Disputed Statements

Yellow Beryl, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1970

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Yellow Beryl, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1990

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Yellow Sapphire, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1970

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Yellow Sapphire, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1990

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Yellow Topaz, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period Start Year

Currently States 1970

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Yellow Topaz, Gemstones

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Origin Period End Year

Currently States 1990

According To Modern crystal healing, from the 1970s

Wouter J. Hanegraaff's New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Brill, 1996) traces the specific modern crystal-healing framework, cleansing and charging stones, programming them with intention, correspondence to the chakras, crystal grids, and the accompanying Atlantean and Lemurian origin story, through its twentieth-century New Age sources, and shows the vocabulary and practices appearing and developing within that documented literature rather than being continuous with antiquity. Hanegraaff does not dispute that stones were worn, carved and credited with virtues in ancient societies, a separate and much older practice attested archaeologically, but the specific modern framework's own textual history is what this property records as recent. That the ancient-provenance claim is false is a historical finding about when the current framework appeared, not a judgement on the practice's legitimacy.

Source New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Wouter J. Hanegraaff tier 1

Zeitgeist: The Movie (2007), Screen Works

Standing Popular myth - corrected

Concerns Scholarly Reception

Currently States Rejected by mainstream biblical scholarship; Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist? (2012) reviews the specific Horus, Mithras and Krishna parallels the film popularizes and finds no ancient source supporting any of them. This atlas's own entries on Massey, Murdock and each named deity carry the point-by-point refutation.

Source Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Bart D. Ehrman tier 1

1860 Mount Lebanon and Damascus Massacres, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 12000.000000

The modern scholarly synthesis: Fawaz's archival study puts Mount Lebanon deaths, overwhelmingly Christian with Druze losses far fewer, at roughly seven thousand to eleven thousand; Rogan's more recent Damascus-focused archival reconstruction puts Damascus deaths at roughly five thousand, revising down older claims he does not credit. Combined, this reading gives a low estimate near twelve thousand.

Source An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Leila Tarazi Fawaz tier 1

1860 Mount Lebanon and Damascus Massacres, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 16000.000000

The upper end of the modern scholarly range, combining Fawaz's higher Mount Lebanon estimate with Rogan's Damascus figure; well below contemporary Western press and missionary claims of the time, some reaching twenty thousand to twenty five thousand for Damascus alone, which Rogan's archival work finds substantially inflated and neither historian relied on here credits.

Source An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860, Leila Tarazi Fawaz tier 1

19, Numbers

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Meaning in the Attesting Source

Currently States Surah Al-Muddaththir names nineteen as the number of angels set over Hell, the one place the Quran states a specific number of this kind about itself. That plain textual fact is not in dispute. What is disputed is a modern claim, advanced from the 1970s by Rashad Khalifa, that nineteen also structures the Quran's letter and word counts as a deliberate mathematical signature. Most Sunni and Shia scholars and most academic scholars of the Quran reject or regard the claim as unproven and its author, who declared himself a prophet on the strength of it, as having left mainstream Islam; a minority movement holds it as central doctrine.

According To Islam (Quranic numerical structure, Surah Al-Muddaththir)

Source The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, Seyyed Hossein Nasr (editor-in-chief) tier 1

1969 Ahmedabad Riots, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 660.000000

The Reddy Commission of Inquiry's official report recorded more than six hundred and sixty dead, the only figure produced by a body with legal power to take evidence; the commission's own report notes this as an undercount, since many bodies were never retrieved or the deaths never formally reported to police.

Source Report of the Justice Jaganmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry into the 1969 Ahmedabad Disturbances, Justice P. Jaganmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry tier 2

1969 Ahmedabad Riots, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 2000.000000

Kumar's study and other historians' work reads the real toll as likely reaching one to two thousand, with some unofficial contemporary reports claiming as high as two thousand; Kumar records the large majority of the dead, and of destroyed property, as Muslim, consistent with the Reddy Commission's own finding that the violence was directed disproportionately against the city's Muslim minority.

