Thursday, August 24, 2006

Confessions of an Economic Shapeshifter



They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within - Leonard Cohen


There's a school of liberal American thought - one that serves a gated community - that says John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is about as deep as it gets. If there is a conspiracy, so that mindset goes, then it goes this far: the cheating of nations of their inheritance by persuading their rulers to take on massive developments contracted to US industry, paid for by enormous loans, that in turn become the weapon of indebtedness to buy a government's allegiance. The story Perkins tells in Hit Man is that of the privateering ruin of the world, coordinated by the deniable aegis of covert statecraft, and it's as good as it goes. But it's not Perkins' only story.

Perkins has written other books about his time spent in the wild places of the world, but they're the kind of books liable to embarrass the reader who thinks Hit Man is tell all. He's taken ayahuasca and seen the holy anacondas; discovered the power of dream and learned principles of shapeshifting from the shamans. In fact, "he is currently working with several major corporations to introduce the concepts of shapeshifting and tribal wisdom into the highest levels of executive thinking."

Now, whatever that may mean (and it may include such dispiriting "transformations" as Bono's equity firm buying 40% of Forbes Magazine, which may make MacPhisto more skinwalker than shapeshifter), Perkins doesn't intend shapeshifting to be understood as pure metaphor. (Though presumably, when he describes the CIA's "jackals" who are called in to perform the wet jobs, it's just a figure of speech.) He means, literally, shapeshifting: that it can entail authentic, cellular change.

Perkins' esoteric knowledge may not be known to the casual reader of Hit Man, but the State Department, in its page "Identifying Misinformation," draws attention to Perkins' other titles in order to scare away the faint of mind. Alluding to The World Is As You Dream It: "shamanistic techniques from the Amazon and Andes," the anonymous flunky writes: "As to whether Perkins was acting at the behest of the US government, the world is not "as he dreams it." Higher up the food chain, where people are known to "create our own reality" and "other new realities, which you can study, too," opinions may differ.

Perkins offers some personal accounts of cellular transformation in his book Shapeshifting, the most dramatic drawn from 1994 when a friend, Sarah, was stricken with a deadly virus. Infectious fluid filled her chest cavity such that her heart and lungs were obscured on x-rays. At Thanksgiving, doctors warned her husband William that she was unlikely to survive until Christmas. William had travelled to Ecuador with Perkins and shared his interest in shamanism; Sarah did not. But close to death, she invited him to visit and talk, and then asked if he could use shamanism to heal her. Eventually agreeing, he asks Sarah to lie down and lights a candal by her bed. Fanning her with branches, he "called on Kitiar, Viejo Itza, and several other shamans to assist me. I asked Pachamama to do whatever was appropriate."

And then:

A tiny ball appeared. The size of a marble, it materialized like a sort of hologram of light near her heart. The thought intruded that it was just my imagination. Quickly I chased this thought away and returned to being the observer. The ball grew larger, to the size of a Ping-Pong ball; it had a bluish hue. It was not like a solid object; it appeared more fluid, and seemed to vibrate. It moved slowly around her chest cavity. I had the feeling that it was searching for something. I also had the feeling that I should try to enter it; however, something told me to be wary and to resist this temptation. I shook the branches more forcefully over her body. As I did so, the ball's color changed to a deeper blue, a color approaching black, then it sprouted two branches of its own, which it waved in unison with the rhythm of mine.

Its branches spread and flattened until they became wings. The ball had shifted into the shape of a bat.... It darted about, then swooped through her torso, and I understood that it was drinking up fluid that threatened her life. Again, this came to me in the form of a knowning, like intuition, or a thought that we are sure is correct yet do not understand how we know it. Then the bat lifted up out of her body, flew directly past me and to the open window behind me. Perched on the windowsill facing outside, it made spastic, jerking motions. I realized with a start that it was regurgitating the fluid it had extracted from Sarah.

The next day Sarah had a radiology appointment which confirmed that a "measurable portion" of the fluid had vanished. The radiologist was surprised, and Sarah's cardiologist told William "Sometimes these things happen." Perkins repeated the healing sessions three times in the next week, after which Sarah had a another examination. The fluid had completely disappeared. Her doctors, their confidence shaken, recommended she travel from Florida to Minnesota's Mayo Clinic for another round of tests, which when complete confirmed that an unexpected healing had occurred.

Perkins recounts other brushes with what could be called either high weirdness, or perhaps more charitably, elevated energies. An evening in the Amazon, for instance, stepping into a clearing and seeing "a blue light flash high up in the top of the canopy. And again. Then it rose out of the forest - a vibrating globe of blue light":

Then another light appeared. This one seemed to materialize out of thin air. The two hovered side by side. Like huge balls of energy, they moved closer to me and then flashed quickly away, disappearing behind the thick wall of the rainforest trees.

These aren't stories which most Amy Goodman-progressives are going to want to hear. But since they are told with the same conviction by the same insider whom they delight to cite as a source for how the world really works, perhaps they should pay them some attention, and accord a similar measure of respect. Maybe then they'd learn the world's workings go also very deep, and strange.

139 Comments:

Blogger Doc Nebula said...

It's comforting to me -- and strange, to find comfort over here on this page, that is so much about the organized, knowing, deliberate, predatory evil all around us, every day, that wants to control and exploit and rape each and every one of us in every conceivable way -- anyway, it's comforting to think that magical healing of this sort can work, and that simply because science pronounces a death sentence, that doesn't necessarily mean sentence has to be carried out.

Reading through the Greenbaum Speech (linked to in previous comment threads) has made me want to keep all three of my kids permanently sequestered in our basement (especially the six year old) but I guess that's an untenable option.

I'd like to learn a spell for identifying members of mind control cults, though. And then I'd like to learn another spell that would send them all screaming to hell. But I guess even magic can't make things that simple.

8/24/2006 05:11:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't believe it.
That is why you failed.

There is no try, only do or do not.

8/24/2006 05:35:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,aw,come on Jeff,everyone knows there is no such thing as magick or what ever you want to call that stuff.But seriously, "beyond the invisible" there are things out there that most people can not begain to belive unless they were to experience them in person.We all have the powers but just don't know how to use them,"There is no teacher.Who can teach us anything new.He can just help us to remember.The things we always knew" a great Enigma tune check it out,later.

8/24/2006 07:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am one of those Amy Goodman-progressives, to an extent. I do, however, leave open a 'possibility space' wherein anything can happen out there (hence my RigInt obsession). Like I commonly say, The Universe is a strange place, who can say what goes on? I remember when I first read about Perkins' other books; it was quite a surprise. Wasn't quite sure what to make of them and whether I now had to relegate my opinion of 'Hit Man' to the same level of dis/belief I hold some of these other out there ideas. I'm still unsure how to regard him. I do believe these things are possible, but don't know how many feather-ruffling anecdotes shy of third-party corroboration it will take to actually make me believe they are not only possible but probable or even actual.

8/24/2006 07:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

LOL, but thanx Jeff.
bats !? how quaint.
but I've wracked my brain occasionally on how to contend with some of these little impasses.
if it has to be Perkins as an example, good enuf.
'nuf said.

8/24/2006 07:11:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Highlander,

The ‘spell’ that will enable you to work on members of mind control cults will also show you, that you do not want to send them all to hell. Society and the dominant psychical conditioning system ensures that we are all mind controlled. Even the rebels depend upon and function within the system.

A simple ontological system:

The World appears to be very fucked up.

There is great beauty in the world, and this beauty represents the potential for more complete structures for understanding.

The potential within beauty tells me that we must be looking at the World in the wrong way. My suspicion is that the desire to send the ‘other’ to ‘hell’ is the disease that keeps us locked within the current forms of expression.

Proxy’s for the hate machine

8/24/2006 07:18:00 AM  
Blogger Eric Soderstrom said...

I liked Confessions. And for me, his other, uh, expertise kind of detracts from it. On the other hand, I read Chomsky a lot. I recognize the truth in his political writing and I just flat out do not understand his linguistics writing. But the linguistics don't take anything away from his activism.

So I guess my point is a good writer can write well about different subjects.

8/24/2006 07:25:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If anything, Perkins struck me as being a dishonest, smarmy and opportunistic person. His book felt contrived and was worse written than a lot of conspiracy literature "non-fiction" that I've read.The fact that his book was a success was baffling to me.

Glad you you are looking at this "shape-shifting" angle. I had wrote off his involvement with shamanism as just some useless new age endevour.

Looking at this after reading Vallee puts this stuff in a new light.

8/24/2006 07:47:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I saw something similar when I was a young man back in the early 70's (I'm 60 now); my wife and I had moved from our home state of Alabama to Florida, then to Pennsylvania, then California, then Atlanta, and them back to Alabama nearly three years later, and the first person I wanted to see was my best friend Tim.

I managed to find out where he was and I called him and he invited me to come see him. He was living at his girlfriend's house in the hippy section of the town which was Huntsville.

My wife and I went to the house early on a Saturday morning and knocked on the door and Tim yelled for me to come in. We walked in and he yelled for me to come back into the bedroom. We walked in and he and his girlfriend were under the covers in bed.

He introduced us to his girlfriend and after our initial greeting she asked me if I had become a Christian and I repied yes. She proudly made some remark to the effect that she had gone the other direction and had become a witch.

I had gone through a three year stint in the occult and finally saw it for what it was and gave it up and became a Christian, and Tim knew about it and must have told her about it.

Then she got this vacant facial expression on her face and went into what looked like a trance, and all of a sudden several black balls came out of her, as if out of her lower abdomen, straight up and even with my height, and started swirling around in a circle at my head level, then all of sudden they started zooming at me one after the other in a straight line. The balls were slightly smaller in diameter than soccer balls.

They came very fast toward my face and right when they got to within a few inches of hitting my face each one swerved off in a different direction so that none of them actually made contact with my face.

Then they started swirling all around the room really fast, and more of them appeared, then some of them changed colors, some to bright red and others to bright yellow. Then all of a sudden they disappeared all at once. Then the girl came out of the trance and looked at me with a look of contempt, as if to suggest that she was more powerful than me.

Tim was visibly shaken by what he saw, and my wife started to get sick and ran outside and threw up in the front yard. Tim apologized several times while his girlfriend lay there with this look of satisfaction on her face.

I can't remember exactly what I said to the girl, as I recall I told her that I had been involved in witchcraft and found it to be a recipe for disaster and warned her to get out of it. Then we left because my wife was feeling sick.

As for Perkins' miracles, Jesus warned that in the last days there would be false prophets who would perform 'signs and lying wonders.' There's no denying that there is power in the dark force, what most people fail to consider is that when the power is used to do good things that the power driving it is evil none the less.

In the scenario Perkins told about the power took the form of a bat, which is a symbol of the power of the dark side. The spirit of death loves to glorify itself, and it's amazing how so many people go along with it.

Those who are used by the dark side to perform miracles always come off looking like good people, if they looked evil nobody would fall for their agendas.

The televangelists have been used by the dark side as dupes to discredit Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, so now people are looking for another power source, and I can tell you those who go looking for it will surely find what they're looking for.

The world is in the final throes of dying and as more and more people turn to the dark side for answers the death process is sped up. One thing I've noticed is that the loudest complainers about the world's demise are usually people who are in some way buying into the wrong power source.

8/24/2006 08:28:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Confessions has been out for a couple years now, and I have yet to see any substantiative critique of the factual contents of his book, only that skeptics find his narrative unbelievable.

In light of what has gone on recently in Venezuela (AFTER publication), do the events of the book seem prescient?

Or consider which specific companies have been hired to do reconstruction/security in NOLA, the exact same ones in Confessions, and the same pattern of behavior: destruction of the indigenous infrastructure and installation of a corporate infrastructure.

If his book turns out to be largely fictional, it's amazing how closely it predicts what were then near-future events without mentioning them specifically. (Heh, reminds me of that Final Jihad or whatever book that predicted so many elements of 9-11.)

There's no denying that there is power in the dark force, what most people fail to consider is that when the power is used to do good things that the power driving it is evil none the less.

I do not know if you are a Christian but consider that "all good things are from God alone."

8/24/2006 09:24:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

History shows the truth has been tampered with.

The female has no place in christianity.
Perhaps the witch was showing her empowerment that was denied her by the church.
Her hate for the system that had enslaved her is understandable.

Women give life.
Women bleed but do not die.
Ancient man knew she had great power.

So man made patriachal religion to enslave women.

I just heard that a christian preacher has fired a lady who had taught there for 53 years, due to his citing scripture she was dismissed.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

The dismissal came without warning.



The Christian Church has done everything in its power to suppress and control sexuality- the life/creative force that liberates the kundalini and is a direct threat to their agenda for enslaving humanity. This power source available to the common people, had to be shut down in any and every way possible. Kundalini liberates the soul and also opens up the psyche. The xian church has done everything in its power to keep us from communicating with beings such as Satan and his Demons, and deliberately cut us all off from any knowledge and power. This keeps us all in the dark, and cut us off from our True Creator God.

The sexual suppression creates an imbalance in the base and second chakras which bleeds over into the emotional level (chakra) this extends to the next chakra and from here, we have a further imbalance, creating fear and guilt, and other emotional and psychological disorders. Because of the cut-off, there is no outlet and humanity degenerates spiritually from generation to generation. Each generation has been indoctrinated and conditioned to view sexuality in the Judeo/Christian/Muslim way. Those of us who are completely free from this influence are few. Sexuality= Life, liberation and spiritual advancement. The Church knows this and has denied the general population this knowledge for centuries.

Now, when I mention "the Church" I am referring to those on top, not the average pedophile priest or minister. The Catholic priesthood is a prime example of the level of indoctrination, ignorance, and stupidity all the way down the line- blind obedience. The child raping and molestations are chief illustrations of what occurs when one consciously suppresses the powerful sex drive, which is the life force, itself.

Because of the suppression of this knowledge, humanity is operating at 1/5th-1/10th of the total potential. The energy centers remain closed and dormant, cutting the world off from other dimensions, blocking spiritual, mental, emotional and physical potential, in order to keep power in the hands of a "chosen" few.

All of this is the use of black magick at the top levels that has been handed down through the centuries. The new age movement teaches helplessness and a taboo on the black arts to ensure this power only remains in the hands of a few as they can no longer suppress the knowledge of it in today's climate of communication- again, fear is used. The new agers who dabble in magick are also imbalanced. The Ancient Egyptians knew that to be adept, one must be versed in both the white and black aspects of magick. Black magick is suppressed and controlled by the few in power at the top who make liberal use of it. The average person is not only ignorant to this fact, but helpless against it.

The denigration and exclusion of women in RHP religions is also for a specific purpose. As Thoth stated, everything comes in two's for balance and harmony. Two is the creative force. The female energy within us all includes the subconscious and the psyche. The female aspect connects us to the higher dimensions of the mind in balance to the male logical side of the brain. The two ideally, should work together in harmony.

Suppressing this female energy is fundamental to the enemy agenda. Once this feminine energy is suppressed, the intuition and higher consciousness are switched off and become dominated by the lower consciousness. The chakras below the heart, which is the switch off point and connector of the seven chakras, remain disconnected and a serious imbalance results. The Church and its controlling cohorts are well aware of the imbalance that occurs when this female energy is cut off. The chakras all work together.

http://www.exposingchristianity.com/Sexuality.html

8/24/2006 09:33:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with the anonymous guy that said that the false prophets look good but are in fact evil. What Prunes wrote to the guy saying: I do not know if you are a Christian but consider that "all good things are from God alone." makes me think that he needs to go eat a bunch of prunes.

8/24/2006 10:03:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice catch, Jeff.

8/24/2006 10:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here we go with the God thing again.

Shapeshifting goes on already, to a certain extent, in Corporate America.

When I first met my former boss in the interview process, I perceived him to be a much larger physical presence than he actually was. After I was hired, and as time passed, and I was able to evaluate his behavior and make a more informed determination about his character, the facade he had created through his actions (posturing, voice inflection, facial expressions, body language) melted away, and I saw him for what he was, both physically, which was no larger than me, and emotionally and mentally, which was quite bereft.

He was, and still is, an expert shapeshifter, IMHO, as are all predators, corporate, or not.

8/24/2006 10:18:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not entirely on topic, but thought this was of interest:

Senator who put 'secret hold' on bill to open federal records is a secret, too

By REBECCA CARR
Cox News Service

WASHINGTON — In an ironic twist, legislation that would open up the murky world of government contracting to public scrutiny has been derailed by a secret parliamentary maneuver.

An unidentified senator placed a "secret hold" on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year. The database would bring transparency to federal spending and be as simple to use as conducting a Google search.
Click to learn more...

The measure had been unanimously passed in a voice vote last month by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. It was on the fast track for floor action before Congress recessed Aug. 4 when someone put a hold on the measure.

Now the bill is in political limbo. Under Senate rules, unless the senator who placed the hold decides to lift it, the bill will not be brought up for a vote.

"It really is outrageous to do this in the dead of night as Congress is recessing," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a budget watchdog group based in Washington. "The public has a right to know how the government spends money."

The secret hold has prompted conservative and liberal government watchdog groups to band together to "smoke out" the senator responsible.

Porkbusters.org, for example, posted photographs of all senatorial suspects underneath a bold-faced headline asking, "Who is the Secret Holder?"

It remains unclear if the senator responsible will be able to withstand the pressure from the broad array of groups and senators supporting the bill.

"It really is a mystery, not only who did it, but what the rationale could possibly be and why they would go to the mat on this," said Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a new Washington-based nonprofit devoted to helping the public understand Congress through the Internet. "There is no conceivable, rational explanation for killing this legislation unless they have something to hide."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4137637.html

Nothing to see here folks... Move along...

8/24/2006 11:06:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The poster who had a link titled 'exposing Christianity' talks a lot of Hindu smack but neglects to say exactly where or how he got his information, what the method was for arriving at this information, and how anyone else can scientifically or spiritually test those assumptions.

It all sounds rather suspiciously like what a certain serpent said to seduce Eve in the Garden of Eden: "Eat and ye will be as gods."
The whole Prometheus supposition upon which satanism, animism and illumunism is premised revolves around a 'selfless' act by the serpent/Lucifer to give mankind 'wisdom.'

What is never countenanced is what the finder's fee for this 'wisdom' is, nor why the consequences of this 'wisdom' are never included in the sales pitch from the fiery fallen Cherubim. There is an old maxim that states "To completely enslave someone, tell them you are liberating them."

