Reading

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I Found Another Osiris

Hyginus, in his De Astronomia, tells us the myths associated with various constellations; in his discussion of the constellation Βοώτης Bootes "ox-driver," tells us the story of Ἰκάριος Ikarios. Evidently, Ikarios was just and pious and so Dionusos taught him how to grow grapes and make wine from them. Once he had mastered this, he loaded up his ox-cart with wine and went around giving wine to the shepherds of Attike. Becoming drunk, they supposed that he had given them poison, and so they killed him and buried his body under a tree. When he never came home, his daughter Ἠριγόνη Erigone "Becoming Spring" worried, and after Ikarios's dog, Μαῖρα Maira "Sparkling," who had traveled with him, came home howling and whining, her worry turned to grief. The dog led her to his master's body, and the poor girl hung herself on the tree under which he was buried, and the dog lied down and died with her. Dionusus, pitying the three unjust deaths, placed them among the stars as the constellations Bootes, Virgo "maiden," and the star Προκύων Prokuon "guide-dog" (woof woof).

This seems to me to be yet-another dim memory of the Osiris myth, with Ikarios being Osiris, Erigone being Isis, and Maira being the dogs who guided Isis to Anoubis (who, in turn, helped her find the pieces of Osiris), making it another argument in favor of my Upuat/Procyon theory.

I think it's interesting that Erigone (= Isis) is the daughter of Ikarios (= Osiris), rather than his wife; this bears similarities to Kore (= Osiris) being the daughter of Demeter (= Isis) or Danae (= Isis) being the daughter of Akrisios (= Seth) and the illicit lover of Proitos (= Osiris). I guess the Egyptians had a high opinion of romantic love, while the Greeks had a high opinion of filial love.

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The Way of Heaven and Earth

Watch on YouTube

Just finished The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal by Kostas Danaos. Found it fascinating, both as pure story and as imparting some insights into neikung and the internal Chinese arts.

Without ruining the entire thing (it's a cracking good read), the story concerns one John Chang, a master of this art form who lived in Indonesia. Above is some video showing his purported abilities.

Keeping in mind that I am a neophyte with regard to chi and that nothing herein should be construed as medical advice in any sense, the author made two points that stuck out to me.

1) Even among the various sects and clans, there was no clear, universal agreement as to methodology regarding these internal arts, such that some practitioners would conduct lethal experiments on acolytes to determine what was effective. This suggests that there's an alternative explanation to why some students get sick while attempting these arts, namely—they're doing it wrong, or their school or teacher doesn't know exactly the right way to go, or even if there is a single right way to go.

2) According to the author, Chang's method distinguishes yang and yin chi as being celestial (solar) and terrestrial (telluric?), respectively, and as fundamentally opposed forces—that is, they do not mix, and are used in tandem only with great difficulty. This is highly suggestive, for those of us in the West, as the distinction between Heaven and Earth is recognizable both from a Christian and non-Christian perspective (to say nothing of its resonance in Taoism).

Taken in a non-dogmatic or doctrinal manner—as reportedly Chang himself did—the yin chi evidently provided one some degree of insight into the spirit world, as the author attests, allowing interaction with "earthbound spirits."

As a newbie to this thinking, I found it useful to break this down as such:

Yang chi	Accrues in the dantien (omphalos)	celestial	solar (?)	descending	active
Yin chi	ascends through the feet through the perineum into the area of the kidneys	terrestrial	telluric (?)	ascending	passive

My conjecture is that different cultures had differing degrees of knowledge of these forces and employed them in different ways. I've written before about how I believe spiritus (the Latin equivalent of chi) may be employed in liturgical rites. The difference, I suspect, is that we in the West have an incomplete (or imperfectly articulated) understanding of spiritus (keeping in mind the limitations of my own knowledge of the literature). In the liturgy, for example, I suspect that the congregation is invited to share its solar spiritus (yang) with the presiding priest ("and with your spirit"...intriguingly, in the Roman rites, kneeling in involved, which to me suggests an intentional suppression of exposure to terrestrial/telluric currents (yin)). The presiding priest, then—who, again in the West, is asked to be celibate, which has specific ramifications for the yin, per Chang/Danaos—is involved in the act of transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine become the body and blood...literally the manifestation of Heaven in the form of things on Earth.

