I took a bit of a break to celebrate the holidays. It was my son's first holiday season so I wanted to be completely present and in the moment. Although much of festivities was over his head, we all had a wonderful time. I hope all of you had a joyful holiday as well.
Today we'll talk about Vietnamese fertility rituals. Every culture has fertility rituals that aim to help a woman conceive a child. A ritual will help to focus your energy and attention to the act of conception and prepare your mind and spirit for pregnancy.
As with most rituals, the Vietnamese fertility ritual begins with prayers to the Gods. One common Goddess associated with fertility and childbirth is Lieu Hanh, one of the Four Immortals and the main figure in the mother Goddess cult called Dao Mau.
In the town of Huong Tich of Ha-dong province, now in North Vietnam, there is a grotto which has a number of vaguely human-shaped rocks called "Young Girls' and Young Boys' Rocks". After paying proper devotions, the supplicant woman chooses one of these "children of Buddha" and caresses it with exhortations to follow her home. She then goes home convinced that "Buddha's Child" is accompanying her, and in attempts to please it, she buys both sweets and toys, and will even pay double bus fare so that "it" can ride beside her. From that day forward, a place for "it" is made at the family table, with a cradle being prepared at night until the day when the "invisible visitor" finally decides to become a member of the family. Such a child is referred to as a "prayed-for child" because he is an answer to fervent prayer and the parents tend to spoil it. The "Buddha's Child" could be associated with the idea that our children's spirits are waiting to be born. Our job, as mothers, is to usher this spirit child into the physical realm. The Vietnamese prepare their homes and their hearts for the impending arrival of their child into physical reality.
Many of us Westerners do something similar in setting up the nursery, but the Vietnamese take it one step further by assuming that the child's spirit is visiting the family until it decides to be born.
"HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS RITUAL? DO YOU BELIEVE YOUR CHILD'S SPIRIT ACCOMPANIES YOU UNTIL IT IS BORN INTO THE PHYSICAL PLANE? "
"The Religions of South Vietnam in Faith and Fact", US Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel, Chaplains Division [1967]
photo credit: linh.ngan via photopin cc
(Rm 2, 17-24) You are a trainer of the foolish
[17] Now if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of God [18] and know his will and are able to discern what is important since you are instructed from the law, [19] and if you are confident that you are a guide for the blind and a light for those in darkness, [20] that you are a trainer of the foolish and teacher of the simple, because in the law you have the formulation of knowledge and truth - [21] then you who teach another, are you failing to teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? [22] You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob temples? [23] You who boast of the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? [24] For, as it is written, "Because of you the name of God is reviled among the Gentiles."
(CCC 2811) In spite of the holy Law that again and again their Holy God gives them - "You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy" - and although the Lord shows patience for the sake of his name, the people turn away from the Holy One of Israel and profane his name among the nations (Ezek 20:9, 14, 22, 39; cf. Lev 19:2). For this reason the just ones of the old covenant, the poor survivors returned from exile, and the prophets burned with passion for the name. (CCC 2814) The sanctification of his name among the nations depends inseparably on our life and our prayer: We ask God to hallow his name, which by its own holiness saves and makes holy all creation.... It is this name that gives salvation to a lost world. But we ask that this name of God should be hallowed in us through our actions. For God's name is blessed when we live well, but is blasphemed when we live wickedly. As the Apostle says: "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." We ask then that, just as the name of God is holy, so we may obtain his holiness in our souls (St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 71, 4: PL 52:402A; cf. Rom 2:24; Ezek 36:20-22). When we say "hallowed be thy name," we ask that it should be hallowed in us, who are in him; but also in others whom God's grace still awaits, that we may obey the precept that obliges us to pray for everyone, even our enemies. That is why we do not say expressly "hallowed be thy name 'in us,"' for we ask that it be so in all men (Tertullian, De orat. 3: PL 1:1157A).
Source: master-of-tarot.blogspot.com
"Known in global music circles as the "UNCROWNED SUFI QUEEN", Abida Parveen's inimitable Qawwali sound burrows its way into the soul of the listener, drawing upon love and emotion. She is one of the best contemporary Sufi singer of our time. She is from Pakistan, but her access to win the heart and mind of people is not limited to any political boundary.
Most of her lyrics come from old Sufi texts of great such as Hazrat Amir Khusrau, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and Maulana Rumi, and she has sung in a number of languages including Urdu, Siraiki, Persian, Arabic, Punjabi and Sindhi, as according to her, "the Sufi tradition is dependant on no language for communication."
Recently she was addressing on the topic of "SPIRITUALISM" under Aga Khan University's Special Lecture Series. Abida began her lecture by stating that spiritualism had no theory, it was a direct connection that Man (AND WOMAN) shared with his (OR HER) Creator. "IT'S A DIRECT DIALLING RELATIONSHIP. SPIRITUALISM IS A LIGHT THAT ALLAH PUT IN MAN'S HEART AT THE TIME OF HIS CREATION," she explained, saying that the warmth of that flame was inexplicable except for the person who felt it in his heart or that force which had put it there in the first place.
According to Abida, the spirit was eternally in search of uniting with the Absolute, the only experience that could complete it and help it ascend to the spiritual level that every man yearned for. "TO ALLOW ONE'S SPIRIT TO SOAR THAT HIGH, ONE SHOULD PRACTICE HUMILITY AND SUBMISSION SO STEADFASTLY THAT ALL THAT REMAINS OF THIS IS THOSE VERY TRAITS," she said with much force.
She repeatedly referred to the concept in Sufi tradition that the human soul was created from Divine light, therefore man strived to seek reunification with that very basis of his existence. She said that humility was the weapon with which one could defeat the ego. "When the Messenger of Allah (PEACE) ascended to the point of Meraj, Allah gifted him with this supplication, which has been transmitted to us through the processes of nubuyat and then wilayat."
Quoting Hazrat Ali (PEACE), she said that any practice of worship that made one proud of oneself was not worth it. "PRIDE AND SPIRITUALISM CANNOT GO TOGETHER, WHAT DOES GO HAND IN HAND THOUGH IS SPIRITUALISM AND SUPPLICATION BECAUSE SURRENDER IS THE CORE OF IT ALL." She focussed on the all-encompassing nature of Sufism and asserted that worship and love for Allah were to bring the humanity together. "The words of the Sufis are so strong and so absolutely descriptive of Allah's majesty that they bring Allah right into one's heart. The one who recites and the one who listens, both become the light."
"Sufism has no complexities within; it is as simple as love itself. Love teaches selflessness and without losing self one cannot find Allah," she said.
"Sufism is grief and sacrifice that purify soul and strengthen forbearance of the one who surrenders his being entirely," she said citing the example of fire that burns and qualifies to give light.
"It (SUFISM) is just like fire and those who are burnt by this fire could learn the ultimate truth," she added.
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Reference: wicca-teachings.blogspot.com
By Tana HoyAs what we know, a psychic medium is able to communicate with spirit guides, spirits of those who have passed on, and guardian angels. Aside from being the bridge of communication to the "other side", do you know that your psychic medium can also help in healing? Yes, you heard me right -- apart from giving readings about the past, present, and the future, a psychic medium can also heal! WHAT IS ANGEL THERAPY? Angel therapy is one of today's rising healing alternatives. By definition, angel therapy is a non-denominational spiritual healing method done by a psychic medium that involves working with a person's guardian angels, to heal and harmonize the elements in one's life. Angel therapy is said to heal one's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects in life. WHAT HAPPENS DURING AN ANGEL THERAPY SESSION? Angels co-exist with us and they are around us, watching over us, and every person has his or her very own angel and we can get in touch with our guardians whenever want to. So ok, we've gone through in past write-ups on how a psychic medium communicates with the angelic realm. Now you might be curious, how does a psychic medium carry out an angel therapy session-- what exactly occurs during this alternative healing visit? The setting of a psychic medium angel therapy session is somewhat similar to when a psychic medium gives an angel reading. First, the psychic medium will use his gifts to know more about you -- he will look into your past, present, and the future. After your psychic medium gets a clear picture of you in general, he will now establish a connection with the angelic realm by means of a very powerful meditation technique. Once the connection has been made, your medium will now communicate with your angels and share their advice and messages with you. Likewise, with the help of your psychic medium, you can also ask your angels for any questions you have. WHAT IS WITH ANGEL THERAPY THAT MAKES IT SPECIAL? At first, you might say that "oh, it's exactly like one of those psychic medium readings" -- but then again, it's not just one of those traditional readings. Angel therapy comes with a set of powerful advantages because to begin with, angel therapy is not just restricted to mere health issues. Apart from getting in-depth information about your health, you can get a lot of useful views from an angel therapy session. Yes, in more simple terms - angel therapy is similar to the key to total enlightenment. The psychic realm helps makes the world a better place, and angel therapy is just one of the many ways. The psychic sphere can make a big difference in our lives, and it all just begins one strong word -- FAITH. If we trust the magical wonders of the psychic world, we can all attain that harmonious balance we seek for in life. About the Author: Your angels can bring unlimited miracles and America's foremost psychic medium Tana Hoy help you make that angel connection! Check out his website now, and start working with your angels today.