Considering that the 'kundalini' and 'chakra' hucksters seem to talk a good game about 'freeing the mind' and 'helping mankind realize their full potential,' the question begs to be asked: And what exactly is the price for this vaunted 'enlightenment' of yours? What's in it for you?

8/24/2006 11:22:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'm reminded of Johanna Michaelsen's 1982 book 'The Beautiful Side of Evil.'

she tells the story of her experience as an assistant to Pachita, an old woman from Mexico City, who, when possessed by the (masculine) spirit Hermanito, would perform miraculous healings. people would come from all over to be healed. Hermanito, through the body of Pachita, worked some wonderous things: would open up one's belly with a knife, extract some dark stuff from it, and then close it up with his hands without leaving a scar. etc. etc.

well, Johanna Michaelson wrote the book to relate her journey from dabling in Mind Control (of the Sylva variety) and other occult related things to becoming a Christian believer. the title of the book underscores how Satan masquarades as a being of light, of goodness and life. When in fact he is an angel of darkness, of evil and death. just because the demon Hermanito had the power to heal did not mean the healing came from God. in fact, those who were healed by the spirit were brought into deep bondage and had exchanged a temporary healing for a more malignant (demonic related) illness.

in her book, she writes about some of the deceptions of the spirits of darkness. Satan and his demons put darkness for light, and evil for good.

i think the book is still in print.

8/24/2006 11:31:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hmmmmm...Atheism seems so much more appealing now. Certainly would be less confusing than this "bad meaning good" meme.

8/24/2006 11:53:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

. . . Maybe Perkins had something wrong with his eyes. I know that's not going to be a hugely popular thing to say here but from a scientific objective it cannot be ruled out. People believed in life on Mars due to the 'Canals of Mars' which turned out to be one astronomer's obscure sight problem.

Anyway, back to high weirdness . . .

8/24/2006 11:58:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Considering that the 'kundalini' and 'chakra' hucksters seem to talk a good game about 'freeing the mind' and 'helping mankind realize their full potential,' the question begs to be asked: And what exactly is the price for this vaunted 'enlightenment' of yours? What's in it for you?

I certainly don't subscribe to his/her every assertion, but the treatment of women within the Abrahamic Traditons is abysmal, so I do agree on that point, and other points the poster posited.

So, tell us, how do feel about the Abrahamic Religions' Treatment of Women? I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to know.

8/24/2006 12:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people (Christians for the most part) have the audacity to claim (exclusive) knowledge of the One and Only True Path to all that is good and right.

Like a couple formerly Siamese-twinned preachers once remarked: "Don't try to be good. Just want to be good."

Great scene, Jeff.

8/24/2006 12:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Or, maybe Jack is a purposeful form of containment. You posit this theory (Confessions of an Economic Hitman) with someone who has written on such far out topics as Jeff has mentioned, and you quickly and conveniently arrive at plausible deniability, and potentially, absurdity, due to this individual's lack of credibility in regards to past topics he has covered.

The theory's true, and you know it, but rather than letting someone outside the loop uncover it and expose it, you have someone inside the loop cover it and expose it......and that person just so happens to be a quack (by conventional standards) when you delve into their history. The fact that Progressives have fallen for it means they have taken the bait. They cling to the true theory, but are ultimately tarnished and sullied because of the other shit that comes with the individual author who has broached it.

8/24/2006 12:33:00 PM  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

"A tiny ball appeared. The size of a marble, it materialized like a sort of hologram of light near her heart...The ball grew larger, to the size of a Ping-Pong ball; it had a bluish hue. It was not like a solid object; it appeared more fluid, and seemed to vibrate..."

Reminds me of these paintings I posted (as FourthBase) on the message board:

http://www.redchinamagazine.com/6chavaz.htm

http://www.redchinamagazine.com/4chavaz.htm

8/24/2006 01:02:00 PM  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

More on blue orbs, from the comments of Jeff's "Bad medicine (Part Two), apparently taken by Anonymous from an "excerpt from the George Knapp dispatches":

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/01/bad-medicine-part-two_05.html

"By early 1996, the sightings of blue spheres at the ranch became almost commonplace. These orbs were said to be about the size of a softball, made of glass and filled with bubbling blue liquids that seemed to rotate inside.

Mr. and Mrs. Gorman say that in April 1996, they watched one of the blue orbs repeatedly circle the head of one of their horses, The horse was illuminated by an intense blue light, and there was a sound like static electricity in the air, but this wasn't ball lightning. The orb seemed to be intelligently controlled. When Gorman approached the horse with a flashlight, the orb darted off, maneuvering through tree branches with speed and dexterity.

The Gormans say the blue spheres seemed to generate severe psychological effects on the family. Family members felt waves of fear roll over them, far in excess of what might be normal, whenever the blue orbs appeared.

One evening in May 1996, Gorman was outside with three of his dogs when he noticed a blue orb darting around in the field near the ranch house. Gorman urged his dogs to go after the ball. The dogs chased and snapped at the orb, but it dodged and maneuvered enough to stay just beyond the reach of their snapping jaws. The ball led the dogs out across the pasture and into the thick brush that borders the field. Gorman says he heard the dogs make three terrible yelps, then they were silent. He called for them, but they didn't respond."

8/24/2006 01:17:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous said " the power took the form of a bat, which is a symbol of the dark side." This is a perfect example of a FEAR based
perspective which permeates Christianity. Maybe it took the form of a bat because an elephant
would look funny as hell flying out
of someone's bedroom window.

8/24/2006 01:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perkins to me, has always appeared to be a bullshit artist.

He and Goodman have a CLEAR attraction to each other, which completely obscures his appearances.

When it comes down to it, he only confirms what everyone already knows.

Sort of a "why dont you tell me something I dont know!"

Anyhoo, Chomsky is a sow. Anyone who could read this book and go back to Chomsky is a fool. The guy thinks 911 was islamo-fascism, for gods sake!!!!

8/24/2006 01:20:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

trachys, thanks for that! (Number 557,869, with a bullet...)

8/24/2006 01:21:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

A. Magnus and Shrubageddon take a line that I find clear-sighted, logical and even helpful, but I also believe there are yet further possibilities. A. Magnus writes:

The whole Prometheus supposition upon which satanism, animism and illumunism is premised revolves around a 'selfless' act by the serpent/Lucifer to give mankind 'wisdom.'

What is never countenanced is what the finder's fee for this 'wisdom' is, nor why the consequences of this 'wisdom' are never included in the sales pitch from the fiery fallen Cherubim.


That is perhaps the best buyer beware warning I've ever seen, as it questions the motives of all would-be Prometheusi, acknowledges that fact that there is some sort of transaction, a sale even, at the heart of such come-ons, and also points to the fallen state of the rogue angel selling the secrets of the kingdom. Brilliant. And yet...what if the kooky-sounding weirdness isn't offered for sale and the author of the idea isn't exactly certain of the outcome himself?

The example I had in mind is that of those wacky mystical physicists who are groping their way toward some fuller understanding of the role of consciousness in creation--not as in the (alleged) Big Bang, or in Genesis, but as in the ongoing creation of reality through the little understood agency of the collective consciousness ? I don't know how many of you guys have dabbled in this stuff, but it's not exactly magic; in fact, it's science at heart (an ultimately "mystical" science, if such an oxymoron doesn't disintegrate under its appalling inherent contradiction.) And, these guys aren't selling anything--they're just plodding along scientifically, trying to set up experiments which test the limits of observation in the outcome of phenomena. It's fascinating stuff, the best part of which is that it's mostly conceptual physics, so that lay people can pretty much follow it without being bludgeoned by elephantine equations.

When Shrubageddon writes the fact that Progressives have fallen for it means they have taken the bait. They cling to the true theory, but are ultimately tarnished and sullied because of the other shit that comes with the individual author who has broached it, he gets at the method by which the good is washed away with the bad in the well-practiced discreditation schemes of those who regularly suppress the intrepid explorers into terra incognito. In the case of the physicists studying consciousness, the most egregious example was the dreadful What the Bleep Do We Know movie, which made a laughingstock of Amit Goswami, Alan Wolf (Captain Quantum), and by extension the entire field of research in this direction.

On the other hand, where there's the smoke of disinformation, there's probably also the fire of truth, depending on who's smoking what...

8/24/2006 01:38:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

fun stuff jeff.

this is isnt a comment on you jeff, just on others who immediately think of the latter topic as complete hog wash. this will get complicated, lets hope i remember everything...i dont know if we should look at shamanism or magic in such fantastical mind sets. maybe it should be looked at in more realistic terms.

the way i look at the universe and this sphere of materialistic and conscious manifest existence that we are in is that there are certain natural laws and parameters that the universe operates from and inside this universe with these laws there is much possibility, much beauty (which is the appreciation of the many forms of potential creations that are possible in this universe) and much potential... so the universe has a lot of misunderstood or just simply unknown facets of possibility we don't know yet. as the statistic says most humans use maybe 15% of their potential brain power they have. that leaves 85% to the unknown.

can you imagine what can be done? can we manipulate energy if we focus hard enough?

i don't know because i don't know how. but from everything i've come to understand, there is a lot of things we don't know yet, that we havn't conceived of yet. someone quoted an enigma song above saying,"There is no teacher.Who can teach us anything new. He can just help us to remember.The things we always knew." and this is that 85%.

if something doesn't make sense maybe its because our assumptions were wrong, like calling everything considered 'magick' a fantasy. we consider magick outside the realm of possibility because people can't fly.

but what i really think is what we call magick is just accessing that unused part. i am a skeptic, i am just saying the truth is quite an expansive thing, its much bigger than we know.

8/24/2006 01:45:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

-------
"What is never countenanced is what the finder's fee for this 'wisdom' is, nor why the consequences of this 'wisdom' are never included in the sales pitch from the fiery fallen Cherubim. There is an old maxim that states "To completely enslave someone, tell them you are liberating them."
-------

Of course, this applies equally to any top-down power structure, Christianity included. Liberty (spiritual or otherwise) is not something that anyone can sell or give you. It's your's in the first place. This is the slight-of-mind at the basis of all hierarchal cultural constructs. Convincing someone to pay for what already belongs to them.

8/24/2006 02:21:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just an offhand comment on how engrained is the Christian vs. pagan view in European history and symbolism, still into the present.

I remembered this when I read this quote:

Anonymous said "the power took the form of a bat, which is a symbol of the dark side." This is a perfect example of a FEAR based
perspective which permeates Christianity.


There's even that "fear based perspective" in the way that European clocks look and mechanically work, of all things.

Most are probabaly unaware that the whole reason "clocks run clockwise" from left to right around in a circle is that it was the Roman Catholic Church's only official direction allowed for rotational movement. It had a religious oppositional and pro-Christian meaning popularized against counterclockwise pagan ritual processions.

Therefore, the Roman Catholic Church set up various rituals instead that tabooed counterclockwise motions, and inverted the motion demonstrated.

In all the town clocks that started to be made (of which there are lots of interesting variants in those early years), the only way that they would demarcate time followed Church's accepted religiously proper left to right circle motions. Thus the Roman Catholic Church's war on the pagans is pretty much responsible for the global use of "clockwise".

In the face of European derived clocks are echo of an entirely unrelated religious world view where meaning was attached to different rotational meanings. The public clock and later the personal watch holds a small piece of this religious contention to this day--between right to left paganism and left to right 'church sponsored' ritual movements.

That BBC Burke "Connections" programme has nothing on me...

Back hopefully on track of the main post... something to think about how engrained are the religious origins of some everyday things you think would be so unrelated to religious meanings, similar to how deeply the "confessions of the Economic Hit Man" could have easily been entitled "confessions of an Economic Hit Man who saw the way out through Shamanism". That would be more accurate to the high religious/occult wierdness in such powerful elite economic issues throughout, though admitting this worldview duality at the top would certainly cause a "fear based reaction" in the Amy Goodmans and Noam Chomsky's of the world...

8/24/2006 02:32:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'm not very familiar with kundalini, but i remember one of the chakras being blue. also isn't blue associated with satan? like in the the color of the u.n. emblem.

8/24/2006 02:34:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Public relations for The Dark Overlord want to sanitize the image ... with blessings from our under appreciated press:'THE 9': Double trouble
Some thrill-seekers tumble around in a big bubble. Others quench their thirst with ... pickle juice?
Seems to show the nine as mere strangers in a strange land unencumbered by what they represent and the dis-attached anchor line to those who provide life support as well as the ideological purpose base to support them in a quest of representation. How long after do we get the "finger" from these "superstars" whose whore mamie has become vividly defined as Carlyle Group that voted new man of the year to no other than Karl Rove for his .... dodged the bullet phrase added to endless republican endeavors and will now go down in imfamy as the "do as you will" defense, as long as we can throw baile you're not sunk. meanwhile the recruiting of the new nine continues

8/24/2006 02:37:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As for Perkins' miracles, Jesus warned that in the last days there would be false prophets who would perform 'signs and lying wonders.' There's no denying that there is power in the dark force, what most people fail to consider is that when the power is used to do good things that the power driving it is evil none the less.

In the scenario Perkins told about the power took the form of a bat, which is a symbol of the power of the dark side. The spirit of death loves to glorify itself, and it's amazing how so many people go along with it.


The bat is only used as a symbol for evil, it is not an evil creation, neither could ayahuasca be.

something to think about how engrained are the religious origins of some everyday things you think would be so unrelated to religious meanings

I have come to feel that there is nothing that did not originate in the... shall I say "mystic"?

Computers evolved directly from the combinatorial explorations of cabalists, chemistry evolved from alchemy, mathematics evolved from the sacred geometries, the rest was written in the book of nature, liber mundi.

8/24/2006 02:37:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fanning her with branches, he "called on Kitiar, Viejo Itza, and several other shamans to assist me. I asked Pachamama to do whatever was appropriate."


AGATHOS. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether- which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

OINOS. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought- and the source of all thought is-

OINOS. God.

AGATHOS. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished- of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS. You did.

AGATHOS. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

OINOS. But why, Agathos, do you weep- and why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star- which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream- but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS. They are!- they are! This wild star- it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved- I spoke it- with a few passionate sentences- into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.


-Edgar Allan Poe
1850

8/24/2006 03:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The "Christians" are never done preaching their useless garbage. The world is quickly headed down the toilet due to the uses "Christianity" have been put to thru the last 2000 years. Any thorough research will show that whatever it was Jesus taught his disciples (12 - - a yogic tradition as to training a few close adepts) most all was hidden and/or suppressed as shown in the gnostic gospels that have come to light and elsewhere. The Roman Empire simply decided to take another form and found that "Christianity" was a better control mechanism than the pagan Gods, and a pagan Roman Emperor held a meeting, that is clearly a matter of historical record, and it was decided that "Christianity" would become the state religion thru which the people could be better controlled . . . the Catholic Church is the Roman Empire by another name and all the other "Christian" protestant,evangelical, King James' version or whatever is more of the same mind control without substance, ritual and talk with the spiritual power removed just like the emperor and his ilk like it . . . There is strong evidence that Jesus lived in Amarnath in Kashmir during that period from 13 to 30 that is "unknown" and that he was a yogic adept - - the miracles he is said to have performed in the New Testament are in fact well-known yogic miracles and the concept of loving others as yourself, as they are yourself - - God being everything, is also yogic . . . so maybe less preaching and more meditating and learning a bit about the Chakras might not be such a bad thing, "Christianity" as widely practiced is little more than a cult of doom, hatred, and self-righteousness . . . as we see from the unfortunate postings that now pop up here quite often for some reason by our own self ordained "preachers" . . . as "born again" as our fine President? I hear he doesn't have any time for Chakras either. . .

8/24/2006 03:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"'Like huge balls of energy, they moved closer to me and then flashed quickly away...'

These aren't stories which most Amy Goodman-progressives are going to want to hear."

.........................

Actually, I think most Goodman "Progressives" would be more open-minded than their contemporaries about such things.

This is the second off-hand dis of Goodman this month by Jeff. Is it because of her ragged hair-doo? Her croaking mono-tone voice? I don't get it, because compared to Fox, NBC/CBS/ABC, PBS, or even the BBC, Goodman's "Democracy Now" reports on important topics you NEVER hear about in the MSM...

8/24/2006 03:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so maybe less preaching and more meditating and learning a bit about the Chakras might not be such a bad thing, "Christianity" as widely practiced is little more than a cult of doom, hatred, and self-righteousness

Look at the Christian art of the Byzantium or Orthodox schools and compare with diagrams of chakras or the lataif: one will notice that hands frequently point towards the tradtional bodily locations of energetic centers or have emblems in these places (the well-known "sacred heart" symbol for example).

Meditation was also fairly widely practiced in Christianity up until the Enlightenment, although it was more frequently known as "contemplative prayer."

The history of the world is very very complicated. There is not one element of Christianity that is unique to it, or any other great tradition; they co-evolve and reflect the central mystery from different angles.

The modern American version of Christianity and the modern Catholic church bear almost no resemblance to any traditional conceptions of the religion.

8/24/2006 03:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Granted, but she's also Vested, and once one is Vested, it is impossible to maintain journalistic objectivity and integrity.

Certain topics can not and will not be covered, because there is just too much to lose.

8/24/2006 03:50:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Umm...sorry about that....I was referring to Amy Goodman.

8/24/2006 03:52:00 PM  
Blogger foist lastus said...

"Considering that the 'kundalini' and 'chakra' hucksters seem to talk a good game about 'freeing the mind' and 'helping mankind realize their full potential,' the question begs to be asked: And what exactly is the price for this vaunted 'enlightenment' of yours? What's in it for you?"

this is hucksterism itself ...
once the kundalini is activated, there is no denial, its a true false issue, as far as being for 'enlightenment'or being stupid,
what you don't know......

8/24/2006 03:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrubageddon, why do you try to steer the debate onto a tangent by talking about the Hebraic treatment of women? In case you didn't know, Jewish women were given far more respect in their family traditions than even Christian women were. A little research on your part would do wonders.

Unless a woman is 'free' to allow her sexuality to be used as a vehicle for social advancement, to be objectified by women's magazines for a paycheck, relegated to perpetual victimhood status or railing against a nebulous 'patriarchy' then they're not being treated well in your book?

The whole point of my original thesis was that there are plenty of promises of 'enlightenment' but precious little in the way of actual practical or positive knowledge that comes from it. If you ask me, any claim by some secret handshake cabal that they have knowledge of 'mysteries' or 'teachings' is full of crap, because what they're really doing is trying to rationalize their way into a position of power by using mythology. Or they're trying to justify their opulent existence where there is no merit (like hard work or creative genius) to do so.

