March 2010

Everything that’s wrong with the Catholic Church, in a nutshell:

Speaking during Palm Sunday Mass, he said that faith in Christ “helps lead us towards courage which does not allow us to be intimidated by the chatter of dominant opinions”.

{ 0 comments }

Holidays and Traditions:

The Real Dracula
Discover the real life exploits of Vladislavs Dracula, a very real monster who gave new meaning to the word Bloodthirsty.

The Golden Bough: Mistletoe history and lore
The role of Mistletoe in European traditions.

Oh, Tannenbaum!
The custom of decorating an evergreen with lights and ornaments is ostensibly Christian, but its roots lie deep in the Pagan past. Discover the fascinating history of the Christmas tree.

Remembering the Dead
A look at the different ways a variety of faiths remember and honor the dead, from the Mexican Day of the Dead, to the Chinese Feast of the Hungry Ghosts.

Halloween History Hysteria
Some conservative Christian tract writers believe Halloween has sinister origins. Explore common myths and realities about the religious origins of Halloween.

The Mysterious Dying God.
What does Christianity have in common with ancient Pagan religions? Much more than you might think.

The Pagan Origins of the Easter Bunny
Not an ordinary rabbit! Learn the true origin of the furry Easter icon.

Occult History, practices, symbols:

Through a glass, Darkly
Mirror gazing, or scrying, is one of the oldest known forms of divination, dating back to antiquity. Learn the divination used by Nostradamus, Dr. John Dee, even Joseph Smith! Also, learn a simple method to construct your own scrying mirror.

The Necronomicon
Its use has propelled the unwitting into violence, insanity, and death. Just looking inside without proper precautions can render a person insane….right? Hardly!

Secrets of Magic Symbols
Most symbols of western magic, astrology, and alchemy are based on a common symbolic alphabet. Knowing the secret system behind these symbols can provide an incredible amount of insight into even the most inscrutable signs and symbols.

Aleister Crowley FAQ

Secrets of Magic Symbols- part two
Explore further the universal symbolic alphabet, with the omnipresent serpent and the cosmic egg.

The Kabbalistic Tarot
The master key to the Tarot can be found in an ancient mystical system known as the Kabbalah. Learn the system behind tarot cards and their symbolism.

Baphomet
At first look, it appears ghastly-a grotesque sphinx like creature, with the head of a goat, cloven hooves, and the body of a nude woman. It is the Baphomet, one of the most misunderstood religious symbols of all time. Learn the history and origin of the mysterious mascot of ritual magick.

Love Magick
Love spells and charms are a universal phenomenon- looking for magical assistance in making a love connection- no matter how icky, sticky, or even toxic- is as old as mankind.

Grimoire- the Magician’s Handbook
Containing complex instructions for conjuring demons and spirits, the Grimoires of European magicians were more than just primers in the Dark Arts.

The Emerald Tablet
The Emerald tablet is the cornerstone of the Hermetic movement. It’s origin is shrouded in mystery, yet is has been an inspiration for alchemists and magicians for hundreds of years.
More: Hermetic Tradition – Learn more about the art of Hermes

Dr. John Dee, the original Wizard
Who was John Dee? A brilliant magician, mathematician, scientist, and secret agent- the original Renaissance man. Without him, there would be no Harry Potter, no Gandalf, no wizard bearing a crystal ball- and no agent 007.

Divination:

Color your own Tarot cards
Own a deck that’s unlike any other- by creating it yourself! This feature includes cards you can print out, and simple instructions so you can create your own unique Tarot cards.

The I Ching
The I Ching, or Book of Changes, has influenced Eastern philosophy for millenia. Learn how to consult this ancient oracle with nothing more than a few pennies and a pencil and paper.

Runes- The Alphabet of Odin
Discover the ancient oracular alphabet of the Norse, the meanings of the Runic characters, and learn how to do a basic divination with Runes.

Ogham- the Celtic Oracular Alphabet
The mysterious Celtic Ogham alphabet dates from the fourth century, and is used as a divinatory system by modern Druids and neopagans.

