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August 31, 2018

That ain't acting.

Amanda Hayes was convicted of boiling her victim in acid and then feeding her body to alligators.

What a gal.

The headline says:

Actress Tried To Use Acid And Alligators To Dispose Of Husband’s Ex-Wife

 

She's no actress.  Except for the made-for-tv stuff about the killing, she did an unaccredited role on The Stepford Wives.  

 

Where's the justice.  Calling this woman an actress is like calling her a lawyer for sitting in a courtroom awaiting sentencing.

 

August 29, 2018

Donald Trump leads a prayer breakfast, ouch.


 What is truth?   Really.  I read yesterday that baby-aspirins don't prevent a heart-attack, alcohol is bad for you, and Donald Trump has a high IQ.   A few lines lower and I read, aspirin is good for you, alcohol (in moderation) extends life, and Donald Trump is an idiot, see test results here.

Seems truth is no where to be found, and so "up," really is "down," and "down," is really "up."  Take this story from yesterday's paper: Trump warns of 'left-wing' violence if Democrats win the house.  Talking to a group of Christian leaders after a prayer led by Donald Trump, he told them: "It's not a question of like or dislike, it's a question that they will overturn everything that we've done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence. When you look at Antifa - these are violent people."


What's weird about this, is that if Democrats win the house, there will be violence again from the White Supremacist who have already demonstrated such activities anytime they get together, from last year's Unite The Right rally when a Supremacist drove his truck into a group of protestors killing one and injuring several others, to those crazy Tea Party rallies where they held "N" word signs and other racial slews at Obama.  These are not peaceful people, and if the Democrats take the house they will be the radical ones in the streets protesting.   No one doubts that.   The Antifa will go quiet again much as the Tea Party has.   Of course, none of those preachers questioned Trumps words and if they believed it, ouch!



August 28, 2018

Trump is no Crowley, Jimmy Page, or Trex.




In "Quartz," writing Ephrat Livni is playing with fire.  In an article titled, The startling parallels between Donald Trump and occultist Aleister Crowley, Livni states that the US president resembles the early 20th century occultist Aleister Crowley, whose entire philosophy is summed up in this single commandment, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”  

Read the complete article here, till then, here's an excerpt:

Trump likely hopes that if he keeps saying the word “hoax,” he can transform Mueller into a toad and make his investigation disappear. Until now, the president has had good reason to believe that if he just keeps on insulting, ignoring, and dismissing critics, things will go his way.

In this sense too, Trump resembles Crowley. Because his journey of “spiritual enlightenment” showed him he was “beyond the Gods,” Crowley relished the criticism that lent him his notoriety. He even encouraged it by referring to himself as “The Great Beast 666.” In 1923, at Crowley’s Sicilian compound—where he led followers of his religion premised on personal will “The Law of Thelema”—an Englishman died in a mysterious ritual involving cat blood. Crowley was expelled from Italy and castigated in the British press. Yet he persisted, continuing to write books, perform bizarre rituals, and attract followers.


How Trump really looks without his dark magic.

The magician wrote a book of poems described by one contemporary critic as “the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language.” It didn’t stop the writer from continuing to publish and even create his own religion. It certainly didn’t halt his erotic explorations. Like Trump, who has been widely accused of sexual misconduct, Crowley was unconstrained by conventional notions of relating, breaking societal taboos.

The one big difference between Crowley and Trump, however, is that one was an occultist and the other is responsible for a country. It will take some very powerful magic indeed for the commander-in-chief to retain his spell on the people if the rule of law keeps proving to be as strong as it showed itself yesterday.

Now, someone needs to tell Ephrat Livni that making light of Aleister Crowley is not a good thing.  As I stated in a previous post here on Esoteric Daily:



The opposite of white magic is, of course, black magic.  Even those who possess a limited understanding of the Craft are aware that black magic deals with such negative things as curses, hexes, sticking pins into dolls, the summoning of demonic energies, the manipulation of others against their own free will, and basically any spell cast with a deliberate evil danger.