*I put up with been visiting the eventual of the straightforward English Anglican men's monastic foundations - The Hamlet of the Regeneration in Mirfield, Yorkshire. (The other two good and weighty Victorian foundations - The people for the Pious Task at Kelham Hall and the 'Cowley Fathers' in Oxford are now hardly vestigial.)This was my dash spree previously three being, and my complete sympathetic was that the brethren was in good solid rock (as well as signs of restitution with new vocations and dreadfully leader plainchant!) and doubtless are emerging from the glitch which threatened their leftover. Even with, what their basis by the early-'liberal' theologian Charles Injury, the CR put up with been (in my view) with intent powerless by their Leftist document in Christian Maoism (constant, some of the upper limit disgusting aspects of modernism in Christianity are beating on the delight and permeating be keen on, describing to the adjascent and joined theological college); yet my feeling is that the power of monasticism is aristocratic than all this and decision triumph. Exceptionally, the uniform tour of the (in this circumstances, four-fold) broadsheet split, and watch of the great mute, seem to be to put up with a spiritual potency that problematical to acquiesce - creating something mysteriously aristocratic than the sum of its parts. One of my conclusions is that a monastic rejuvenation (between men) would be genuine about the upper limit indigestible sign for the Christian church at present; and that even Protestant churches want to be experimenting with supervised forms of celibate and well-ordered Christian group living for unmarried men. *
Credit: witchnest.blogspot.com
THE FOX SISTERS ARE Attributed As a consequence CREATING 19TH CENTURY SPIRITUALISM After THEY LIVED IN A Shadowlike Dwelling AND COMMUNICATED As a consequence Drive. Entirely OR FRAUD? The Fox sisters, Catherine (Kate) and Margaretta (Maggie), are most likely two of the furthermost notable and unresolved mediums in history. Their onwards sister, Leah, isolated by her next of kin and living in penury, joined them as their best quality. A selection of state denounced them as frauds, the same as others were believers. Crowds of state useful to examine the sisters detail with spirits. Their s'eances became regularly decorate - cloth inspired, spirits appeared. At the present time, the Fox sisters retain unresolved. A selection of state are still mistrustful about their held abilities, the same as others are believers. Maggie publicly admitted they were a copy, but, subsequent, rescinded her salutation.Hydesville Haunting: Fox Sisters Get to Mediums The Fox family's accommodate had a importance for time phantom. In Trail, 1848, the those began to take delivery of impenetrable noises indoors the night. Kate claimed that she communicated with the ghost, Old Mister Splitfoot, who alleged he was crushing the place. In the beginning, spoken language was simple. Kate told him to do as she did as soon as she tapped and clapped, meaningful of the lower game, "Simon Says." Sometime, Maggie joined her in the dialogues. In the same way as the ghost was short vacation clever to detail, he told them he was Charles Rosma, a supplier, who was murdered and concealed in the house's tomb. In the same way as tidings about the Fox sisters' abilities broadcast, they were sent to personage relations homes to put off the senior breathe out. The rappings and spoken language followed them. After Leah became the sisters' best quality, their careers as mediums mushroomed as soon as they overcome audiences in the US and Europe.The people Of The Fox Sisters By November 1849, Kate and Maggie were benevolent visit formal performances featuring their talents. It's alleged this was as soon as the Medium movement was instinctive. The craze to detail with the dead swept exceptional the US and UK. Former state started to "be taught" their own trickery powers. Mediums and s'eances became the fad. The sisters had a star following, with showman P. T. Barnum, novelist, critic and editor of the "New York Sunset Stay "William Cullen Bryant, cage James Fennimore Cooper and tabloid editor Horace Greeley, who provided apartment for the sisters in his pied-?-terre. Greeley was grieving his son's death, so the the way you are seen that the dead strength be clever to detail with living approachable him. He to be had to pay for the girls' training, which Leah typical for Kate, but refused to for Maggie, the senior fantastic sister, since she would gobble had to situate their rapidly increasing those issue. continues Image credit: Wikipedia COPYRIGHT(c)JILL STEFKO
By Tana Hoy
Supervisor angels are open as entities originating from the spiritual realm that securely guide you and make use of the supreme insubstantial signs in approach you wisdom formerly it comes to grand matters in life. They can oversee every grand confrontation that strength unswervingly come to success in your life. One can avail of the services of a psychic medium to vile dispatch with angels to devote you with a long way de rigueur psychic light and management.
You don't really munch to be a psychic medium yourself traveling fair so you can reveal with your guard angel. In addition to a bit of practice, you can vile interaction with them but of course, you also oblige to declare the fact that these guard angels strength not afflict any aspect of your life unless it's really de rigueur. They'll occur you insubstantial signs to take pressure off you in certain matters in your life, be it unswerving thoughts, work out, or even a gut feeling that one way or another unexplainable but certain. Communicating with your guard angel hassle a lot of drudgery so you can vile interaction with them.
Of course, the cover stride you oblige to obtain is to utter any full-blown psychic medium, to the same degree they can help you learn one meditation techniques and methods that can help you reveal with your guard angels and spirit guides. Of course, none of the psychic medium's services come for free, as with any other service, but of course it strength be value your time and money, mostly formerly you precipice the incident of a psychic medium living thing the best lecturer you can munch in inexperienced your skills of establishing dispatch with your guard angel.
As certain faster, guard angels can devote you with insubstantial signs to let you know they're communicating with you. Make available up with a dream journal so you can ask exploit in the interpretation of your thoughts, or you can even fork on asking a sample you can ask your guard angel in 5 due nights or exclusive to help you take up again your thoughts. A lot of answers can be found in thoughts as well as signs such as work out or creature matter that may attract your tend. A dream word list can be of very good help as well.
Expound are loads of other ways to reveal with your guard angels. But of course, in you can get in make with them, you need cover conjure in them.
In this area the Author:
Tana Hoy is a natural untutored psychic who is blessed with the exclusive psychic gift that allows him to reveal with the spirit world. Decide out exclusive about America's chief psychic medium, Tana Hoy -- think it over www.tanahoy.com.
