I know you're intrigued.
I know you won't believe its happening here in Canada, in Vancouver, in this wonderful place.
Wake up and take off the rose colored glasses,
it's happening everywhere
It will be better than you think.
And scary. So prepare yourself.
There are no unbroken lines of knowledge.
Through the purges and inquisitions, the hatreds compounded, the ages of darkness, war upon war, we lost everything we had found.
The "Old Ways" they ramble of are re-creations
We must create ourselves anew, looking forward, not backward.
We can be deeply spiritual without resorting to idiocy.
Using fiction and foolishness to ascend taints the water of our lives.
We cannot grow life using water mixed with black oil.
No matter how erudite our explanations may be.
I really loved the Wickerman
It was an amazing film, with an interesting history.
It almost never made it to theaters.
The director is currently working on another similar film.
Being a "horror cult classic", the Wickerman has drawn millions of viewers, many of whom are high as a kite on hallucinogens (entheogens).
I know I was melting along with the walls the first time I saw it.
Hmmm.
Anyways. It's great. Horror without gore in the best of suspenseful movie traditions.
With the always fascinating Christopher Lee
Lee is well known for his many horror films
I always associate him with Dracula and its sequels...
The wickerman had a beautiful take on paganism, and a very well portrayed vision of this little island cult. Lee's performance and monologues describing the island and it's beliefs, even at the end, when the wickerman is being lit, are very convincing.
I'm astounded sometimes at the bleeding over of ideas between genres, people, religions.
It is a fiction, yes.
And like other horror works throughout the history of film, there have been lots of people who got a bit too wrapped up in it and took its words and representations as "truth".
Like those who believe they are vampires did with Dracula.
It's an odd thing, but common. I recently read about a 5 year old who was convinced he was imbued with all the qualities of Airbender. I'm sure most people can remember someone who believed in a particular movie just a bit too much.
So little we know of the deep influence new forms of media such as television have, never before in our history have we spent so much time as passive receivers of stories, instead of the interactive stories and books we once used.
The concepts of the wickerman moved like a meme through our society at the same time the works of Crowley, Levi, Wilson, and Barker began to achieve wide circulation after centuries of severe print censorship began to erode..........
I place Crowley and Wilsion together here on purpose.
Many people consider Crowley a Prophet
I honestly prefer Kahil Gibran
Many people consider Wilson a prophet for his wondrously sick Illuminatus trilogy.
If you take either one as "truth" you are a bit foolish.
Crowley needs to be read with a huge amount of skepticism, one tenth of each of his works is truly useful and the other 90% is a huge mind fuck, a labyrinth of mind traps for the Fool walking carelessly on the precipice...
And with the dawn of mass media, we've got a whole shitload of mindfucked zombies shuffling about looking for brains to eat, because they lost theirs somewhere along the way in their journey to know their inner light...
But people want information about themselves, and they'll lap up anything that might have some nutrition, regardless of the poisons hidden under the sugar.
We can learn about ourselves without recreating the mistakes of the past.
Older data is not usually not true, and we have to remember that the majority of written work and research on spirituality, especially by individuals and more "nature based" philosophies was lost in the great purges of the inquisition. What we have left are mostly fakeries, mishmashed collections, and christian influenced collections that are far from the original material.
The christian religions have disillusioned many people with inherent hypocrisies and abuses, so people go searching...
So many people searching for spiritual truth, they want the keys to their own being given to them with the smallest amount of work possible, and in their searches they pore over old texts, many of which are truly filled with rubbish. They find their nuggets of truth perhaps, but they always seem to grip tightly to some piece of rubbish or another that blackens them, and there are no shortage of "leaders" to lead them even further astray.
The idea is to ignite the light inside you, without getting it wrapped up in spikey black shit.