Further conjecture: The solar Logos, the light that lights every person that comes into the world, through which all things were made, is associated with the yang chi (the celestial). The yin is associated with forces such as gravity, and with the Void, the primordial chaos upon which the Craftsman imposes his vision (the terrestrial). Per the author, the interplay and struggle between these two opposed forces are what confers life itself.

In terms of the spiritual world, then, there are additional possible readings into how this may be understood in a Christian context. We assume that the evil demons are bound to the Earth, and thus hold sway, as "pure spirit." Thus, in their fallen state, they are associated both with the Void/chaos and the yin chi. Yet this force is not "evil" unto itself (although the spirits may themselves be corrupted), and, if the model holds, is integral to life/manifestation. With regard to the yin chi, I am also led to think of Mary, the Blessed Mother (Mater, matter), who in the exorcist literature is thought to be particularly repellent to the evil demons. It is Mary as a vessel who, through the Holy Spirit, is understood to manifest Jesus Christ—the solar Logos made flesh, the will of Heaven expressed on Earth. In this we can understand the perfect conjunction of two opposing forces—the ascending and the descending—as the Way.

Quite apart from these speculations on liturgy and theology, these ideas also may shed light on the hesychast tradition, which, as I noted in another post, already have tendencies that resonate with Chinese methods (as I understand them, at least; CF Symeon the New Theologian, "The Three Ways of Attention and Prayer"). This, too, may be the cultivation of yang chi, insofar as this function was understood among the Desert Fathers. It should be noted, too, that these monks were continuously assailed by demons during their wanderings. According to Chang/Danaos, the yang chi in one's body exists in some proportion to the yin chi. Could it be that the desert monks' cultivation of the "solar spiritus" engendered an equal and opposite reaction from the "terrestrial spiritus" (the demons)?

Diary: Hair Shirts

I suppose that it had to happen sometime.

For years now I have been wearing a hair shirt in protest about the way the internet/computer manufacturer consortium have “ruined the internet”. The hair shirt consisted of used laptops from the local computer recycling organization and buzzed along just fine, but lately the poor old things have been breaking down. My 2012 rebuilt MacBook Air and a 2014 Lenovo are both crippled by hardware issues so I had to go out looking for something new.

When I went to the shop to look for a “quality used car” what I saw was that prices for the newer Macs (they do seem to make good hardware) were not that great. Since my 11 and 13 year old computers were gassing out (I have had them 4+ years) so buying another cheap computer (working 10 year olds run in the $80.00 to $120.00 range) I didn’t want to mess around with hair shirts anymore. I am too old and my decades long protest went unnoticed.

So I went to the least evil of the big retail places (wally world) and they were selling new M1 MacBook Airs for $600.00. Now I suppose that this is Apples gesture to poor folk since a new M4 is more expensive by quite a bit. So I put a crowbar on my wallet and I am pecking away at it now.

I had to make a choice about the “ecosystem” that I wanted to work in. Apple or Google or Microsoft. Essentially, my opinion ended up being Apple as the least scummy of these three. Microsoft is now and has always been “la creme de la scum”. I despise everything that they are. Google is way above MS on the scumometer, but their Chromebook system really isn’t all that useful and is pretty closed and marginal. That left Apple.

It isn’t a super great choice but I suppose that it is something that I can live with. They are a manufacturer of pretty and well built hardware that is on the spendy side but seems to last forever. Their software is pretty much the same as what I have been using except for the annoying decision to keep the window control buttons on the right side rather than the left side, but truthfully, that isn’t that big a deal.

What I am hoping is that this is my last computer. I am hoping that it outlasts me. Apple will try to sell me shit I am not interested in buying, and I think that their intrusive overwatch to get ideas concerning my spending habits will lead them to the logical conclusion that I am not really a part of their market.

So all of this verbiage is my admission that I have been hanging on to a dead idea that the internet isn’t primarily controlled by corporate interests. It is time to look at it as a utility that I spend money on. It has replaced my television for news, it has replaced the post office for mail, it has replaced my newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the connection provided by the funny looking black cube is part of my telephone service.

