Reading

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Sims 4

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Unused image for Emmy comedy winners post

I found another video I liked better for 'The Studio' wins 9 Emmy Awards and could win up to 6 more.

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The Alternative Path: Another One of the Paths Before Us

I have often said we live in a Dark Age of the spirit. Seldom has it been more difficult to take up genuine spiritual work. All the religions are corrupt, all of the prophets are false, and for most of us, there is no source of guidance save a small, flickering, constantly endangered candle deep within the cloudy windows of the soul. Demons, those shifty beings who feed off human sorrow and pain and wait for opportunities to parasitize the weak and greedy, are having a field day. Any kind of spiritual work such as basic prayer or the creation of genuine community is almost impossible in these heavy times.

There are always disparate paths one can travel no matter how bleak and unilateral the road may appear. If you’ve ever watched a particularly bleak art film such as Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl or The Devil’s Bath, you are familiar with nihilism as a genre. The character, usually a depressed woman, winds her way towards inevitable suicide because circumstances and patriarchy can only lead to one kind of grisly, self-harming outcome. Yet there is always a choice, even for those afflicted with the worst cases of Sartrean bad faith.

One of these choices is to go full Rambo on a bad guy/gal like Luigi Mangione did on Brian Thompson and Shane Tamura did on Wesley LePatner. Vigilante justice works quite well, no matter what its detractors like to claim. A dead CEO stops a great deal of cash from hemorrhaging out of middle and lower middle class pockets, and better yet, the rest of the CEOs start living in fear. When CEOs actually fear for their lives as a consequence of being horrible people who actively make grandiosely evil choices, this is an undeniable net positive. A dead criminal has a zero percent recidivism rate. When Muslim migrant rape gangs have to worry about being stalked, tortured, and systematically murdered by larger gangs of disenfranchised, ski-masked white boys, every young English girl and boy who has to walk to school alone breathes a little easier. You won’t sell me on the notion of the baddie rapist exterminators going to Christian Hell or atheist oblivion. I believe Valhalla awaits them, because just as the old gods are stirring, all signs point to them having readied their old realms for exclusive reentry to heroes.

The heroic Saint of Killers schtick is not for everyone. It is certainly not for me in this incarnation where I am so short that I cannot refill my bird feeder without a stepladder. Though I pity the fool who drives me to invoke my old, latent, inner serial killer, at this time she is not in the building. Most people choose the Path of the Normie, and though this path can go six ways to Sunday, more often than not it leads to a great deal of reincarnation and short stints in both Heaven and Purgatory between lives. The Path of the Normie is especially problematic in our day an age as souls are sifted to determine how attached to the material they have become. It is my impression we should separate ourselves out from Normies as they are easily moved by astral tides and can easily become zombified monsters.

As often happens with me these days, I was doing my normal routine when a disembodied being essentially sat me down and instructed me to take notes on concepts it wanted me to explain to my small yet highly intelligent audience. As per usual, this entity was far smarter than me (not that hard of a state to accomplish, I’m afraid) and I suspect it could have been from the Divine realms of consciousness. It said that I needed to do my best (in my own retarded way) to outline three main strategies for approaching spiritual work. It said that the three basics I should cover — these things often come in threes — were the virtues of Differentiation, Diligence, and Humility. As always, I acknowledged I could be wrong about everything, including the nature of the entity I believe was speaking to me. I promised it I would do my level best to meditate and explain the concepts to my small cadre of Meatworld friends. You are among those friends, Dear Reader, so here we go.

Differentiation

The first part of true spiritual work is differentiation from what I have called Normie consciousness. In my essay about the Normie path, I liken Normie consciousness to a shallow ocean of muddled clouds that is currently being driven off the edge of a great cliff. There is that old saying “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” This is usually said by adults to kids who are intent on following a stupid trend, implying that they are moving towards self-destruction because the herd is moving the same way. True confession: the vision of the shallow ocean of clouds came to me in one of my nightly dreams and I unpacked it in discursive meditation, during which I believe I had help understanding it via one of my many, smarter-than-me, possibly Divine spirit guides. The trouble with following trends is that you become what you follow. If you fail to draw boundaries around what you will and will not do, the borders of your soul disappear and you become subject to massive forces that would seek to drive you towards a particular outcome or karma. This is why I likened the Normie response to MRNA vaccination pressures to a mass choice to fall into Hel, because this is the outcome I believe that has been created for many souls due to the pressure of many erasing their soul borders to join the great blob of vaccinated materialism. Of course vaccination is not the only determinant whether a human soul is one with the blob or apart from it. There are a zillion factors that make a soul, most of which are far too complex to derive any blanket judgements. Also, I could be wrong.

