In 1978, when Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was released, audiences laughes at vegetables rising up against humanity. Come 2011 with the current E-Coli outbreak, they’re not laughing now.
It is all to do with the recent Rapture. Now the first of the tribulations is occurring – Vegetable Apocalypse!
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Is there a link between the Man In Black and the "Black Man" of traditional witchcraft sabbats? Of course not, I just made it up to get traffic!
Alas for Wiccans currently residing in California’s correctional system! It appears that a court has ruled that the state is not obliged to employ a Wiccan chaplain to minister to their needs. So says a number of news sources including, e.g. Courthouse News Service.
However, examining the story in detail it appears the truth is more complex – in fact most of the news sources seem to have misreported the judgement, for the sake of coming up with a lurid headline. What appears to have happened is that an enterprising Wiccan (not incarcerated), observing that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not currently employ a Wiccan chaplain, and the fact that there are 598 prisoners designated as “Wiccan” currently languishing in jail, sued the prison service for not employing him as a chaplain on the grounds that it breached the prisoners’ rights.
The court however recognised him for being a chancer, and pointed out that it would be for the prisoners to sue to vindicate their own rights – he did not have standing to do so himself. Hence he was not entitled to sue himself.
This has variously been summarised in the headlines as “California Prisons Don’t Have to Subsidize Wicca” but in fact the court ruling established no such thing. The court only ruled on a technicality – i.e. that one particular person was not entitled to sue – but not the general principle, which remains undecided – until Wiccan prisoners themselves sue the CDCR, which may yet happen.
Incidentally, I note that the Court has adopted a definition of Wicca which diverges from what most witches would recognise, to wit:
“faith groups consisting of Wiccans, Goddess worshipers, Neo-Pagans, Pagans, Norse Pagans (and any other ethnic designation), Earth Religionists, Old Religionists, Druids, Shamans, Asatrus, and those practicing in the Faery, Celtics, Khemetic, Gardnerian, Church of All Worlds, Reclaiming, Dianic, Alexandrian, Iseum of Isis, Reconstructionist, Odinist or Yoruban Traditions, and other similar nature-based faiths.”
In other words, the Court conflates “Wiccan” with “Pagan.” I am guessing that the reality of the situation in California is that those prisoners who have been labelled “Wiccan” are in fact members of different pagan traditions who have been bundled together under an arbitrary (and technically inaccurate) blanket tradition. In that sense it is unfortunate but probably wise for CDCR not to appoint a “Wiccan Chaplain,” as only one such Chaplain would not be able to cater to the spiritual needs of all the different pagan prisoners.
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Lorraine Mbulawa, the teenager accused of attempted murder.
You now have the power to kill someone in the UK and be found Not Guilty of either their murder. This is the apparent verdict of Leeds Crown Court, which has acquitted a teenager of the attempted murder of her own mother.
Unfortunately though, the teenager in question was convicted of section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act (“malicious wounding”), which means that if death had occurred she would still have been guilty of manslaughter. NB: life imprisonment is the maximum sentence for manslaughter, though unlike murder it is not mandatory. As it was, she was given a suspended sentence.
The teenager and her family came from Zimbabwe where belief in the the occult is widespread. Interestingly in order to convict her of malicious wounding, the Jury implicitly accepted evidence that she was not insane at the time of the offence. In sentencing, the Judge said.
“[She] believes she was doing what the spirits told her to do which reduced her culpability significantly.
“Since she knew what she was doing she should have fought against what she was told to do.”
Now this is an innovation in the law which appears to have crept in since I was at University! You will probably have heard of the old adage: “Ignorance of the law is no defence.” So what we have got here is the following situation:
What, therefore, is the correct verdict? If one assumes that the accused did actually want to cause her mother’s death – albeit at the behest of these spirits – it should be Guilty of Attempted Murder. What the jury seems to have done is assume that belief in disincarnate spirits, which does not amount to insanity, is somehow a mitigating factor – that it makes the accused Reckless as opposed to Intentionally violent.
This would be like me being acquitted of Theft because Valefar put me up to it. Actually this could be a good wheeze, the more I think about it. Theft is a crime of strict Intent. There is no such thing as Reckless Theft, so if a jury found that I did not have sufficient mens rea for the full offence, there would be no lesser offence for me of which to be convicted. Hence I would walk completely free! Sorted. 😉
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The Rapture. You're Doing It Wrong.
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever.
1 Thessalonians 4:17
Meet me Jesus, meet me,
Meet me in the middle of the air,
If my wings should fail me Lord
Please meet me with another pair.Led Zeppelin, In My Time Of Dying
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Following on from my post about the coming Apocalypse, I thought I would share my thoughts on the Initiated view of the so-called Rapture. The popular notion is that on a certain day, the Lord will call His Own to Himself, which will result in them ascending physically into the sky. This will entail great joy for the Virtuous; great lamentation for the not-quite-so-Virtuous; great consternation for those of the Virtuous who were stuck indoors on the day it happens; and widespread looting and partying for everyone else.