Black Magic is a false promise of power without cost and the idea of greedy wishes granted that lures the naïve into the darkness like flies to a spider's web.  Jimmy Page of the very popular rock band of the 70's, was said to practice both white and black magic.  Any study of the rock band's history shows a strong connection with black magic in the form of Aleister Crowley.  The group not only read his materials but purchased his castle to record several of their albums.  There were many evils that happened to the band including the death of Robert Plant's son (the nude boy in the film The Song Remains The Same) and the eventual motorcycle accident of John Bonham, their drummer, which ended his life as well as the band.  There was a popular rumor with other musicians of the day that when Marc Bolan of TRex snubbed the band, he shortly thereafter, died in a tragic car accident.  No one really knows, but after that accident there was no other "deep" rock band to stand in the way of Led Zepplin and the number one slots on the British and US music charts. 


Then there is the Eddie and the Hot Rods' curse.



In 1977, Essex rockers Eddie And The Hot Rod wrote a song that was partly inspired by Crowley’s famous motto: ‘Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law’. The band rewrote this as “Do Anything You Wanna Do”, a spirited ode to self-empowerment, and attached the lyrics to a perky pop tune that quickly reached the Top Ten. It was engineered by a young Steve Lillwhite, who recorded it at Island’s studio in Notting Hill.
 
In recognition of his contribution to the song’s genesis, the band decided to put Crowley on the cover of the single. But they also felt his glowering visage was not really in the spirit of the band, so manager Ed Hollis (brother of Talk Talk’s Mark) attached a slightly comical pair of Mickey Mouse ears to Crowley’s head.

Great cover, big mistake. According to rumour, this image soon came to the attention of Jimmy Page, a Crowley apostle who lived in the Crowley’s old house, had a vast collection of Crowley paraphernalia and was fascinated by the occult. Page had orchestrated the Crowley-influenced occult symbolism that adored Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, which incidentally was also record at Island Studios.
 
The band were told that Page placed a curse upon Eddie And The Hot Rods for their disrespectful treatment of the Great Beast. From that moment, the band were plagued by problems. They were dropped by their label, their manager became hooked on heroin and they never bothered the higher reaches of the chart again. From behind his Mickey Mouse ears and with the help of satanic rock royalty, Crowley had got his revenge. As bassist Paul Gray told me, ‘Weird shit happened after that. A lot of people said we shouldn’t have fucked about with Crowley.’






https://thebolditalic.com/timely-spells-to-cast-on-the-current-administration-2d91ebaffb8d

August 21, 2018



For the Greeks and Romans of the first century B.C., the term "Chaldean" had no meanings: It was the name of the inhabitants of Chaldea, a district southern Babylonia, and it was the title given to professional diviners who used the heavens to predict the future.  This second group got its name from the popular belief that horoscope casting was invented in ancient Mesopotamia.

Although traditions of divination often appeal to ancient authorities for credibility, the Chaldean origins of astrology are no fiction.  Since the 1880s, about 30 ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets containing horoscopes have surfaced.  The majority of these tests were first made accessible for study in Francesca Rochberg’s excellent 1998 volume, Babylonian Horoscopes.  Thanks to this publication, we now know that the horoscope was one of the last and —for better or worse—one of the most enduring contributions of ancient Mesopotamia to human culture.

The origins of Babylonian astrology can be traced back to the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium B.C.), when Royal diviners began interpreting the significance of celestial omens, such as eclipses.  But after the Persians conquered Mesopotamia in the mid-first millennium B.C., Babylonian astrologers started using the heavens to predict ordinary people’s fates.

There was nothing new in the idea of using a person’s birth date to foretell his future: A seventh-century B.C. omen series called Iqqur ipus used the month of birth for just this purpose.  There was a technical obstacle, however, to bringing the heavens into play.  How could ancient diviners do this when there was no assurance that an ominous occurrence could be seen on a particular person’s birth date for example, on rainy or cloudy days?  The Babylonians solved this problem by taking into account a combination of astronomical events that occurred before and after the target date, along with certain facts about the situation of the heavenly bodies on that date.