One thing that constantly amazes me is how many people I've met who are against christianity, but then they lock themselves into a paradigm that's based on Jewish Qabbalah. Golden Dawn, O.T.O, Thelema, Theosophy, Masonism, Rosicrucianism, they are all based on Qabbalah, which is Torah, which is the basic foundation of the Old Testament, which forms the base of Orthodox Christianity.
It doesn't make any sense to me at all. I'm not Jewish, so Qabbalah really doesn't do anything for me, just like Jesus doesn't have any special significance to someone with Jewish heritage. Why would someone seeking spiritual knowledge that's different from Christianity choose an alternative that's basically the the same shit?
Kabbalah itself is supposedly a very beautiful system, according to some level headed spiritualists I've spoken with. It's just really obtuse and convoluted and requires more than one translation to study properly if you don't read hebrew.
The problem lies with the approach that many non-jewish occultists such as Crowley have taken where any Christian symbolism is reversed, in black and white, making bad=good and good=bad.
It's far to simplified and just makes a strange Frankenstein monster of the process, leading to sickness and hierarchical foolishness. LeVey's take on "satanism" (TM) does a similar reversal structure of the christian system rather than start from scratch and use a proper observational method. In the end we end up with a whole lot of little badasses running around trying to be"evil" while basically following the same orthodox theological cosmology in reverse that they pretend to oppose. They use the same names, the same references and books and dictates and just try to view them in their "mirrored" system.
On top of this Christian/Orthodox/Judaic cultural appropriation, they attach other religious concepts, most notably the "Egyptian" motif that Crowley and the Masonic orders are so fond of.
In case you've lived under a rock all your life, the Egyptians were a nasty bunch 2000 years ago, enslaving whole civilizations, treating people as less than animals, and strangely enough, they hated the Jewish people and brutally enslaved them.
Doesn't anyone else think combining Egyptian pantheism with Judaic mysticism seem a little like breeding lions with sheep?
Theosophy didn't really do much better, combining Kabbalah with Hinduism and other "eastern" motifs. Again they just took a bunch of over ritualized hierarchical concepts appropriated from other cultures and stirred them together to create a weird stew that would sell books, draw donations and bring neophytes to the fold.
This Reactionism in general is at the root of a resurgence in over-reliance on Ritual, Cultural Appropriation, and eventually throwing everything into the pot, including human lives.
Trading one set of paradigms for another is useless if we don't critically evaluate our purposes for doing so and assess the results with regards to our needs or expectations.
I once sat through a hour long presentation by an occultist who was explaining how to "properly" make a magic circle. She professed to be "wiccan" and then proceeded to outline a 6 hour circle building process based on information from 3 old grimoires, one of which is a proven hoax, and they were all based on Qabbalist interpretations and lists of "demons" and symbols, mostly focused on the seal of solomon. As if these "demons" or ethereal beings really answer to names in human languages such as hebrew and don't answer to any other form of address.
I thought it was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.
The reality of circles is, they are a projection of your mind,
so all you need is your mind, chalk is just a crutch.
Imagine a cylinder of light around you, it's easier than a sphere.
That's really it. All of it.
Reality is a subjective interpretation for each and every human
and the range of this experience is vast.
Yet collectively and individually we all have evolutions to towards new versions of ourselves
Our society has indeed seen many forms of human sacrifice, from individuals to mass genocides where suffering is collected, with so many great explanations for our descent into madness.
What starts with one, creates another and another until a once nurturing society becomes a continual scene of murder.
And that's probably the greatest of reasons for our need to look closely and see that people do this thing even now. In our last century there were many little groups of all denominations committing these atrocities, torture and death for enlightenment.
The Inquisition and Salem Witch trials were christian forms of human sacrifice.
Few people realize that some of the victims of the salem trials weren't even pubescent.
High ranking officials of the SS engaged in a number of human sacrifices before their "mediums" decided the best were children, and lots of orphans disappeared around their facility.
There were so many orphans, like the homeless today, that no one really spoke up.
Millions died in the horrifying purges of the Inquisition.