The fact of the matter is that as human beings we are equally fallible, corruptible, and fragile. Anyone who claims that some kind of esoteric knowledge they have makes them 'special' is either deluding themself or trying to delude others into a position of subservience to their interests. This knowledge curiously is never available for falsification or impartial testing. Wonder why that is?

Illuminism, Luciferianism and Animism are also the rationalizations of the socially powerful to explain their entirely unearned accidents of birth. They know they just as easily could have been born bereft of influence and means, and they also know that they are just as mortal as their lesser endowed brethren. Therefore they constructed a mythical and heroic mythology to explain their 'superior' position in life.

8/24/2006 04:02:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks once again Jeff for doing your part to help thinking people keep their minds propped open.

I think your Leonard Cohen quote at the outset pretty much summed things up: the most dubious aspect about Perkins career is not his various "confessions", but rather the scary fact that he somehow believes he can "change the system from the inside".

To my mind and experience, and I imagine many would agree, attempting to introduce counter-culture (in whatever form) into the prevailing culture ultimately only serves to undermine the counter-culture and further pervert the direction of the existing dominant system.

As the saying goes, a man who chases two rabbits catches neither.

8/24/2006 04:02:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

but rather the scary fact that he somehow believes he can "change the system from the inside".

I don't think he believes that at all.....but he, and his ilk, want Amy Goodman Progressives to believe it, and they want Amy Goodman Progressives to believe him.

He has succeeded, as Jeff has pointed out.

I agree with everything else you posted.

8/24/2006 04:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To Magnus

Just b/c you have not been privy to esoteric knowledge . . . this means such does not exist and is useless . . . uh - huh . . .

8/24/2006 04:16:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A. Magnus said...
Shrubageddon, why do you try to steer the debate onto a tangent by talking about the Hebraic treatment of women?


I didn't. I was commenting to reinforce what another Anonymous Poster posted in that regard. In otherwords, I didn't bring it up....he/she did...and you commented on their comments...and I commented on someone's comments....but I thought that someone was anonymous, and not A. Magnus.

So, no steering on my part, to set the record straight.


In case you didn't know, Jewish women were given far more respect in their family traditions than even Christian women were. A little research on your part would do wonders.


Oh, come now, all you're doing is marking degrees of repression and submission between the various Abrahamic Traditions.

I think Richard summed it up nicely with his bleeding post, however, there are countless other examples.


Unless a woman is 'free' to allow her sexuality to be used as a vehicle for social advancement, to be objectified by women's magazines for a paycheck, relegated to perpetual victimhood status or railing against a nebulous 'patriarchy' then they're not being treated well in your book?


I don't agree with what you have ascribed to me here.

The remainder of what you wrote was well received and I agree with it, to a certain extent.

8/24/2006 04:23:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrubageddon,

Sorry if I confused your commentary on anonymous's commentary there, it can be a bit difficult to navigate these 'anonymous' posts and parse out the content from the disinformation at times. My bad.

I personally don't subscribe to the supposed 'oppressive' tenets of Abrahamaic traditions when it comes to women and owning other people as property; that being said, I'd much rather stick to topic for now and debunk 'Illuminism.'

Another anonymous poster said not to knock 'illumination' just because it wasn't given to me. How that poster knows that I haven't already given illumination is anyone's guess. Again the so-called 'illumination' in question is not available for public intellectual scrutiny.

If this illumination was all it was cracked up to be, those who have it wouldn't be so base as to hoard it; after all, illumination is supposed to expand one's mind and heart, not make one a miser right? If secret knowledge was any good, it wouldn't be secret - all mankind could benefit from its tenets.

All the exclusivity and secrecy of the so-called illuminists does is illustrate a tangible level of fear they have over being exposed as frauds, charlatans or moderately clever common criminals. These are the actions of people who have something to hide, and I suspect that what they're hiding is that there is NOTHING special about these illuminists to begin with.

They just want the rest of us to think they're omnipotent, descended from 'royal' or 'godly' bloodlines or somehow 'better' than the rest of us. Whatever diabolical plots these illuminists hatch, the fact of the matter is that they are nothing more than a gilded criminal cartel - like La Cosa Nostra only with multiple brand names and trademarks.

8/24/2006 05:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

off-topic post, but did anyone else notice this?

"Former Giuliani Aide Found Strangled


NEW YORK -- The nude body of a one-time deputy press secretary for former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has been found strangled in his Manhattan apartment.

The death of Martin Barreto, 49, has been ruled a homicide.

Police found Barreto's body Tuesday in a bedroom at his home after a friend reported he wasn't responding to phone calls or knocks on his door.

A doorman says Barreto had been expecting a visitor. Police are searching for the visitor as a possible suspect.

A Giuliani spokeswoman says the former mayor wants to express his sympathy and prayers to the victim's family.

Barreto worked at City Hall in the mid-1990s."

http://www.1010wins.com/pages/73273.php?contentType=4&contentId=193630


about shape-shifters, i believe that i encountered one, once, about ten years ago: my mother and i were cleaning up after my uncle's wedding reception at a local community center one summer night in the wilds of south carolina, and, locking up, we were about to walk to our lonely car in the darkened lot when we saw another vehicle pull into the lot, make a u-turn, and head back out. we thought nothing of it, naturally, and got into our own car, pulling up behind the other. it seemed that the driver had been sitting there, as if waiting, because the lane we were both to pull out into wasn't busy, and there wasn't a stop light or anything that would've given them pause. at any rate, when we had pulled up behind the person, they pulled out, heading in our direction as well with us in tow. again, so far, nothing unusual about it all. my mother was driving, and we passed the car--a white american-made sedan, maybe a buick?--on its left, which gave me a good look at the driver, **clearly a caucasian woman** with long, sorta wavy hair, and, from what i could tell, rather attractive. i can still picture the green glow of the dashboard instruments on her face. still, so far so good, until we got to the next stoplight, that is. again, i looked at the woman, whose car we had passed and who had now caught up with us at the light, and, now side-by-side, she turned my way, looked at me, and turned her head towards her empty passenger seat. again, she turned her head back my way, and she. was. no. longer. a. "she." HE was **clearly** an asian man, with long, straight, black hair, and (this probably isn't a PC term, but it conveys the meaning..) a long, "fu-man-chou" mustache that fell past his jaw-line. (i have many times seen the same technique used in movies--they look this way, turn away, look back again and are different--and i wonder who or what inspired the first such scene.) he looked me in the eye and fear--maybe i just scare easily, but others tell me differently--shot through me like lightning. then the light changed and we drove on, well ahead of the other...

well, i was convinced i was mistaken, as those things just don't happen. leastways, not to me. when the fear had subsided after a few seconds (i hadn't *said* anything), my mother was the first one to speak: "Did you see that man?" she asked. i said i had, and then she said what i really didn't think she might: "Did he look like a woman to you at first?"

it had never happened to me before, and hasn't ever since. everything else in my life i can pretty much chalk up to something else--a trompe l'oeil, a shadow, a wisp of nothing--and i can account for. not this singular event, especially since it was witnessed by another who is perhaps the most pragmatic (to a fault, oy!) person you'd likely meet.

8/24/2006 07:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrubageddon did write:
o, tell us, how do feel about the Abrahamic Religions' Treatment of Women? I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to know.
12:13 PM..

I think..that is trying to go into another topic.I will try my best.

Jews ,Christians and Moslems worship multidimensional,extraterrestrial phychic energy vampires that use religion to manipulate the masses who blindly follow.
The Judeo,Moslem and Christian religions are a vicious hoax on humanity of catastrophic proportions.

8/24/2006 07:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

psychic ...ok shrubbie put the dictionary away.

8/24/2006 07:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Knowledge is power.

The heart chakra is the powerhouse of the soul. The heart chakra has power over anger, courage, fear and dynamic energy. This energy can be explosive. The element of fire rules the heart and increases the adrenalin for a fight or flight response. The heart chakra is the center of our offense and defense, it is where we can atack with aggression and defeat enemies. The heart chakra under will and controlled breathing techniques can warm the body to resist extremes of cold. When directed, the heart chakra can fill us with vigor, vitality, fearlessness and confidence. A powerful heart chakra enables us to enjoy life more fully.

It is the connection point between the upper and lower chakras, like the corpus collossum connects both hemispheres of the brain. The upper chakras deal with the astral; astral sight and telepathy, connecting with others psychically and transferring one's will, sending receiving telepathic messages (3rd eye), astral hearing and communication (throat) and astral knowledge and understanding of the universe (the crown).

The lower chakras deal with earthly matters- survival (base), sexuality, creativity (2nd) and the will, rebellion (3rd).

The heart chakra is where we have our life's purpose. Because it is so important, it is where the enemy usually attacks. The Gods and Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt are often seen with their arms crossed over their chests. This symbolizes protection of the all important heart chakra. The nazarene who is an enemy to humanity is always seen with his arms open and many paintings with the Mother of god same thing- exposing the heart chakra so humans can be psychically victimized.

In the English language, we have often heard the adages "a burning heart" "have the heart" and so forth. The heart chakra has to do with one's zeal for life, one's accomplishments, goals and sense of direction and self-betterment. To have a heart is not the twisted teachings of new age bimbos, but to have the heart to achieve your highest goals, the drive to push yourself to be the best you can be, the enthusiasm and personal motivation that drives us forward, the burning DESIRE. This is where we advance and achieve.

Famous athletes who make it to the top Olympic teams are the ones who are completely focused on their sport and training and have the burning desire to the point of obsession to make it to the top. They have the heart.

The enemy attacks the heart as this is where the driving life-force, ambition and powerhouse of the soul is located. The effects of a depleted heart chakra are depression, apathy (not caring about anything; indifference), only existing and not really living, being a mindless slave, disconnected from all emotion and feeling. The end result is suicide or death from just not caring anymore.

The heart chakra is the seat of all our emotions as well as our ambition and drive. One can hate with a whole heart as well. This is where the driving force in black magick comes from that will make or break a spell-working. If one lacks the feeling or desire, one will not achieve the objectives at hand. This is why the heart chakra is so important.

New age teachings are corrupted and incomplete. What the enemy fears the most is humanity having the knowledge to defend ourselves as a whole and the self-esteem to REFUSE to be slaves. One's self-esteem also comes from the heart chakra.

8/24/2006 07:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

All the exclusivity and secrecy of the so-called illuminists does is illustrate a tangible level of fear they have over being exposed as frauds...

Lets not confuse the "illuminati" with illumination.

My take on this:
In the curent lexicon, the illuminati refers to an exclusive clandestine group within the Powers That Be that control world events, power, and wealth through family ties, conspiracy, blackmail, mind control, sabotage, and other means.

Illumination means a state of being supposedly achieved through the activation of the "Serpent Fire", or Kundalini, characterized by a feeling of heat rising along the spinal column that results in a perceptual revelation.

It's safe to say that few if any members of the "illuminati" have been illuminated.

If secret knowledge was any good, it wouldn't be secret - all mankind could benefit from its tenets.

I don't think the path to illumination is as secret as it is just plain hard:
Fasting and a vegetarian diet, meditation- the cleansing and quieting of the mind, yoga, and all that jazz is easier said than done in this day and age.

8/24/2006 07:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Woman
The fact that God considers women to be inferior is made plain throughout the writings of the Bible. Paul, the true author of Christianity, repeatedly taught the early followers of Christ that women should stay in their place, which was subservient to man (1 Corinthians 11:3). He also stated that women were created for man's use (1 Corinthians 11:8-9), that they should learn in silence, not asking questions or raising doubts about the authority of men in public (1 Timothy 2:11-12). He went on to state that women should not speak in church because that was shameful, since the word of God would never come to a mere woman. If the woman wanted to learn more about something she had heard in church, she should ask her husband to explain it to her at home (1 Corinthians 14:34-36). Paul rationalized that it was the woman's fault that man fell from grace in the garden of Eden, because she was deceived by the serpent, not the man (1 Timothy 2:14).

Modern Christians love to ignore the teachings of Paul in this matter. The difference between men and women in Paul's eyes is made quite clear when he tells men to love their wives while women are commanded to be submissive and obey their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:18-19 1 Peter 3:1-7).

The fact that women were mere property is made readily apparent by the manner in which women were treated in the Bible. Fathers could sell their daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), use them for protection from mobs (Genesis 19:8, Judges 19:24), offer them as rewards for assasins (Joshua 15:16-17), or murder them as a human sacrifice, if God so demands (Judges 11:30-31, 34-40). Men could rape with relative impunity (Exodus 22:16-17, Deut. 22:28-29), taking women or girls as war booty (Numbers 31:17-18, Deut. 21:10-14) and enslaving as many women as he could afford to keep through the Godly practice of polygamy (Exodus 21:10).

As we pointed out earlier, taking women as property during war was ordained of God. When God told his people how to properly invade a foreign city, he told them that if the city didn't surrender peacefully and agree to be slaves, the Hebrews were to kill all the men in the city and take the women and the rest of the property for themselves (Deuteronomy 20:10-14). Of course, this guidance only applied to those cities which were very far away. The cities which God had given them for an inheritance were to have all living things in them killed (Deuteronomy 20:15-16).
AMEN

8/24/2006 08:08:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

none-the-less, the progress women have made in the west cannot be divorced from christianity's impact on the same, some for better, some for worse. we would not have gotten the western civilization we got without the church, warts and all. indeed, given that western thought has permeated the globe (not without resistance, of course), *you* are a by-product of christianity just as surely as any catholic saint or medieval monarch, whether you would believe it or not. as are non-westerners, by proxy. why do asians wear suits instead of kimonos? why does the 'middle kingdom' pretend to practice communism?

that isn't to say that we aren't affected as well by other forms of thought, but trying to separate christianity from the west and from westerners is like trying to separate coffee from the water after it's gone through the percolator.

so for us to reject extremist muslims' stoning of their 'impure' daughters or the hindus' practice of leaving their infant daughters to die of exposure or the chinese tendency to abort their in utero females as grotesque is to have *something* of the western spirit within us. and that spirit might not have allowed a woman to say mass, but it nigh worshipped her in the form of The Virgin.

elizabeth I and catherine de medici and eleanor of acquitaine and st. catherine of sienna (who wagged her finger at pope gregory XI, and, in spite of overwhelming opposition from his curia, he listened!) would have been *unthinkable* outside of the west in their day and age, and even so in some places today, all these hundreds of years later.

8/24/2006 09:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

some more 'Arcadian Fields Forever'...

"Pastor, his family accused of molesting children;
Wife accused of assisting in religious ritual, prosecutor says

Updated: 3:34 a.m. ET Aug 24, 2006

WASHBURN, Mo. - The minister of a rural Ozarks church, his wife and her two brothers have been accused of molesting young girls from their congregation for years, sometimes as part of a religious ritual, officials said.

The county prosecutor says the Rev. Raymond Lambert, 51, of Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church, repeatedly had sex with two underage girls with the help of his 49-year-old wife, Patty, according to court records.

For 10 years, the pastor told the girls, 'We are preparing your body for service to God,' the prosecutor said..."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14491888

8/24/2006 10:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Other positive contributions of western culture are the idea of individual rights (the idea that each individual is sacred in and of itself) and the idea of looking dispassionately and technically at one's own beliefs and culture.

Of course, these are honored more in the breach than in the observence, but they are recent stages in human evolution.

The west got a lot of its impetus from Islam, with its large empire extending into the Mediterranean and including Spain. The Muslims were some of the great early practitioners of tolerance of minorities.

8/24/2006 11:29:00 PM  
Blogger Vanished friend said...

Anyone notice that in Jeff's picture for this post, the 4th face, the one on the right, looks just like John Kerry? Creepy. Nice job Jeff! LOL.

8/25/2006 12:11:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

prunes said -

I have come to feel that there is nothing that did not originate in the... shall I say "mystic"?

I would second that in spades -- and it's not just science.

Games, for example, from board games to ball games, clearly have their origins in systems of divination. Many of them began as respresentations of the movement of the celestial bodies, others as simpler forms of fortune-telling.

Gold was considered a representation of higher things long before it got turned into money -- and even money retains much of that same numinous aura. If wealth were not a transcendent goal as well as a worldly one, people would not pursue it so obsessively.

Civilization began as an attempt to manifest the ideal of "as above, so below" -- specifically, to replicate the perfection of the celestial sphere here on earth -- and all political systems still justify themselves by reference to some assumed system of higher truth.

Even our fundamental political documents drip with mystical imagery, grounding themselves in a higher reality through the use of phrases like "in order to form a more perfect union."

Art, music, theater -- all came out of shamanistic performance, and even the most trivial forms of popular entertainment still are required to lift us out of ourselves and show us glimpses of a larger world and higher truths.

When you read biographies of the real innovators, whether in art, science, or politics, you invariably find that they were working from some kind of mystical or occult basis and that their public accomplishments represent just a partial expression of their private visions.

I've said here more than once that human beings are natural magicians. It might be as accurate to say we are natural full-time mystics. Mysticism is not just something for specialists, or something we do on the side. It is the water we swim in and the air we breathe.

There is no action we humans perform that does not have a symbolic significance. Not a word we utter that does not resonate with metaphorical implications of higher things. All of our values -- truth, beauty, freedom, love -- are mystical values. They begin as ways of talking about the ineffable and only secondarily are applied to mundane things.

Even the worst among us are not motivated by anything different from this, but are simply distorting it into forms of egotism and personal power. Even propaganda consists of true stories attached to false reference points. Even perversions are -- quite literally -- just a turning aside of what ought to be pure and holy into corrupt channels.

It's mysticism all the way down -- as well as all the way up -- and the path is the same. The only difference is in which direction you're walking on it.

8/25/2006 12:40:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

jon said -

indeed, given that western thought has permeated the globe (not without resistance, of course), *you* are a by-product of christianity just as surely as any catholic saint or medieval monarch, whether you would believe it or not. as are non-westerners, by proxy. why do asians wear suits instead of kimonos?

Well, trousers originated with the horse-riding nomads -- most likely the Scythians, as I recall. And coats came to Europe from the Turks in the 1600's. So you can't exactly blame suits on Christianity.

More substantively, though, I've seen it argued very plausibly that most of what is valuable in Western culture is an inheritance from pagan Europe -- with roots as deep as the Paleolithic -- and not from Christianity, which was imported relatively recently as an autocratic eastern cult and was for a long time practiced mainly by the upper classes.

The cult of Mary has been one aspect of a general Christian tendency to separate all women into whores and virgins -- with an unbridgeable gap between the base and fallen on one side and the pure and undefiled on the other. If you want to find the sources of a Western ideal of vigorous, autonomous women, the Celtic tradition is probably a far better place to look than Christianity.