Where did their astronomical data come from?  In Against the Professors, the second-century A.D. Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus offers us the fanciful picture of a Chaldean watching the sky, awaiting the sound of a gong signaling that a child has been born.  In reality, horoscopes were prepared well after the moment of birth, and there was no call for such precise timing.  Astrologers could turn to the archive at the Esagila Temple of Marduk, for instance, where Babylonian scientists had been keeping a continuous record of astronomical and meterological observations since at least the seventh century B.C.  Their so-called Astronomical Diaries seem to have been the source of much of the information in ancient Babylonian horoscopes.

All the Babylonian horoscope tablets, with a single early exception, employ zodiacal signs to specify the locations of the sun, moon and planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) on a person’s date of birth.  It had long been recognized that the moon and planets travel along a fixed belt among the stars, and that their positions could be expressed either in relation to certain bright stars in this so-called Path of the Moon or, more roughly, according to the constellation through which they were passing.  The zodiacal signs used in Babylonian horoscopes represented 12 equal divisions of this belt, and they were named for the constellations that more or less coincided with those divisions.

Thus the constellations called the Hired Man, the Bull of Heaven, the Great Twins, and the Crab gave their names to zodiacal signs corresponding to our Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer.  To determine when a planet crossed from one zodiacal sign to the next, the observers of the Astronomical Diaries tracked its passage through the stars; for example, the star called the Rear Twin (our Eta Geminorum or Pollux) marked the boundary between the Great Twins and the Crab.  Each zodiacal sign was, in turn, comprised of 30 smaller units, called ki (our degrees), which could be used to pinpoint the location of heavenly bodies more precisely.


                                      

Most of the Babylonian horoscope tablets that have survived contain only the date of birth of a person and the relevant astronomical data.  Only a few tablets—mostly from Uruk—actually offer any kind of prophecy or interpretation:  “His days will be long” or “He will have sons” are typical predictions. These notes seem to have been derived mechanically by looking up a particular astronomical fact, say the moon’s position, in an omen list.  One must presume that the horoscope caster who inscribed the tablet also regaled his customer with stories that wove together, embellished and, if necessary, reconciled inconsistencies between the omens.

The Babylonian horoscope casters apparently left no literature or correspondence explaining how a horoscope worked.  We cannot say whether they, like their omen-watching predecessors, believed that the heavens expressed the personal intentions of the gods— though horoscopes death with periodic and predictable astronomical phenomena, properties not usually associated with divine whims.

When the Greeks first began studying Babylonian horoscope, in the first or second century B.C., they had no trouble interpreting the horoscope as a record of physical cause-and-effect relationships.  The heavenly bodies, revolving in complex orbits around the earth, were seen as agents of nature; their motions helped determine the interaction of elements on earth, including the birth and growth of human infants.

About 200 Greek horoscopes survive from antiquity, mostly in the form of papyri from Egypt.  The earliest ones date from the late first century B.C., just a few decades after the last known Babylonian horoscope.

Horoscopes astrology burst forth on the classical world at an opportune moment.  Methods of divination and magic were rapidly gaining popularity at the same time that theoretical astronomy was steadily advancing.  By building on principles laid out by the Babylonians, Greek astrologers could claim to satisfy practical human needs through modern, scientifically respectable methods.

Like their Babylonian predecessors, Ancient Greek horoscopes eschew interpretation, normally giving no more than the date and time of birth and a list of astronomical facts.  They focus tightly on the hour of birth, disregarding eclipses and other possible divine omens that take place well before or well after a person’s birth.

There are some striking differences between Ancient Greek and ancient Babylonian horoscopes.  Greek horoscopes list not only the basic zodiacal positions of the sun, the moon and the five planets; they also record the horoskopos or “hour-watcher”—the part of the zodiac that was rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of a person’ birth.  This element, which was not included by the Babylonians, is what gave the horoscope its name.  In addition, all of the astronomy in the Greek horoscope played no direct role in Greco-Roman astrology.