Through a glass, Darkly
Mirror gazing, or scrying, is one of the oldest known forms of divination, dating back to antiquity. Learn the divination used by Nostradamus, Dr. John Dee, even Joseph Smith! Also, learn a simple method to construct your own scrying mirror.

Vachetta Tarot
The beautiful and enchanting Vacchetta Tarot joins out Color your own Tarot feature. print and color a full deck, including minor arcana.

Religion and Religious Experiences:

The Seven African Powers
In the Yoruban tradition that is parent to the Lukumi and Palo faiths, the Orishas are emissaries of God, ruling the forces of nature and the fortunes of mankind. The Seven African powers are the primary deities of this tradition.

Hoodoo- An American magical tradition
Interest in African rooted spiritual traditions such as Voodoo, Santeria, and Palo is growing steadily in the US, but few are aware that Hoodoo, a unique fusion of American folk practices and African magical traditions, has been a fixture of American culture for several hundred years. Author Stephanie Rose Bird shares with us some Hoodoo basics.

Hoodoo’s Dance with Death
Guest author Stephanie Rose Bird muses about the traditions of her childhood.

Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji
Five centuries ago, during a time of great strife between Hindu and Muslim believers, a young prophet brought forth the message, “There is neither Hindu nor Muslim.”

Vodoun, the real Voodoo
Vodoun, the traditional religion of Haiti, is one of the most misunderstood religions of all time. Learn more about this ancient ancestral tradition.

A Defense of Discordianism
Tired of cranky old religions and arrogant thunder Gods who take the fun out of everything? Discordian Fayanora’s description of life as a Discordian.

A Defense of Discordianism-Part Two
All is Chaos- Part two of Fayanora’s paean to the Goddess of Discord. Even more babble and confusing prose.

The Way and its Power- the story of the Tao te Ching
When the wise man Laotze was halted on his travels by a customs official who demanded he declare his items of value, Laotze replied that he had only one thing of value- his wisdom. The official pondered this and decided that as payment, Laotze should write down his wisdom. The result was the Tao te Ching.

Kalpana Chawla
Astronaut Kalpana Chawla was a pioneer in more ways than one. The accomplished mission specialist was the first Indian space traveler. She was also the first Sikh.

Symbolism:

The Tree of Life
The Tree of life is a universal motif, found in every ancient culture- a symbol of the uniting of heaven and earth, spiritual nourishment, and even enlightenment.

The Pentagram
The pentagram is almost as old as mankind, an an important symbol in many religions. Learn the history, meaning, and importance of the Pentagram throughout history.

Gnostic Hollywood
Has Hollywood gone Gnostic? Are there secret theological messages in modern films? Explore Cinema’s strange new direction.

Exploring The Da Vinci Code: Was Jesus Married?

Masonry, Secret Societies:

Freemasonry 101
A brief overview of the history and symbols of freemasonry.

A New Order of Ages
The Masonic Enlightenment and the Symbols of America

Politics, Cults, Controversy:

Separation of Church and State?
A collection of quotes from founding fathers and US presidents supporting church and state separation, including a list of bogus quotes to watch out for.

Clone or Con?
A controversial company claiming to have produced the first human clone may have ties to the Raelians, a controversial religious group. What lead a former sports journalist to turn to a gospel of extra-terrestrial Gods and human cloning?

{ 0 comments }

CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° is planning a series on violence in Scientology, set to begin this Monday.  Anderson notes on his blog that although the series has not yet aired, he’s already receiving a ton of form-letter complaints from Scientologists, who claim he’s attacking their beliefs.

{ 3 comments }

Twenty years after her controversial Saturday Night Live appearance, it turns out she’s still not wrong.

{ 0 comments }

If you’ve ever wondered what Mormons turn to in a culture that frowns on alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco, food write Scarlett Lindeman  of the Atlantic has the answer:  Lots of Jello (among other things).