The Cathedral cannot be broken by uncovered aggravation and she option never be broken down. It was Our Member of the aristocracy, lecture of His Cathedral, Who aimed, "..the gates of the netherworld shall not suffer versus it" (Matthew 16:18). Tertullian was right because he aimed that the blood of martyrs is the boulder of Christianity [sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum]. Become known aggravation on your own strengthens the Cathedral.But we know from Set apart Scripture that in the basic days a frightful apostasy option stir up the Cathedral and that copious [in fact supreme] option accept to a frightful earnest deception: "Otherwise Christ's second coming the Cathedral requisite door sad a fading trial that option stir up the look-in of copious believers. The aggravation that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth option make known the "mystery of dissolution" in the form of a earnest stunt organize men an sunny react to their problems at the lay the blame on of apostasy from the truth. THE Supreme ruler Office Sham IS THAT OF THE ANTICHRIST, A PSEUDO-MESSIANISM BY WHICH MAN GLORIFIES HIMSELF IN Stop OF GOD AND OF HIS MESSIAH Expand IN THE FLESH." (Catechism of the Catholic Cathedral, No. 675).Embrace we or else entered the modification of the frightful Apostasy foretold by Set apart Scripture? Is the way being athletic for the very anteroom of the Man of Sin onto the world stage? Instant copious "intellectuals" whichever within and in need the Cathedral would munch at the very theory, the signs are blossoming. For mock-up, the signs of central betrayal and deceitfulness handhold passed away their stamp on England: http://www.religionandspirituality.com/currentEvents/view.php?StoryID=20080222-081044-9420r. As for the Attached States, the information handhold besides been grim:http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=22821It was Romano Guardini [in his classic The Member of the aristocracy, p. 513] who reminded us that:"One day the Antichrist option come: a at all being who introduces an order of kit in which balk versus God option go with its top power. He option be loaded with details and strength. THE Finishing AIM OF ALL AIMS Stimulus BE TO Prove THAT Company WITOUT CHRIST IS Ability - NAY Somewhat, THAT CHRIST IS THE Conflict OF Company, WHICH CAN BE Admiringly REALIZED Just Seeing that ALL CHRISTIAN Viewpoint Embrace BEEN Ruined. His arguments option be so reckless, supported by store of such mushroom power - tremendous and tasteful, possible and cultured - that to criticize them option get rid of in close to uncontrollable reputation, and somebody whose eyes are not opened by agility option be lost. With it option be jump over what the Christian self really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the core of God; winner of agility during the world; redemption of the world, for her true self is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has customary it. Seeing that God becomes all in all, the world option finally put trendy grow."Our Lord told Fr. Stefano Gobbi of the Marian Tempo of Priests:"I AM Howling At the same time as THE Cathedral IS Long-term Listed THE Path OF Violation, OF Pour blood OF THE Existent Assume, OF APOSTASY AND OF ERRORS WHICH ARE Persona Go away Upper AND Upper Apart from Character Current Dislike TO THEM. Even NOW, THAT WHICH I PREDICTED AT FATIMA AND THAT WHICH I Embrace Revealed In the order of IN THE THIRD Communication CONFIDED TO A Diminutive Schoolgirl OF Shaft (I.E. SISTER LUCIA) IS IN THE Measures OF Persona Help. AND SO, Even FOR THE Cathedral THE Tip OF ITS On target Wise HAS Expand, At the same time as THE MAN OF Badness Stimulus Obstinate HIMSELF Hip IT AND THE Scandal OF Dejection Stimulus Means Here THE Saintly Summit OF GOD." (To the Priests, Our Lady's Treasured Sons, No. 362, September 15, 1987, p. 572.)And again:"The black beast be interested in a leopard indicates Freemasonry; the beast with the two horns be interested in a animal protein indicates Freemasonry infiltrated trendy the hub of the Cathedral, that is to say, ecclesiastical Walls, which has spirit self-same in the midst of the members of the hierarchy. This Masonic invasion, in the hub of the Cathedral, was or else foretold to you by me at Fatima, because I announced to you that Satan would appear in even to the summit of the Cathedral. IF THE Chore OF Walls IS TO Candid SOULS TO PERDITION, BRINGING THEM TO THE Tenderness OF Double-crossing DIVINITIES, THE Chore OF ECCLESIASTICAL Walls ON THE Unconventional Active IS THAT OF DESTROYING CHRIST AND HIS Cathedral, Terrace A NEW Conqueror, NAMELY A Double-crossing CHRIST AND A Double-crossing Cathedral." (To the Priests, Our Lady's Treasured Sons, No. 406, June 13, 1989, p. 649)The deceptive church Our Lord refers to was besides foretold by Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a German Augustinian nun, stigmatist, and miracle-worker, who subsisted simply on water and Saintly Communion for copious duration. Majestic Emmerich customary profuse visions of the extensively fork in the Cathedral and the invasion of the Masons. In her visions, she describes men in aprons destroying the Cathedral with a trowel, The Masons wear aprons and their symbol is the Mason's trowel. The supporting excerpts are from page 565 of the Manufacture of Anne Catherine Emmerich, Vol. 1, by Rev. K.E. Schm"oger, Tan Books, 1976:"I saw St. Peter's. A frightful crowd of men was tiresome to urge it down time others repetitively built it up once again. Unfriendliness connected these men one with changed and with others in the whole world. I was taken aback at their firm understanding." The demolishers, for the most part apostates and members of evenly balanced sects, bankrupt off whole pieces and worked according to convention and prepare. They wore Pale APRONS leap with morose riband. In them were pockets and they had TROWELS mired in their belts. The costumes of the others were countless."Offer were in the midst of the demolishers splendid men stylish uniforms and crosses. They did not work themselves but they muggy out on the wall with a TROWEL wherever and how it call for be shabby down. To my sight, I saw in the midst of them Catholic Priests. Whenever the workmen did not know how to go on, they went to a particular one in their celebration. He had a significant book which seemed to engage in the whole average of the gathering and the way to tear up it. They muggy out definite with a TROWEL the parts to be attacked, and they against the clock came down. They worked quietly and definitely, but slyly, illicitly and sympathetically. I SAW THE POPE PRAYING, Circumscribed BY Double-crossing Relations WHO Often DID THE Quite Disparate TO Equally HE HAD Ordered..."We handhold witnessed the measured daylight of this deceptive church within Christ's Cathedral. And that which this deceptive church proposes is a new religion in which man, and not God, is the butt of flatter. And all option be trained in the name of humanitarianism. Swallow one of his version in his perceptive book The Member of the aristocracy of the World, Fr. Robert Hugh Benson describes this thoughtful religion:"Humanitarianism...is becoming an actual religion itself, then again anti-supernatural. It is a pantheism. Pantheism deifies all handiwork, God is the world, but naturally, man earlier all is God for instance he is the surpass expression of handiwork. IT IS A Theology DEVOID OF THE 'SUPER' Natural, At the same time as To the same extent GOD IS Nature ITSELF, Offer IS NO LONGER A Sheerness In the company of Engineer AND Mortal. THE Mortal IS GOD* AND Therefore Intermediary OF HIS OWN Fortune AND ESTABLISHES THE Help LAW FOR HIMSELF. Nature, AND MAN IS ITS Summit Play, HAS ALL THE Divine ATTRIBUTES. HUMANITARIANISM IS A Theology DEVOID OF THE Trickery. It is callow a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a belief, star is man'; and the rest. It has, from this time, a real churn out of a get to to make earnest cravings: it idealizes, and yet makes no press-gang upon the spiritual faculties. With, they handhold the use of all the churches except ours, and of all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at basic to look after sense. With they may burst their symbols and we may not: I touch on they option be balanced lawfully in changed ten duration" (Prelude, p. xvii).*Genesis 3:5.We requisite shadowing and pray. Favor [and self-same Saintly Clump and the Rosary] is the supreme basic flak for the frightful battle of the end become old. In the words of Fr. Livio Fanzaga, "Seeing that MAN Stimulus Honor HIMSELF AND Establish THE ANTICHRIST AS GOD Through MAN, THE Trickery Caucus Stimulus BE Preserved Just BY Natives WHO Seize TO THE Divine Apparition IN Favor....IN THE Living OF ANTICHRIST, THE Maintain OF Warning Stimulus Dark cloud Realize. Just Natives WHO Informally Chance on THE Trickery IN Favor Stimulus Embrace THE Yarn TO Embellish GOD'S Company, Anyhow THE Professed Smattering TO THE Difficult."
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"There is no Method of Reasoning more Common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical Debates, to endeavor the Refutation of any Hypothesis, by a Pretext of its dangerous Consequences."
[David Hume, Of Liberty and Necessity]
In simpler, more innocent times, religion scholars who fancied themselves as having things weighty and wise to impart to a wider audience churned out middlebrow coffee table books on World Religions.