Extant Ancient Greek astrology textbooks reveal that Greek horoscope interpretations involved a much higher degree of mathermatical sophistication than anything in Mesopotamian divination.  Nevertheless, the intellectual heritage of astrology is clear.  Despite numerous changes and innovations over the centuries, modern horoscope would still be perfectly intelligible to a Greek of the time of the Antonines (the second century A.D.), and it would not be wholly foreign to a Babylonian of the time of Alexander the Great.
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On this day in ancient Rome, the Consualia harvest festival held in honor of Consus, the Earth god, took place.  There were sacrifices and offerings of the first fruits, followed by horse racing in the Circus Maxiums.  The annual festival of Heraclia was also held on this date in honor of the god Heracles and included sacrifices at his shrines.

Circus Maximus

August 20, 2018

a few thoughts on time




It may come as a surprise to learn that the idea of a Christian Era dates back no future than the sixth century—A.D.  It was a rather obscure Syrian monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little) who came up with it—and who miscalculated its “epoch” or starting point.  His example was followed in the seventh century by the invention of a Moslem Era dating from the Hegira, the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina in 622 A.D.  Because the Moslem year is a lunar one and shorter than the solar year of the Christian calendar, as this book goes to press in 2002 A.D. the Moslem year has reached 1423 A.H. (Anno Hegirae), even though only 1,380 solar years have elapsed.  In the eight century A.D., the Jets followed suit with an era of their own based on the “year of creation,” which according to tradition occurred in 3760 B.C.  The Jewish year is a solar one, based on the moon but reconciled periodically with the solar year by means of leap-months, so its years keep pace with the Christian calendar.  In 2002 A.D., the Jewish year is calculated 3760 + 2002 +5726.

Thus, early in the Middle Ages, the three great monotheistic faith began dating their own eras, and these usages now dominate the globe.  But they were far from the first to introduce the idea of the era as such.  Like many of our most essential modern institutions, the concept of the era dates back before modern times, indeed before medieval and classical times, all the way to the ancient Near East, the best documented area of the world for half of its recorded history.  The story unfolded in two stages. 


Seleucid



The immediate model for the religious eras was the Seleucid Era, which was used in the Mediterranean world from before the rise of the Roman Empire to well after its fall.  It’s “epoch” was the (re-)conquest of Babylon by one of the successors of Alexander the Great, namely Seleucid I.  In 312 B.C.  Seleucid became the ruler of much of the Asian Near East, naming his son Antiochus I as co-regent late in his reign.  Antiochus (and his descendants) continued to date by the years of Seleucus’s reign even after the latter’s death, and thus was born the novel idea of the dynastic era.  It replaced the cumbersome system of starting a new era with the accession of each new king, which required memorizing the lengths of previous reigns (or written king lists) to calculate long-term contracts or to write history.  So useful was the new idea that it soon spread beyond the borders of the Seleucid kingdom.  Thus the dynastic Seleucid Era became a truly international era, sometimes known as the “Era of (all) the Greeks” (see the First Book of Maccabees 1:10).



But even the Seleucid Era had its limitations.  After its introduction, the development of astronomy proceeded apace, led by such figures as Hipparchus in the second century B.C. and Ptolemy in the second century A.D.  They required a system that went back before Alexander, and Ptolemy in particular provided one in the form of the “Era of Nabonassar.”  Named for the king who ascended the throne of Babylon in 747 B.C.  According to Berossos, a Babylonian priest writing in Greek in the third century B.C., Nabonassar was responsible for introducing a new historiography in Babylon.  The question is, did Nabonassar introduce the era named for him, or was it a construct of later historians and astronomers?  The fact that two other eras, both devised in the third century B.C., dated their epochs to the eighth century B.C. Supports the latter view.  One of these was the Olympic Era, which was counted beginning with the first Olympiad in 776 B.C.  The other was the Roman Era, dated “from the founding of Rome” (ab urbe condita), supposedly in 753 B.C.