“Utah food culture, for the most part, can be dubbed Mormon cuisine. The state was settled in 1847 by Brigham Young, the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints following the assassination of founder Joseph Smith, and as the community fled religious persecution it spread into southern Idaho, California, Wyoming, and Nevada, popularly called the “Mormon Corridor” or the “Jell-O Belt.”

{ 0 comments }

This is fantastic news.  According to NPR:

“While Sikhs used to serve in the Army while observing their religion’s requirements for wearing turbans and not shaving their hair and beards, the Army eliminated the exemption in 1984.

Until now. After much advocacy from the Sikh community, the Army relented for Rattan and for a fellow Sikh who will be trained as a medic this summer.

“It was definitely a very humbling experience,” Rattan tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “I have a lot of responsibilities on my shoulder. Not even as a soldier, but as a Sikh.”

{ 0 comments }

Have you ever wondered where the celebration of the Christian holiday celebrating the resurrection of Christ acquired its unusual name and odd symbols of colored eggs and rabbits?

The answer lies in the ingenious way that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices. After discovering that people were more reluctant to give up their holidays and festivals than their gods, they simply incorporated Pagan practices into Christian festivals. As recounted by the Venerable Bede, an early Christian writer, clever clerics copied Pagan practices and by doing so, made Christianity more palatable to pagan folk reluctant to give up their festivals for somber Christian practices.

Continue Reading >>>

{ 0 comments }

Today is the Vernal Equinox, when the sun crosses the Celestial equator, and enters the sign of Aries. The Spring Equinox is one of the most ancient and Holidays. In ancient times, it was a day of mourning for the consort of the Goddess, the Dying God.

It is known to Neopagans as Ostara, the feast day of the Goddess Easter, the Anglo-Saxon counterpart of the ancient Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar. It is also the first day of the New Year in the Zoroastrian Calendar,  No Ruz, or “New Day.” Here’s a bit of history on Mesopotamian New Year festivals.

{ 0 comments }

A Virginia lawmaker* is attempting to thwart the Antichrist with a preemptive ban on implanted microchips.  His fellow lawmakers ridiculed it, then passed it.  As Republican David Albo pointed out, “The fact that some people who support it are a little wacky doesn’t make it a bad idea.”  I can buy that.

Is it me, or do Jedis only make the news for causing public disturbances?

That for all the claims of some religious folk to moral superiority, it was a humanist group that did the right thing?

The state of New Jersey adds Pagan/Wiccan Holidays to the school calendar.

Time is running out for Lebanese  television psychic Ali Hussain Sibat, who was tricked into visiting Saudi Arabaia, where he was arrested and convicted of  sorcery by the country’s religious authorities.  If you’ve ever wondered what life in the US would be like with fundamentalists in charge, this is it.

The fundamentalist propaganda machine that is Stephen Baldwin is a little scarier than it looks.

Religion Dispatches looks at Scientology’s aggressive attacks on the media, and how its strategy has evolved over time.  Scientology’s had a rather bad couple of years, having come under intense media scrutiny, subject to massive protests, and losing almost half of its US membership.

A second push for a Senate inquiry into the practices of Scientology in Australia has been blocked.  A third attempt is already planned.

Representatives of several orders of nuns in the US have publicly stood up to Catholic Bishops’ opposition to Barack Obama’s health care plans.  Although the Bishops contend the bill promotes abortion, a spokesman for the nuns group referred to their support as “The real pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.”

*Amazing how many weird stories start with that phrase

{ 0 comments }

The blog No Longer Quivering details the experiences of refugees from the Quiverfull movement, an evangelical movement that promotes family planning in the old catholic style, in which women continue to bear children as many times as they become pregnant.