Nope, this is another aspect of things that I am not particularly thrilled about. The world has changed from my salad days when my opinions and worldview were installed in the meat puppet that carries me around. Most of the promises that were made in the days back then when my e-mail was a PDP-11 on the DARPAnet and I hooked in from home on a 1200 baud modem didn’t pan out. As usual, the world that was promised wasn’t available for delivery.

So my excessive expenditure is the best compromise that I can come up with. It ain’t perfect, the choice limits some choices, but the choice is the best that I can come up with taking into consideration lifespans of both the hardware and the user.

I still don’t like it much. But there is much that I don’t like.

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Sphinx's Riddle

WAIT A SECOND

When Sphinx asked Oidipous, "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed," he answered "man, for as a babe he is four-footed, going on four limbs; as an adult he is two-footed; and as an old man he gets besides a third support in a staff."

This is a myth, and so a mystery teaching; therefore, while Oidipous's answer is "correct," it also hides the true answer, which is man's greater life. The one voice is the soul, which reincarnates in many bodies; the four limbs is when the human soul is originally incarnated in beastly lives, living without virtue; the two limbs is when the human soul is as a "normal" human, living the civic virtues; and the three limbs is when the human soul is initiated (cf. Hesiod receiving a laurel-wood staff from the Mousoi and Teiresias receiving a cornel-wood staff from Athene), living the purificatory virtues. Prior to that, the soul isn't individuated (being a part of the undifferentiated group-soul); after that, it isn't strictly human (or, indeed, strictly individual anymore).

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: NASA

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A video about water I might show my students

Watch on YouTube

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dreams

'Not all skies can be personalized'

I dreamed we wandered the streets of Paris, bustling, crowded. I was staying temporarily in an apartment with a hulking, bald Dutchman named Wim Wenders (who was not, apparently, the German filmmaker of the same name). He seemed a gentle giant. There was a slight Frenchwoman in a long, green shirt who was staying there, too, who had allegedly been assaulted by Wenders the night before. On this day, as we walked around, though, things seemed normal between them, although I knew the cops had been called, and also that some sort of American spy type would show up and handcuff Wim to a radiator in the apartment. The latter would not live long. The woman, however, would escape the caper unscathed. "Where will you go?" I asked her, but she told me she had an apartment elsewhere in the city. As for me, I had lost all my luggage, and had only an undershirt, jeans, and my white Adidas. I was bound to leave on the next plane for Newark.

*

I dreamed of a purple-tinged forest. In the sky would appear a large, black tombstone-like spacecraft that would hover and then take off. It had a single, massive window, and three messages painted on it, at the top, then below the window, and at the bottom: "Who Cool," "Super Cool," and "How Cool." My daughter and I would watch it make its descent and then would walk through the woods once it had made its departure.

She was sad because of some other phenomena which I cannot remember, something involving birds, I think. "Not all skies can be personalized," I told her.

*

I dreamed I was in a vast dome of a church. The layout was not my cup of tea, but the paintings on the dome were tremendous, depicting the child Christ surrounded by hosts and hosts of animals and mythological beings, the teeming things of the world, the glories of Creation, all against a blue background, lit subtly by candlelight all around.

Michelangelo Buonarroti had just finished the frescos, but I knew that he was unsatisfied with some of the details. Nonetheless, the pope and those in charge had declared the work finished. I met Michelangelo in a hallway outside. He tried to hide his displeasure, but it was difficult. I asked him about a panel of St. Jerome that he had planned to paint on one of the doors leading into the dome area, but which remained vacant—I knew it was a sticking point for him, and his face became animated when I asked him about it. But just at that moment a cardinal appeared along with a troupe of other priests, and Michelangelo fell silent, fuming. The cardinal showed us a decorated wooden wall unit where they stored the holy oils, that had intricate carvings on the handle. I admitted it was very beautiful, but by then Michelangelo had stormed out and was gone.

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.

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Dogs Again

Oh!

𓃣𓃪𓃧
woof woof woof woof woof woof

There are three canines in the Isis myth: Anoubis, the guard dog; Seth, the dangerous wild dog; Upuat, the tracker, the guide. These are the just same as the three heads of Kerberos, the guardian of Haides, and they represent, collectively, karma in it's three functions: keeping the children safe, keeping the dead in, and showing the living the way back out.