In an age of extreme materialism, the work of differentiation means shedding materialism and practicing what you preach. The original Jesus and Buddha are two good examples of what this looked like: both became wandering mendicants who eschewed luxury in favor of mystical enlightenment. Most Normies go the opposite way of Jesus and Buddha, seeking the various initiation rites of the Bathroom Class. Nowhere is this more true than of televangelist preachers who live in McMansions and fly around in private jets. The Bathroom Class and its aspirants are deeply attached to the material to the point where they frequently become Earthbound after physical death. When physical life revolves around comfort, convenience, and the inflation of the ego, you vibrate more strongly in death to what you did in life. Those who treated everything and everyone as an object to be used and thrown away will end up tied to their own rotting garbage after death. They will remain tethered in Meatworld as hungry ghosts, their astral revenants animated by the ever-starving Wendigos of material lust. This is a terrifying age of unique horrors, especially as a psychic sensitive. Those who chose to incarnate in this era — this includes you — have balls made of brass.

I hope it goes without saying that differentiation means learning to stand on your own, alone if necessary, against tyranny, greed, and lowest common denominator peer pressure. Fear is the mind killer, said the Dune sci-fi novel series, and it is a good take away even if you have no interest in those books. When everyone around you, including the poor people, entertains themselves with lurid fantasies of living in luxurious mansions, be the rebel who sweeps his own floor in the morning and cleans his own toilet every night with no plans on ever changing those habits if your bank accounts swell. When every unemployed, former IT manager is scouring Indeed and milking every connection to compete for the golden ring of another $100K+ cushy corporate position, be the guy who walks away from the rat race entirely and starts a bike repair business or who restores old furniture to its former glory out of a two room apartment. When every person in your peer group subsists off a steady dopamine drip of video games, social media, and porn before going off to college and accumulating permanently life-ruining debt, be the girl who turns off the machines and goes outside and talks to the trees. Be the weirdo who takes jobs merely in order to understand regular, working people while she is still young. In my own case, my successful management of my own fears about lucrative employment ushered me into a lifelong career of music teaching. Thirty years later, I love my job and I am amazing at it. If I had been more afraid of the bohemian life of a music teacher, I would have made different, more materialistic choices and I would likely be unhappy about them.

Letting go of Perfect

Ironically, the drive towards perfectionism makes us into Normies and dissolves our soul borders as effectively as consciously slipping into the stream of the herd. If you are anything like me, you want everything in Meatworld “just so” and you have had trouble accepting things the way they are since before the day you were born. As a child, I already had a rampant desire to look perfect, act wisely, and to be among those whom I thought of as perfect.

Perfect, of course, is not possible in Meatworld. It is often the most perfect looking people who are the foulest and vilest. Perfect, at least in Meatworld, is an illusion and a trap.

Perfectionism often comes with the toxic trait of snap judgement of the perceived imperfect, especially where appearances are concerned. If you are a perfectionist, the next time you see a person or people who do not present an immediate, bodily threat, catch yourself before you condemn them for their appearances or judge yourself against their appearance. When your brain goes to judge with “She looks tired” or “I look tired compared to her”, “He’s fatter than I am” or “I am skinnier than him”; “Her hair looks like s**t”; “He is a slob”, stop and acknowledge that they are probably doing their best to get by in the world, just like you. Like you, they crap and have stinky butts. Get over it and move on to thoughts that are more constructive for you, you, and you.

As I aged, I noticed that my perfectionism and competitiveness also affected the spaces I occupied. I was always running algorithms in my head to determine which spaces were “good enough” for the likes of me, not even knowing I was doing it. The entire time I was doing this, I remained deaf, dumb, and blind to the spirits of place and all they wished to tell me. Gratitude (in place of worry) is the primary method of connecting to the spirits of place that I espouse in my upcoming Aeon book, Sacred Homemaking, due out in Summer 2026. Compulsively and constantly appreciate helpful spaces and items just as you would helpful people. For instance, I am writing this sitting in a sixty year old chair while looking at my spectacular front yard garden in a lower middle class block on a rare, cool summer day. I could focus on the list of projects I need to do to make this little house perfect — repotting plants, vacuuming, repainting, growing hedges, remodeling, or I could focus on how grateful I am for this time to write, the lovely porch that my husband fixed up and painted, this brief spot of respite from summer heat, the wonderful books in the bookshelves, the adorable cats, the door that keeps the outside out an the inside in, the windows that easily open and close, the colorful rugs, the fine air, being well-fed. There is much to love here — more, actually — than what needs improvement or maintenance. Every second of every day offers an opportunity to focus on what is already good, and the very definition of true progress is to stop, smell, and thank the roses.