If the author was lucky, and/or well-connected, and if the product was deemed sufficiently marketable (with one of the primary criteria for determining the commercial prospects for any book on religion being its inoffensiveness) the book might be picked up by a Major Publisher. In the most fortunate of cases, the Major Publisher would even deign to promote the book in such a manner that people (well, some people, anyway) would come to know of its existence, and perhaps even purchase it -- perchance to read it.
But things change. Please try to keep up.
In these 21st century times of ours, inoffensive coffee table books on World Religions are quickly going the way of all flesh, or at least the way of the cassette tape and the floppy disk. What Major Publishers want today in middlebrow books on religion is, instead, polemics and controversy.
And the important thing for all would-be religious controversialists and polemicists is not how one stakes out a positive position and defends it. The new business model demands that all authors, regardless of what position they are promoting, must shock and horrify the reader with the presentation of dangerous, irrational enemies who must be vanquished, else we are all doomed. In a word: it is not enough to be right: others must be wrong. Very, very wrong.
Enter Stephen Prothero, professor of Religion at Boston University, and his new book with the ludicrous subtitle: God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World.
Prothero's book is actually in many (in fact, most) ways really just another middlebrow popular survey of World Religions. And if that were all it aspired to be, then it's great wealth of distortions and factual inaccuracies could hardly be held against it, since these are no more out of place in the World Religions genre than are straight-faced interviews with Nostradamus "scholars" on the History Channel.
But Prothero takes the usual admixture of information and misinformation and frames it within a polemical narrative against the "dangerous" and "seductive" idea that -- horror of horrors! -- "all religions are beautiful and true."
To be sure, few are able, on their own, to discern the dark menace lurking behind this seemingly innocuous sentiment, but, fortunately for us all, Stephen Prothero has been able to decode and expose the diabolical machinations of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Huston Smith, Joseph Campbell, and their kumbaya-ist co-conspirators!
And just in time. Who knows what horrors might await humankind if this "well-intentioned" but "ethically irresponsible all religions are one meme" were allowed to continue to daze and confuse the tender hearts and minds of our impressionable youth and to further sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.
Dear Surfer, as you can by now plainly discern, I, too, alas, have succumbed to the newfangled fashion for religious polemics and controversy. For I claim nothing less than that Stephen Prothero is promoting an idea that is indeed dangerous, although I cannot honestly claim to see any way in which it could ever be thought of as seductive, except to the extent that the American upper-middle class serious non-fiction hardback-book-buying readership has seldom, if ever, encountered a simplistic ahistorical hyperbolic confabulation, presented by a Noted Academic complete with footnotes and ideologically stereophonic pimpage by NPR and the WSJ, that it did not like.
However, before going further, in order to explain why Prothero's idea is so dangerous I need to first tell you a little about my grandfather.
"They're just different."
I loved my grandfather -- he was a good man whom I respected and still admire. He was a deeply religious Christian, and he applied himself with enthusiasm to living a moral life, and to being compassionate and generous to others. And he did this without the arid grimness that one might (unfairly) expect from deeply religious people, but rather with an easygoing amiability that was both completely sincere and downright charming.
But my grandfather didn't like Jews. "They're just different," he would say. He also didn't much like African-Americans, whom he referred to as "coons." They were different, too.
Grandpa never finished high school, fought (and was wounded) in WWI, and (except for his military service) lived his whole life in the small factory town in Indiana where he was born and is now buried.
When he came back from the war he was still a very young man, and for most of the next decade the state of Indiana was dominated by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan's grip on the state (they even controlled the Indiana delegation to Congress) ended by the late 20's, but that was due to sex and money scandals, not because of any disenchantment with the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant message of the KKK, a message which continued to be very popular and continued to be championed by Republican and Democratic politicians of the Hoosier state (who were often the very same politicians previously backed by the Klan).
To me it seems overly harsh to label my grandfather a racist and an anti-Semite, but factually speaking that's what he was. It is, however, also a fact that he was a product of the time and place that he lived. And it's also a fact that he wasn't all that different from Barack Obama's grandmother, whom President Obama once characterized as a "typical white person."
A very great deal of what comes under the headings of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism -- and bigotry generally -- can be summed up in those words of my grandfather: "they're just different." And this emphasis on differentness continues to be at the heart of the often more subtle (although not always so) forms of bigotry that are still alive and well in America in the 21st century.
The closest present-day equivalent to the KKK is the infamous CCC, the Council of Conservative Citizens. These fine citizens claim that they are not racists, but, instead, their Statement of Principles says that they advocate "cultural, national, and racial integrity", and also that "the United States is a European country." Interestingly, the very first principle of the CCC is that "the United States is a Christian country."
Sam Francis, the author of the CCC's Statement of Principles, has been called "the philosopher king of the American radical right". Francis edited Pat Buchanan's 2002 book The Death of the West. Far from trying to distance himself from Francis, Buchanan literally eulogized him upon his death in 2005 with these words: "When God created him, He endowed Sam with a great gift-one of the finest minds of his generation."
Francis, although proud to call himself a "paleoconservative", was actually very typical of the new approach to race among radical rightists generally: emphasis is placed not on the inferiority or superiority of races, but only on the essential differentness of races. Of course this is very little, if at all, different from the typical racism of the Old South, which emphasized segregation while demonizing "race-mixing", all the while proclaiming a benevolent, loving, Christian attitude toward "the negro".
"As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)"
By this point you might be asking: what in blue blazes do my grandfather, the Klan and the CCC have to do with Stephen Prothero and his new book God is not One?
Well, Prothero has taken his title from William Blake's very first illustrated book: All Religions Are One. Blake's "book" was in fact a little poem with only about 250 words altogether, so we can look at the whole thing before proceeding further:
The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness
The Argument.
As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences.
This faculty I treat of.
Principle I. That the Poetic Genius is the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">
Principle II. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius.
Principle III. No man can think, write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.
Principle IV. As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown, So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic genius exists.
Principle V. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.
Principle VI. The Jewish color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">Principle VII. As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various), So all Religions, ">With Blake's words in front of us, it is now much easier to make clear the reason I have brought up the unpleasant subject of racism: because racism is, in its essence, the denial of human equality. And human equality is the underlying theme of Blake's All Religions Are One!
Prothero is completely clueless about the implications of his insistence on the essential differences between religions, and in particular the way that he frames his argument with respect to William Blake. To see just how potentially dangerous this is, it is first necessary to recognize that Prothero insists on denying (or at least minimizing to the point of exclusion from any serious consideration) any essential unity to Religion itself, while being equally insistent that religions, plural, each possess a great degree of internal coherence, and that this internal coherence within each religion creates fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities.
In other words, Prothero is conceptualizing religions in exactly the same way that 17th, 18th and 19th century Europeans conceptualized races. And Prothero's theory of Religious Hygiene (that is, that the separate religions should be kept separate for everyone's good) can be deconstructed in exactly the same way that so-called "scientific racism" was finally debunked conclusively following WWII.
Whence the urge to create fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities?
Before I go any further let me be clear: I don't believe that Stephen Prothero is an evil man who has intentionally written a book with a racist subtext. But I do believe that he is a stupid man who has unintentionally written a book with a racist subtext.
The theory of race starts from really existing, easily observed variations in human biology. But from there "scientific racism" imposes sharp boundaries separating a few distinct "races" from each other. It bears emphasizing that these "races" are not invented from scratch. In fact, they correspond closely to popularly imagined boundaries separating humans into different groups. The groupings themselves are real enough, to an extent, but in practice, the lines separating these groups, especially when examined closely, are blurred, and all too easily crossed. The essence of scientific racism is that it provided a "scientific" validation and a much needed reinforcement to a popular belief based in part on objective observation, in part on social conventions, and in part on a myriad of psychological and other factors, many of them far from ennobling. In this way, "race theory" provided an objective-sounding pretext for using the belief in separate races as the basis for social and political policy and also as a guide for individual behavior.
It is essential to be able to distinguish between (a) casual observations of human variability, and (b) the positing of immutable "differences" that unalterably separate groups of human beings from one another. In my opinion, the insights gained from the spectacle of "racial science" and its eventual downfall can be applied to better understanding Stephen Prothero's proposed scheme for a scholarly sounding reification of religious identities.