“Calulu” relates the frustration and heartbreak of finding oneself barren in a faith group that emphasizes fertility as a sign of god’s grace, and describes a culture in which lack of fertility is attributed to divine punishment for  the sins of the would-be mother- everything from secret abortions to petty lapses in  nutrition.  In one incident, she describes a church newsletter’s speculation on her “unrevealed” sins:

“Some began to suggest in prayer that whatever I’d done to bring this barrenness upon myself be revealed to me so I could repent, pray and be healed. After all, God did bless the righteous with many arrows in their quivers so obviously there was something unrighteous about me. It didn’t hit me fully how looked down upon I’d become until a church member referred to me as her ‘heathen buddy who only has two children’ Someone else spread on the prayer list that I had problems related to a past abortion, even though I’d never had an abortion.”

I find this tendency to blame the victims of birth or circumstance for their conditions to be one of the more disturbing aspects of fundamentalist Christianity.  This isn’t an isolated idea, either- the news media was shocked when a Virginia Republican suggested disabled children are God’s punishment for past abortions, but I’m guessing this was sadly familiar to a lot of Christian women.

{ 0 comments }

A UK man claims his life was saved by an image of Jesus that appeared in his frying pan.  After the man passed out drunk, leaving a pan of bacon on the stove, he claims to have awakened to burned bacon and an image of the savior.

Will it get its own website, like this bit of blurry scorch-mark on an iron?

Also, not to be outdone, Allah makes his mark, LOLcat style: the name “Allah” appears on the side of a cat named Osama.

{ 0 comments }

Today marks a sad aniversary, one of the least-known but most tragic chapters in Church history, when the last of the European gnostics ended a long siege and walked willingly into the bonfires prepared for them by the inquisitors of the Catholic Church. Their only crime was believing differently than other Christians.

The Cathars were a medieval Gnostic movement that flourished for a time in the Languedoc region of Southern France. They are thought to be an offshoot of the Bogomils, a Bulgarian gnostic sect, in turn most likely influenced by ideas from Manichean and other eastern gnostic sects,* brought West through trade routes from the Middle East.

The Cathars believed themselves to be the only “true” church, and dismissed the Roman Church as corrupt, greedy, hypocritical, and power-hungry Roman paganism. They eschewed materialism and hierarchy, and attempted to emulate the earliest Christians, living simply and ascetically.

Cathar Dualism

Very little is known about the intricacies of Cathar doctrines, but it is known that they had a dualistic view similar to that of the Zoroastrians and the Manichean gnostics- that good and evil were eternal powers that existed in almost balanced measure, in constant opposition. They believed the material world to be a prison- that Satan was the personification of chaos, and the earth a construct that allowed the dark forces to imprison and partake of the nature of the light. The taught that it it was a Cathar’s spiritual duty to liberate the spirit from its material prison. These beliefs led to a lot of supertistious misinterpretation by enemies of the sect, who have claimed that the Cathars utterly rejected the physical body, that they were favorable to or encouraged suicide, abortion, etc. The Cathars themselves seemed to interpret this “liberation of spirit” to be at least partially metaphorical, carried out by their rejection of material wealth and social rank and their emulation of Jesus.

Continue: The Cathars and the Massacre at Montsegur

{ 0 comments }

In this week’s edition:

The Holy See’s busiest  exorcist has accused the Vatican of sheltering a Satanic cult

The Satanic Conspiracy industry is still going strong.  The popular notion in the industry now is less Satan, more MK Ultra, the same garbage in new packaging.

Authorities revisit a notorious 25-year old murder, suggest that maybe Satanists were to blame after all.

One such ’survivor’ desperately seeks to open a ritual abuse case against Father Gerald Robinson, whose conviction for the Satanic murder of a nun in 2004 was clearly wrongful.  Among the woman’s accusations are claims she was forced to drink blood, raped with a snake, and forced to watch small animals being killed.

In better news, 48 hours and actor Johnny Depp combine forces in a last-ditch plea for the West Memphis Three.

Interesting

Speaking of ancient accusations, new evidence has surfaced that ancient Carthaginians weren’t sacrificing babies after all.

Does the movie Avatar allude to the tenth incarnation of Vishnu?

File under WTF

Need a unique fashion accessory?  Try a fetus rosary!