Let’s ignore for one moment the fact that the idea of the Rapture is (a) preposterous and (b) inconsistent with other eschatological passages in the New Testament in both the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. The whole idea about the Rapture is based on the passage from 1 Thessalonians quoted above: the operative word in the verse is “air.” In Greek this would have been Aera i.e. the air of the atmosphere or sky, as opposed to Pneuma or breath. In Hebrew however, this is Shamayim.
Shamayim, spelled with final (top) and medial versions of Mem.
Correctly spelled, this enumerates in Gematria to 1090 – which reduces by Theosophic Reduction (aka Aiq Beker) to 10, the number of Malkuth. Furthermore, the technically-incorrect spelling using the medial Mem instead of the final, which enumerates to 430 – the same as Nephesh.
This casts the situation in a far different light altogether. “Nephesh” is the vital or animal-soul of a person: the word is used in the Old Testament as a synonym for a “living being.” It may also be thought of as bearing the same relation to the Ruach as the Sub-conscious mind does to the Conscious mind. In the Qabalah the Nephesh is associated with Malkuth.
Thus by analysing it Qabalistically, it starts to look pretty much that far from meeting the Lord somewhere above the troposphere, He will manifest down here in the midst of our life in Malkuth within our very own being. After all, Jesus did say (He was quoting Psalm 37 when he did so) that it would be the Meek who inherit the Earth, not the unvirtuous.
NB: This interpretation may sound far-fetched but it is far more reasonable than some of the explanations put about by those who believe in a literal Rapture.
This is a bit of a sad post for me, as I had rather wished I had not been right after all. On the positive side I am glad to see that anarchists and satanists did not disrupt the Royal Wedding after all. However, over the weekend it was reported that Wills & Kate had decided to postpone their honeymoon: whilst today it was reported that the couple face separation as Prince William deploys to Falklands.
It is with no pride that I distinctly remember what I wrote in a previous blog post:
Sometime last year I went on the radio – the BBC World Service no less – to explain that astrologically speaking there is something wrong with the date that Wills and Kate have chosen for their wedding. The main concern I identified was that on April 29th 2011, Saturn – the planet of Death, delays and restrictions – was opposed to Venus, the planet of Love.
In effect, the Wedding Day was the day on which the marriage was “born,” and hence the stars on that day constitute a natal chart of sorts. Hence although the day itself went alright, the Saturn influence will show itself as a recurring pattern throughout the marriage. It would appear from the news stories referred to above that this is already beginning to rear its ugly head.
My advice to the Royal couple is therefore to take steps to knock this on the head now, so it does not become a feature of the marriage. Seeing as the Honeymoon has been postponed, there is now a rather obvious date later in the year when it would be an auspicious day for them to take it, viz Friday October 7th, which was the day I suggested for their wedding in the first place!
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The many millions of readers of this blog will know that I am not overly impressed by the Daily Telegraph’s reputation for up to the minute scientific reportage. Often a scientific story gets reported a few days or even a week late, and sometimes even the time-gap is even longer (e.g. getting round to reporting on Professor Chandra Wickramsingh‘s work in astrobiology only after he had been doing it for the best part of forty years).
Now however they have taken the biscuit. In today’s edition I read that “Prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version of sat nav based on stone circle markers, historians have claimed.” Further:
They were able to travel between settlements with pinpoint accuracy thanks to a complex network of hilltop monuments.
These covered much of southern England and Wales and included now famous landmarks such as Stonehenge and The Mount.
Well, well! There is only one problem with this theory: it was first proposed by Alfred Watkins in 1922 in his book Early British Trackways (1922), which was the fore-runner of the seminal The Old Straight Track
Note however that Watkins never claimed that Ley Lines were anything other than a geographical phenomenon. It was left to later writers to attach paranormal connotations. John Michell’s The View over Atlantis
Actually the idea of siting a temple using ley lines is perfectly sound, especially when you consider that ancient places of worship would have been the very sorts of location that neolithic man would have wanted to find as he roamed over the countryside. Hence: it is inevitable that ancient temples would be located upon ley-lines not necessarily due to any paranormal significance, but so that pilgrims would succeed in finding them.
This is not to say, however, that Ley-lines do not have paranormal significance. One of Michell’s assertions in the View Over Atlantis is that ley-lines indicate currents of energy which he refers to as “dragon-current,” because they are comparable to similar currents of energy found in Feng-Shui. Moreover the idea of “dragon-current” appears to be archetypal because along at least one ley-line in Britain there is a number of Christian churches – built on the sites of old pagan temples – which are all dedicated to either St Michael or St George – two saints famous for killing dragons. The official explanation for this is that they represent the victory of the Christian Church over Satan – although one may point out that it really meant the victory of the church over the pre-existing pagan religion, on the basis that in those days any religion which one did not like was linked by the Church to Satan by default.