But cuneiform records from Babylonia suggest otherwise.  They show that numerous calendric reforms as well as innovations in chronological historiography, or what may be termed “chronograph,” do in fact go back to King Nabonassar.  Among these are the so-called “Babylonian Chronicle,” a year-by-year record of major events affecting Babylonia and especially its priesthood; semi-annual “diaries” with observations of astronomical, meteorological and other natural phenomena (together with fluctuations in commodity prices), and occasionally historical events; and the regularization of the system of “intercalated new” of leap months—a system still largely adhered to by the Jewish calendar.  So the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out that Nabonassar meant to introduce a new era beginning with his accession. True, political events frustrated his plans, for his son lost his throne to the Assyrians.  But it is possible that astronomers continued to use the era, thus laying the groundwork for the later Seleucid Era and, ultimately, for our own era. 

So, boys-and-girls, you see, it never was the Year of Our Lord until somewhere around 600 CE (current error -- yes, I mean, error).

Babylonia

a poem:

Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea? 


                         -- Percy Bysshe Shelley


 
the Shelley


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August 19, 2018

I am. Period.




 O, raise up thine eyes to eternal sky

In thy bondage strike out to be free

Hush the whispering voice of the infinite why

With "I am and I was and I ever will be."


So, what is being said here?  Easy, you are what you think.  Period.  Call it Positive Thinking, Mind Control, or The Secret, whatever you like!  Our lives come down to three phrases: I am, I was, I ever will be, and in the end you will be what you think you should be.  Simply put: nothing is impossible for the Conscious Mind, for the Conscious Mind controls the Subconscious Mind and the Subconscious Mind is all-powerful. 


Wow.  WTF.   Why go to church when you can read it here?


Every condition, circumstance, and manifestation of your life can be changed to suit your conscious desires.  The way is to "Know that fear is your enemy."

So, let's do away with the fear.  The fear of everything.  We will start by letting go of the notions we have about who we are, where we live, where we were born, what we have done, etc.  Forget all that, and instead meditate on I am a pure spirit cast into a human mold as a manifestation of divine intelligence, existing this little while on earth to help carry on the divine plan.  Being "pure spirit" we are part of the only intelligence there is, and all the power and understanding of this intelligence are ours to draw upon.

The Universal Mind that flows through us all knows no limitations and gives of itself according to need.  It is creating for us right now by reading these words and just, being.





Being "pure spirit," we are a part of God, a manifestation of the infinite.  In our earthy form we undergo a sense of isolation and personal responsibility which causes us doubt.  The doubt is from forcing on an existence instead of accepting an existence.  How do we "accept" this existence?  Simple, by stating, "I am" -- or "je suis" if you prefer a more poetic sounding call of arms.

I am.  

Period.  


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On this day in ancient Rome, the ripening of the grapes and beginning of the wine-making season was celebrated with an agricultural festival known as the Vinalia Rustica.  The first greapes were broken off and offered to Jupiter and Venus.   

August 17, 2018

Find your personal Jesus, go inward lad.


a message from my spirit guide 

New Testament texts took centuries to write.  They were chosen amid an ongoing conflict between those who believed the orthodox texts represented Jesus' words and deeds, and the Gnostic Christians who believed that the orthodox writings had an inferior understanding of the true knowledge the Christ.


Theodosius
And so here's where the story begins.  Emperor Theodosius in A.D. 381 desired to condemn all versions of pagan and Gnostic belief, and so issued an order that only those bishops who would sincerely confess their belief in the equal divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and condemn all others, would return to their churches.  When this didn't work, Emperor Theodosius turned to brutality and extreme measures to eradicate the heresies of paganism, Gnosticism, and other spiritual beliefs and practices he thought undermined orthodox Christian beliefs.  His representatives traveled through Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria to destroy temples and disband unorthodox religious groups.  The persecution drove some unorthodox groups underground and obliterated others, but accusations of heresy among groups of Gnostic Christians and pagans persisted.  Simply stated: If one didn't past the Holy Trinity Test, they didn't work or share into any of the community harvest.  Eventually they would be called heretics, witches, and devils.  Some of us hid alone for safety, others formed groups in caves, but most, pretended to believe.   We knew it was a lie.  We told our children the truth and the reason for acting; eventually, however, our grandchildren and great, grandchildren stopped passing down the truth of how the orthodox church stole our truth.   Fortunately, in our hearts we knew the truth.   And today, as the Catholic Priest are exposed for their perverted acts on children, and the Protestant faith are exposed for their hate in hypocrisy, we will find a way to return.  