Notice, too, how Anubis is depicted in hieroglyphs lying down; Seth, sitting; and Upuat standing; representing one growing more active as they develop...

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: birds and traffic noise

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Happy International Cat Day!

Watch on YouTube

Diary: Chillaxing (Also mail to M)

I've been remarkably passive of late. I just can't seem to work up any angst or curiosity about much of anything. I suppose that I will be accused of "being depressed" because I am not out there "chasing my dream". Truthfully though, It is not depression, it is the simple idea that the world really doesn't give a shit one about how I think things should be run. The world is probably right about this. When I look back at my life and decisions made, there really isn't anything that stands out as being outstanding.

I'm taking a break from thinking about how I think. I'll probably take it up again when the weather gets bad in the fall. My current thinking (in place of the thinking about thinking) is about how everyone seems to love the idea of an apocalypse and gets bent out of shape when you point out that the more likely scenario is that everyone will just have to tighten their belts.

I am definitely not doing any in depth study of the current world events. The first reason is that the organizations reporting are parochial in the extreme. I would say that "both sides" are the problem, but truthfully there aren't just two sides. It is an out of control scrum with no referees and rules that I don't in any way understand. Most importantly, I have no way to register my necessarily uninformed opinion and even if I were to do so, the recipient would not care one little bit.

Walked over to the football field and watched the high school football team begin practices. Whew, they are itty-bitty little guys. Thank god that they are in a small district of small schools. It would be awful if they had to play a big regional school of farmboys. Listening to them talk though, it would seem that a call from the NFL will be coming any day now. I really don't remember being all that cocky. Maybe I was, but I certainly don't remember it.

Not much will be happening this weekend. Medical advice was to put a television camera into an orifice that usually goes the other way to see if repairs need to be made. I get to experience laxatives and clear fluids to prepare for such. Forgive me if I am not thrilled.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: America, "Ventura Highway"

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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!

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More Dogs

I mentioned before that I think Horos is the star Sirius (Greek Σείριος "scorcher," referring to the "heat" it causes in midsummer; cf. Hesiod, Works and Days 585) and Anoubis is the star Canopus (Greek Κάνωβος—probably derived from Anoubis—the name of the pilot of Menelaus's (=Isis's) ship; cf. Conon, Fifty Stories VIII; Strabo, Geography XVII i §17).

I think I've identified a third star: Upuat (𓄋𓈐𓈐𓈐 "opener of ways") is Procyon (Greek Προκύων "before-dog"), the eighth-brightest star in the entire night sky. (You can see it in the star map I posted earlier: it is the bright star to the left of Orion and above-and-to-the-left of Sirius.) Apparently the name comes because it is seen to rise before Sirius, in the same way that Upuat "opens the way" for the rising soul, identified with Horos/Sirius, in the Pyramid Texts. It is also more northerly than Canopus (the three are more or less in a straight line), suggestive of the dogs that led Isis to Anoubis.

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

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Rejected image for reality shows post

I created this, then replaced it with an image I liked better for 'Shark Tank' vs. 'Queer Eye' for Outstanding Structured Reality Program at the Emmy Awards.

Queer Eye hosts on steps of Lincoln Memorial Queer lifestyle reality show Queer Eye has received four Emmy nominations. 77th Emmy Awards Nominee, Love Is Blind, Outstanding Structured Reality Program

Diary: when you have time (also an email to J)

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/questioning-the-corporation.html

This piece is interesting. Naked Capitalism (NC) is a long time read for me, it is a good place to read things written by smart semi-liberals from the professional managerial class.

Yves is pretty smart, but her point of view is that of a successful yuppie who is torn between the pleasures of the wealth she has garnered, the not-complete internalization of how the game was rigged, and the negative effects that the system has on others not in her class. Sometimes when she gets all pearl-clutchy it gets tiresome.

Overall, the discussion of how small groups of people have gotten together to skim wealth from others (the basis of capitalism) is informative. I do strongly believe that capitalism is always going to happen, it is an effective way of concentrating wealth for the purpose of society. When controlled and watched carefully, it has proven itself effective and sometimes, quite beneficial overall (there have been times when the people who get screwed is a LOT smaller than now, and there will always be someone who gets screwed).