So far, so coincidental. However recently I found a book called Ancient Magicks for a New Age
But, prior to sleep, approached Bel’s Tump in the astral. Had a vision of a broad tree with a whitened bole, and then the Tump itself, a demonic looking creature rising from it. For once, despite the usual frisson of fear, I didn’t shut it out and demanded, several times, to know its secret.
Then came an extraordinarily long and vivid image of a colossal dragon pouring from the mound,* slithering out, vast. Again I felt no fear despite the reality. I knew it was part of me. At my demands to know its secret it crumbled to white powder and bones.
* My emphasis.
The biggest irony comes however when Richardson comments on the interpretation of his vision. “I am unable to give any clues, even at this remove, as to what my poor, short-lived beast actually meant.” We may speculate that a conical tumulus may have been just the kind of earth-work that neolithic man might have erected as a marker along the direction of a ley-line. If so we then have the situation that a clairvoyant, whilst still ignorant of John Michell’s theory of “dragon-current,” nevertheless has a dragon-related vision in relation to this particular locale. It may just be anecdotal evidence but it indicates a tentative vindication Michell’s writing.
So, all in all it is at least worth keeping an open-mind as to the paranormal or spiritual significances of ley-lines as something far-more than just a primitive sat-nav system.
What next for the Daily Telegraph one wonders? Scientists discover round-things which help make transport easier???
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A story I found on another blog:
In Myers v. Raemisch, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40373 (ED WI, April 5, 2011), a Wisconsin federal district court permitted an inmate who is an initiate into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was allowed to move ahead with his suit seeking permission to obtain a particular tarot card deck that was designed exclusively for use by believers of the Golden Dawn, as well the tarot’s companion book. Department of Corrections rules permitted only a different tarot.
(See:Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases).
But the real question is … which Golden Dawn order has a outright crook as one of its members? No sarcastic responses, please. 😉
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You are able to achieve pain-relief through Meditation – even to a greater extent than by taking Morphine. That is the apparent conclusion of one study conducted by the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in North Carolina, as reported in today’s Daily Telegraph. The meditation technique is referred to as “Focussed Awareness,” which as far as I can make out is more or less identical to the Hong Sau technique of Kriya Yoga. The study appears to indicate that the act of meditation causes a change in brain activity – parts of the brain involved in feeling pain show decreased activity, whilst other parts involved in pain-coping mechanisms are stimulated.
Now I don’t wish to belittle the work of the scientists themselves, but I will just point out that the Daily Telegraph is not exactly improving on its reputation for up-to-the-minute scientific reportage. It only took me two minutes on Wikipedia to find out that there have been studies indicating that meditation is effective for pain relief dating back to 1985, and this is quite apart from numerous public demonstrations of Yogis doing the old needle-through-the-cheek-routine. Nevertheless it can be argued that the present-study constitutes a valid attempt to peer-review the meditation-as-analgesia theory.
[Update: when I was trying to find the details of the study, I found out that the exact same scientists had conducted the exact same research at the University of North Carolina in 2009. I do hope that it is not actually the same study – it would mean the Daily Telegraph is either recycling old news stories, or has taken two years to publish these guys’ press release!]
If meditation-as-analgesia gained widespread clinical use, presumably that would mean cost savings in terms of less money spent on painkilling drugs. Hey! Perhaps this might even solve the current* NHS funding crisis – one can but hope.
* I say “current” – but honestly, when was it otherwise?
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Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Facebook Facial Recognition & Marketing
Yes I do really look like this in real-life! 😉
Facebook is apparently introducing a new Facial Recognition feature which is going to suggest tags for your photos, based on their similarity to other photos already on the site. Now whilst a lot of civil liberties campaigners have immediately like a trout to the fly jumped and shouted “invasion of privacy” etc etc etc I am feeling faintly amused by the fact that if it actually works, everyone who uploads a picture of Eliphas Levi’s Baphomet is going to have “Alex Sumner” suggested as a tag for it.
This has given me an ace marketing idea! What you need to do is to hire someone who has a passing resemblance to a famous celebrity, and get them to be the “face” of your campaign. Then find all the photos you can of this celebrity and tag them with your “mascot.” Sooner or later, the Facial Recognition feature will kick in and everytime someone uploads a new photo of the celebrity, they will get a tag suggestion for the mascot instead! Then they will be like “WTF? Why is this guy getting tagged in the photo?”
Obviously this is a completely Black-Hat strategy, and hence I strongly advise anyone from actually implementing this. 😉
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