8/25/2006 01:27:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeez Jeff.. I've never read so many words on what's so clear.

Perkins is another Civilzation player. (So am I).

You maximize flow of resources into a center... and they pay you!

Am I too drunk to realize the deeper meaning of your post or is it that obvious?

Everyone knows the civilization has to draw in more resources that it encompasses, let it collapse.

Tell me something I haven't know since 1492.

8/25/2006 01:31:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

From the modestly titled Beyond Reality, a few tidbits and possibly pertinent oddments:

"In the last analysis magic, religion and science are nothing but theories of thought."
Sir James Frazer

" . . . our common sense strives to create an illusory certainty about the causes of events by imputing reverse causal connections. History is bullshit; it is as indeterminate as the future."
Peter J. Carroll Liber Kaos 1992


"If you'd like to see a revivalist preacher at work, there are probably several in your city. Go to the church or tent early and sit in the rear, about three-quarters of the way back. Most likely repetitive music will be played while the people come in for the service. A repetitive beat, ideally ranging from 45 to 72 beats per minute (a rhythm close to the beat of the human heart), is very hypnotic and can generate an eyes-open altered state of consciousness in a very high percentage of people. And, once you are in an alpha state, you are at least 25 times as suggestible as you would be in full beta consciousness. The music is probably the same for every service, or incorporates the same beat, and many of the people will go into an altered state almost immediately upon entering the sanctuary. Subconsciously, they recall their state of mind from previous services and respond according to the post-hypnotic programming.

Watch the people waiting for the service to begin. Many will exhibit external signs of trance--body relaxation and slightly dilated eyes. Often, they begin swaying back and forth with their hands in the air while sitting in their chairs. Next, the assistant pastor will probably come out. He usually speaks with a pretty good 'voice roll.'

A 'voice roll' is a patterned, paced style used by hypnotists when inducing a trance. It is also used by many lawyers, several of whom are highly trained hypnotists, when they desire to entrench a point firmly in the minds of the jurors. A voice roll can sound as if the speaker were talking to the beat of a metronome or it may sound as though he were emphasizing every word in a monotonous, patterned style. The words will usually be delivered at the rate of 45 to 60 beats per minute, maximizing the hypnotic effect."

Dick Sutphen: The Battle for your Mind - Persuasion and brainwashing techniques being used on the public today

8/25/2006 02:32:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous 9:33 poster said...

The female has no place in christianity...

So man made patriachal religion to enslave women.

According to the bible there is no patriarchal or hierarchial authority. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one. All the apostles were equal. There is a plurality of proven and experienced saints that oversee the christian gatherings. There is not one saint who is greater than another. There are saints who are well learned and experienced within the churches and those that are not. Saints are the ones whose primary focus is on Christ. All the answers to life are found in the bible to them.

What we are seeing today is a one man show dictatorship in most all Christian churches. There is no plurality. Romanism corrupted the Christian churches. But most of the churches were corrupted before the Romanism. The ones that were not were persecuted for it. Christians spread out from the first churches that were established by Christ's apostles throughout the Middle East, Africa, Europe, etc...

My interpretation of women being silent in the church I believe has nothing to do with men's knowledge but God's knowledge. My understanding of this difficult teaching is that a woman, as an individual, is better than the christian fellowship. This gathering is somewhat below her. When she separates herself from an official christian gathering she gets things right with her men in her own backyard. She finds out whether or not her husband, father, etc... and herself agree or understand what is being taught in the church. Her affairs at home overule official church affairs.

There was a strong sense of equality in the early churches. These churches were totally persecuted. Christ's mother and siblings attended these churches. Men's teaching does not agree with the fact that the woman is better than the church. But this is how I understand this theology.

Anonymous 8:08 poster said...

The fact that God considers women inferior is made plain throughout the writings of the Bible...

Colossians 3: 19 Husbands love your wives, do not be bitter with them. Ephesians 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it;
1 Corinthians 7: 3 Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: 1 Peter 3: 7 Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the female vessel as weaker, and as being heirs together of the grace of life;

I do not see women as inferior in the whole bible. There is the proper context and perspective that is written every time women are mentioned. The God in the bible is not a god that dislikes women. If you disagree then ask me about a certain verse or idea in the bible. Keep it short and simple please. I'll only answer honest questions.

8/25/2006 04:30:00 AM  
Blogger Sounder said...

People from both the religious and secular poles of experience are equally disposed to see certain things as being wrong and disgusting. Still, elements from both expressions become involved in perverse activities. Our problem may stem from a confusion of categories. (A popular technique for removing substance from form.) Some categories that are treated as being of the same ‘kind’;

Country/Government

Interests of Israel/ Zionism

Religion/Word of G-d

Secularism/Rationality

People use the second category to stake their claim within the first, when closer examination reveals the tenuousness of the connection. It is easier to motivate people to do stupid things if they are confused as to what is the right thing to do. With category confusion comes an ability to claim something as being positive when in fact its expression is quite negative and will facilitate further perversions.

More semi-literate ramblings from Sounder, Proxy for the Love Machine

8/25/2006 07:04:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Humblenotry,

Your analysis of where women fit into the grand scheme within the Christian Church is probabaly the most kind and open minded version of it I've ever run across. What you wrote is almost poetic and has a poetic beauty about it. Thank you for taking the time to write it, I'm going to copy it and keep it and send it to all my Christian friends.

And you're right in saying that it is a difficult teaching. My understanding of why Paul saw it important to sequester women in the public meetings had to do with a couple of things:

At the time he wrote the letter there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit going on and it became obvious to Paul that the Holy Spirit had placed the anointings for teaching and leadership on the men and not the women, and under the anointing of the Holy Spirit he confirmed it in writing.

Also, Paul was aware that the principality Jezebel was Satan's frontline opponent to the outpouring and that she would attempt to make her predictable dig at it through the women as she knows how to resonate with the women.

You wrote: According to the bible there is no patriarchal or hierarchial authority.

This is absolutely correct, the Church is supposed to function as a family with fathers as the leaders, not as top down control priests.

When people have no relationship with the Holy Spirit they automatically gravitate toward top down control and law, and to reliance on formulas. They want a man at the top to lead them so they don't have to be responsible for their actions.

The reason people get sidetracked into cults is mostly because they have no identity and the cult gives them one. One example of cult mentality is the so-called 'Judeo Christian' agenda of spelling God's name G-d. People in cults want to think of themselves as being special cases, a cut above the masses, and they want to have something they can use to declare it.

8/25/2006 08:02:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

starrute, you said: "I've seen it argued very plausibly that most of what is valuable in Western culture is an inheritance from pagan Europe -- with roots as deep as the Paleolithic -- and not from Christianity..."

You are half right. Not from Christianity, but not from the pagans either.

Try Islam, from whence we got toothbrushing and dental hygiene, the custom of regular bathing, astronomy, chemistry, the preservation of the Greek Classics and the New Testament, which were back-translated from Arabic after the original Greek and Aramaic versions were destroyed in the burning of the library of Alexandria, as well as the oud/lute/guitar, pillows, the list goes on.

The europagans and the christians both were filthy barbarians before the muslims taught them the basics of civilization.

8/25/2006 08:12:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Of course, now we're just civilized, well-groomed barbarians.

8/25/2006 10:09:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Instead of the Bible we need some thoughts on the ladies from a master of gender studies, Bill O'Reilly:

In The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life says,
"My thing was the music: I was a dancing machine. Sock it to me, Donna Summer! Let's shake this place, Gloria Gaynor! Get down! Now, this was the lad of a quarter century ago, okay? But I make no apologies. I loved the all-out dancing, and quite a few girls loved to dance with me. The dancing got me dates. The dancing said (since you couldn't hear any words in those places under the rotating mirror balls), Hey, let's have some fun and see what happens next. Even Catholic girls had their inhibitions lowered by the howls of the Bee Gees or Sylvester. A few hours at clubs like Septembers or Shenanigans and most of my dates wanted to extend the evening at their place or mine."

Lost your breakfast yet?

If not, you can find more O'Reilly wisdom here:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/bill_oreilly

My personal fave was this gem:
Page 4: "Okay, you know I've made money. It was a long time coming, so I don't usually spend much of it and I certainly don't show it off." (Okay, Bill, obviously you do show it off. You're now averaging one reference to your huge salary every two pages. For God's sake, Bill, these are kids! Can you possibly be this insecure? Do you flash a fat roll of Benjamins in front of the dog every morning, cooing, "Who's your daddy?")

8/25/2006 10:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry to drag things off topic again, but found my way to this website via a story up at disinfo.com.

http://www.steorn.net

They claim to have come up with a method of producing free energy. From their website:

"Steorn’s technology appears to violate the ‘Principle of the Conservation of Energy’, considered by many to be the most fundamental principle in our current understanding of the universe. This principle is stated simply as ‘energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form’.

Steorn is making three claims for its technology:
1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.
2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts.
3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

The sum of these claims is that our technology creates free energy.

This represents a significant challenge to our current understanding of the universe and clearly such claims require independent validation from credible third parties."

To such an end, they posted a full-page add in the Economist, challanging the worlds scientists to test their claims. As of now, they claim that 3290 scientists have expressed interest.

8/25/2006 12:02:00 PM  
Blogger foist lastus said...

"A 'voice roll' is a patterned, paced style used by hypnotists when inducing a trance. .,. A voice roll can sound as if the speaker were talking to the beat of a metronome or it may sound as though he were emphasizing every word in a monotonous, patterned style."

sounds like rap [a lot of it is monotone] and (which is not music so much as it is stylized poetry)
...
as far as your chakras go ,the awareness of them can be activated{thru mediation]!, and then they become a conscious awareness (but one that cant be ignored...)

8/25/2006 12:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Some good reading for the participants of the religious discussion on here:

1. "The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals As Solar Observatories" by J. L. Heilbron

2. "Christianity on Trial: Arguments Against Anti-Religious Bigotry" by Vincent Caroll and David Shiflett

3. "For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery" by Rodney Stark

...etc. You can't watch the movie "Kingdom of Heaven" and think you are getting good history, or, for that matter, history at all.

8/25/2006 03:27:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dharma

Dharma is not religion.

Religion is only a method of worship and is a word which came into use in the nineteenth century. The word is based on a Christian concept and rooted in a Christian background of affiliation.

Dharma is a very ancient word. Dharma is non-divisive, non-exclusive, and non-conclusive. Dharma is a quest for understanding cosmic order of the universe and consciousness order at a personal level.

Dharma unites. Religion and its obverse secular are divisive. Religion is a restrictive canvas related to modes of worship of a divinity called by a variety of names. Religion and its obverse secular is restrictive in relating to parts of society and parts of social conduct.

A universal law I learned on the way is that you do not need man as a mediator to know the creator.
Man has interjected himself into this.Like someone earlier wrote:
Making us pay for that which we already have.




There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.

Ripple,from the Grateful Dead

8/25/2006 04:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Perkins describes in COEHM that he was chosen for his lacking amoral and ethical core. Big time rollers need small time opportunists to bring "order" to the world.
Although I think much of what Perkins wrote in Hitman is true, I can't help but wonder what is purposefully left out and intentionally injected.
He saw how well the Casteneda books did and he took an alternate road. But was it really a soul searching transformation, or was he sent there?
I mean, we are talking about a government that spent millions trying to figure out how to weaponize a frizbee.
If I had to bet, I'd bet Perkins is some kind of inside man. Kind of like the man who came in from the cold, went to the far out, and now is softening the left center for some new Bonofied enlightenment.
I'm thinking he either met McKenna or ripped him off...possible both.

8/25/2006 04:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

during the 'dark ages' europeans weren't more christian, they were *less*. paganism wasn't weeded out of the european mind for a thousand years following the death of christ, which is why, following the collapse of rome from 410-470, when the church moved beyond the borders of the rhine and danube, christanity was an urban phenomenon, not a rural one: the serfs and peasants and nobility of the wilds of gaul and lusitania and hibernia and germanies were still pagan in their thinking. so, the church concentrated on the credo, the ave, and the pater; the classics, squirreled away in monestaries, were only brought out after the old thinking of pagan europeans had finally been eroded away: the thinking that had people erecting altars under every evergreen. by the time of st. francis (who could, sans any retro-pagan bias, sing "brother sun, sister moon"), the classics were brought back out and compared with texts coming back from the crusades and a re-naissance of learning was underway.

and incidentally, the church never *seized* power after AD470; it was the only authority intact after western rome collapsed, making, by accident, the only governing body left around. in an interesting story recounted by jacques vallee in "dimensions", agobard, archbishop of lyons, recounts a story of the inhabitants of the region bringing before him three men and a woman to be stoned for having had some encounter with a flying ship. agobard, who died in 840, might not have believed their story, but he kept them from a stoning. the point is, the people looked to him for some sort of authoritative judgement on the issue, even if their first, pagan, inclinations led them to believe that a stoning of these folks was proper. it is only one of a myriad examples where the church during these dark times was the only tangible link to the relative security enjoyed under rome, and a symbol of that by-gone authority. but that doesn't make them christian.

islam--which did *not* give us the NT, btw--inherited a cache of persian/greco/egyptian knowledge of astrology and science and medicine, so for it to be 'ahead' of a quasi-christian europe in these fields at this time should come as no surprise. in fact, if they had *not* been, it *would* have been surprising, as they overran the very cradles of our joint civilizations! so kudos to the muslims for picking up where the byzantine christians left off in their advance of their civilization.

by lepanto, however, a more christian europe was in the ascendancy, and has been ever since.

8/25/2006 04:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

star said:

"The cult of Mary has been one aspect of a general Christian tendency to separate all women into whores and virgins..."

are you really suggesting that the church has *never* recognized married women or mothers or both? or that it has never canonized or beatified a married mother? how ludicrous! for it to even do so *once* means that your premise of 'whore-or-virgin' falls flat, imo. before christianity moved out of the roman boundaries, it had recognized the holiness of the likes of st. helena and st. monica (and *scores* of female martyrs from the first 300 years) neither whores NOR virgins....

8/25/2006 04:59:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

to the "dharma bum" who quoted from the Ripple scroll:

dhar·ma (där'mə, dûr'-)
noun

Hinduism & Buddhism.

The principle or law that orders the universe.

Individual conduct in conformity with this principle or law.

The essential function or nature of a thing.

Hinduism:

Individual obligation with respect to caste, social custom, civil law, and sacred law.

Buddhism:

The body of teachings expounded by the Buddha.

Knowledge of or duty to undertake conduct set forth by the Buddha.

One of the basic, minute elements from which all things are made.

[Sanskrit dharmaḥ, statute, law.]
--------------------------------

The etymology of the word "religion" has been debated for centuries.

The English word clearly derives from the Latin religio, "reverence (for a god or the gods)" or "conscientiousness".

The origins of religio, however, are obscure.

Proposed etymological interpretations include:

From Relego:

Re-reading ~

from Latin re (again) + lego (in the sense of "read"), referring to the repetition of scripture.

or

Treating carefully ~

from Latin re (again) + lego (in the sense of "choose".

This was the interpretation of Cicero) "go over again" or "consider carefully".

From Religare:

Re-connection to the divine ~

from Latin re (again) + ligare (to connect, as in English ligament).

This interpretation is favoured by some modern scholars, but was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.

or

To bind or return to bondage ~

an alternate interpretation of the "reconnection" etymology emphasizing a sense of servitude to God, this may have originated with Augustine. However, the interpretation, while popular with critics of religion, is often considered imprecise and possibly offensive to followers.

From Res + legere:

Concerning a gathering ~

from Latin res (ablative re, with regard to) + legere (to gather), since organized religion revolves around a gathering of people.
------------------

to Anonymous 8:12, the muslims also gave the europeans the astrolabe, rice, coffee, sugar, the silk-route trade to china, the zero (possibly by way of hindu mathematicians), and the concept and practice of ocean-going, commercial trading ships (oops!).

8/25/2006 05:08:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i would add "the evolution of medieval thought" by david knowles to the reading list above.

star said:
"..trousers originated with the horse-riding nomads -- most likely the Scythians, as I recall. And coats came to Europe from the Turks in the 1600's. So you can't exactly blame suits on Christianity."

it wouldn't have mattered if the suit came from mars. the *reason* the world over sees it as standard attire is because western men have dressed that way for 150 years now.

8/25/2006 05:31:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous said " the power took the form of a bat, which is a symbol of the dark side."

Seems to me that in China they are good fortune. So the chinese are going to hell?

And that 'blue is the color of the devil'...WHAAAT?
The chakras are the colors that we would refer to as the 'rainbow'...
like:
Red, easily the devil's color
Orange, the color of flame, obviously also the devil's color
Yellow,The devil uses it with red to make orange...
Green, in *esoteric* knowledge, green is grouped with red to symbolize *fire*, so that is the devil's color too.
Blue, well, it's just the devil's color, he looks good in it.
Purple: The color of vanity and pride, also the devil's color.
Then,not chakras, but well- represented as colors:
Black, which is without a doubt the devil's color, all the satanists robes are BLACK! and that leaves white, but THAT isn't good either it's just the devil trying to dupe you by baiting you with something that looks pure!

And that G-d stuff miffs me too, like "god" is his *real* name...seems to me God is a generic word for deity, You can refer to Yehovah and you can refer to Jupiter, they're both fricckin G_DSSSSSS. Maybe you should go back to the unpronouncable YHVH...Be much more obscure and snobbish...

But who am I to say, I'm just some damn feeble, frail flower of the feminine sex who obviously has no right to do anything but squeeze out cannon fodder and slaves once yearly for the fatherland. And thank my masters daily for the privelege, nay WORSHIP them, and maybe I'll get to have some man to make me a saint too....
(Howls of demonic laughter....)

8/25/2006 05:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

O, you poor widdle opwessed womyn.

8/25/2006 07:29:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While this information does certainly help me to maintain my usual healthy scepticism about the book and its author, it certainly doesn't discredit Amy Goodman or Democracy Now or "Amy Goodman progressives." Amy Goodman does an amazing job of presenting ideas and information that we usually can't get from any other news source. It may not always be the 100% accurate but I am not aware of any new source that is always accurate. I deeply appreciate Amy Goodman for showing us the other side of the story.

8/25/2006 08:22:00 PM  
Blogger Sounder said...

Juno Jones said;

”And that G-d stuff miffs me too, like "god" is his *real* name...seems to me God is a generic word for deity, You can refer to Yehovah and you can refer to Jupiter, they're both fricckin G_DSSSSSS. Maybe you should go back to the unpronouncable YHVH...Be much more obscure and snobbish...”