Here in 'Murca, we have forgotten that the corporation serves more than the components that comprise it. "Shareholder Value" is a minor (my guess is 30%) component of the responsibilities of the organization.

Even if we start now, it will take decades and a gargantuan effort to effect this poisonous perception that has grown since the days of Reagan, Bush one, and Clinton.

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dreams

Basilisk

I dreamed we lived in a city, on an island in a river. On the other side, the main part of the city. The only way across, besides taking a boat, was to crawl on hands and knees across a beam that was about a hand's width. Below you, the water. In the water swam various fish and sharks, but coursing along atop the water was a basilisk. In the dream, the basilisk was many colored, with strange, luminescent frills. It would roar and hiss, but it could do you no harm—so long as you did not fall down into the water. I would make my way shakily across the hand-bridge, almost a half-mile long, the basilisk roaring all the time, and wondered: How long can I continue doing this?

*

I dreamed we moved to a busy city block across the street from a grand old church. I went inside to go to confession, but could not find the confessionals—there were just rows and rows of endless cubicles and people doing office work.

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

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It's Wednesday, so here's the Wednesday trailer

Watch on YouTube

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

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Promotional image for Top Chef's Emmy nominations

I came across this while finding images for 'Welcome to Wrexham' vs. 'Love on the Spectrum' for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program at the Emmy Awards. I might use it when I cover competition show nominees.

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On Providence

ὃ δ’ ἀφήμενος οὐκ ἀλεγίζει οὐδ’ ὄθεται
but he sits apart neither heeding nor caring

(Hera speaking of Zeus. Homer, Iliad XV 106b–7a, as translated by yours truly.)

We homeschool my daughter, and the curriculum we are working from is a Christian curriculum—not surprising, I suppose, as most homeschoolers in the USA are so for religious reasons, and so most of the materials on the market cater to that. In any case, the English textbook she is studying had her working with Christian hymns today, and she was complaining about these; so, as a counterpoint, I read her a few bits and pieces from the Homeric Hymns and Orphic Hymns and Porphyry's Hymn to the Intellect, and we discussed what the point of the hymns are, coming to the conclusion that the hymns in her book were about lowering god to the man, while the hymns I showed her were about raising man to the god. This led to a pretty interesting dialogue:

Daughter. But why should we raise ourselves to Zeus (for example)?

Me. Do you care about the cells in your body?

Daughter. What? ... No, not really. I don't even think about them.

Me. But you are like a "cell" in the "body" of Zeus.

Daughter. So Zeus doesn't care about us?

Me. I don't think so. (That's pretty different from what the hymns in your book say, isn't it?) But you still take care of the cells in your body, don't you?

Daughter. I don't try to, but yeah, I guess I kinda do. I mean, if I didn't, I'd get sick and die.

Me. I think that's how it is with Zeus, too. He doesn't care of us but that doesn't mean he doesn't take care of us. (That's what angels are for, after all!) So to raise yourself to Zeus is to harmonize with Zeus: it's like your cell trying to harmonize with your body. Wouldn't your body work better if all your cells tried to be as aware of the whole as possible?

She went away very contemplative...

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Retracing Old Ground

One of my prized possessions, back in the day, was an over-the-top, folio-sized copy of Manly P. Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages. (It didn't survive the trip when we fled our old home, alas; but just as well, since it wasn't the direction I needed.)

The highlight of that book, I think, was it's extravagant full-page illustrations by John Augustus Knapp. I had occasion to be looking back over these today, and what do I see in the painting accompanying Hall's essay on Hermetism?

woof woof

Why, it's our old and faithful friend Upuat, waiting to guide us into the ruins of ancient wisdom! Hey there, buddy! Who's a good boy?

