate the incurable illness of Alexis, on occasion intervening successfully to end dangerous attacks of bleeding. This won him the passionate support of the worried empress.

Between 1906 and 1914, Rasputin’s association with the imperial family was used against the regime by politicians and journalists who wished to undermine the dynasty’s credibility, force the emperor to give up absolute political power, and assert the independence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the state. Rasputin helped the propaganda by boasting about his influence on the imperial couple, by his debauched lifestyle, and by a number of public disputes with church figures. Even within the church, however, his role was a limited one. In government it was minimal.

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