Creator exists beyond the limitations of our categories and as such has no name, still
I agree that my previous use of a (no) name for God may be irritating. I thought I had my reasons, but my reasons are not good enough.

Don’t know dharma much, but I liked this.

Anon 4:42 said,
”Dharma unites. Religion and its obverse secular are divisive. Religion is a restrictive canvas related to modes of worship of a divinity called by a variety of names. Religion and its obverse secular is restrictive in relating to parts of society and parts of social conduct.”

Yes, like people making some ‘god’ into God. Or declairing relative truth as being Absolute Truth.

Anon 4:46, I think you are on a good track.

8/25/2006 10:10:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wasted enough Sundays as a child sitting in church. About the only trance they induced in me was one that involved snoring.

I'd pay good money for a nice trance right about now.

4 days of excruciating tooth agony so far as I wait for my Monday morning double root canal.

I was stupid enough to allow my dentist to talk me into staying with the root canal plan. I just wanted the bitch to rip the fuckers out, but she promised that she'd medicate me nicely as I wait for Monday.

Ha!

Double fucking ha!

She gives me Vicodin...

Vico-goddamn-din....

Useless crap pill...

Currently eating 2000 mg &, while walking across the floor is a woozy adventure, it still feels like I'm Dustin Hoffman with Larry Olivier crouched on his chest.

In my humble, yet whimpering with pain opinion, i think junkies & pillheads should be involved when deciding dosage & drug effectiveness. Doctors are obviously waaaaaaaaaay out of goddamn touch on both of those topics.

I also learned something....I'd squeel like Ned "Deliverance" Beatty if I were ol' Dustin in Larry's dentist chair.

Sorry for the off topic blather...

8/25/2006 11:00:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Power of Pride:

http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=154220

As it is, I worry that the supposed leader of the free world is trapped in the body of a 7-year-old and hiding a Whoopie Cushion under his bed.
Has Dubya lost it?
Anyway, here’s the news, such as it is. U.S. New & World Reports’ Paul Bedard says our commander in chief “loves flatulence jokes . . . can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.”


In an interview yesterday, Bedard, who writes “Washington Whispers” for the weekly newsmagazine, also said he’s heard about Bush’s full-salute “Austin Greeting.” That’s when new aides come in for their “meet and greet.”
“Word is,” says Bedard, “he likes to gas a couple, and then bring the aide in and see what the kid’s face looks like.”
Naturally, the aide can’t accuse the President or grimace or hold his nose. This dilemma apparently drives the presidential funny bone wild.


Feel proud America.

8/25/2006 11:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From the "belief in canals" dept.:

Jasper Maskelyne, was born in 1902 in England, a music hall conjurer, never fired a shot in battle, but his amazing feats played a key role in the Allied victory in Africa.

Among his many triumphs, Maskelyne “hid” the Suez Canal and conjured up illusions of armies and battleships, fooling German forces led by General Erwin Rommel into retreat.

The grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne, one of the founding fathers of British magic, Maskelyne was a celebrated stage magician before the war. Convinced he could use his skills to help the army, Maskelyne wooed sceptical officials by creating the illusion of a German warship floating down the Thames using mirrors and a model. He was placed in charge of the Royal Engineers Camouflage Corps and sent to Egypt where he performed some genuine missions impossible.

Asked to prevent the Germans from bombing Alexandria Harbour, the conjurer redirected the bombers by recreating the harbour’s exact lighting pattern three miles away.

He “vanished” the Suez Canal by building a series of spinning strobe lights to put pilots off their bearings.

Maskelyne’s greatest triumph came in 1942 when he successfully convinced Rommel that the British Eighth Army was in the south of the Egyptian desert and that the Alamein attack would begin there rather than in the north.

Although praised privately by Churchill and hunted by Hitler, Maskelyne ended his days in relative obscurity as a farmer in Kenya and died in 1973.

8/26/2006 04:55:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More on oligarchic control, and how financial elites "shape-shift" their own agenda into an illusory "democratic consensus" (courtesy of the great Matt Taibbi):

"The unspoken subtext of this increasingly bitter debate between the Democratic Party establishment and the supporters of people like Ned Lamont and Hillary Clinton's antiwar challenger, Jonathan Tasini, is a referendum ordinary people have unexpectedly decided to hold on the kingmaker's role of the holy trinity of the American political establishment -- big business, the major political parties and the commercial media. The irony is that it's the political establishment itself that has involuntarily raised the consciousness of its disenfranchised voters.

The surge in support for Lamont initially came from people motivated by two simple things -- a desire to protest the war in Iraq, and physical revulsion before the wrinkled, vengeful persona of Joe Lieberman. But the party, in fighting back, attacked not on the issues but on the means of protest -- blogs, grassroots activism, Lamont's independent wealth. In doing so, it threw into relief the essential parameters of the problem, which is this: The Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters.

It raised money by appealing directly to companies in private fundraisers, and it used the commercial media to enforce its policy positions, in particular its desire to "clearly reject our antiwar wing," as Al From put it a few years back. It's a simple formula for running one-half of American politics; you decide on John Kerry two years before the presidential vote, raise him $200 million bucks, and let CNN and The New York Times take care of any Howard Deans who might happen to pop up in the meantime. The same greased track is being prepared for Hillary Clinton right now, and we can be quite sure that guns are already being aimed at Russell Feingold.

It's been an essentially oligarchic system of government, where all the important decision-makers have been institutions, with any attempts by ordinary people to circumvent the system coldly repressed. Remember 2000, when Ralph Nader was not only not allowed to debate with Al Gore and George Bush, but wasn't allowed in the building -- not even allowed in a second, adjoining hall in the building, not even when he had a ticket? Well, we have a replay of that proud moment in our history going on now, with Hillary's Senate primary opponent Tasini being shut out of debates by New York's NY1 TV channel (owned by TimeWarner) which is insisting that qualified candidates not only reach 5 percent support in the polls (Tasini is at 13 percent and rising) but raise or spend $500,000. Said NY1 Vice President Steve Paulus: "All Tasini would need is for each [New York state registered voter] to send him a dollar. Right now, with the money he's raised, he does not represent the party he claims to represent."

So a war chest is now the standard for representation? In order to get on television, you need a dollar from every voter? (Are we electing a Senator or holding a Girl Scout raffle? What the fuck?) And this is decided by . . . an executive for a corporate television station? One that recently sent a reporter [Adam Balkin] to Japan to do features on high-tech toilets? In other words, NY1 will pay to put an exotic Japanese toilet on a few million or so New York television screens -- but insists on seeing a half-million dollar deposit before it will put a Democratic candidate with 13 percent support in a televised debate? Am I missing something?"

8/26/2006 10:22:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops. Forgot this no doubt bang-on prognostication:

"The surge in support for Lamont initially came from people motivated by two simple things -- a desire to protest the war in Iraq, and physical revulsion before the wrinkled, vengeful persona of Joe Lieberman. But the party, in fighting back, attacked not on the issues but on the means of protest -- blogs, grassroots activism, Lamont's independent wealth. In doing so, it threw into relief the essential parameters of the problem, which is this: The Democratic Party has been operating for two decades without the active participation of its voters.

It raised money by appealing directly to companies in private fundraisers, and it used the commercial media to enforce its policy positions, in particular its desire to "clearly reject our antiwar wing," as Al From put it a few years back. It's a simple formula for running one-half of American politics; you decide on John Kerry two years before the presidential vote, raise him $200 million bucks, and let CNN and The New York Times take care of any Howard Deans who might happen to pop up in the meantime. The same greased track is being prepared for Hillary Clinton right now, and we can be quite sure that guns are already being aimed at Russell Feingold."

War shifts the shape of placid normalcy into blood, bone, and dust. Our professional shape-shifters, and their legions of journalistic doomers, try unceasingly to shift the shape of argument from "what's best for the people," to "what's best for our own narrow, elite interests?" And they are so good at it that millions of brainwashed automatons parrot the elitist crap, thinking it their own.

Genius.

8/26/2006 10:27:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Indeed. People turning into lizards before your eyes may simply be a recondite metaphor for the vicious slime who "shape shift" themselves into "representatives of the people." And let's not forget the original Mr. Shape-shifter, the 'Father of Lies,' who delights in nothing so much as carnage and the despair that war always brings to the human community.

Propaganda is a technique of shape-shifting. It is a mental legerdemain, practiced on societies by the financial elites who own the media. "We're your friends," the lizards lie.

Then they eat you.

8/26/2006 10:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's not just the Hillary juggernaut. I'm starting to suspect that the fix is already in for the current midterms. That even if the Dems do regain power, they'll take one look at the *real* facts on the economy, the world situation, etc., say "We can't let the people know about this, they'd freak out!" and keep on maintaining the same structure of lies and control.

There was also this particularly disturbing article in the Times yesterday:

As the start of the fall campaign looms and House Democrats remain within realistic reach of reclaiming the majority, party leaders are beginning to explore the delicate question of what happens if they win.

Rusty from being out of power for 12 years, Democrats are rethinking how they should parcel out coveted committee chairmanships and the other plums that would come with House control at a time when the party’s potential chairmen are increasingly being portrayed by Republicans as liberal extremists.

In fund-raising appeals, on the Internet and in stump speeches, Republicans raise the specter of a Judiciary Committee headed by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, a banking committee steered by Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a tax-writing committee led by Charles B. Rangel of New York, and an energy panel under the leadership of John D. Dingell of Michigan.

Democrats and others call it a tired scare tactic with more than a whiff of bigotry because Republicans often point to gay and black Democrats who would lead committees. But faced with the attacks and pent-up ambitions of rank-and-file lawmakers, Democratic leaders are hinting they might abandon party tradition and award sought-after slots not solely on the basis of seniority, but instead follow the Republican lead of also weighing such factors as legislative record, diversity and work for the good of the party.


Any number of possible comments come to mind, ranging from "Heads I win, tails you lose" to "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" to many things far less printable. But I never thought I'd see the day when "diversity" meant "fewer black people" . . .

Link

8/26/2006 12:06:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ahh yes...

That tired "Republicans vrs. Democrats" routine has lost its sheen for me, long before all of them (except Wellstone) voted for the Iraq war, long before not a single Democratic Senator stood up to investigate the voting irregularities that gave Bush 2 the White House...

"Meet the new boss" indeed-
Lamont is the great-grandson of former J.P. Morgan & Co. Chairman Thomas W. Lamont and the grandnephew of Corliss Lamont (a director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1932 to 1954). His self-reported net worth lies somewhere between $90 million and $300 million.
-Wikipedia

And like the Bushes and Chairman Mao, he's a Yale man.

Lamont is "a member of one of the Money Mafia families whose ancestors were the invisible money barons who wrote what became the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 at the Jekyll Island retreat of J. Pierpont Morgan on November 22, 1910.

At Jekyll Island, five bankers, assistant Treasury Secretary Abraham Piatt Andrew, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s father-in-law, Sen. Nelson Aldrich [R-RI] , hammered out the strategy to pressure the State legislatures to ratify the 16th and 17th Amendments.

Thirty-six states caved in to the muscle-flexing by JP Morgan Company; JP Morgan's First National Bank of New York; Bankers Trust Company; Rockefeller's National City Bank of New York (Citibank); and the Rothschild's New York bank, Kuhn, Loeb & Co.


http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon147.htm

Talk about economic shape-shifters...

8/26/2006 06:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is Lamont Bull & Scones, I mean Skull und Bones?

8/26/2006 08:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous 8:02 said...

Also, Paul was aware that the principality Jezebel was Satan's frontline opponent to the outpouring...

You are welcome. Thank you much for your response. It is greatly appreciated. I am very glad to share this here. We know that God gets all the glory for this.

I never thought about Jezebel's influence within the early churches in this context. The mother goddess influences grab every thing up spiritually and physically. Ashtoreth the goddess representing the passive principle of life and her soul mate the god Baal representing the active principle. The Queen of heaven Mary is this goddess today in the churches. I think her phallus image is the pillar and picture of the snake(the devil) in these churches.

It's ancient religious systems that kept the peasants contained under a hierarchy.

Jeff, Perkin's influence I think is an eerie view on how the political lefties and righties are uniting as a result of the global economic system through religion. Specifically through the "New Age" movement.

The Theosophists are rolling over Christianity and replacing it with the occult. A modern disciple of Alice Bailey, Marilyn Ferguson, wrote in her best selling book "The Aquarian Conspiracy" in Chapter 8, "Healing Ourselves", that medicine was going to be reinvented. It's foundation would shift to eastern mysticism from western rationalism. Her new paradigm of medicine has the inclusion of the spirit world and "energy fields."

30 years later it is obvious that the "New Age Movement" has made great progress in transforming the medical profession, in part because of the failure of the medical system to address issues outside of its own paradigm (model).

Medicine in the late 20th century had become heavily institutionalized, bureaucratic, expensive, controlled by special interests and cumbersome. Alternative or "holistic" health practices originating from a religious system antithetical to Christianity, filled the void and have now become accepted and mainstream. Some? of the practices and methods of alternative medicine are purely a way to connect individuals to the powers of the spirit world. Through the five senses, through the mind, and through the body itself. The stated goal of the New Age leaders is to "initiate" people into the spirit world, that is, provide a way for them to become demon-possessed.

However, neuroleptics, mood stabilizers, and electroconvulsive therapies that are given freely by the medical establishment can also provide a way for people to become demon-possessed in my opinion. Some people begin to hear voices and are treated as permanently ill. Withdrawal from ingesting certain pharmaceuticals can cause
unpredictable even violent behavior. The news media has reported persons behaving violently because they stopped taking their medication. What they fail to report is the proven medical fact that this behavior may be caused by the side effect of not taking the pharmaceutical and not the person's mental state.

Science has been able to prove that some alternative techniques or medicines work because of sound? scientific principles found in physics, chemistry or biology.

But I think that the new world religion of Antichrist & or False Prophet may be thought of as scientific. This new religious science may promise to lead humanity into the experience of it's own divinity, that each of us is "God." The basic lie of the serpent in the garden of Eden will seem to be validated by the godlike psychic powers the Antichrist & or False Prophet will manifest and the WHOLE world will pursue. It may be a religion of self love and self worship centered in man himself and oriented to man's personal success rather than to the glory of the Christian God. It is clear that we are very much involved with this direction. The evidence is there for all to see in the New Age Movement, which is a blend of science and Eastern religions.

8/27/2006 01:00:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

This may sound a bit weird, but I believe there's an important connection between Richard's passing mention of the Irish free energy hub-bub and starroute's (and the anonymous persons') thoughtfully sad comments on the soullessness of the collusionist Democrats. The connection is perhaps a bit tenuous, but aren't a lot of things, like sanity and life itself for that matter? Here's where I "spotted" the link, while reading someone ruminating on why Tesla never seemed to achieve the goal he had set for himself, that of "freeing" mankind through developing the technology to tap into limitless, emissionless energy:


So what do you do about it - Free Energy: Creating an Idea whose time has come.

Wireless transmission of power and free energy have not happened yet, perhaps we aren't ready, perhaps the Earth isn't ready. Pogo said it best,
" we have met the enemy and it is us."
In the Jungian view of collective unconscious, things happen when the time is right, we get what we agree to. We need a flight plan. And that plan must realize that,

WHEN THE POWER OF LOVE OVERCOMES THE LOVE OF POWER THERE WILL BE PEACE

[Source; Girls Lavatory, Boulder High School, Boulder, Colorado] Described as "Post Industrial, neo-technical, teen-age graffiti."]

"So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator himself had electrically designed this planet...."

--Nikola Tesla describing what is now known as Schumann Resonance (7.8 Hz) in "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires As A Means Of Furthering World Peace", Electrical World And Engineer, January 7, 1905, PP 21-24.

8/27/2006 01:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Girl's bathrooms obviously have better graffiti than boys... All I can recall at the urinal is stuff like "Why look up here, the joke is in your hand"...

And in reference to the Schumann Resonance, I mean I did a lot of bongs, but I seem to remember a corelation to brainwaves, and Ley Line tuning... vibration nodes on a sphere... Buckminster Fuller's geodesics... a toreador mesmerizing a charging bull with the flip of a switch... why doesn't Jeff put up a new post...
...zzzzzzzz......

8/27/2006 03:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We know very well that "modern man" has been around for at least 150,000 years and yet beyond our meagre records of the tortuous and twisted past two thousand, or the very few indistinct ghosts and shadows that only briefly appear and vanish just as swiftly throughout the ten thousand year wasteland that preceded them, we have no information about any those ancestors of our's at all. None! Their slate has very much been wiped clean.

The best that all our learned minds, scientists and academics alike, have managed is to simply declare that missing 138,000 years of human presence on this planet as somehow being "uneventfull" for want of any evidence to prove otherwise...hmmm?

Not only do they refuse to speculate upon the matter, they quite vigilantly block and deny any kind of discussion of that most peculiar and altogether pressing topic even though everything we do in fact know about ourselves thus far has given us more than ample clues to the kind of fate we ourselves are just as likely courting.

Now our planet, and indeed our entire solar system is rapidly spiralling towards it's closest point to the great central sun of our galaxy.

A "homecoming" of sorts that predates even our own mysterious progenitors by at least that much time again.

It not only may have last taken place when no human life, at least as we understand it, would have been possible but may in itself have accounted for that particular impossibility. We simply do not know...yet.

But if sudden "flares" on our own tired and miniscule little sun can knock out power grids and change our weather around the globe what might we reasonably expect from what is rapidly and relentlessly coming our way from that most ancient and powerfull of all sources, the one whose enormous energies first cast us out and whose inexorable gravity will send us wheeling out yet again to the fullest extent of our galactic trajectory before it reels us in again?

So we are confronted by the vast power, mystery and uncertainty of the universe itself. We may even be confronted with the potential mortality of our own planet or in some final microcosmic anlysis perhaps even our own as individuals.

There is, however, nothing particularly "new" in any of those possibilities beyond a growing collective "awareness" of them and what that awareness most urgently dictates in response to them.

Each moment matters. Each and every choice, regardless of how how small or seemingly inconsequential, opens or closes doors and pathways to new probabilities.

Those probabilities and their potential outcomes are all determined by whatever the true "intent" is of every single choice we happen to make.

It is "wishfull thinking" that invariably causes us to selfishly court disaster. It is only humility and honesty in the face of all the harm and hurt that "wishfull thinking" actually creates that can stave those disasters off and bring us something genuinely better in its place.