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The Karma of Killers: One of the Paths Before Us

We dwell in the decay of a Great Industrial Age. We would like to think we are the first and last hi-tech era to blight this planet, but recent discoveries reveal that ours is neither the alpha nor the omega when it comes to humans harnessing the Earth’s energy for their own highly specific and intricate purposes. Recent lidar (light detection and ranging) discoveries reveal that not only were ancients up to something under those pyramids, they clearly understood currents and patterns of force far better than our mid-brained Scientism-ists ever will. Surely their approach to getting energy from sky, water, and ground was more sophisticated than oxen and plows.The end of this empire is here — the systems and infrastructures we depend upon are sclerotic, elderly, and clearly doomed. The upper middle class is a rapidly shrinking set of musical chairs accompanied by ever-quickening rounds of the monkey chasing the weasel. Despite the upper middle class ideal being a trap, there is no shortage of people willing to die trying to fall into its jaws. Conspiracy theories are quietly renamed conspiracy facts. The idea that a wholly corrupt, overarching System of pedophilia, murder, mutilation, and money laundering dominates the loftiest echelons of power is not as easily dismissed by normal people as it was even five short years ago. Nobody knows if the System and its participants are as diabolically hegemonic or powerful as they seem. What we do know is that regular life for the citizens of empire is not getting any better, that politicians are uniformly trash, and as the Rush song Freewill states:

If you choose not to decide,
You still have made a choice

Like it or not, we are in a phase of politics where the only effective political action is the kind that comes out of the end of an automatic weapon or at the edge of a sharp blade. Before anyone suggests I am advocating for violence here, no, I am not. I have no plans to go gonzo unless situations truly degrade to the point where I have nothing left to lose. I am nowhere near that point, but many are.

When political action of any sort becomes futile and all markets are rigged so heavily that the average person is laden with the burdens of Atlas to simply exist, choices present themselves. The first choice that most opt for is status quo, the second is to become a killer, and the third is to choose an alternative to the binary of status quo and killer. I plan on treating all of these themes to at least one essay a piece.

Briefly, status quo is the path of least resistance. To opt for status quo is to seek out the dwindling rewards of the System in order to amass more of them for oneself and potentially one’s brood. The status quo seeker wants popularity and clout within the dying system and hopes to exploit it as it has exploited him. He fails to understand that unearned wealth must come from someone who earned it and that by amassing unearned wealth, he merely agrees to pay for it somewhere down the line. Somewhere down the line could mean several or even hundreds of lifetimes of subsistence farming in times of famine. Perhaps it could come in the form of devastating illness and excruciating death. Or it might be several helpings of each. Perhaps it involves running the mazes of Purgatory for a glacial cycle or two until it becomes apparent that the hell world is of one’s own perverse creation. I believe status quo is by far the worst of the three choices, far worse and more likely to lead to hell than the Path of the Killer I am exploring today. Ironically, many who see themselves as killers are actually status quo seekers. They are little boys who fancy themselves as grown men.

Though mainstream System media is desperate to pretend it isn’t so, the Path of the Killer has arrived on schedule. The prognosis is doubleplus ungood for billionaire CEOs, grinning politicians, and status quo tops who make the mistake of being visible on the internet. Whoops! For many years, I wondered why school and theater shooters didn’t march into the boardrooms of Monsanto, Bayer, and Nestle instead of a fifth grade classroom. Many school shootings are false flags, meaning the government mass murdering real fifth graders in real time and then claiming the dirty deed was not done by the CIA in order to ram through anti-Second Amendment legislation.

Insurance adjustors

Luigi Mangione was, as we all suspected, the first in what will be a long line of adjustors to terrify and purge the political class that sits prettily above the common people on their heavy thrones. Luigi allegedly took out United Health CEO Brian Thompson in late 2024. A combination of lax security measures and good timing enabled Thompson’s gratuitous slaughter in front of the Hilton in midtown Manhattan. The opening ceremony of our new era of killers was brazen and showy. Mangione is supposedly being treated like a prison king, with nobody allowed to mess with him and his hair carefully crafted by another inmate in an expert fade. Sean Combs, a.k.a. P. Diddy, who is in the same prison at the moment, is reportedly very jealous, because his prison slop allegedly is full of bugs, poop, semen, and pubic hair. Awww.