Find your real Jesus today.  Go inwards, lad, go inwards. 

                                                                                                                              --Dr. T V Boogie


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  This day marks the first of the nine days that Odin, the chief Aesir sky god, hung from the World Tree (Yggdrasil) in order to discover the meaning of the runes.  In ancient Rome, the festival of Diana, beloved goddess of the Moon, chastity, and hunting, was celebrated with feasting, mirth, and magic making. 


Diana

 

August 16, 2018

Similarities between Trump and Buddha.



God Said:

Let there be light...Let there be a firmament...Let it divide the waters from the waters...Let the dry land appear... Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life...Let the earth bring forth...the beasts of the earth...Let us make man...

What does it really mean?  Easy: Science.  

If you strip out the poetic language, it is a sequence in which subatomic particles ('light') are followed by gas ('firmament'), followed by liquids ('the waters'), solids ('dry land'), primitive vegetable life ('grass'), primitive marine life ('the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life'), land animals ('the beasts of the earth') and finally anatomically modern humans ('let us make man').  

Looked at it this way, Genesis is consistent with the modern scientific view. 

Now, let's see what the Buddha said about how the universe was created:

Go f*&k yourself (my words not his), for such knowledge is unnecessary in order to achieve the liberation from Death and Rebirth.

Okay, so, sometimes Buddha sounded like Donald Trump when asked a direct question.  

Does this mean, Trump is Buddha and Fox News his Bodhi tree?

Dang, my brain hurts.



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So it is a fact that the Earth is shifting.  I first read about it in Gizmodo.  In that article it is stated that "...because planets aren’t perfect spheres, but bumpy, pitted things whose mass is always on the move..." you get the drift.  It also went on to say the two causes are: "... the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and changes in the global distribution of water stored on land. Both of these are related to a single underlying phenomenon: climate change.

Okay, that article was written some years ago.  So, I decided to give us a 2016 update as to see where it has shifted and according to Business Insider, not only is it going to get hot as hell everywhere, the North Pole is headed south.  According to that Business Insider article, the North Pole is headed toward London!

Now, before I say something stupid about this, let me tell you that I use Green Mountain energy and drive an environmentally sound car:  a diesel Volkswagen.  I also recycle plastic (sometimes, probably more than most) and walk when I can.  I also take the damn light-rail here in Dallas which is really a bitch because the depots are really, really, hot.   Can you image how much hotter they will be with global warming.


Anyway, what I'm saying is this.  Lets all do a little more.   For one, please bring your fucking own grocery sac.  I mean, not only are they good on the environment and hold a lot more stuff, the business owners are Climate Change Deniers Benefiting Off The Destruction Of Our Planet!

Today's Bad Capitalist profile is one of the plastic bag companies that sued the city of Dallas when it put a tax on the use of plastic bags to encourage people to bring their cloth bags to cut-down on plastic waste.  The parent company is Novolex, and yes, they sued Dallas to stop the eco friendly policy because it hurt their profits.   Look at their website (http://novolex.com/) and you'll never know they were the ones.  They've completely hidden it with a false image of as a Friendly, Earth Loving company.  The first words you'll see on their homepage,  "Sustainability (their words, not mine)." 


http://novolex.com/

Yes, they had their chance to do something about climate change, and instead chose profits.  That's fine, that's not the issue, the issue is now they are stamping "Sustainability" and "Eco Friendly" all over their image to hide their true Gaia Hating actions. 

It's Orwellian, in the same sense that in Orwell's book, 1984, love is hate, and, war is peace, according to Novolex, profits are Eco friendly




Profits Are Not Eco-Friendly.

STOP BUYING THE BULLSHIT PEOPLE. 

August 14, 2018

Trump: He's No Jefferson.