Diligence

My late father was a diligent man. He measured twice and cut once. He maintained a beautiful house and yard for nearly sixty years of his life, along with marriage to my Mom, who was able to stop working shortly before I was adopted in 1973. My father was mentally alert literally until the second he died, which I personally witnessed. The day before he died, he was perfectly lucid and conversing with relatives. Despite having advanced bladder and liver cancer, he still worked in the yard two weeks before his death in October of 2023. He kept his salesman/estimator job until the day he died as well. He was 85. My German immigrant grandmother was the same way. Her mind was not as sharp as my father’s in late age, but she was as neat as a pin until the day she died, always kind, loving, and sweet to everyone.

As a kid, I remember both my parents and grandparents making their beds every morning. My parents’ house was always clean and tidy. My father loved his lawn and never allowed it to become anything less than a well-manicured park. They were always early picking us up from various events or school. They were dependable. Most kids do not have the blessing of dependable, organized parents. The foundation of security a dependable parent builds underneath a child is a deeply spiritual well regardless of religion or belief. I would not be in the position of spiritual strength in which I find myself had I been without my dependable, stable, organized, diligent parents.

Once we have differentiated and shown ourselves to be fearless (mainly to ourselves), the routines of diligence take over. Making the bold statement is not enough. You must live it every day, through thick and through thin. You must continue to kick ass until the day you die… and beyond. In my own case, my own unwavering, daily dedication to revival Druid practices of discursive meditation, the Sphere of Protection, and Ogham divination for myself and others has resulted in tangible results. These results would not have been as remarkable if I had skipped my practices when I was feeling ill, low, or not in the mood. The gods and helper spirits want to help us to help ourselves, but they cannot assist us if we are not in it to win it. The long haul is… long. We set ourselves on a trajectory and we must remain brave and true to it despite terrible weather and great temptations off the path.

Musical practice helped prepare me for spiritual work. I was born to be lazy as many musicians are: there is this idea that we can hack our way to musical expertise without practice. There is also the issue of there never being time enough in any given day to practice properly. As a music teacher, I have learned that five minutes of practice in a day or a week is better than no minutes. Perfect is not possible, so whip out a tune and stop caring if it is going to get you to Carnegie Hall. Perseverance is what matters. All rivers start as a trickle.

Humility

Imbalance of humility is a major player in the spiritual leprosy of our era, especially when it comes to perceiving the Divine. I find it very frustrating when evangelist Christians claim their God is everywhere. Really? Is He in the underground tunnels where children are flayed alive and eaten after being violently raped by cackling political dignitaries? Is He in the throat of the sea bream who suffocates to death in the Pacific garbage patch? Is He squatting in the reeking contents of my cat’s litter box? The Christian God and his monotheist counterparts (Buddha, Mohammed) are not very relatable. Their stories no longer slap. The metaphors are still relevant but the stories themselves, especially the ones that take place in an ancient Semitic river land when pyramids were still being built, are elderly and fall short. What people invariable end up doing is looking for more updated, modern applications of the metaphors — hence Savior and Changer archetypes being pinned on the Great White Disappointment — instead of more renewed faith that Jesus is actually coming back. Monotheists especially suffer from perfectionist, all-or-nothing syndrome, which is a way of categorizing all phenomena into spiritual binaries: good/evil, heaven/hell, winner/also ran, God/Satan. The problem here is that the spiritual is the subtle. It requires detail and nuance. There is no nuance in a binary, no working ecosystem, only the bludgeon of the Rightly Right and the Wrongly Wrong. See yourself as the Rightly Right and you will unleash all manner of horrors upon your fellow humans: Mao, Stalin, and the Inquisitors come to mind. On the other side, knowing yourself to be Wrongly Wrong (and seemingly helpless to improve) hands you over to the perversity and depravity of that worldview. Those who see and know themselves to be Wrongly Wrong become monsters of a different sort, offered up to similar Wendigos: Jeffrey Dahmer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Sean Combs, and the Marquis de Sade for whom sadism was named are infamous for the harm they have done.