There was a brief respite for status quo overlords and their media mouthpieces until June 6, 2025, when Nicholas Manning, the CEO of West Valley Medical Center in Idaho was found dead in a Baltimore, Maryland hotel room. It’s interesting that the Mangione family owns several hotels in Baltimore (though not the one where Manning was found) and is heavily involved in the politics in Maryland, but I digress. Manning was 46 when he was found dead, supposedly of a drug overdose. His family adamantly claims that he was murdered. West Valley’s parent company is the Health Care Corporation of America, which operates an 86 billion dollar network of for profit hospitals across the US and UK. Manning allegedly made 21 million per year. Manning’s family insists fraud was involved in Nicholas’s death, which is currently under investigation.

Thomas Gebremedhin, a VP at Penguin Random House, recently got in hot water when he tweeted about the alleged murder of Wesley LePatner, a female, Jewish CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust and married mother of two. Gebremedhin pointed out that LePatner made $9000 per minute while making home ownership difficult to impossible for nearly everyone else and expressed that she should “rest in piss”. LePatner’s company was called out by none other than the United Nations for massively inflating rents and home prices around the globe more than six years ago, and of course the private equity firm’s response was to do much more of the same. LePatner and her family lived in a tacky, multimillion dollar penthouse overlooking Jay Z and Beyonce’s building in New York.

Many gods, and not half of them pacifists

Ours is not an openly warlike civilization, as that would take a level of honesty most of us do not possess. We like to hide our hatred and veil it with a veneer of virtue signaling. As John Michael Greer wrote, hate is the new sex, and the repression of hatred as a natural force has become a leitmotif in public and private life.

The most perfunctory of studies of ancient Greece reveal the rivalry between Athens and Sparta. Though we modernites like to stamp ancient cultures with our own generic brand of materialist atheism, Greek city states were deeply enamored and embedded with the gods they worshipped. In Athens, the primary deity being worshipped was obviously Athena, but the entire pantheon constantly occupied minds and hearts. The gods were involved in everyday Greek life in a way no modern person will ever understand. Ares was not the only god of Sparta as Hollywood might presume. Apollo, slayer of Tityus, was revered as well as Artemis the huntress.

Furthermore, the Greek gods weren’t nice. Niobe, the Queen of Thebes, boasted about her superior fertility compared with the goddess Leto, mother of Artemis and Apollo. Niobe had fourteen children and Leto only had two. A kinder, gentler pair of gods would have let it slide. Instead, Artemis killed each one of Niobe’s seven daughters with her arrows and Apollo caused Niobe’s sons to sicken, shrivel, and die. Niobe’s husband then died of plague. Niobe wept until she was transformed into a stone on Mount Sipylus.

Unlike monotheist retards, I don’t believe myths actually literally happened, however, this tale gives us some hints to the dark nature of a solar god and a lunar goddess. The gods killed Niobe and her presumably innocent children for her egomania. They slaughtered her and her family because she was an uppity, arrogant insect who became too annoying not to stomp, and personally I don’t have a problem with it.

There are more not nice gods than nice ones. The brutality of the Iroquois was legendary, and I guarantee they weren’t even close to atheist. Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas were also not atheist, and they had plenty of warriors, slaves, and human sacrifice. The Abrahamic religion’s gods are typically brutes as well, with Allah marrying a seven year old girl and considering it fine to force Islam on the rest of the world by any means necessary. Yahweh is no slouch when it comes to hideous murder, and despite his admonitions to be fruitful and multiply, it seems that deity has never met an abortion he didn’t like.1

To the Vikings, Hel was both a goddess and a place where people went after they were dead. Earth and incarnation was the third station between two afterlife worlds: Valhalla for warriors and those who died honorable deaths in battle and Hel for everybody else. This is not to say Hel wasn’t restful or pleasant for some souls, it is only to say it was not considered as special or grand as Valhalla. Valhalla’s etymology is “hall of the battle-slain”. For those who died brave deaths, it is a sort of heaven, much closer to the gods and their world than Hel. They rest in Valhalla, fighting, feasting, dying, being reborn, and repeating the cycle again and again until Ragnarok, the final battle. Hel, on the other hand, is a land of mist and shadows. Hel is a female goddess who reaps souls to populate her gray sepulcher underneath the earth. Valhalla is in the sky.