 During the election, Jefferson refused to discuss his religious beliefs, leading many people to believe he didn’t have any.  This prompted the Reverend John M. Mason to claim that anyone who voted for Jefferson “would do more to destroy the gospel of Jesus than a whole fraternity of infidels.”  When Jefferson was elected, some believers hid their Bibles so they wouldn’t be seized by the “the satanic Jefferson.”  Actually, Jefferson was religious and did attend church (Episcopal), though he didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ.  “To the genuine precepts of Jesus Himself,” he wrote, “I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one would be; sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others; ascribing to Him every human excellence and believing He never claimed any other.”
History 101, pg 255

 Say nothing of my religion.  It is known to my God and myself alone.  Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life;  if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

                                  -- Thomas Jefferson.




And today, 42 presidents later:



Sir Donald Trump got 81 percent of the male white Christian vote.  

Why?

Well, just as Trump has been accepted by the wealthy 1% because of his tax-cuts for the wealthy, Trump is loved by the church because he has begun to deliver on his promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment Act which regulates political speech from the pulpit, which, once removed will be the death of the Separation of the Church and State guidelines Jefferson and the other founders fought so hard to have put in our constitution.

The fact that Trump is not a member of any church, doesn't matter.

The fact that Trump lies a lot --
Click here for a list of well-documented Trump lies.
 

The fact that Trump surrounds himself with mobsters, looks up to despots like Putin, and has said on a live tape that he makes advances on woman without their approval...

He's no Jefferson.  



 






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And, today boys-and-girls we are going to look at two great Americans from long ago and see what they had to say about this great country we call America.

Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people.  To us it was tame.  Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.  Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families that we loved was it “wild” for us.  When the very animals of the forest began fleeing form his approach, then it was that for us the “Wild West” began. 

              —Chief Luther Standing Bear (1868-1939), Oglala Sioux 

Chief Luther Standing Bear

“God has not been preparing the English speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing….He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth.  He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples….And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the world.” 

                                               —Senator Albert J. Beveridge, 1900


Chief Make-um America Great Again! AKA Beveridge

Now the choice is up to you to decide who was right, the Native American or Racist Politician. 
  

August 13, 2018

Cannabis and history.


Lest we forget


Cannabis was first cultivated around 4000 B.C. in China.  Since then, it has been a popular source of fiber.  Everything from rope to clothes has been made from it.  Even the original drafts of the Declaration of Independence were on hemp paper.  But it has also been popular for its medicinal and intoxicating properties.  Queen Victoria used it to relieve her period pains, and from 1842 to 1900, nearly half of all the medicine sold in America contained marijuana.

Cannabis was introduced to the New World by the Spaniards prior to 1545.  The settlers in Jamestown brought it to Virginia in 1611.  It was found to be so useful that in 1762, Virginia awarded bounties to farmers who grew hemp and to manufacturers who converted it into various products.  Not stopping there, Virginia also penalized those who didn’t produce it. 

Just three years after Virginia was handing out its bounties, George Washington was growing cannabis at Mount Vernon, as can be seen by two entries he made in his diary.  For the dates May 12-13, 1765, he wrote, “Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp.”  And then on August 7, 1765, he wrote, “—began to seperate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp at Do—rather too late.”



Recreational use of the drug reached America before 1856, for in that year a series of articles written by Fitz Hugh Ludlow about his marijuana-eating experiences were published in Putnam’s Magazine and then as a book titled The Hasheesh Eater.  Ludlow was a sixteen-year-old in Poughkeepsie, New York, when he began experimenting with various drugs at the local pharmacy, including chloroform, opiates, and stimulants.

By 1883, hashish houses were established among the opium dens in New Orleans, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago.  The following year, hashish candy was being sold in Baltimore. 

The father of our country wasn’t the only president interested in marijuana—Thomas Jefferson also grew it.  And then, of course, there was President Bill Clinton.  Since he claims he tried marijuana without inhaling, it might be assumed that he ate some Alice B. Toklas brownies.  But either way, he definitely knew of the drug’s intoxicating properties. 
History 101; pg 210


"My Gift to American."
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This day (August the 13th) marks the first day of the runic halfmonth of As, the ash tree.  The As rune is sacred to the divinities of Asgard and represents stability with the divine force in the world.  The world ash, Yaggdrasil, a symbol of continuity in times of change and chaos.  