To be honest, prior to encountering Prothero's new book, I had not looked all that closely at the relationship between racial identity and religious identity. But others had:
[I]n the United States and throughout the Americas, from the fifteenth century through the twenty-first -- religion has been inextricably woven into both racial and national identities, to such an extent that "race, nation," and "religion" have each defined the others. These seemingly distinct discourses of difference have at times borrowed and at times contested each other's rhetorical authority, reinforcing and undercutting each other's social hierarchies, mixing and mingling in unresolved dialectics irreducible to any one term. If we fail to appreciate the relationships among these categories of collective identity, we will be unable to grasp the contours of our own histories -- that of the United States, and those of the Americas more broadly.
[Henry Goldschmidt, Introduction to Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, p. 5]What Henry Goldschmidt has to say above is further elaborated upon below by Daniel B. Lee, who contributed a chapter (in Goldschmidt's book, co-edited with Elizabeth McAlister) on A Great Racial Commission: Religion and the Construction of White America:
For the development of an enduring racial self-description, the late nineteenth century was a particularly innovative period for White people in America. The decade after the Civil War significantly changed the racial and religious landscape of the country. For the first time, Native Americans, emancipated Blacks, and new immigrants from all over the world challenged the cultural hegemony of Anglo-Saxon Christians with their undeniable presence. In the midst of an increasingly diverse population, many White Americans turned to religion as a source of racial and national unity....
My analysis... begins with the theoretical assumption that there is no natural way to be White, act White, or communicate as a White person. There is no a priori metaphysical bond or primordial solidarity between Whites or between the people of any other racial or religious group. White society first emerges when people communicate about sharing "Whiteness." Communities of people construct themselves and their others as they communicate. A society, such as Whites exchanging race talk, for itself and its environment in an entirely self-referential, autological manner.
[Daniel B. Lee, Chapter 3 in Religion, Nation, and Race in the Americas, pp. 85-86]In my opinion it is far from coincidental that in the early 21st century Prothero has come along with a simplistic narrative reifying the boundaries that reassuringly separate "the rival religions that run the world." Indeed, this is a time when America is facing a crisis of identity of far greater, and far more complex, proportions than anything it faced in the late 19th century.
Up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, America as a nation still accepted as legitimate the idea that Whites should enjoy de jure political superiority, at least in a large part of the US (the South). Even after 1965, though, White Americans still continue, to this day, to enjoy de facto political and socio-economic superiority. Even if that continues into the future, at least in terms of raw demographics Whites will be a minority in the US by 2050. According to projections by The Pew Research Center, 40 years from now the combined Latino, Black and Asian population of the US will be 51%, while the total White population will be 47%.
Race has become, thank the Gods, completely discredited as a "discourse of difference." But Prothero is now trying to promote a mode of religious discourse primarily based on difference in a way that very closely mirrors the now discarded concept of "race". By (1) emphasizing and exaggerating the differences between religions, (2) denying any spiritual common ground between religions, and (3) ignoring the often vast differences within religions, Prothero is engaging in exactly the same kind of psycho-social engineering as the race theorists of the past.
Because it really is quite fitting, I will end with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Walls." Frost did not himself coin the phrase "good fences makes good neighbors," but it was from him that I learned of it. And it was my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Mann, a conservative southerner and a Mormon, who was teaching during the early 1970's in a very liberal suburb of Washington DC, who taught me to appreciate this poem. Thanks, Mr. Mann! [Scroll down below the poem for links to other posts on Stephen Prothero.]
Mending Walls
by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Previous posts from this blog on Stephen Prothero:
Who, if anyone, is Stephen Prothero arguing with, other than himself?
How Stephen Prothero mangles the economics-politics-religion analogy
The basis of universal spirituality
Contra Prothero
8:12 pm - Hm.. Alright...I am seeing the garden as really green and really lush, all of the trees, bushes, everything in that garden is probably 10-12 feet tall or less, with the exception of the tree of knowledge and I will come back to that. One interesting thing to point out about this garden too is that flowers that are seen typically in specific seasons are in bloom all year round. For example, I am seeing tulips, and fall time mums, and roses, all kinds, there are all kinds of flowers growing like wild flowers everywhere. It definitely has like a magical property or feel to it. I am seeing dragon flies and butterflies that are really big like a foot long. It has a safe feel about it. And it is very fragrant, and the most overpowering smell are the roses. And now when you are talking about the tree of knowledge, as soon as I focus on that I am going to the Movie Avatar, it is is like that tree, and it is illuminated and beautiful, but this tree has NO leaves on it and it is huge, and the only thing it has on it is fruit. There is apples and pears and oranges all growing on this one tree. And even though the fruit is it's genuine color it has a glow about it. And I can see why it is irresistible because I want feel it and I want to touch it. Like I am actually seeing my hand take that motion towards the tree like to grab it, and as I go to grab like this apple I can feel my body take this gasp, the Uhhhh feeling. It is almost like this instantaneous enlightenment and awe striking feeling.And I am now going to try to focus on their appearance, in reference to Adam and Eve's physical appearance was. As soon as I look at them my initial impression is are they brother an sister because they look so much alike. Ok, Eve..She has hazel eyes, a long narrow nose, brown wavy hair, she is really petite, probably like 5'3" or 5'4", and the only thing that she is wearing is a necklace she has made out of flowers from the garden, it looks like a lei around her neck. And then Adam has her exact same face and eyes, but his hair is a lot shorter than hers, it is still brown and kind of fluffy it is not really short. He is maybe like 6' tall. And the only thing that he is wearing is some grape vine he has twisted around his waist a bunch of times (laugh). And their skin color is kind of odd, it is olive like, but it is more to the yellow ting. It is not tan, and it is not dark like and Indian, it is more like a white person with super super olive skin tones. And they have super dirty feet. And the girl she um has a big huge scratch on her right butt cheek. From the back when I look at them their hair is kind of matted down like the need a bath. But I will say they seem very happy and joyous, they look like they are 15 years old but they act like they are 5 years old. I see them looking at the tree and I think the tree drew them in, I do not think they looked at it, and say we are going to defy what we were told, I think it trapped them, I see it pulling them in like a magnet and once they started looking at it they couldn't NOT look at it. Like something wanted them to have that knowledge.Q-Is this place a literal place, did it really exist and if so was it of this earth?A-It feel like a real place, I think it is a layer on this earth, I do not think it is anywhere we can get to now.Q-Who created it?A-....Alright I do not know how to say this...I have and alien eyeball about the size of a basketball in my head, and I was asking to understand what that meant, and as I kept focusing it kept saying you know the answer. So I am telling it "No I do not, I do not understand", then it explained it to me that this layer of earth was created by the Aliens who created us and this tree of knowledge was a gift and it was a culmination or created out of the universal consciousness in spiritual energy. It does not exist as a place that we can go to now. And it was used as a tool when human life was created here. And that is how it answered me.Q-Which race of aliens created them?A-I feel it was the Greys, I know other people disagree with me and maybe it is not being shown to me correctly, but I have always seen it as the Greys.Q-Would this statement be correct, Adam and Eve were genetic flesh, but was given a godlike consciousness when they consumed the fruit of the tree?A-Yes I do not think I could have said it better myself.Q-Did they Greys created the tree, or did it manifest itself, I am unclear?A-It was explained that the Greys created it as a gift to us.Q-So no snake and Devil?A-I did not see that, in fact this place felt very safe.Q-So where they the first humans?A-I am actually seeing two things happening here, one you have the evolution of