King Charlemagne, long recognized for many societal reforms, killed over 10, 000 germanic "pagans" in one day because they refused to convert to christianity. One religious belief killing another is basically a sacrifice for one's "god". IMHO
One school of Buddhism in some parts of the world still uses torture and murder in ritual, although almost every other form of Buddhism has a no harm to life policy.
There have always been "Brujo" that follow this path, the great sacrificial edifices of certain Maya cultures show us such a focus on pain and blood, death magic to the extreme,
and coming up to 2012 there is an increased interest in them by many new agers.
Egypt spilled blood in massive amounts as well, and was well known for it's massive implementation of slavery.
Masonic orders, basically a form of orthodox christianity with qabbalist and eastern mystical components have tried every form of religious rite in their past, and some would argue that there is evidence to support modern practices of human sacrifice in the rituals of some lodges.
Just a few years ago a large number of people were killed in various parts of Africa for reputedly using "magic" or "juju" to cause men's penises to shrink.
Stoning someone still happens regularly around the world, and always for a religious moralist reason.
Everywhere there have been people who tried human sacrifice.
In the "developed" countries it usually occurs smaller groups or alone because of the knowledge that common society around them would dissaprove...
Why?
Because it's easy.
It works and it's easy
like a huge greasy mcdick burger that fills the void and makes you feel full,
but in the end gives you a lot less than you needed and even causes harm.
It's a fast way to tip a lot of people over the edge quickly, but in doing so it spreads a sickness through the participants, and that sickness always spreads.
If the participants don't go mad and kill themselves, they eventually internalize the event and create their own explanatory mythology to justify it.
And out of a huge mass of participants, offshoots break out, and new centers of the same shite begin to propogate.
Once a year becomes twice a year becomes 8 or 12 times a year,
becomes every time they have a fucking party.
Why don't we try it, becomes "that was exciting" and eventually becomes WTF.
And it multiplies and spreads,
the large numbers of participants looking for a thrill always equates to a form of profit,
in followers or admissions,
which then makes others want to recreate the same profit making event
It's also a huge well of EGO that usually initiates these things.
I am so great, we will do the ultimate blah blah blah....
but so much of the "occult" or "magic" or "religion" is really about ego in the face of something we all contain within us to some degree or another.
What I always find interesting,
is those that practice evil shit never really seem gain that much...
So I'll go through a couple different ways that this sickness manifests in reality, and how it affects both the participants and society in general...
The first is the standard Big Ritual with the dais/altar/centrepiece.
In the center is a victim or (2/3) and everybody involved is part
The second is the Scarlet Whore takedown propogated through the fetishistic adoration of Crowley's work. Basically, a coven concentrates their energy and efforts on a woman who has a great depth of spiritual power, and through drugs, sex, and coercive mental subversion they gradually turn her into a whore. In more refined covens she has a role similiar to a "holy courtesan" and in covens that are more base and focused on negative, evil aims she is brought down to the level of a street crack whore, and eventually dies debased and riddled with disease.
This methodology has long been used by Christian congregations as well, especially on women who had the audacity to try and divorce their husbands or remain single and sexually active after the death of their partner. Through the mechanisms Social Stigma and Social Economic Closure they make sure that she is unable to get work or any means to live so that in the end her choice is to either become a prostitute or go back to the flock and live piously. If she becomes a prostitute she may even be murdered by a member of the church with no serious ramifications for the killer as her death is seen as a form of religious "justice" which is used to keep other women in the group from attempting to gain freedom as well.
This methodology can also be used on someone outside of the group, which is common in "satanist" forms of practice where "weakness" is seen as the greatest of human evils, someone outside the group who is homeless or has addictive behaviors is brought down through character assassination and other indirect methodologies to a point where they lose contact with family or friends that might miss them or support them. Often members of of the attacking group will directly subvert and influence the minds and attitudes of the victims family and community in an effort to "give no ground" for the person to run to. Once the person is down and socially isolated, extensive attempts are further made to either make the person kill themselves, overdose, become jailed through group-made accusations, or simply get them into a position where they can be murdered in a group ritual without anyone noticing and no repercussions for the group.