Now that particular choice presents itself with every other choice we ever have to make.

To be sure we must give the Devil his due, but certainly not more than half of the time. I suspect that even a good deal less than that might actaully make a world of difference. Right now he has the field all to himself.

8/27/2006 08:53:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

I think that was sort of this guy's point--that after dithering with cool, detached cynicism and its other fashionably 'mature' schools of thought, it's back to the bongs and those cosmic, banal truths we were focused on so much...before we became the sophisticates we are today...with the world in our hip pocket...

It looked somehow relevant to me, late at night, after I'd followed all these blogging reactions to Steorn's challenge. The hopeful were mostly a little starry-eyed, while the doubters were so pompous, so convinced that their understanding of the universe doesn't allow for the possibility of free energy and that therefore, it can't happen here. The bong of truth starts to look pretty appealling after hanging out with the supporters of the Reptilian World Alliance for a few hours...

8/27/2006 10:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Bong of Truth." Ha! Ironing the fabric of reality?

Cuttlefish, I was just reading about the Schumann resonance last night. Are you able to expound on this brief Wikipedia comment?

"Since the ninth overtone lies at approximately 60 Hz, the cavity is also driven by the North American power grid."

What are the implications of our using 60 cycle/sec current?

8/27/2006 10:55:00 AM  
Blogger AJ said...

WHEN THE POWER OF LOVE OVERCOMES THE LOVE OF POWER THERE WILL BE PEACE

Well said cutt,

To the Christian posts earlier- I might suggest there are definate areas of magick that can be used for good and evil. To outright dismiss all things that your little brains might not understand as evil magick is a testimony to the myopic focus and self rightousness that have become a business monopoly with Fundamentalists Christians or any other fanatics.

8/27/2006 11:08:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, THE APPLE AND THE SERPENT




Edward Kelly's "Vision of the Round House"¹ adds further credibility to the texts written by scholars supporting the concept of the creation of humanity by extra-terrestrials through genetic engineering. There is no way Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly had any knowledge of this in the 16th century. The "Vision of the Round House" is identical: Humanity was created by extra-terrestrials who needed slave laborers in the mines. By taking the ovum from a Cro-Magnon/primate and using artificial insemination with a sperm from one of the Nephilim, we were created.

The one known as Satan created us and designed us. He intended to bring us knowledge and make us as the Gods, but he was prevented from doing so and cursed by some of the other Gods. We did not evolve naturally, as opposed to animals who have overall better health and immunity. Satan wished to bring us to perfection, but some of the other Gods wanted for us to be destroyed after the mission was over and since we were becoming an issue, they attempted to let us all drown in the flood.

During early development an embryo enters a stage. This stage under a microscope looks just like an APPLE. This is known as the "Torus Stage." The shape is called a "Morula." Every single form of life goes through this stage. This is the "apple" that was written about in the Garden of Eden. This is where Satan went against the other Gods and gave us more advanced genetics. The "breath of God" is the soul. The chakras are the psychic energy centers that are activated by BREATHING in certain ways to enable the Kundalini to ascend. When the Kundalini Serpent ascends, enlightenment/Godhead is achieved.

The Tree of Life is Ancient Egyptian in origin. It is actually a pattern, either upright or upside-down for the genetics of life. It plugs into the Flower of Life that has been inscribed upon so many walls in Egyptian temples and also in the pyramids. The Flower of Life is the blueprint for every living thing.

Fools claim Satan is an "xian invention." All of the Old Gods were made into Devils and Demons in order to destroy their relations with humans. These are the Gods who have been present throughout the life of the human race and have attempted to give us knowledge and to help us in our times of need. Cities were destroyed, libraries and other places where books were kept were burnt and destroyed. Every culture, such as the Philistines, that worshiped other Gods was made war upon and genocide ensued. The Philistines worshiped Beelzebub. he was the God of the Philistine city of Ekron and Zebulon. (Baal [Lord] Zebulon). There are few if any traces of the truth concerning these Gods.

The Old Gods have remained as Devils and Demons just to survive. The judeo/xian "god" wishes for the destruction of humanity. This can be seen in the Inquisition, anti-life teachings, especially where the abstinence of sexual intercourse is concerned, to stop us from procreating. Moses went on a rampage of war and slaughter when he descended from the mount under the direction of jehova. The incident at Fatima with the virgin bitch revealed the alien contempt for humanity in the hopeful anticipation of our blowing ourselves to bits with nuclear weapons, if one can read between the lines.

With the opening of the watchtowers a small increment, humanity has been flooded with knowledge in the last 100 years that has been unparelled in the whole of history. We have not had time to adapt. This was the sole intention by the angels who communicated the information to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly. That the knowledge would act to destroy humanity in a short period of time. 100 years is nothing to the Gods. The fact that they were angels is portrayed by their arrogance and condescending attitude towards the two men. Demons are very friendly and understanding when treated with respect. I have never known Demons to be arrogant.

Most people either study physical science or the occult knowledge. Not very many study both. This is where people would benefit, by studying both, for in the end, it all comes together.

Francis Crick, Nobel Prize Winner for the discovery of DNA and his hypothesis of Panspermia


# His Day is Monday.

# His Colors are Blue, Red and Black

He is the Sumerian God EA, also known as ENKI which means "Lord of the Earth." He is also known as Melek Ta'us.

# Animals that are sacred to him are the Peacock, the Serpent, the Goat, the Dragon and the Raven.

# His numbers are 2 and 11 and 4.
(666 is symbolic of the Age of Aquarius when he will rule again).

# His Zodiac Signs are Aquarius, the Water Bearer and Capricorn, the Goat.

# His Planets are Uranus and Venus (the Morning Star).

# His Directions are both South and East

His most Important Day of the year is December 23, when the Sun is one degree into Capricorn. Capricorn is the 10th sign of the zodiac and the first degree of this sign makes eleven.

8/27/2006 01:24:00 PM  
Blogger AJ said...

1:24-

Virgin Bitch??
Why the passion?
Sounds like issues you have with a Luciferian vs. Christian reality/ideology are real.

8/27/2006 01:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here is the Fransis Crick link,
i forgot

8/27/2006 01:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick

8/27/2006 01:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mary worshippers?

Nothing new under the sun.

Astaroth
Her Sumerian title "Queen of Heaven" was stolen by xians and used for their fictitious "Virgin Mary."

"Easter" was stolen from Astaroth. Originally known as "Ashtar." This holiday coincides with the Vernal Equinox of spring when day and night are of equal length. Known as "Eastre" to the Anglo-Saxons. As the Goddess of fertility, she was associated with rabbits and eggs. The xtians stole this holiday and twisted its meaning. Other names include: Easter Eastre Eos Eostre Ester Estrus (Estrus is when an animal goes into heat; mating season) Oestrus Oistros and Ostara. Again, the "Lamb of God" was stolen from the Zodiac sign of Aries the Ram which occurs every spring.

8/27/2006 01:54:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Caduceus ever wonder?

The serpent, a symbol of Satan represents the firey kundalini force coiled at the base of the spine, which upon ascending, transforms the human mind and soul to a much higher level of understanding and ability. This is the true meaning of "Raising the Devil." The Serpent symbol of Satan also represents the DNA helix of life.

8/27/2006 02:23:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Source: Mail on Sunday
Date: 8 August 2004

...Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws.

It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.


Now, back to Tesla. First off, I'm neither an expert nor an aficionado on things Teslese, but there are a few things that strike me about that snippet ("Since the ninth overtone lies at approximately 60 Hz, the cavity is also driven by the North American power grid.") Tesla was antagonistic toward Hertzian electronics, claiming that Hertz had misunderstood the nature of electricity altogether and that the electrical power we use is but a dim shadow of the true power we have yet to access. Bearden talks about this end of it a lot, connecting Tesla's Hertz-bashing to his own Heaviside/Lorentz disparagements, since all three were in some way involved with perverting the work of James Maxwell Clerk, the most sublime genius who laid the groundwork for both free energy and a Grand Unified Field Theory with his famous equations, which were then "edited" by Heaviside and Lorentz, which in turned prevented Hertz from really understanding electricity and Einstein from postulating the GUFT. Thus began the history of free energy/"true" physics suppression.

The thing about resonance also has some weird twists to it. Tesla once made a public exhibition of demolishing a building using soundwaves. Apparently, everything has some essential vibrational frequency which, when discovered or tuned into, can cause all sorts of interesting effects. Tesla was cut loose by J.P. Morgan, his main financier, when it finally dawned on him that Tesla's world grid would provide free energy to all and no profits to him. The von Schumann Resonance is, from what I gather, the natural frequency at which the earth vibrates, or at least at which its natural electrical field resonates...

8/27/2006 02:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize."


Gosh yes! That just sounds so much edgier than admitting you stole the idea from your
female colleague

8/27/2006 03:08:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More substantively, though, I've seen it argued very plausibly that most of what is valuable in Western culture is an inheritance from pagan Europe -- with roots as deep as the Paleolithic -- ...

I don't think you could get into much details to back that up on how that presumably is continued. Actually, a lot of the Roman Catholic Church preserves the pagan heritage, instead. Then there's this big pink elephant---

I think the other parallel gnostic tradition in Europe is as strong as the Roman Catholic Church from the evidence I have seen in several books on architectual projects that cover hundreds of years or the durable knowledge about archaeoastronomy.

All this is simultaneously mixed with the continuity of the scientific/hermetic traditions of Egypt from the early centuries of the "Christian/gnostic" era. Later, it surfaces into the Cistercians, the Templars, the Crusades--which were three things in European history where there is a lot more than meets the eye... particularly concerning occult bloodlines involved in them.

And yes defininately on another point above--all the crucial Islamic religious/cultural influences on 'secular/cultural' aspects of tolerance in Europe and Spain/Languedoc--and even courtly love traditions connections, says Tannahill. All that Islamic information heritage you mentioned in Europe is fascinating (though I think you accidentially inserted the Greek Bible as something that the Islamics "saved"? ;-). Even in your "Islamic" list above, there seems to be some form of European gnosticism in that religion. Read Bushby's The Secret in the Bible for an (undocumented, alas though interesting) assertion that renegade gnostic Roman Catholic Cardinals were founding Islam... Islam has a lot more bloodline continiuty issues in its religion and its various sects than RCC does as well.

ALL SHOULD read Talisman: Secret Cities, Secret Faith for the best discussion of this "European" parallel tradition of gnosticism to the present that I have seen. If you think rigint's high wierdness is interesting, it goes WAY BACK IN EUROPE. It will seriously blow your mind what you've been missing (and meant to miss) in front of your face. This book really ties in this parallel tradition of religious and political power in Europe. If you knew nothing before, it will definitely give you historical vertigo to read it. It will leave you really really AFRAID how powerful this parallel tradition seems to have always been...though it is a secretive group. Europe is the land of secret societies, possibly due to the ongoing process of how repressive the Roman Catholic Church got for hundreds upon hundreds of years where you could be killed for anything. Millions of Europeans were killed for thought crime from the 1200s-1600s.

The 'gnostic wing' of European history really comes back into its own beginning in the 1700s--after getting off the ground during the crusades period though crushed then by the 1300s. The whole smattering of "Christian" cathedrals throughout Europe had an underground stream "dual use" religious mystery school use that built up within them over the centuries.

More on this parallel tradition is seen in the fascinating (or scary) "multi-religious use" Christian churches throughout Europe. After WWII, lots of bombed out European churches as people were going through the damage, were found to have--hidden below the main altars--pagan sacred phallus statues and a lot else.... (Read about that in the book Pagan Europe)

We require a better term than "Europe" when discussing these things--Europe the term only came into wide use as the term Christendom started to be phased out. (see The Myth of Continents book). I prefer "Mediterranean" myself because that takes in lots of other common Islamic and Egyptian heritage carried into "Europe" equally along with the pagan local religious motifs. The RCC is only one layer of "European" religion and always has been. Plus, it helps to remember there were different equal Christian traditions throughout the Mediterranean, and that "Roman" Christianty versions were hardly the majority view of Christianity...The global Roman Christian Church still uses the administrative institutions of the Roman Empire, i.e., dioceses all over the world...

Before this thread peters out, I'm hoping to hear other's ideas on the "mystic origins in everyday life things" that are staring us in the face. That story about the Bell helicopter inventor accosting people of being "Pleidean aliens, based on their astrological chart, obviously" really demonstrates all this mystic duality very well within the European 'scientific' tradition.

8/27/2006 03:23:00 PM  
Blogger AJ said...

.."everyday life things" that are staring us in the face."

I have this vague notion that Jesus is telling me not to vote Republican anymore...

8/27/2006 04:04:00 PM  
Blogger ericswan said...

starroute said...
It's not just the Hillary juggernaut. I'm starting to suspect that the fix is already in for the current midterms. That even if the Dems do regain power, they'll take one look at the *real* facts on the economy, the world situation, etc., say "We can't let the people know about this, they'd freak out!" and keep on maintaining the same structure of lies and control


Dig a hole, dig a hole; don't you just love it...

8/27/2006 08:51:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pagan and proud of it here. If you're happy in your faith, then I'm happy for you. All I ask is that you don't diss mine, and in return I won't diss yours.

Peace.

8/28/2006 01:36:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Churches use of occult energy fields

The worship of Mary mother of God and of the holy Saints took the place of the Old Gods in the Catholic religion as the popes used this replacement method for converting polytheists to monotheism.

Ancient Pagan Temples were destroyed and razed and churches were built over these.(thus explaining the hidden chambers hidden beneath the altars that another writer said were found after wwII bombings of many churches).
Many of these temples were built on Ley Lines, especially in Europe.


he amount of money, land, treasures, artifacts, and other material holdings of the Catholic Church alone is beyond the stretch of the imagination.

Even through the Dark Ages when poverty was widespread, mostly because of xianity itself, we find these huge and fabulously wealthy cathedrals, built in the midst of the extreme deprivation of the populace, with altars and apses made of gold with ornately decorated vaults, columns and walls. Magnificent basilicas, cathedrals, abbeys, baptisteries, monasteries, convents, and churches were built. Practically all of these were so lavish and so huge in comparison with the meager surroundings of the times, that they flamboyantly stood out as the main repository of all the material wealth — gold, silver and architectural lavishness — of both their era and their geographical location.

The Catholic Church during the Dark Ages established itself as the unconditional ruler over all of Europe. The Catholic Church had complete dominion over kings and queens, the military and ruled by terror. No one was free in any respect. Knowledge was destroyed and/or removed from the populace, because to create a perfect slave state, slaves must be illiterate and without power.

The mass murders committed by Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and other totalitarian dictators were repeats of the xian inquisition. The names and the faces change, but it is still the same agenda with the same people. Mao marched on Tibet, murdering and torturing native Tibetans en masse. The Chinese Army, under orders from Mao traversed steep mountains and dangerous terrain for the primary purpose of destroying ancient knowledge, regardless of what the history books claim. The Tibetan monasteries, because of the surrounding Himalayan Mountains, have been secluded from the rest of the world and as a result were able to keep ancient knowledge out of the control of the destructive xians. Anyone who has any serious knowledge or spiritual power is a threat to the state. Slaves must neither possess knowledge nor have access to occult power. Knowledge and power are kept in the hands of the controlling few. Of course, Billy Graham’s “East Gate Ministries” was permitted to flood China with bibles; a project that totaled in the millions of dollars- all tax-exempt.

The concept of world domination by a select group who rule with an iron fist and use mass murder and terror to achieve their ends is spelled out through the entire judeo/xian bible.

Concepts: The state owns and controls all property. Listed below are parallels and teachings in the judeo/xian bible: Your body isn’t your own; it is the property of “god.”

* Don’t have sexual urges, if you do, the owner of your body will do as he pleases with it and “cast it into Hell” (Rule by terror): Matthew 5: 27-30
* The “lord” has control over all of your personal relationships: Matthew 19: 9
* No freedom of speech: Matthew 5: 33-37; 12: 36
* Let them throw you in prison: Matthew 5: 25
* Don’t defend yourself or fight back; be the perfect slave: Matthew 5: 39-44; Luke 6: 27-30; 6: 35
* The meek make the best slaves; “meek” means “submissive”: Matthew 5: 5
* Live for your death, never mind the life you have now. This is a classic on how to run a slave state. Life is not worth fighting for: Matthew 5: 12
* Break up the family unit to create chaos: Matthew 10: 34-36 Luke 12: 51-53
* Let the chaos reign: Matthew 18: 21-22
* Don’t own any property: Matthew 19: 21-24; Mark 12: 41-44 Luke 6: 20; 6: 24; 6: 29-30
* Forsake your family- “Father, mother, sisters and brethren” this is what a totalitarian state demands of and rewards children for who turn in their parents to be executed: Matthew 19: 29
* More slavery and servitude: Exodus 21:7; Exodus: 21: 20-21; Leviticus: 25:44-46; Luke 6: 40- the state is perfect. Luke 12: 47; Ephesians: 6:5; Colossians: 3:22; 1 Timothy: 6: 1; Titus 2: 9-10; 1 Peter 2:18
* The nazarene, much like the teachings in the Old Testament, demanded complete and total obedience and enforced this concept through fear and terror. Preachers delude their congregations into believing “jesus loves you.” They scream and whine “out of context” but they are the ones who miss the entire message and are “out of context.”
* The nazarene never taught humanity anything for independence or advancement. Xians rave about how this entity healed the afflicted, but he never taught anyone how to heal themselves or to even understand the nature of disease. He surrounded himself mainly with the ignorant and the servile. The xian religion holds the mentally retarded in high regard.



Occult knowledge can be used by anyone for any purpose. Any fool can readily see the above is not of Satan, nor does it have anything to do with him and these so called “occult groups” are infiltrated from top to bottom by Catholic Jesuits and others who wish to delude those who might be Luciferian or Pagan and keep them under their control. This can be seen with their judeo/xian occult symbols, Jehova/YHVH “god” names and angels.

It is obvious in addition to all of this, the Catholic Church was enraged by the revelation of the pedophilia scandals. These actions were planned and deliberate. The pope and high-ranking clergy acted indignant and spiteful when exposed to the world. They were anything but sorry. We all know child rape makes for unstable personalities and these are needed to add to the chaos for fulfillment of their objectives. Deluded people who are spiritually and psychologically lost.

Respectfully Yours

8/28/2006 11:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow. Such hatred of Catholicism.

"The nazarene never taught humanity anything for independence or advancement."