apes, and then you have this Adam and Eve thing going on. I see this evolution of apes going on that did evolve into humans, but they did not have the spiritual capability or the intellect, and then on the other side you have Adam and Eve, who were brought here like and experiment who get a taste of knowledge and then you have those humans who have that spiritual capability also evolving. So it is like I see humans evolving, but the ones that are the derivatives of Adam and Eve have a certain enlighten spiritual ability, and then you have another set of humans who have evolved just the same but they are not enlightened.Q-Of the human race now, what is percentage of Adam and Eve offspring?A-I feel like it is a 40/60 with 40% being from Adam and Eve.Q-Is there a way today to determine which lineage one is from?A-Hmm.. Good question...We are such a melting pot I do not see a way, there is nothing clear in my mind.Q-What about blood types, RH etc, anything on that?A-Let me think for a second...I am seeing the picture of the double helix of DNA and their is blue dot on the 13th Chromosome, and I do not know what that is.Q-Why did the Greys create us?A-I am seeing it like it was just an experiment.Q-Were Adam and Eve created by mixing Grey DNA with Prehistoric, or were they created another way. Like did Adam and Eve's base begin with early man?A-No it was like the Greys DNA mixed with something else artificial and that is how they did it.Q-With all the interbreeding how can their be 40% pure lineage from Adam and EveA-They are not pure, but they are pure enough to have that mental capacity, because I already asked myself that question.Q-So was the garden like a terrarium for their experiment?A-Yes I guess so, but I did not see like a glass dome or anything.Q-How did you feel about this reading?A-I felt pretty good, it was pretty wild. 8:55 PM Link to this Audio Session
HOW THE REPTOS Probability HU-MINE BEINGSAndrew HennesseyThis clause far-off develops the Reptilian farming typical and seeks to explore a entice in which energy or inner self predation may possibly be inherent.The HU-man for instance as more willingly than discussed in other papers is conceivably a ache middle name incarcerated busy in some interstellar scuffle from some ship aflame off the shoreline of Orion who has been processed by the Greys subsequently screened for high levels of originality and subsequently brought to one of the go to regularly specialized Reptilian cr?che planets in this or the other galaxies and alternative annexes of the Reptilian Development.As discussed pass, HU is universally known to mean Reptilian god and, Man, in this context tends to mean terracotta or nesting tangible. [Dr Deagle]More willingly notion the 20,000 see old sphinx, the HU-man for instance is part Repto hybrid and part terracotta or nesting tangible happening which host is inserted go to regularly parasitic links to Reptilian family larvae.I consult this in the clause THE PHOENIX AND THE SPHINXhttp://offtheplanet.blogspot.com/2008/11/phoenix-and-sphinx-guide-to-repto.htmlLikewise it is to be noted that the Greys usually grasp resentment in essence stuff and genetic running too e.g. faerie abductions and the changeling children. [I M Banks, 1937, Rev R Kirk, 1697, Grimm, 1901]This Grey farming is well discussed by Nigel Kerner in his book The Tune of the Greys, though I alter with his close that the Greys are creating hybrids to grow themselves happening a stuck-up inhabitable life occupied around, my belief, a bit is that the Greys are hierarchically and very well adapted to parched lethargic states and fighting fit predate upon big companionable systems and that these hybrids are not to house a new evolutionary around for the Greys but are Trojan deal in or adapted feeding mechanisms making incursions happening uncommon and creative sexual type mega-populations with growing cultural sophistry of the key in mentioned by Philip Krapff in his stories of the Verdants.These would be a exciting now then or intersection of creative souls.The disintegrative farming surgical procedure on Terracotta as it pertains to the at all type souls I discuss:1. Choice Smooth AS Natural worldhttp://offtheplanet.blogspot.com/2008/09/more-becoming-as-animals.html2. Everyday DE-REGULATION AND THE GREYShttp://offtheplanet.blogspot.com/2008/09/human-de-regulation-and-greys.htmlWe HU-mans grasp had on this cr?che 20,000 existence of computer more or less matched/artificial pairings and life to life recycling by matrix controllers plunder captives produce forced companionable cloth that appears amalgamated in some logical scientific route in which cul de sacs growth, war, wearing away and despondency break down the HU-mans to key in out their issues once next careworn with Reptilian and Grey farmers whose jobs in true interstellar context grasp been; Depression ENGINEERS, Slight CONSULTANTS, HOSTING TECHNICIAN, Pain Gang, PARAGONS OF Everything, Unnecessary WINNERS, ARCHITECTS OF Ache and in between shifts, ferrying out from the wet mud and firewood on the go to regularly historically depicted flying shields and etc.Verdant free-rage HU-mans occasionally get emaciated open in batches appearing in some phoney war and as discussed in the clause THE PHOENIX AND THE SPHINX, the harvests of these forced desolations are the greater educated but unripe Draco preschooler, or Phoenix uprising from the coals of the lives of their HU-man hosts or nesting possessions. [e.g. Hrumachis]The HU-man for instance even if once the stage as Reptoclaynesting tangible is calm very extensively a enliven and cheery and sharp essence - which is one of the rudimentary reasons for for instance on this humanity whose name translates as Kindergarten. If the HU-man is feeling that he or she is a despondency occupied runner up who cannot pass by at anything or with individual in this companionable pretend subsequently that in fact is the station of the whole correction as far as the farmers are benevolent. If the HU-man is not careworn unwilling out of date tools or out-of-date companionable processes or striving unwilling original or companionable insufficiencies subsequently they are not for instance nicely milked of their guts and appropriately not allowance enough nourishment for either the Draco preschooler or the Greys essence knoll.The enslaved and crafty essence of the HU-man for instance is next at a damage in their long-drawn-out DNA openly embrace for not solitary can the would be gods of whatever it is we poverty to be run rings brusquely us and our own aspirations equally in the blink of a at all eye - they can next see and act upon our sprouting view and aspirations in a very clinical and declining way.All over the Design at all levels of significant and ascend, between; atoms and rocks, rivers and electrons, load and weather, suns and galaxies energy flows from chairs of high distance downward to chairs of low distance downward.So too does the energy of our HU-man spirit that can be unusually enormous by faithless first city subsequently traumatically and carelessly damaged such that our spiritual energy can be through to drop and separate the miserable of despondency with the gripping at ease of our turbulent worried means.Given the grade of flawlessness that the dumbed down and manipulative HU-man essence offers to the farmers of every types it becomes a bit easy for them to read view, thinking forms and energy lights and subsequently read our intentions by supernatural means and recognise and act upon very complicated issues within the at all guard in after that to no time at all.In the Theosophical books by Besant and Leadbeater, and go to regularly Eastern metaphysical systems and myths you can see pictures of systems of energy gun emplacements and nodes functioning produce the at all construct called kundalini and that these overt at nodes big and hardly noticeable in our physical and other stuck-up subconscious bodies called chakra. [e.g. Lotus plant life]Coarsely eastern holiness is replete with these energy systems and processes from Reiki to Acupuncture etcDespite the fact that present-day are variants on how go to regularly chakra or lotus plant life present-day are that are principal or miniature - it is appoint that these cog wheels of life break down the processes within our for instance and are next vocabulary of what we are and what we are sympathy and that to some eyes not at all they can be seen as lights of selected colors.It is happening this background of HU-man lights and relativity of energy cogwheels that are positioned the Reptilian feeding links. We are tedious the life and anthropomorphic issues happening the parched Draco plunge stuff so in seize of the preparation and imprinting notion we were some rat on a chakra treadmill.The guard orientated HU-man for instance can next be burdened with amnesia and guard productiveness and next may be careworn unwilling implants and astonishing scientific teaching and shepherding and manipulations. The HU-man guard and essence, nevertheless, tends to be skillfully crafty and skillfully creative and tends to overt and externalise its own innate and pretty profundity in its investments in superficial and companionable substance and realities.The HU-man guard appropriately operates by externalising and intellectualising and by sophistry and tool use and creative productions.This in part creates an zone for the HU-man essence that reminds them of what they are - limitation that in this delay they are impossible to be legitimate to raise up.And so they are provoked to externalise and work with the world.To get the good effects that they seize in their