Better to exist within the realm of accountability and diligent discrimination to always discern right from wrong. This discernment is far from easy and must begin with the self. Discernment involves deciding which parts of our world belong to Satan, which belong to God/gods, and an entire, bursting spectrum of in-betweens.

You have both less power and more power than you think. You can control the minds of others if you like — just look at the monsters mentioned in the paragraphs above who started life as regular people — do you really want to be like them? You will not easily levitate spoons or fly a Quidditch broom without material innovation. Maybe take that into consideration if that is your idea of magic.

To be humble is to understand you are special but not exempt. You don’t get to skate, whether you are embedded in the crowd or surfing above it. You must devote yourself to unrelenting, daily work, and sometimes that work is down in the muck with those who will never understand you, nor you them. To be humble is to fully acknowledge you could be wrong and not to be butthurt because you are not yet a god or anything close to it. Humility, like the third element of most ternaries, is what seals the deal and opens the Universe of new possibilities. Stay humble, my friend.

Current Mood: bleak
Current Music: George Winston, "Stars"

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Magic Monday

It's midnight, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

(The image? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Dinomite Twins Twitch Stream

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The first image I created for today's post

Although it's the fifth image in 'The Penguin' has already won 8 Emmys, but could lose to 'Adolescence' and appears over the jump.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Star Wars: The Old Republic

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I hope this earns Lady Gaga an Emmy for Music and Lyrics

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

ogham,
readings

Ogham Readings on Saturdays

I am happy to read your Ogham free of charge -- that's how I hone my divination skills. Please limit your reading request to four or fewer Ogham cards: though this can take many forms, here are some common ones (all of them are basically combos of 4 cards):

-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading

-four questions about four separate items that require one answer (card) per item
-a one card reading to answer a specific question and a three card for a more nuanced question
-Two separate readings, two cards a piece exploring the positives and negatives of two different choices

I am happy to do Ogham readings confidentially via email -- just email me at k steele studio at gmail during the allotted time/before deadline. I cannot answer health questions. If you have a question about health or another sensitive, private matter, provide a bunch of non-identifying information and the Ogham will be able to figure it out even if I don't. I'm serious... the Ogham actually tend to "know" things without me being privy to what is going on.

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break.

My next planned break is from October 23 - November 6.

I take reading requests from whenever this post goes up on Friday night until 8pm US Central Time Saturday.

For a more in depth look into how I read and interpret the Ogham's symbols, please visit my website druidogham.wordpress.com.

I am currently trying to minimize my use of PayPal. If you'd like to make a donation, I would be grateful if you did it here:

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

Current Mood: full
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Sims 4

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A commercial I've been watching lately

Watch on YouTube

Diary: Cruising

I think that I have a pretty fair life. Oh, granted there are things about it that are less than optimal, but on the whole, the present is pretty damn tolerable.

Here is my problem. With only two exceptions (identity withheld to protect the innocent) most of my social circle feels contempt for what I have "settled" for. I am still sorting out how I should feel about this kind of thing.

Whether one likes it or not. A large part of self worth is (unfortunately) a reflection of what others think of you. Why do you think churches breed fanatics? The internalization of a moral/intellectual precept and then refining of the outward symbols of belief lead to greater and greater acceptance/credibility with the group.

Thus my heresy. By rejecting the outward symbols that show conformity with the group belief system give the group no motivation to allow you into its sphere of influence and protection. I am walking the line now. I am trying to keep just inside the limited protection and rewards of the system. I want to be as far from the center, out in the low density fringes just this side of what is considered failure by the system.

I need to work on this explanation/narrative more. It isn't going to end up a political treatise or anything, it is just an explanation of where I stand and what I have to watch out for to maintain my distance from the center.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Jethro Tull, "Aqualung"

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Frugal Friday

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

Rule #5: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm.

With that said, have at it!

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Paleontologizing Twitch Stream

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I showed this video to my geology class today

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Just Dance

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Second image for Casting Emmys post

Used in Gold Derby's predictions for casting at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Diary: Jerky

So, as a reminder of my past life as a dad and almost-prepper, I still have a cabelas dryer (the little one, not the big one).