Source Communalism and Sexual Violence in India: The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Conflict, Megha Kumar tier 1

2002 Gujarat Violence, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Minimum

Currently States 1044.000000

The Gujarat state government's own official figure, one thousand forty four dead, of whom seven hundred ninety were Muslim and two hundred fifty four Hindu, with two hundred twenty three more reported missing. Human rights investigators and later scholarship, Nussbaum among them, treat this official count as an undercount.

Source The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, Martha C. Nussbaum tier 1

2002 Gujarat Violence, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Death Toll Maximum

Currently States 1926.000000

The independent Concerned Citizens Tribunal, convened by retired judges and civil society figures to investigate the violence outside government channels, estimated as many as one thousand nine hundred twenty six deaths, and some later accounts round this toward two thousand; the overwhelming majority of victims under any count were Muslim.

Source The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future, Martha C. Nussbaum tier 1

2002 Gujarat Violence, Wars & Conflicts

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Perpetrator Regime

Currently States Mobs organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, its youth wing the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh carried out organized attacks including the Naroda Patiya massacre. Human Rights Watch documented Gujarat state officials directing or shielding the violence; a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team investigated the state government's role, and its finding of no prosecutable evidence against then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2022, a conclusion human rights groups continue to dispute.

Source Gujarat Riots: Summary of the Supreme Court Judgment Dismissing Zakia Jafri's Plea to Probe a Larger Conspiracy (LiveLaw) tier 2

A, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Chaldean Letter Value

Currently States 1

According To Modern planetary numerology, the scheme called Chaldean

The values recorded here follow Cheiro's Book of Numbers (Cheiro, the pen name of William John Warner, published by Herbert Jenkins, London, 1926), the most widely reproduced version of the so-called Chaldean numerology table. Cheiro's own text names no ancient Chaldean source for the letter values it assigns, and comparing it against other published numerology tables from the same and later periods finds no agreement between them on several letters; no Mesopotamian or Chaldean text has ever been produced that contains a comparable letter-number correspondence. That comparison is why historians of the modern occult treat "Chaldean" as a nineteenth and twentieth century marketing label rather than a checkable lineage claim. The value recorded here is Cheiro's published reading, not a settled fact.

Source Cheiro's Book of Numbers, Cheiro (William John Warner) tier 3

A closed community forbidding conversion and intermarriage, Beliefs & Restrictions

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Status Within the Tradition

Currently States Genuinely disputed within the tradition

According To Zoroastrianism

The bar on conversion and intermarriage is disputed across the diaspora rather than settled. Iranian and North American Zoroastrian bodies have accepted converts and the children of mixed marriages; the Parsi authorities in India have resisted both, and the question has been litigated in the Indian courts.

Source The Zoroastrian Diaspora: Religion and Migration, John R. Hinnells tier 1

Aaron, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Historicity

Currently States Historicity debated

Lester L. Grabbe's Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (2007) finds no source outside the Torah attests Aaron, and that the genealogy making him ancestor of the Aaronide priesthood, examined against the Torah's own priestly source material, is itself part of what is in question rather than independent confirmation of his existence.

Source Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, Lester L. Grabbe tier 1

Ab ࡁ, Alphabet Letters

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns A Rival System's Attribution

Currently States The script's ancestry is assigned either to a cursive form of Aramaic, the derivation favored by most script historians, or to the Parthian chancery script used in Sasanian era administrative documents.

According To The Mandaic script

Both derivations are held in the literature and neither has displaced the other. The Aramaic cursive camp points to the letterforms' overall resemblance to other late Aramaic cursive scripts of the region, including Nabataean and Syriac; the Parthian chancery camp points to specific letterforms, including certain medial and final forms, that resemble Pahlavi documentary hands more closely than any Aramaic cursive exemplar. No single find has settled the question, and Mandaic paleography treats it as open pending further comparative work.

Source Iranian Scripts for Aramaic Languages: The Origin of the Mandaic Script, Charles G. Haberl tier 1

Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Figures

Standing Scholarly debate

Concerns Lifespan or Floruit Start Year

Currently States 1077

The source marks this year circa, its own approximate estimate rather than a fixed date.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.) tier 1