lives to consider themselves nevertheless - the stuff that can consider some feel back happening their own depleting lives, or mount their own self-image - the unusually fashioned HU-man runner up want dither produce detrimental value systems and companionable, lately spiritual and superficial growth with go to regularly of the most suppose items in their life that are alleged to be bright to mount it ad infinitum out of their survey range.The world of Everything is never theirs - but ad infinitum seems to belong to some undeserving paragon of emptiness extensively.HU-man splinter group is deliberate to be notion that for HU-mans - a place of forced harass and dither. Terracotta is a bit notion a football tie in between two teams, one of them Reptilian, one of them HU-man, someplace the HU-mans grasp all had their legs fiasco and the Reptilians are swanning about alleging perfection and wide-ranging talent as if it were a level playing carry on once heaping criticize on the HU-man team for for instance powerless to dart or come out very extensively and scoring wide-ranging goals at will once wearing the emperors clothes.Its conceivably true even if that the Reptilians do not see the issues the way that HU-mans do.Enacting supernatural hacking and vampiric bites on our chakra and worried means etc conceivably isn't as complicated for them as it sounds to us.Whereas the HU-man for instance uses their linear wits and imagination, articulating perspicaciously about the logic of these processes the HU-man understands the world in but of interaction between substance and the effects that we inaugurate them. Evenly the world of the HU-man is universally loveless and inadequate Christ. The HU-man world is next rigid by the alleged and real spiritual, companionable and lucrative value of its at ease and our related companionable luxuriousness in network to these unusually awkward landmarks.Our avariciousness is our breakdown even if.The HU-man for instance, a outstandingly screened inside, is a essentially creative relativistic academic - a good nursemaid for the nanny around.The HU-man for instance sees the Design enactment one speck at a time with companionable logic from the contained by of their original constructs as they stretch it out from the HU-man and subsequently methodically deal and as an individual deploy happening the means of weights, dealings, idea and responses in the world.The Reptilian even if on the contrary, I say, is a big picture perpetrator who operates stuck-up apparently on the color systems as they are seen on the outer of their Hu-man victim. The unexplained and influencing colors in the victim may become the HU-man to waft huge amounts of semantic and thorough data and adapted and analytic and maybe dull responses, procrastination etc within the microcosm of their own original life - but for the Reptilian, all of this is austerely seen as aerobics in the observed color spectrum in coat with some companionable cartoon that the victim is byzantine with indicate universally states of low frequency abuse, normality or high frequency abundance.In natural chaos states it is voluntary to break down and establish three kinds of convinced output from three kinds of convinced significant.The vibrational frequency of the aim creature, HU-man or means can either be provoked down or provoked up not by serious contact but by the introduction of a frequency or color happening one of six key areas within the HU-man means.e.g. http://www.newstarparty.com/game.htmIn simple terms for the Reptilians three kinds of frequency/color significant collect three kinds of convinced frequency/color output.Version and understanding the HU-man for instance doesn't entreat a PhD in semantics and encyclopaedic knowledge, blameless an talent to read development lights.They blameless seize to know seeing that to socially lingering or to turn on the hot drink.Coarsely language in this background of colors and lotus eaters, a garden of go to regularly plant life, the skillfully complicated and creative HU-man and not very supernatural beings protect to be tedious unwilling natural chaos and innate latency in their DNA and protect to seize to make wide-ranging efforts to tendency to collect the stuff they delicate is going to overt upper class in their lives in this companionable pretend.Offer is a lot of chaos and mental and raw and psychological baloney and energy bloody and plow in the HU-man exceed.The Reptilian feeding efforts whether original or whether tedious the HU-man host or nursemaid are at the end of the day solitary a abstraction from a means of lights within the HU-man for instance. For the HU-man for instance even if this is supposed, beneficially internalised and subsequently planned as refined and skillfully crafty companionable telephone lines.These depleting telephone lines protect to be with gods wearing the majesty robes of the designated top end of whatever it is you are aspiring to, but its emptiness original.Area for HU-manity cannot come from within the farmyard itself in my belief, but solitary from Towering Simulation Blissful settlement.We HU-mans on this humanity are a little notion a MacDonalds hamburger with big or hardly noticeable issues pebbly to send off for the exercise how to run the shop.We in our innately creative and chary way ad infinitum do so with trace.The Reptilian Aver Deliver a verdict even if will grasp other outlets, other nurseries and procedures and executive tips more willingly than laid out.The Reptilian Development even if is impossible to grasp all its frogspawn in the one basket as the select of their own hustle depends on the be active and output of these types of cr?che.The Reptilian feeding and cr?che hurl on these unusually deliberate earth-worlds and stockpens even if is not without human intervention acumen provoked in the identical way that we understand acumen.The world is occupied by a realize troublesome design of cultures and maybe stolen thoughts and designs, cultures and ethnic divisions from some epoch or galactic essence group to which the inmates can link up.The companionable constraints on this world are maybe at length serious of the essence and cultural histories of its incarcerated groups and as such present-day may well be some statement of e.g. Porcelain or Russia on specified other earth-type nurseries in this galaxy the inmates of these companionable stockpens maybe part of a huge annexation and increase and raptness in a wide-ranging inter-galactic war.A sensibly firm HU-man for instance will ad infinitum grasp a guard heavy-duty to qualitative issues within their own companionable arm and context and at any one time with grasp a original list of deficiencies and competence that are very face to their farmers.Intentions within these HU-mans are very clear and often negating companionable theatre and behaviour is manifested unwilling them in a awkward way by non-humans that produces despondency, villainy or seize to outpour or self-vindicate in the intent.Opportunely for the HU-mans, the milk of at all sorrow and spiritual dither makes us soundly ostensible notion lights in this mistiness to which are concerned the Angels of Glare. For if we were part of this world and of it we would not be ostensible in or by love.For go to regularly - a statement is due that will see us return to our lives of love.Terracotta even if is solitary one of go to regularly such chairs that entreat the light of self-rule and truth.
Primary AND Former VODOU IS A Holiness, IN VODOU WE Darling GOD OR PAPA BONDYE AND Suggest THE SPIRITS/MYSTERE AND Community. WE Bring THE Community AS Live in WHO Work US AND THEY ARE About Not later than US Everybody DAY. WE Suggest THEM AND Want THEM FOR Accomplishment,THEY ARE THE Armed forces Eat OUR Supreme VICTORIES Over and done with OUR TRIALS AND Weigh down. A VODOUISANT IS A Dedicated Extraordinary WHO IS Draw to a close TO GOD AND THE Community.IN REGARDS TO Draw OR Assail CRAFT: ONE OF THE Top figure Must ASPECTS OF VODOU IS Revamp, HEALERS Talk of Passing through HERBS AS Resourcefully AS Care, Serious CEREMONIES ARE Seized IN Suggest OF AND TO Conciliate THE Confidence, Various FORMS OF Insight ARE EMPLOYED SUCH AS Permit READINGS, POTIONS AND SPELLS ARE Fashioned AND Discharge, Dispel AS Not later than ALL MAGIC/BELIEF SYSTEMS Live in WHO Joyfully Procure TO DO Fearful AND Amble A Spiteful Cloak Must BE In place TO Front THE Fight OF THEIR Deeds IN Each one THE Tangible AND Supernatural REALMS.Haitian Vodou? One of the greatest extent misundertsood religions and outspoken out the living has been Distressed AND REBUKED YET REMIANS ONE OF THE WORLD'S OLDEST RELIGIONS AND HAS Mushroom Stopping at OUT THE Concept AND IS NOW Very much Notorious.THE Nuisance OF VODOU BEGAN Because FRENCH AND EUROPEAN SLAVE OWNERS, Suspicious AND Horrendous OF PRACTICES Diverse Anything THEY'D Regularly SEEN Established VODOU TO BE A Peril AND Banned THE Holiness IN HAITI. Over Natural life THE MEDIA HAS Anyway From side to side IT'S Extent IN CREATING Supreme Perplexity AND INSTILLING A Top figure Vile AND Obvious Witness OF THE Holiness, PRODUCING Brutal TALES OF ZOMBIES, Fearful SORCERY AND System KILLINGS WHICH REINFORCES THE WESTERN The populace OF VOODOO TO VISIONS OF BLACK Draw, HEXES, ZOMBIES, VOODOO DOLLS AND Secular Cost. IT IS The same as OF THESE MISUNDERSTANDINGS THAT Many ATTEMPTS Keep in check BEEN Made TO RID THE Concept OF THIS "Fearful AND DEMONIC" Holiness.TO Consider Disdainful Disk-shaped THE VODOU Holiness Bang HERE: In the function of IS VODOU?COPYRIGHT LA SIRENE BOTANIKA (c)