Why this is important is that lately I have been trying to seriously reduce (though not eliminate) sugars and carbohydrates. White rice needs to be watched carefully.

I have restarted my romance with jerky. I really do love the stuff, but buying it at the store is ungodly expensive. Rule of thumb is that it is over a buck an ounce for the cheap stuff. Homey cannot afford that. So I need to break out the dryer and get cracking on jerky. First effort will be chicken jerky. I picked up some skinless boneless chicken thighs and marinated them:

Marinade: 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/3 cup honey 1/2 tsp curing salt teaspoon of cayenne (lets call the marinade 50 cents

Cut the 20 ounces of chicken thighs ($2.99 at costco) into thickish strips and marinated them for 24 hours, then they went into the cabelas. The cost of the chicken was $3.75

Pasteurization chart for chicken The following profile can achieve the same level of bacterial reduction (specifically, a 7-log reduction of Salmonella) as cooking chicken to 165°F ((74\degree C)) instantly, as long as the temperature is held for the specified time:

140°F ((60\degree C)): Held for 30 minutes. 136°F ((58\degree C)): Held for 68.4 minutes. 130°F ((54\degree C)): Held for 112 minutes (for beef, lamb, and pork) or 6 hours (for chicken).

I put the dryer on high and let 'er rip. I waited until my fancy-schmancy thermometer and probe hit 136 F. and then waited for an hour and a bit and pronounced the jerky done. The energy use was 3.1 kWH at an average cost of $0.19/kWH or $0.58

Weighed the results. 9.5 ounces of yield for $3.75+$0.50+$0.58 = $4.84/9.5 or $0.51 per ounce ($8.16/lb) which is half of the cost of store bought.

another one bites dust

Now @earthworm_uk has gone too.
(Sorry for the bleak pun in the subject. I have this peculiar ability to joke while feeling bleak.)

It was fabulous reading, talking to and learning from you, Earthworm.
Time to move on, you say. If there is somewhere better I need to know, please, please?
All the best to you and Miranda. May robins visit you every spring.

I think about you both sometimes while gardening and wonder what tips you would give me towards a little patch of horticultural harmony at my place in the Antipodes.

Entry tags:

religion,
satanism

Scientology and Satanism

L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, was said to have been a malignant narcissist. L. Ron Hubbard’s son changed his name to Ronald De Wolf. Of L. Ron Hubbard’s seven children by three different wives, DeWolf was one of two who were estranged. DeWolf called Scientology “the self-created fantasy of one man brought to deadly reality for others by a simple word: agreement”. DeWolf also gave sworn statements that his father was “deeply involved in the occult and black magic.”

It is common knowledge when Hubbard was discharged from the US Navy after WWII, he chose to move into the Pasadena, California mansion of Jack Parsons, a rocket engineer who was a superfan and disciple of Aleister Crowley. Parson’s residence, called The Parsonage by the free-wheelers who came and went from it, was where Parsons reconstructed Crowley’s magical rituals, most of which revolved around copulation and chemically-assisted altered states. At the time, Parsons was attempting to impregnate his second wife, Marjorie Cameron, with the Satanic equivalent of the Second coming, despite her supposedly knowing nothing about his intentions. Meanwhile, both Parsons and Hubbard were taking turns with Sara Hollister, Parson’s ex-wife’s younger sister, who had been sleeping with Parsons from the age of seventeen while he was married to her older sister. All of these people were members of The Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and Jack Parsons along with his order members funded Crowley in his ailing dotage. Nevertheless, Aleister Crowley expressed disgust when he learned that Parsons and his live in friend, L. Ron Hubbard were trying to create a Moonchild second coming of the whore of Babalon working, calling them idiots. Within the span of a year, L. Ron Hubbard and Sara tricked Parsons via a swindle involving multiple yachts. They ditched Parsons, absconded with most of his fortune and the proceeds from the sale of the Parsonage, and got married when Sara was 22 and Hubbard was 35. Hubbard was still married to his first wife at the time, and yes, that means he committed bigamy.

Ronald DeWolf says that “black magic is the inner core of Scientology” and that his father “did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan”.