A healing ceremony that required participants to ingest snail mucus ends about as well as expected.

9th district says “under god” is a display of patriotism, no religion here, keep moving!

Glenn beck pisses off Christians- apparently there are some yet who prefer the teachings of Christ to those of radio personalities.

Texas thinks it’s a bad idea to teach students about the First Amendment.

{ 0 comments }

A Wisconsin judge has ruled in favor of an Amish farmer who claimed that being forced to register his livestock went against his religious beliefs.  While the state policy aims to control food-borne diseases, Wisconsin Amish consider the law a step away from the Satanic “mark of the Beast.”

{ 0 comments }

A Zimbabwean tribe who assert their identity as a lost tribe of Israelites have recently had their claims validated through DNA testing.  The Lembas of Zimbabwe and South Africa have a number of observances and practices similar to Judaism.  They eschew pork and bloody meat, practice ritual circumcision, and scribe the star of David on their tombs.

The DNA tests confirm the Lemba’s claims that a small group of settlers married African women some 2500 years ago (Lemba women do not have Jewish DNA)  The Lemba are just one of several Jewish ‘tribes’ discovered via DNA testing.

The Lemba also claim to own a relic linked to the Ark of the Covenant.

See also:

‘Lost Tribe’ returns to Israel, about the return of India’s Bnei Manashe

Ethiopian Jews: trapped in-between

{ 0 comments }

Protesting Church abuses

Scientology’s abusive treatment of its most dedicated adherents is once again exploding into the spotlight.  The Sunday New York Times profiles Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris Collbran, former members of Scientology’s infamous “Sea Org.”  The Collbrans, like so many before them, allege human trafficking, violent abuse, coercion, and worse.  The Church responds, as usual, with tours of lofty, empty buildings, unverifiable claims of growing membership, and claims that the Collbrans, like every defector before them, were “expelled” for holding Scientology back.

Coming next: allegations of journalistic malfeasance, veiled threats, photos of the Collbran’s home, and offers of their “confidential” confessional files.

Also: just days before Australia’s Parliament votes on an inquiry into the practices of Scientology in that country, the program “Four Corners” will feature even more allegations of abuse and illegal treatment.

{ 0 comments }

Watch in disgust as one of Scientology’s clueless “volunteer minsters” in Haiti boasts about stealing water-filled radiation shields from a radiology room to distribute as drinking water:

Edit: when my tipster wrote pointing this out, this was the Minister’s response:

Re: Video
Fuck you, asshole. Were you there? No. Do you know what I am talking about? No. So SHUT THE FUCK UP!

{ 13 comments }

Apologies for the late edition- the Scientology story got a lot of response and time got away from me.

In this edition:

Factoidz has a great piece on false memory syndrome.

An arson suspect is accused of owning a book on atheism (oh no!)

It’s like a Muslim version of that “celebrate” joke.

The Vatican was probably due for a gay prostitution scandal.  Too bad it’s right after a particularly disturbing abortion scandal.

Scientology hires reporters to “investigate” a critical newspaper.  We would be pretty surprised if it didn’t backfire.

Hijabs don’t meet Hollister stores’ “look” policy, First Amendment keeps not giving a crap.

Campus atheists propose “porn for bibles” swap.

{ 0 comments }

This is one of the strangest donation drives I’ve ever seen.  Stephen Baldwin is of course the lesser Baldwin brother, a c-list actor whose very public conversion to evangelical Christianity arguably wasn’t good for his career.  It’s not too strange for his fellow believers to want to elevate this “man of God,” but the way it works is definitely bizarre.  Taking inspiration from the story of Job, the premise is that if enough fellow believers “gift” the actor with donations, God will notice and “restore” him to wealth and stardom.

This strange leap of logic is inspired by a this passage from the Old testament:

“After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before.

All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.”

Which doesn’t appear to say “Give Stephen Baldwin cash,” but then, I’m no Christian scholar.

Don’t miss the video, which is dramatic and silly enough even for Scientology:

{ 0 comments }