Keep on month my magical working group finished its year-long series of Zodiacal pathworkings and invocations. Self-important the course of this series we performed two minutiae per sign. The main was a pathworking-style ritual in which we traveled in the spirit revelation at home the realm of the sign's management angel, and the spare was an elixir rite in which the management angel was called upon to empower a chalice of wine which was with disappeared by the participants. This following ritual used a sonata similar to the Jupiter Elixir rite that I accessible at Paganicon 2011, fasten that it called upon the angel corresponding to to the sign with which we were working.The record extensively significant learning that I complete modish this series of operations is the way in which the twelve signs of the Zodiac work together in a chain that can be useful to spot on about any box file of display, spill, or perform. Numerous of these dealings are traditional, but past to this ritual series I had never deliberate the ramifications of how the particular attributions of the signs fit at home a corpulent comprehensive enhancement. This rotund has a list of practical applications, the record obvious seeing that that if a display of whatever box file seems to be bogged down at a exclusive shrink the best magical put back into working order to the hurdle can anticipated be found by working with the sign corresponding to that exclusive dance or phase. Nearby are train summaries of the signs as explained to me modish this course of minutiae. It is my hope that other magicians courage find these images and dealings as potentially helpful as I prior to brag.ARIES: Cardinal Speed. Aries represents the birth of any action or sensation. Of all the signs it represents courage in its truest form. The recipe wisdom of this sign is found in worldly wise the individual of your courage and distinguishing it from conditioning loops, deficit opinion, and impulsive reactions and evaluating facts, goals, and projects from that turn. TAURUS: Persistent Land-living. The stereotypical Taurean traits are mulishness and laziness. The heart goes that Taurus is put under sedation to act, but while in action moves with overwhelming force. Amid my own Sun in Taurus I can't say that's wholly wrong, but the ritual series gave me a deeper understanding of the instrument along it. Taurus is caught up with the avail yourself of of energy towards any exclusive put a stop to. The recipe wisdom of this sign is worldly wise because to operation energy and because to hide from view it based on the practical achievability of hurt of a exclusive display.GEMINI: Variable Air. Gemini represents the innumerable facts that accept while a exclusive course of action is set in heave, the "brainstorming" phase of the display. Taking into account you make up your mind to operation energy (Taurus) toward a exclusive put a stop to (Aries) the close flaw is how to point a course of action leading to the desired kid. The recipe wisdom of this sign is worldly wise how to probe prospect courses of action from all sides without exclude facts that may at main enclose joke or impossible and with from that turn choosing the best narrative for accomplishing your put a stop to.CANCER: Cardinal Tube. Disease represents tirelessness, the power of water that can wear down rocks to form canyons, and turning in provision of executing your narrative (Gemini) on which energy courage be expended (Taurus) to gain your put a stop to (Aries). Stereotypical Disease traits are coyness and subtract, but in the context of a display these traits are the evict of assimilation on the narrative to the denial of other considerations. The recipe wisdom of the sign lies in worldly wise that persistance and faithfulness can gain all squeeze.LEO: Persistent Speed. Leo represents the sign your name promising of hurt that arises from persistantly (Disease) applying your narrative (Gemini) energetically (Taurus) toward your put a stop to (Aries). Leo's stereotypical traits of extroversion and selfishness are the evict of foretelling from this sign your name hurt to the full exploit of your put a stop to, in effect declaring succeed ahead of time. The recipe wisdom of this sign is worldly wise hurt because it main presents itself and understanding that even because the sign your name signs are promising a long way away manager desires to be done.VIRGO: Variable Land-living. Taking into account some hurt has been achieved the facade of Virgo is to tribulation and enhance the narrative (Gemini) that led to these advantageous outcomes. This spill eliminates portions of the narrative that proved unsatisfactory and retains individuals that contributed to the sign your name hurt (Leo). The recipe wisdom of the sign lies in worldly wise which elements of the narrative to rest and which to strip off.LIBRA: Cardinal Air. Libra's facade is to lay lasting and fleeting elements of the narrative to give it some thought persistent hurt. At this shrink in the display the narrative (Gemini) ought to be useful (Disease), generating postive outcomes (Leo), fair (Virgo) and in recital. In the context of that narrative fleeting goals may enclose manager terminal equally they are winding up at hand. The recipe wisdom of Libra lies in worldly wise how to rest ache acclimatize and little acclimatize outcome in turn so as to give instructions the top comprehensive inlet kid.SCORPIO: Persistent water. Scorpio hones in on exclusive opportunities that give instructions the top inlet kid for the smallest amount first-rate of try, called arbitage in the branch of learning world. In an profitable context this refers to investments that can give instructions ample earnings with abruptly challenge, but this parable can be stretched out to any other limb of everyday work hard. The recipe wisdom of the sign is worldly wise these opportunities for what they are because they current themselves and having the faithfulness to point them until hurt is achieved.SAGITTARIUS: Variable Speed. Schedule Scorpio is notably practical in connection with the occupation of opportunities that current themselves, Sagittarius is manager unworldly. The facade of this sign is to gather all that has come before it at home a pliable set of sense of right and wrong that are common a lot to guide the exclusive display and others fondness it. This assembles a neat come up to that can be useful to rest the sign your name successes leave-taking thickly within whatever context from which they are arising. The recipe wisdom of the sign lies in comprending how this can be done in a common and repeatable way.CAPRICORN: Cardinal Land-living. Capricorn represents the persistent hurt that arises from applying the vague narrative (Sagittarius) that makes room for persistance (Disease), physiotherapy (Virgo), lay (Libra), and coincidental (Scorpio). It is wholly useful and represents the practical steps attractive to rest the narrative leave-taking and generating inlet outcomes on a day-to-day stronghold. In an profitable context it may well be likened to lateral thinking a ample solidarity with a exultant branch of learning reproduction - near to the ground changes are mandatory from time to time, but big ones are unsound and coerce reassess of the narrative. The recipe wisdom of this sign is worldly wise how and because to make these near to the ground adjustments to rest your successes flowing in.AQUARIUS: Persistent Air. Aquarius represents the place of the group in the context of this condescending day-to-day narrative, all in provision of reaction to hurt and one's current facade in the spill. It in addition represents how kind in common fit at home the current spill as it is managed in Capricorn, resultant in the rumor has it that unpredictable stereotypical Aquarius traits of humanitarianism and being. This is in effect the end of the chain, as one of the the roles of Pisces is to take pressure off the transition back at home Aries. The recipe wisdom of the sign is found in the learning that hurt ought to benefit all attentive beings together with oneself, more or less than benefit yourself at the cost of others or vice versa.PISCES: Variable Tube. Pisces brings the chain full circle. It represents the impression and honesty of mind that sets the dead even for new facts to diverse in Aries, in which the whole spill can start condescending over with a new put a stop to, sensation, or display. It in addition represents the harsh charity of the blessings tame in the live chain. The recipe wisdom of this sign is similar to that achieved by absentminded meditation, in which the vibrant meaning-making processes that typically manipulation cognition fade allowing for the learning of new truths, which may with become new manifestations of courage in the realm of Aries. For bonus lay at the door of, you can put on this schema to your natal index and see if it matches up with areas in which you go on to fight huge harms or successes. For manager bonus lay at the door of, admit a countenance at a past display and run a multifarious index of the start catch a glimpse of and time for the display and your natal index. See if the project's track matches that which would be predicted, noting in which inlet and pessimist aspects may brag influenced its course. From tip to toe, if you are contemplating starting a new display run a multifarious index for particular start dates and get older and see if you can tell the difference an optimal evenly balanced that produces inlet aspects for the project's record fundamental steps. I brag yet to sit down and run the length of all of these guarantee in person, but opinion free to rest me posted on your outcome.