Murder of the victim is often achieved through indirect means:
- give someone a tainted needle, or some other contact with aids or other sickness
-taint a user's drug supply
-poison
-Direct pharmacological attack as in the powder blowing scene of "serpent and the rainbow"
-having someone with a strong illness/flu/cold make transferable contact with the target
-"random" violence or abduction
These methods are difficult to point at, skirt around the concept of direct murder, and can be easily explained away by the group, except for the time of the death, which will generally coincide with a common spiritual day/week/time where the group focuses on their "ritual path"
In the end we have a whole bunch of "spiritual" members of society who could be a force of positive energy walking about trying to deal with a bad case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and waves of psyche destroying guilt, a fine state for a would-be brainwasher to come along and mold them to a more adversarial form...
One of the main offshoots of this disturbing trend is that it is not really the "weak" that are targeted, but those who create possibly profitable works but have no means of production or distribution access. The group will target someone who has something like a book, a set of songs, artwork, an invention, an idea that can be worth profit. The group then targets this person as a prospect for their sacrifice, uses the methods outlined here and others to destroy them, and acquires the profit making object/idea that the now deceased could not capitalize on due to lack of resources or contacts. In effect they achieve robbery and murder, claim righteousness within their paradigm, split the profits, and have a good laugh after the funeral, which they usually attend. A homeless artist with 3000 attendees at their funeral is common in L.A. and other large cities, and now it begins to become prevalent here in sunny Vancouver (and elsewhere in Canada). Shortly after they have a "retrospective" to market the stolen works within a social gathering facade. And have another good laugh.
I've watched it happen more than once.
Another common target is practitioners of other spiritual systems, however, since the other congregation may intercede it is often lone practitioners such as shamans or the self initiated that become targets. Or neophytes who don't understand the process they are going through
Again, many against one is not a true form of weakness, and hopefully in more than one case the backlash of the target's community, or the vengeance of the "target" themselves may alter the societal perception of who is the prey and who is the hunter. In fact this is a common "job" of Shamans in many cultures worldwide, to point out murderers, thieves, pedophiles, rapists and others that hide within the community under a facade of respectability. The Shaman, who lives outside of the hierarchical structure and usually at a distance from the regular community has a point of view that is less hindered by ties, strictures, and games that allow a predator to hide in plain sight and even hold immense power within the community.
The various spiritual communities that fit under the moniker of Neopaganism need to be aware that allowing another clan to commit these acts unchallenged will in the end result in a blanket accusation against all of them, just as one or two rogue Santerian priests caused hundreds of other law-abiding Santerian groups to be targeted during the 70's. Literally millions of good honest people with nature-based philosophies and spiritual practices have died because of one or two groups in an area or country following the path of atrocity.
There is more! but again we must take a short break...
Why would I write about such things you wonder?
Because people have definitely disappeared.
People I once knew. People who made good conversation.
And the madness still lights up some foolish followers eyes,
a secretive laughter that reeks of lunacy.
I'd rather people did copious amounts of drugs and meditated together.
It's fast and sometimes dirty too, but at least it's not murder.
There's more, this topic is going to take me a couple of weeks to finish, and I have to clean it up and give more references, because I don't want to leave it hanging...
no pun intended...
but you might find an antidote for the madness here
I would also like to note that I'm not really against traditions that perform animal sacrifice, but my personal belief is that it should be a form of feast and shouldn't incur cruelty.
It's not my cup of tea, but I like a good barbecue once in a while.
Many people don't realize it, but the common image of "Baphomet" by Levi (a qabbalist), is actually a drawing of the "Goat of Mendes", a representation of a communal goat sacrifice common to many primitive cultures in many regions. His version was from images found in a region called Mendes.