Different strokes for different gods and different peoples

Monotheism had a good run. The gods of the last two thousand years each tried to create their own monopolies: Buddha in the East, Christianity in the West and South America, and Allah in the Middle East and Africa. The trouble with monotheist gods is they are all seemingly vying to be Highlander. There Can Be Only One in the monotheist purview, yet it does not appear as if a one-god model is going to happen on Earth or her Universe. During each of their respective peaks, Buddha, Yahweh/Jesus, and Allah commanded large respective populations. None has proven strong enough to take the entire world for himself at this point, and I don’t believe it is going to happen. Of course I could always be wrong.

The old gods seem to be on the rise, and there are many more of them than there are monotheist deities. As monotheism falters and its gods grow increasingly remote and distant, the appeal of gods who send help and comfort in our everyday lives is overwhelming. I don’t ask Jesus to help me communicate with my loved ones because I do not sense he is around or interested. I believe I have talked to Jesus about certain things and that he has illuminated me to great truths, however, for everyday pablum, he’s not my guy. Instead, I ask Hermes, Sul, or Lady Bastet (many of my loved ones are cats). As mainstream religions impale themselves upon their own hypocrisy, it is only logical that polytheism resurges to the place it once held for most people; nature abhors a vacuum.

I am not going to speak for my gods, however, I don’t believe they like the Brian Thompsons and Wesley LePatners of the world. I don’t believe the people who rained punishment on bigwig CEOs are going to hell… at all. Valhalla perhaps, but not hell. Samurais did not forgive their enemies. To forgive or yield to an enemy was considered much more dishonorable than death.

In order to die with honor, it is sometimes necessary to kill, or at the very least to allow death to do its natural thing. I once saw a video of an old Indian street woman eating her own barf because she was starving to death. I am glad I have never known that kind of hunger, but at what point is it not worth hanging on? Especially when you come from a culture that wholly considers reincarnation to be a thing?

In spite of the hordes of pudgy, suicidal, gamer-goomers, there will always be various groups and individuals who have not had their skills bred or cucked out of them. There may be a thousand hikkiko moris content to sleep until 2:46pm or until they get hungry enough to rise for whatever meal Mom provides for them at age forty-three but there will always be one or two with enough vigor to sneak a gun into the citadel. Even in less populous times, there was no way of controlling us all.

There is a whole culture in prison devoted to the sadistic torture and murder of child molesters and murderers. In 2018, Chris Watts allegedly killed his pregnant wife Shanann and their two daughters, four year old Bella and three year old Celeste. Chris tried to lie about the murders at first and later confessed. His motive for the crimes seems to be that he was having an affair with another woman and he and Shanann were in deep financial trouble. Rumors are circulating Chris Watts is not having a good time in prison. He has been transferred from a North Carolina penitentiary to a Wisconsin one because he was beaten up and lives in constant fear of being beaten, poisoned, or raped. In other words, his fellow prisoners are punishing him because the law is not up to the job. Jared Fogle of Subway commercial fame seems to have run a child porn distribution center since his young manhood. After making it as a sandwich actor, he still was dumb enough to get caught crossing state lines with the intention of raping a kid. In 2016, a fellow inmate in the Colorado facility where Jared was being detained beat the crap out of him, punching him several times in his face.

To my mind, it is pathetic that lifers in prison are the only ones responsible enough to zero out the recidivism rate of kiddy diddlers via the only way that is effective. When a pedo is killed in prison, it is a public service that benefits the taxpayer, who no longer has to fund that prisoner’s existence.

When human garbage is in a high place, holding his or her fellow humans in thrall and subjecting them to his caprice, I am not so sure it is the Devil acting when that human trash is taken to the curb. America and other nations have entered our Insane Roman Emperor era. No matter how many emperors were killed back in those days, new and often worse ones popped up in their place. Eventually the whole construct collapsed and gave way to different gods. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Humans do not make gods, no matter what Yuval Noah Harari or Richard Dawkins wants to believe. Humans perceive gods in our own image because we don’t know what else to do and frame of reference is not our strong point. Are the gods OK with it when we take matters into our own hands? I don’t know, but I would argue they don’t seem entirely adverse to it.

1Exodus 21:22-23, Numbers 5:11-28, Hosea 13:16