If by "the Nazarene" you mean Jesus, he did say, "Blessed are the peacemakers," which of all the utterances in human history has to be on a short list of "civilizing" statements. No?

"Xians rave about how this entity healed the afflicted, but he never taught anyone how to heal themselves."

Why not just write "Christian," instead of Xian? Do you have trouble saying "Jesus Christ?" Anyway, he expicitly taught how to deal with these matters: Prayer and Fasting.

You are misquoting, and taking passages out of context. Whatever. But what is wrong with "Consider the birds of the air, and the lilies of the field: they neither reap nor sew, nor gather into barns, yet your father in heaven takes care of them?" Is it some terrible scourge to believe that God loves you and will take care of you? That his love for you is limited only by your own doubt?

Do you wish that Jesus was sort of like Adam Smith, teaching laisse faire capitalism? Read about the impact of Peel's Corn Laws on the common Englishman: Adam Smith in action. Please point us to the historical epoch when financial aggregates did not act to protect their own interests, at the expense of the common man. That would surely be a revelation worth sharing.

How deluded someone like Maximilian Kolbe was, loving his fellow men to the point of sacrificing his own life in their stead at Auschwitz. He venerated the Virgin Mary: what a fool!

If "Blessed are the peacemakers" is wrong, then I don't want to find out what your version of "right" is. Unfortunately, we're living in it.

8/28/2006 01:06:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

If you look at Jefferson's bible, the one he compiled by taking out all the miracles attributed to Jesus, and just focus on the words he supposedly uttered, you come away with a very different Jesus from the one having lavish cathedrals built in his honor at the expense of the peasantry. The parables of Jesus are quite different in tone and meaning from the edifice of authoritarian Christianity which was mostly codified by Paul and then set in stone at Nicea and Utrecht.

Of course the Catholic Church was/is a self-serving monstrosity; of course the fundamentalist Evangelicals are fascistic swine whom Jesus would be appalled to meet today. The irony of this "discovery" is that the central, indeed only message of the historical Jesus--the "order" to love one's neighbor as oneself--is thrown out with the obviously political institutionalization of the church as the temporal apex of human organization (assuming that he wasn't fashioned out of the aggregate of the many messianic figures going back in time past Zoroaster and Mithra to perhaps even the Egyptian Ra).

You can't read the Beatitudes and reconcile the spirit of concern for the common welfare with the nasty, exploitative madness that swallowed up this spirit, obscured its truth and relevance even unto our own time, and shat out the institutional Jesus as bricks and bludgeons with which to keep the common man enslaved and the self-appointed "men of God" in positions of oppressive and brutal power.

If you strip away all the bullshit, Jesus is no different from the Buddha. The power of love is the transcendant force that the wielders of traditional, violent power have good reason to fear. If we can ever unite in common consciousness against the universal evil of the overlords, we won't need any second coming of the bearded Buddha to kick some asses out of the temple.

8/28/2006 01:38:00 PM  
Blogger AJ said...

"If you strip away all the bullshit.."

IC, I think you're my new hero.

Regretably from the fundamentalist perspective you are *already guilty* and not worth listening to.

8/28/2006 02:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How the energy fields are Manipulated by the Universal Church


In order to maximize power for their agenda, Christian churches were built upon Ley Lines. Ley Lines are areas within the earth that have ioncreased geo-magnetic energy. The human body is composed of and runs on bio-electricity. Our thoughts are made up of electrical impulses. Through meditation and working with our own energy centers, we can hone our thoughts to have a stronger electrical output and to affect our environment. When one who is knowledgable uses earth energy in addition to this directed thought energy, this greatly amplifies the power behind the thoughts and direction of the energy through the will. Pagan temples were destroyed and Christian churches were erected in their place. Special rituals were also conducted at these energy crossings within the earth grid. Human/animal sacrifices and such produced extreme fear in the victim.

This directed fear energy- what they use to control was pumped into these vortexes of earth energy. What happens is this energy, magnified thousands of times creates a vibrational state within the earth field in which we all live. From what I understand, it encircles the earth like a spider web. This is the reason why Christianity has such a powerful hold on many. Fear is the four letter word that controls the world and it is very effective.



Roman Catholic Church and all of her protestant daughters are the great religious whore of the Book of Revelations. The Roman Catholic Church is involved in this new crusade in the Middle East.

The goal is Jerusalem.

We often hear the hysterical ranting of Christians who claim “Satan” is going about setting up a “New World Order” where human beings will be bar-coded like cattle and lose all of their freedoms and rights. This NWO is said to be a “one world communist state.”
Christianity has a history of blaming the Devil for everything they do not agree with or in reality, their own crimes against humanity.

With enough research and just plain common sense you can see it is judeo/Christian inspired, the Catholic Church, National and World Council of Churches (of which most Protestant Churches belong to and support) are working for it, funneling the bulk of their contributions into it for politics, and are at the uppermost levels abusing occult power to achieve these ends.

Of course, with the incessant blame-shifting, one will often hear from deluded Christians: “Oh no!! That’s NOT MY church!!” The Protestants condemn the Catholics; completely ignoring the fact that their religions in many respects parallel Catholicism and ALL Christian sects had their origins in the original Christian church- the Catholic Church.

8/28/2006 03:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bush slipped and did say CRUSADE once.
But who cares he is a Born again CHRISTIAN.

Also took the ORDER of DEATH oath.

No relation to Knights Templar or anything , GO BACK TO SLEEP.

8/28/2006 03:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah, religious arguments. What a nice way to spend the day.

Cuttlefish, you wrote: "The power of love is the transcendant force that the wielders of traditional, violent power have good reason to fear. If we can ever unite in common consciousness ... to kick some asses out of the temple."

The ellipsis is for your own sake. You employ the language of violence to argue for love? What temple will you be kicking those asses in? I thought you (and those in agreement with you about the evil Church) hated temples? Why not leave the deluded in their temples and go out and enjoy some fresh air?

I'm a convert to Catholicism, and have found no attempts to "enslave mankind." They do seem big on helping the poor, but that's their problem, right? They run schools for the handicapped, the disadvantaged, and, in every homily I've ever sat through these past 17 years, talk about nothing but love.

You are free to demonize us, just as anti-semites are free to demonize Jews.
Out of 1 billion Catholics, are there some baddies? Obviously. Have their been rotten Popes, bishops, cardinals and priests? Clearly. Do large institutions always seek to protect themselves from outside criticism? Yuh. Governments do it, police forces do it, the military does it, and, sadly, the Church has done it.

Would we live in a utopia if only it hadn't been for Christianity? Maybe, but I really doubt it. One of the few countervaling forces acting against modern fascist (state corporatist) tendencies is Rome. Rome spoke against the Christmas bombing of Belgrade. Rome spoke against the first Gulf War, and Rome spoke quite clearly against the current Iraq war.

Catholics are under no delusion as to what fate awaits us, if we speak Truth to Power. We, like Jesus, will be crucified. Look what happened to Dorothy Day, to Oscar Romero, to Kolbe, and to thousands of thousands of martyrs through the ages (including all the early popes until, roughly, 250 AD).

You can preach love and "kicking ass" all you want, but you are only pursuing a false vision of Utopia, an 'Erewhon,' an immanentizing of the eschaton (to employ the standard vocabulary) which leads, throughout history, not to human "salvation" but to futility.

Truly, you are wind-blown clouds.

I'm not saying this to prolong a fight, for this argument has already been fought in a thousand courtrooms, a million dungeons, and at least eight blogs. You're a good writer, Cuttlefish (I will make you a fisher of cuttles), but you need to examine your animosity for Catholicism a little more closely. Hatred festers and blooms like algae.

Vatican II happened. "Aggiornamento" was not some empty phrase. Heck, even the "Whore of Babylon" gets to put on fresh linens now and then, hmm?

8/28/2006 04:13:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Human/animal sacrifices and such produced extreme fear in the victim."

Are you saying that such sacrifices were conducted in Catholic churches? Any references, professor?

8/28/2006 04:14:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From earlier someone wrote..........

The whole smattering of "Christian" cathedrals throughout Europe had an underground stream "dual use" religious mystery school use that built up within them over the centuries.

More on this parallel tradition is seen in the fascinating (or scary) "multi-religious use" Christian churches throughout Europe. After WWII, lots of bombed out European churches as people were going through the damage, were found to have--hidden below the main altars--pagan sacred phallus statues and a lot else.... (Read about that in the book Pagan Europe)

But there is nothing to any of this.

I even heard there were pentagrams and other things found under Saint Peters Basilica in the Vatican.

The Popes throne in the Holy City depicts NOW GET THIS

the labours of Hercules

of all things.

Go figure.

8/28/2006 04:27:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The Roman Catholic Church is involved in this new crusade in the Middle East."

Ratzinger has been consistently against the Iraq war from the beginning. If you can show evidence otherwise, maybe I won't think what you said is stupid.

8/28/2006 04:30:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

SHAPESHIFTERS

It’s also pretty interesting to look at the Roman tradition of syncretically fusing religions together. It seems Christianity was just the newest gambit in this centuries-old game of changing with the tides.


Remnants and residue of the old religions became part of the pope’s inheritance, the fixtures and fittings of the previous tenant. Images of Peter were fashioned after traditional statues of Jupiter. The mystery religions had had symbolic keys to the inner mysteries; keys now found their way into papal regalia. The pontiffs inherited a throne, decorated with the twelve labours of Hercules, which the Popes used for centuries. The Pope’s retinue of cardinals took on the title from ‘cardo’, meaning hinge, from the hinge on the door guarded by Janus, the god of entrances. Peter himself, of course, would similarly become the doorman on the ‘pearly gates’ of heaven.

8/28/2006 04:41:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Earth has been the target of a soul farm

One might ask what purpose war serves when an institution such as the Catholic Church is striving for world rule. Nothing known to humanity changes lives, creates devastation and opens people up for domination more than war.
Both sides of the conflict are aided and funded by those intent on establishing world domination and the creation of a slave state. At the end of the war, all countries concerned are at the debt of the international bankers, much of these owned, and operated by the Vatican. This is not to disregard others who are working for the same objectives. All parties involved use each other to achieve these ends, along the way, both despise each other out of greed and seek each other’s destruction so if the goal is achieved, the winner takes all. What they all have in common is the worship of the same “god.”

Plus:
The church wants control of Jerusalem.
The UN force will be there soon too.

8/28/2006 04:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I even heard there were pentagrams and other things found under Saint Peters Basilica in the Vatican."

Tell now. Maybe some day you will be fortunate enough to visit Rome, and (if you dare) St. Peter's. An amazing city, rich in history, kind of like...Tenafly.

But about the pentagrams: sorry to disappoint you, but there's just a lot of dead popes under the basilica, including Peter his own self.

And Michelangelo? He was really, really underpaid for his wall art.

There IS an Egyptian obelisk out in the piazza, dating to the 13th century BC (oops, sorry, BCE), put there as clear proof of evil intent by (read this name twice, people) Sixtus V. And it had been trucked to Rome by ... Nero! And you know how you get there? The Via della Conciliazione, built by ... wait for it ... Mussolini!

Not to mention that they don't let you wear shorts inside! And it's hotter than blazes in Rome. They don't even sell beer!

Let's kick their deluded asses out of there! Finish what Napoleon started. (Ahh, Napoleon...now there was a mensch!)

8/28/2006 04:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300092172/qid=1121998557/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/002-3734984-5297633?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

8/28/2006 04:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Friar Malachi Martin comes to mind.

This woman also.

"You'll be surprised that Roman Catholic hierarchy are practicing satanic rituals inside the Vatican, the late Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XIV (former Cardinal Ratzinger) knew that these satanism is happening inside the Vatican.





"It was revealed by the late Jesuit priest Fr. Malachi Martin. Fr. Martin did not recant anything he wrote in his authored book.


Most people can't imagine such a scene and immediately attack the credibility of the eye-witness and the messenger. In this case, the eye-witness who described the above scene in the bowels of the Vatican can no longer be attacked since she jumped or was pushed to death, falling to cobblestones on St. Peter's Square in the early morning hours in the 1980's.


But her memories and story lives on despite her untimely death as this week researcher and historian Bobby G. Limeta, a freedom fighter from the Philippines, provides two attached PDF files concerning the Jesuit Order and satanic rituals in the Vatican, as well as rituals in the Castle of Darkness in Muno, Belgium.





http://arcticbeacon.com/JESUIT_ORDER___Satanic_Ritual_Inside_Vatican.pdf


http://arcticbeacon.com/JESUIT_ORDER___Satanic_Ritual_Inside_Castle_Of_Darkness.pdf

http://www.illuminati-news.com/060406a.htm

8/28/2006 05:03:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to do functional MRI on individuals spouting anti-Catholic sentiments, and see if the cortical activation was the same as for anti-semites spouting nazi slogans. Or, you could flash a picture of the Pope in front of an anti-Catholic, see if you get the same cortical activation as a when a nazi is shown a picture of a rabbi.

Does structure underlie religious bigotry? Are the neural pathways the same?

8/28/2006 05:07:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That would be "ex-Jesuit Malachi Martin." He was pariti at Vatican II, but left the Church because he was disappointed by the new direction of inclusiveness. Didn't want to give up the Latin Mass.

In his novel 'Windswept House,' he alluded to an installation ceremony in the Vatican for Satan (who, let us remember, as per the above commenters, is a factitious Christian bogeyman). Why, Pope Paul VI himself spoke of "the smoke of Satan" entering the sanctuary.

I would refer you to any of the numerous Traditionalist Catholic websites, which explore this topic further. Some are even sedevacantists, who maintain, against a certain abundance of evidence, that there has been no valid pope on the chair of Rome for about 40 or 50 years (who's counting?).

I used to be a Martin afficionado: read 'Keys of the Blood' 4 times. All that odd stuff about the Pope (JP II) waiting for an event which would "fission human history." Whatever did he mean? I guess we'll never know. He died, JP II died, the fire didn't fall from the sky, fantasy football goes on.

8/28/2006 05:16:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am against Judaism ,Christianity and Islam.

I am against the systems of control, not the deluded "people" who know not, or refuse realize what is happening.

Most of us are familiar with psychiatry, counseling, psychology, and other mental health services. The methods used are standard. Most professionals prod the patient into expressing repressed feelings- anger, hatred, envy, resentment and related emotions, including repressed sexuality and sexual feelings. Acknowledging these repressed emotions sheds new light on the origins of serious hang-ups, neuroses, compulsions/obsessions and other serious mental health disorders. Many physical ailments are brought about by repressed emotions. Some of these end in death. These have a very detrimental effect upon one’s soul and spiritual being as well.

The New Age movement, Wicca, many eastern religions (Such as modern Buddhism, which have been Judeo/Christianized), and others all advocate denial of expressing so-called "baser" emotions. This leads to poor mental health and worse. Catholic priests are a blatant example of the consequences of sexual repression. Sexual repression is about the worst, as the sex drive is as powerful as and is tied directly to the life force, it doesn’t just go away. Anything that is repressed comes out in warped, distorted, and unhealthy ways. Many problems would be avoided if people would vent their feelings and stop repressing them. This isn’t about going on a rampage, it is just acknowledging one’s own feelings and letting them out. One should always be honest with one’s self.

By denying anger, hatred, jealousy, and other so-called "negative" emotions, one is laying a pattern for serious problems down the road. People who claim to love, love, and love, and deny their anger and hatred, take on that artificial alien deadpan smile that is so common amongst Christians in the advanced stages of Christianity. Inside, these people are extremely unbalanced and are literally like grenades with the pins pulled, just waiting to explode, either turning their pent up anger out on others or in upon themselves. This is extremely unhealthy. Yet, they consistently excuse the hatred and wrathful behavior of the false god they worship. This sets the stage for serious mental illness.

Another common teaching is denial of materialism. The reason for this is so wealth and power can be kept in the hands of a few- the same people at the top who work to remove spiritual knowledge and replace it with Christianity and other lies. Material possessions make life more enjoyable and are an extension of ourselves. There should be a healthy balance between spiritualism and materialism. The merging of the material with the spiritual is the key to attaining the godhead of the soul.

No one has a right to dictate to others how they should feel about someone or something.

Live like a slave or die by the sword.

Go figure that one out it means

LIVE FREE OR DIE

8/28/2006 05:22:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I'm a convert to Catholicism, and have found no attempts to "enslave mankind." They do seem big on helping the poor, but that's their problem, right? They run schools for the handicapped, the disadvantaged, and, in every homily I've ever sat through these past 17 years, talk about nothing but love."

Just a comment you should be proud of. Catholics were the only political bloc in Europe to oppose 'secular/scientific' eugenicics legislation. "Protestant" U.S. churches loved it. Catholics were opposed to it, and called "backward" because of it. However, the popular Catholic concern for the sanctity of the soul was more important than the state engineering elite attempts that were more possible and politically allowed in Protestant cultures. Food for thought..

British Catholic convert Chesterton took on the eugenicists in his day, and his work has stood the test of time...

Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State by G. K. Chesterton

In the second decade of the twentieth century, an idea became all too fashionable among those who feel it is their right to set social trends. Wealthy families took it on as a pet cause, generously bankrolling its research. The New York Times praised it as a wonderful "new science." Scientists, such as the brilliant plant biologist, Luther Burbank, praised it unashamedly. Educators as prominent as Charles Elliot, President of Harvard University, promoted it as a solution to social ills. America's public schools did their part. In the 1920s, almost three-fourths of high school social science textbooks taught its principles. Not to be outdone, judges and physicians called for those principles to be enshrined into law. Congress agree, passing the 1924 immigration law to exclude from American shores the people of Eastern and Southern Europe that the idea branded as inferior. In 1927, the U. S. Supreme Court joined the chorus, ruling by a lopsided vote of 8 to 1 that the sterilization of unwilling men and women was constitutional.

That idea was eugenics and in the English-speaking world it had virtually no critics among the "chattering classes." When he wrote this book, Chesterton stood virtually alone against the intellectual world of his day. Yet to his eternal credit, he showed no sign of being intimidated by the prestige of his foes. On the contrary, he thunders against eugenics, ranking it one of the great evils of modern society. And, in perhaps one of the most chillingly accurate prophecies of the century, he warns that the ideas that eugenics had unleashed were likely to bear bitter fruit in another nation. That nation was Germany, the "very land of scientific culture from which the ideal of a Superman had come." In fact, the very group that Nazism tried to exterminate, Eastern European Jews, and the group it targeted for later extermination, the Slavs, were two of those whose biological unfitness eugenists sought so eagerly to confirm.