The birth of Scientology came about in Southern California from a time and place that also spawned Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan and Michael Aquino’s Temple of Set. LaVeyan Satanism, Aquino’s Setianism, and Scientology have a great deal in common, with Scientology taking the gold star for its evolution of Crowleyan principles and philosophy. Of the three Crowleyan solipsist religions, Scientology is by far the most profitable of the three. Hubbard, a prolific writer of science fiction, stated “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.” and he seems to have done just that. Scientology’s methods of interrogation and confession, lifted from Crowleyan magic, would go on to become the foundation for the practices used David Raniere’s NEXIUM cult.

As Scientologist escapee Jenna Miscaivage (niece of David Miscaivage) states, the cross emblem of Scientology is a joke and a fake. Scientology was invented for one reason alone: the enrichment of L. Ron Hubbard.

Diary: Unpleasant

I have a sneaking hunch that the next five years will be a period of accelerated decline. It is not going to be "the end of the world". I have no idea how bad it may be. Sitting at the kitchen table and looking out at the high thin clouds and a sunnyish day have got me thinking about the guesses that I am formulating in my brain.

I am a mediocre guesser. Everyone is. Oh, folks can preen and sift through their guesses and crow about the ones that they got right. But it is like going to a casino. Almost everyone who goes to a casino and wins is quite forthright about their exploits (though I think most are exaggerated). I rarely, if ever, hear folks declaim concerning their losses.

I am guessing around a 66.6% chance of things heading south in the next five years (sorry, the Ouija board and the crstal ball that I use are from Walmart and have limited vision). Now this needs to be broken down somewhat.

40% is just a steady and slow decline. Things will be a little more expensive, jobs will be a little harder to find and pay a little less. Governments will get a little more nosy and provide less. Truth is, it will be enough to complain about but folks will deal.
20% will be a faster ramp. I think that the rebuilding of the manufacturing sector isn't going to go well. The banks and the rich folks will accelerate their greed and the modicum of tickle down that is happening now will go away. Folks are going to get damned grumpy and the vast majority of expectations are going to go unmet. Expect some acting out.
6.6% will be something bad that I prefer not to think about.

The other 33.3 percent can be broken down as follows:

17% will be that things will stay pretty much the same and the status quo remains.
16.3% will be maybe things will actually improve. Congress will put a leash on banks and the rentier class and AI will prove to be a bust (fingers crossed) and we can start digging out of the hole

0.1% will be reserved for Alien attacks, the second coming, and a new, non-polluting energy source that can be built from lawn clippings.

Diary: An unpopular opinion

Here's the deal. I spent the greater bulk being a toady to the medical profession. Research scientist for around half and mid level bureaucrat for half. For a total of around thirty years. My education is comparable to any. Having now presented my bona fides, I can state that I have no problem with AI replacing around half of the current medical profession.

I have been using Dr. Google for years now. I have the good fortune of being able to cross check the results of human visits against Dr. Google and to be honest, the results have panned out the same with a slight edge going to Google.

Now the laboratory and the direct inpatient hospital care will always be there. But even those will be changed. I don't really see any way around it. Such is life.

Nope, especially here in the US, the medical profession is going to be seriously impacted by AI. Since the bulk of the medical profession is for-profit, the bean counters will use use AI to ruthlessly reduce provider headcount both in the administrative and peripheral specialities.

I am not sad. I don't think the current system is all that good, it is probably bordering or inside the "bad" descriptor. What we will get will probably lie within the same level of care but without the lower ranks of the "care pyramid" being around to provide service.

Sorry, but the current system here in the states is a bad idea. We are smoothly transitioning from one bad idea to another bad idea. Enjoy the ride.

Current Mood: astounded
Current Music: Mark Isham, "On the Threshold of Liberty"

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Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 211

We are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; ~~public health authorities~~ government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; new revelations are leaking out about just how bad the Covid vaccines are for human health; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules have been slightly expanded due to a recent discussion here:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.

3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button.

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

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Saved comments during August 2025

( I was mostly busy on my own blog last month, although I left comments at MeWe and Mock, Paper, Scissors, too. )

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Virgo II - the Hammer and Anvil (2-12 September 2025)

Virgo II, The Hammer and Anvil (September 2-12, 2025), is associated with craftsmanship (artisanship, to use a more gender-neutral term), but also with the work of the Moirai, or fate-weavers: Clotho the spinner, Lachesis the measurer, and Atropos the cutter. What fate are you weaving, and who is intertwined with you in the business of making the tapestries of your community

(locked to Patreon-only members): https://andrewbwatt.com/2025/09/01/virgo-ii-sun-the-moirai/