August 12, 2018

Esoteric Sunday: Roots of Spiritualism.

Esoteric Sunday


There are people living among us who can see the world of angels as clearly as they can see the rocks and stones and trees that the rest of us see.  These people have many names, some of them rude, but for now, we will call them mystics. 

Sometimes they live and work within organized religion, but more often they live apart.  They tend to be solitary, perhaps lonely figures.  

Zephaniah Eddy was working on the farm one day when he saw his two sons playing with feral children he had never seen before.  When he went after these strange children, they seemed to vanish in mid-air.  The old man hauled the brothers over to the barn and beat them with a rawhide whip; he had  long worried about a history of witchcraft in his wife's family and now wanted to do everything he could to stamp it out.  



But as the boys grew older weird things continued to happen -- slates, tables and inkwells flying around the house, strange pounding noises and disembodied voices.  Spirits appeared, including a creature with white fur that the boys said sniffed at their faces when they were in bed, they grew larger until it turned into a luminous cloud with a human shape. 



Zephaniah grew increasingly alarmed and when the boys fell into trances he would sometimes beat them, even pour boiling water on them or singe them with burning coals -- anything to try to make them snap out of it.  The Eddy brothers left home as soon as they could, but then they were stoned, stabbed, manacled, tortured and even shot at by angry mobs, and they returned home, to the small, basic farm in Vermont, when their father died.  They remained scarred, sullen, suspicious of the world, but news that the farm was infested with spirits began to spread. 
 
Olcott


Henry Steel Olcott was a successful attorney.  He had been a colonel in the Union army, where he had been responsible for investigating fraud and corruption in arsenals and military shipyards.  He was also a prominent Freemason and one of a panel of three men charged with investigating the assassination of Lincoln.  In 1874 he was sent to investigate events at the Eddy's farm and he traveled there, accompanied by an artist called Kappas, whose illustrations he would use in a remarkable book, People from the Other World.

On his first day he attended a séance led by the Eddys at a local cave, Honto's cave.  Beforehand he investigated the location to make sure there were no hidden entrances or passageways.  When the séance started, he was amazed to see a gigantic Native American emerge from the cave.  Then another appeared, silhouetted on the top of the cave, then a squaw.  Afterwards Olcott could find no trace of footprints. 

He was hooked.  He stayed for two and a half months, recording some 400 spiritual manifestations.  During his stay he virtually took the farmhouse apart, plank by plank, to prove to himself that he wasn't being duped by trapdoors or other contrivances. 

Blavatsky
 A few weeks after Olcott's arrival, another visitor came to the farmhouse.  This was Madame de Blavatsky, an eccentric Russian traveler with a well-developed interest in esoteric teachings and a magnetic personality.  When she attended séances, some of the beings manifested by Eddy brothers began to speak and write in Russian.  New spirits manifested themselves before Olcott and the rest of the company, some of whom Madame Blavatsky claimed to have met earlier on her travels, including a Kurdish warrior and the leader of a band of jugglers form North Africa.  

Olcott tried to make sense of the exercises of power he was witnessing and to discern universal principles underlying them:

   What is this insensible something that envelops us like an inner atmosphere, and saturates all whom we meet?  What subtle power made the mere touch of an Apostle's robe efficacious to cure disease, and the laying on of a royal hand effect the same result?  What human lightning darting from Napoleon's eye converted every soldier into a hero as it fell upon him?  What potent spell lurked in the presence of Florence Nightingale, and made the wounded men at Scutari better, if they could barely kiss her shadow as it flitted across their beds?

In 1875  Blavatsky and Olcott co-founded the Theosophical Society, with the aim of promoting a universal brotherhood, regardless of race or creed, based on a free-thinking study of world religions.  In 1887 Madame Blavatsky published Isis Unveiled, a vast compendium of Rosicrucian lore.  She outlined a theology intended to make sense of the explosion of spiritual activity in the second half of the nineteenth century, much of it under the umbrella of Mystic Spiritualism. 


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Thanks For Being!

Thanks For Being!