What are sometimes called the "excesses" of Nazism drove the open advocacy of eugenics underground. But there's little evidence that the elements of society who once trumpeted the idea have changed their mind. Dr. Alan Guttmacher provides a good example. The fact that he had been Vice-President of the American Eugenics Association was no hindrance to his assuming the Presidency of Planned Parenthood­World Population in 1962. And his seedy past did not keep Congress from providing millions of dollars in federal funds to Planned Parenthood. Nor did it stop the Supreme Court from carrying out the central item in Dr. Guttmacher's political agenda‹legalized abortion. Many of those who now admit that eugenics was evil have trouble explaining why so few of its advocates were every exposed and why so many are still honored.

As the title suggests, eugenics is not the only evil that Chesterton blasts. Socialism gets some brilliantly worded broadsides and Chesterton, in complete fairness, does not spare capitalism. He also attacks the scientifically justified regimentation that others call the "health police." The same rationalizations that justified eugenics, he notes, can also be used to deprive a working man of his beer or any man of his pipe. Although it was first published in 1922, there's a startling relevance to what Chesterton had to say about mettlesome bureaucrats who deprive life of its little pleasures and freedoms. His tale about an unfortunate man fired because "his old cherry-briar" "might set the water-works on fire" is priceless.

That tale illustrates Chesterton's brilliant use of humor, a knack his foes were quick to realize. In their review of his book, Birth Control News griped, "His tendency is reactionary, and as he succeeds in making most people laugh, his influence in the wrong direction is considerable. Eugenics Review was even blunter. "The only interest in this book," they said, "is pathological. It is a revelation of the ineptitude to which ignorance and blind prejudice may reduce an intelligent man."

History has been far kinder to Chesterton than to his critics. It's now generally agree that eugenics was born of evolution and the "ignorance and blind prejudice" of social elites. But never forget that Chesterton was the first to say so, condemning what many of his peers praised.

The completely new edition of Chesterton's classic includes almost fifty pages from the writings of Chesterton's opponents. They illustrate just how accurate his attacks on eugenists were. For researchers, it also includes a detailed, 13-page index.

...

Excerpted from Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State by G. K. Chesterton. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Eugenics
"There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. . . . I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. . . . But Eugenics itself does exist for those who have sense enough to see that ideas exist; and Eugenics itself, in large quantities or small, coming quickly or coming slowly, urged from good motives or bad, applied to a thousand people or applied to three, Eugenics itself is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning."

Institutionalizing the Unfit
"I will call it the Feeble-Minded Bill, both for brevity and because the description is strictly accurate. It is, quite simply and literally, a Bill for incarcerating as madmen those whom no doctor will consent to call mad. It is enough if some doctor or other may happen to call them weak-minded."

Forced sterilization
"Indeed one Eugenist, Mr. A. H. Huth, actually had a sense of humour, and admitted this. He thinks a great deal of good could be done with a surgical knife, if we would only turn him loose with one. And this may be true. A great deal of good could be done with a loaded revolver, in the hands of a judicious student of human nature."

The Tyranny of Science
"The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen‹that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics."

Eugenic Motives
"There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite innocent instruments, there are some, even among Eugenists, who by this time know what they are doing."

The Poor Man and his Child
"There is one human thing left it is much harder to take from him. Debased by him and his betters, it is still something brought out of Eden, where God made him a demigod: it does not depend on money and but little on time. He can create in his own image. The terrible truth is in the heart of a hundred legends and mysteries. As Jupiter could be hidden from all-devouring Time, as the Christ Child could be hidden from Herod‹so the child unborn is still hidden from the omniscient oppressor. He who lives not yet, he and he alone is left; and they seek his life to take it away."

The Rich Begin To Fear the Poor
"So at least it seemed, doubtless in a great degree subconsciously, to the man who had wagered all his wealth on the usefulness of the poor to the rich and the dependence of the rich on the poor. The time came at last when the rather reckless breeding in the abyss below ceased to be a supply, and began to be something like a wastage; ceased to be something like keeping foxhounds, and began alarmingly to resemble a necessity of shooting foxes."

Scientific Regimentation
"That is the problem, and that is why there is now no protection against Eugenic or any other experiments. If the men who took away beer as an unlawful pleasure had paused for a moment to define the lawful pleasures, there might be a different situation. If the men who had denied one liberty had taken the opportunity to affirm other liberties, there might be some defence for them. But it never occurs to them to admit any liberties at all. It never so much as crosses their minds. Hence the excuse for the last oppression will always serve as well for the next oppression; and to that tyranny there can be no end."

Socialism
"In short, people decided that it was impossible to achieve any of the good of Socialism, but they comforted themselves by achieving all the bad. All that official discipline, about which the Socialists themselves were in doubt or at least on the defensive, was taken over bodily by the Capitalists. They have now added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old plutocratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State."

[Chamfort still lives! I think he would like that quote... it reminded me of this one of his aphorisms, ah well, damn it I am unable to find the book right now with it, though it comes from his collection entitied sarcastically "Products of the Perfected Civilization" if someone wants to know.]


The Working Classes
"The working classes have no reserves of property with which to defend their relics of religion. They have no religion with which to sanctify and dignify their property. Above all, they are under the enormous disadvantage of being right without knowing it. They hold their sound principles as if they were sullen prejudices. They almost secrete their small property as if it were stolen property. Often a poor woman will tell a magistrate that she sticks to her husband, with the defiant and desperate air of a wanton resolved to run away from her husband. Often she will cry as hopelessly, and as it were helplessly, when deprived of her child as if she were a child deprived of her doll."

Fascinating its still #129,308 in Books...after all these years.

And STILL read some of the hostile reviews itching for their next mass murder episode. Sheesh.


Eugenics leadership in practice leads us straight back to Yale University, the Harrimans of Brown Brothers Harriman, and Skull and Bones...

8/28/2006 06:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, but the Catholic Church opposes any progress of the sciences.
As if this is still not going on in black labs.
Come on who is naive.

The Catholic Church like leading Zionists also let jews die in wwii.
All part of the plan for a Zionist Israel.

Reading history truly is enlightening.

Israel like the USA was founded in the occult.Their supreme court,100 percent paid for by the Rothchilds.
It has more to it then meets the eye lets say.

8/28/2006 07:15:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

quote from above:

Plus:
The church wants control of Jerusalem.
The UN force will be there soon too.

see these six little films at this link:

VIDEO: Peres Gave All E. Jerusalem Religious Sites to Vatican: U.N./NWO Holy Roman Empire
by Barry Chamish excerpts ( chamish [at] netvision.net.il )
Sunday Apr 9th, 2006 12:50 AM

Excerpts from Barry Chamish's Lastest Video Presentation: "ZION FIRST: The Vatican's New Crusade for Jerusalem."

Information that should be widely shared. This is a small preview of a very vivacious talk, with question and answer session, with Barry Chamish. Check website for more.

These excerpts concentrate on Sabbateanism and the Vatican's desire to start up the Holy Roman Empire--which of course was the German Reich)...and to innately connect it with U.N. troops. Let the truth be told on the infiltration and attempt to destroy Judaism by the Sabbatean leadership, as well as their connection to the Vatican-NWO-one world religion & U.N. nexus. If Jewish people have ever wondered why their "leadership" does so much damage to their interests, this is for you.

six films, six summaries

1 Peres left out of Oslo Accords, Nothing to do with him, so Peres Makes a Deal with Vatican As Backup: Gave East Jerusalem and Mount Zion to the Vatican for U.N. Policed NWO international area: plans for no passport area policed by U.N. and how it connects to the continuing Crusades for the Holy Roman Empire dominion that the Vatican wants still after centuries

2 1860s, Sabbateans of Labor Zionism (not Jewish, followers of Donmeh False Messiah Sabbatai Tzvi, cloaked) plot destruction of religious Jews to herd them to Israel for Destruction

3 1880s, Sabbeteans, Pogroms of 1880s to Drive Jewish people to the Sabbeatan territorial areas, though having difficulty getting their territory there

4 Sabbateans drop attempts to get Germany to give them a Sabbetean state by the 1900-1910 period, go with Britain instead; Britain pulls 1 million troops out of WWI during the fighting and sends them to conquer Palestine

5 Hertzl murdered; Chaim Weisman (Sabbatean) as his replacement: Labor Zionism and the Nazis work as one in Germany to herd more Jewish people to Sabbatean State

6 Rockefellers aid in pressuring the U.N. vote for Israel post WWII; as well as how Israel only went after the small Nazis and let the larger ones they worked with escape


and another Chamish film here--juicy parapolitical stuff, hardly for the squeamish...

Barry Chamish: who murdered Yitzhak Rabin and Utah Congressman Wayne Owens
2 hr 40 min 23 sec - Jul 15, 2006

On July 15, 2006 Barry Chamish, author and journalist, spoke in Salt Lake City, Utah about the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, as well as the death of Utah Congressman Wayne Owens. Barry also gives other insights to what's currently going on in the war in Israel.

8/28/2006 07:18:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Anonymous,
Thanks for the left-handed compliments on my writing, but I do believe you rather missed the point of my sermon when you write:

You employ the language of violence to argue for love? What temple will you be kicking those asses in?

I assure you my "asses kicked out of the temple" spiel was purely rhetorical, the violence only symbolic. This, in fact, is one of the causes of misunderstanding between (alleged) Christians. Everything Jesus "did" or "said" was symblolic or metaphorical; how can you interpret a parable literally? This applies most especially to the Evangelicals, but the Catholic Church has its share of fundamentalist theologisms as well.

When you say You are free to demonize us, just as anti-semites are free to demonize Jews, you must realize that I'm not demonizing Catholics at all. Most of my family still count themselves among your one billion and I certainly don't make the sign of the Evil Eye when I see them. I'm very antagonistic to organized, hierachical religions, it's true, but I don't demonize the flock at all, only the shepherds. Here's the problem for me: didn't Jesus say somewhere not to let any man come between you and God? Isn't that what the Church does? I can't go to heaven unless I'm baptized and receive various sacraments from men? Jesus didn't intend any of that crap, and it's obvious from he his speeches. (Let's not even start with the kissing of rings...)

8/28/2006 08:48:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cuttlefish, to be fair, you did say that the Church "was, and is, a monstrosity." How is this any different from someone arguing that Judaism is a monstrosity?

I agree that there are many accretions that seem, at the very least, superfluous. However, the Church itself is the first to admit (really--it's doctrine) that insofar as she is the "Bride of Christ," she is stained by human sin. The Church is a human institution, and thus, deeply flawed. Nobody would dare to argue that the Church on earth is perfect.

There are many things I don't like about the Church, as I've noted elsewhere (my name is legion: innominata.) The music is emetic, most of it penned circa 1973, the nadir of American musical culture. I often look around during the songs, and most people are stoney-faced: the stuff is unsingable dreck. I prefer Gregorian chant, which is no longer used. (and, lest you be misled, outside the Church I prefer Hendrix).

Some priests put a lot of effort into homiletics, others don't. Some, in an attempt to be "with it," come across like Phil Donahue in robes, not at all to my liking. But these are more matters of esthetics than theology, and can be ignored. Whether Mass itself should be purgatorial is another matter...

The cover-up of pedophilia is an ongoing source of disgust for me and a lot of pew-dwellers. That a lot of 1970 circa priests are/were gay is a huge problem, one that JP II was slow to address, and only now being rectified. I've lived in two episcopates where the bishops were widely thought to be gay. I've often wondered if "the desolating abomination, standing in the holy place" doesn't refer to precisely this. My own take, obviously, but I believe from the evidence of Creation that God is fecund, and gays aren't. Cultures of death are replaced by cultures of life, end of argument. Anglo America can watch CSI and Desperate Housewives all they want, hold hip and ironic attitudes, and swallow oral contraceptives and viagra like candy, but the fact remains that the Chinese and Mexicans have children, and will simply replace us in a century or two. Europe struggles with this, as well, with negative birth rates and burgeoning Moslem populations. Italy has the lowest birth rate of any European country. Go figure. Maybe it was all those Fellini films.

Anyway, I haven't had my Ovaltine, and am getting sidetracked. None of the human stains on the Church compel me to leave Her. John 6:66 (let the reader be aware): "and many turned away, and went back to their former lives." Jesus turned to the 12, and asked "will you, too, leave?" They responded, "Where would we go? You have the words of life."

That's my position, too (and hey, for those who've made it to the 138th comment on this post, I've just revealed the Secret of 666: John, writing the Book of Revelations on Patmos, refers the "reader" to his own Gospel, the only chapter of which to go to 66 verses being Chapter 6): where else am I going to go? I have had my numinous experiences, my "afflatus" (no, not the GWB kind), and just don't find compelling other, um, explanations of this odd place we find ourselves in. The Church is flawed, often exasperating, occasionally downright pathetic and tawdry (and, in the past, bloody-minded), but I still find the theological exegesis to be the best around.

Pick up a copy of the catechism someday. I suppose it's online. You might be surprised.

It's one thing to argue that we can get along without any institutional Church, but then how is the thing to be transmitted?

Earlier, I asked whether we would have a Utopia, if Christianity hadn't existed. We can look at China, or India, for at least a partial answer. China's history is one of constant, internecine warfare, of warlords and corruption (I'll give you the Boxer Rebellion: a justifiable reaction to Western rapacity). India I know little about, prior to British exploitation. But where the Arcadia? When Waugh put the tag at the beginning of Brideshead he was referring to pre-War Oxford. Poussin was referring to Greek mythology. It is, in fact, a reminder of the finality of Death.

Which brings me to one of my favorite aphorisms: "No one gets out of here alive."

8/28/2006 10:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I can't go to heaven unless I'm baptized and receive various sacraments from men? Jesus didn't intend any of that crap, and it's obvious from he his speeches."

Jesus himself was baptised (by John the Baptist). Also, speaking of sacraments (which were given to Men to assist them towards eternal life), He specifically said in the Bread of Life discourse that "unless you eat my flesh (chew is a more accurate translation) and drink my blood, you will not have eternal life." When the crowd questioned this odd saying, he repeated it. He didn't say "hey, guys, just kidding--it's just symbolic talk, you know me..." This time, he wasn't speaking in parables.

Read it yourself: John, Chapter Six:

48 I am that bread of life.

49 Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.

50 This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

52 The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?"

And the world has been saying the same thing for 2000 years.

8/28/2006 11:10:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Okay, but what does it mean to partake of His Flesh? Does it say that a sacrament administered by some organized church is what is meant by this, or can one interpret this symbolically? One could very easily argue that baptism (once of a woman and once of water) is the same, figurative deal--in other words, if I dedicate myself to Christ, am I not made new, in a second birth symbolized by water rather than blood?

To argue the opposite is to take salvation away from God and put in the hands of some corrupt bishop living off the sweat of a thousand peasants. Salvation is not man's to give, period. Investing the Church's sacraments, or its papal edicts with God's authority is blasphemous. Say you've got one of your basic medieval syphilitic popes who's pissed at me for preaching liberation theology--can he really keep me out of heaven by excommunicating me, when his rotten soul is going nowhere but down?

There is no logical basis for either the authenticity of the sacraments or the authority of the Church. Forget what Jesus told Peter, it's entirely man-made.

8/29/2006 01:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cuttlefish, you surprise me. I don't think you read Jesus's words when you ask:

"Okay, but what does it mean to partake of His Flesh? Does it say that a sacrament administered by some organized church is what is meant by this, or can one interpret this symbolically?"

You seem to know less about Christianity than I might have imagined. Christ instituted the bread and wine thingie at the Last Supper. Catholics take it literally (vis. the above-referenced Bread of Life discourse), Protestants don't.

Catholics believe in transubstantiation, believing the species of bread and wine at Mass, duly consecrated, become Christ's flesh and blood.
Crazy, sure, but it's what we believe. So that's how we "consume his flesh."

"Investing the Church's sacraments, or its papal edicts with God's authority is blasphemous."

Well, not if you think Jesus is True God from True God, and gave us the sacraments. Why is it blasphemous to follow what you believe to be his explicit teaching in this matter?

"Forget what Jesus told Peter..."

Yes, that would make things rather easy, wouldn't it. But I choose not to forget it; why should I? On whose authority? Yours?

Chameleon of the sea, indeed.

8/29/2006 02:39:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Ah, but I do know my Catholic theology, I assure you. Please explain how some filthy, worldly, corrupted pope in the Middle Ages had the power to excommunicate a living saint whose preaching got in the foul pope's way? It's God's to grant or deny, not mere men who pretend to speak in His Name. Please explain how mortal men can have any control over the disposition of my eternal soul--I really am very curious...

8/29/2006 03:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dangit ... I posted this comment last night under the wrong post. I repost it here in the correct place.

My take on Perkins: Viewing him with cautious optimism, I think he is a guy, plagued with guilt just like my former SEAL acquaintance, who is trying to do the right thing. Of course, he's been labeled as a "limited hangout disinfo agent" by some deep-politics researchers. But it's absurd to expect one individual player -- as it turns out, a minor player -- in a tightly compartmentalized role to even know "the whole truth," much less to have the extreme (and perhaps reckless) courage to expose it all. If Perkins' account is taken at face value, he is relating what he knows, and implicitly, what he knows that he feels prudent to talk about. And what he does discuss in Hit Man is big and shocking enough, and credible precisely because of its limited scope, that it functions quite well as a paradigm-shifting wake-up call for the average snoozing American. He stood up and shouted, loud and clear, that the ostensibly benevolent American postwar economic empire is in fact malevolent, built on force and fraud. I think that's all that can be expected of a man who was in his position, and for that purpose I don't think he did too shabby of a job.

I don't go for all the shamanism and shape-shifting -- I believe that messing with those types of spirits is treading on dangerous ground. But I think Perkins was led into this territory by a drive to make sense of the world, a search for truth and perhaps for some sort of supernatural mystical solution to the political, economic and ecological jam that he and his erstwhile puppetmasters have gotten us into.

8/31/2006 01:36:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To the interested parties the Catholic Church may be written about in the book of The Revelation. This is understood as being in the future as well as during the days of John. You may think this is insane but to the ones interested interesting. This interpretation from Chapter 2 verses 18-25.

And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; 'These things says the Son of God, Whose eyes are like unto a flame of fire, and His feet are like fine brass;
I know your works, and charity, and service, and faith, and your patience, and your works; and the last to be more than the first.
Notwithstanding, I have a few things agaisnt you, because you suffer that woman Jezebel, which calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she did not.
Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am He Which searches the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
But I say unto you, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.
But that which you have already, hold fast till I come.

9/02/2006 05:13:00 AM  
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