Don't have a cow, man

The Inspector, Karen Liebowitz

And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke — Numbers 19:1-2 (KJV)

Robert Guffey's Cryptoscatology turned me on to the bizarre and frightening story of Clyde Lott, cattle breeder and fundamentalist Christian, who is seeking to breed an unblemished Red Heifer in order to bring about the construction of the Third Temple which will then bring about the Second Coming of Christ, along with the end of the world as we know it.

Why the Red Heifer?

The red heifer or red cow (Hebrew: פרה אדומה; parah adumah) was a sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible the ashes of which are used for the ritual purification of an ancient Israelite who had come into contact with a corpse.

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In Daniel 12:10, God tells Daniel that in the last days, "many shall be purified and made white"; a reference to the purification ritual of the Red Heifer, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isa 1:18, Num 19:6). The analogy appears to relate to a partner of the returning End Time messiah.

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The absolute rarity of the animal, combined with the detailed ritual in which it is used, have given the Red Heifer special status in Jewish tradition. It is cited as the prime example of a khok, or biblical law for which there is no apparent logic, and is therefore deemed of absolute Divine origin. Because the state of ritual purity obtained through the ashes of a Red Heifer is a necessary prerequisite for participating in Temple service, efforts have been made in modern times by Jews wishing for biblical ritual purity and in anticipation of the building of The Third Temple to locate a red heifer and recreate the ritual.

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The Temple Institute, an organization dedicated to preparing the reconstruction of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, has been attempting to identify Red Heifer candidates consistent with the requirements of Numbers 19:1–22 and Mishnah Tractate Parah.

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During a March 2010 radio interview a Temple Institute representative claimed that there is now "definitely a kosher red heifer here in Israel."

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The non-canonical Epistle of Barnabas (8:1) explicitly equates the Red Heifer with Jesus.

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Some Fundamentalist Christians believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ cannot occur until the Third Temple is constructed in Jerusalem, which requires the appearance of a red heifer born in Israel. Clyde Lott, a cattle breeder in O'Neill, Nebraska, United States, is attempting to systematically breed red heifers and export them to Israel to establish a breeding line of red heifers in Israel in the hope that this will bring about the construction of the Third Temple and ultimately the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Not forgetting that for fundamentalist Christians such as Lott, the Second Coming will be preceded by the reign of the Antichrist.  The Second Coming will result in the Last Judgement, the end times thought by some to be described in the Book of Revelation.

His is what would be generally described as a "futurist" interpretation of Revelation:

Futurist interpretations generally predict a resurrection of the dead and a rapture of the living, wherein all true Christians and those who have not reached an age of accountability are gathered to Christ at the time God's kingdom comes on earth. They also believe a tribulation will occur - a seven-year period of time when believers will experience worldwide persecution and martyrdom, and be purified and strengthened by it. 

Those not included in the rapture will be condemned to hell on earth, forever.  Which is actually probably pretty accurate, for the reconstruction of the Third Temple must be on the Temple Mount where we currently find the Dome of the Rock, the second holiest site in Islam.  Destruction of this mosque would lead to such a violent Holy War that it could easily finish in nuclear holocaust.  Even after the Israelis trounced their Muslim adversaries in the Six Day War, they left the Temple Mount in the hands of their enemies.  Even in victory, they couldn't risk the all-out Jihad of the entire Muslim world should they have chosen to occupy it.

So breeding the Red Heifer is just one way to bring about the Apocalypse.

La vache qui rit

 

One happy heifer

Being the goofball I am, the words "red heifer" made me think of the only red heifer I know about: La vache qui rit, aka The Laughing Cow. (Red Bull energy drinks don't count, a heifer is a female, a bull, a male!)

This brand of cheese dates to 1921, when brothers Leon and Jules Bel founded the company and created the first spreadable cheese found in individual, foil-wrapped portions.

The cow itself was trademarked in 1921 by Leon, becoming France's first brand-name cheese.  In 1924, friend Benjamin Rabier created the caricature of the cow which is pretty much the same version we see today.

Obviously, this jovial bovine is not the Red Heifer of the Book of Daniel.  For starters, her nose and hooves have white hair; according to the stringent standards of the rabbis, this disqualifies the Laughing Cow as a sacrificial candidate.  Furthermore, it's a cartoon character.

Funny thing though, is the name of the founders:  Bel.  Bel and the Dragon is an apocryphal book of the Bible, chapter 14 of the extended Book of Daniel, the very book in which the Red Heifer makes an important appearance in an end of days context.

In Bel and the Dragon, there are, curiously, two incidents related to food.  In the first, Daniel challenges the Persian King Cyrus's belief that his idol is a living God.  Cyrus says his proof is that the God consumes a ritual meal overnight.  By scattering ashes on the floor, Daniel is able to prove that the meal is in fact consumed by the priests who hide inside the statue and come out at night to gobble up the ritual offerings; their footprints give them away.  Cyrus then has the priests, their wives and their children killed on the spot and allows Daniel to destroy the idol.  Yahweh is a jealous god and when affronted, thinks nothing of allowing the murder of women, children, etc.  Remember the Apocalypse!

In the brief but autonomous companion narrative of the dragon (14:23-30), "there was a great Dragon, which they of Babylon worshiped."....  Daniel slays the dragon by baking pitch, fat, and hair (trichas) to make cakes (mazas, barley-cakes, but translated "lumps") that cause the dragon to burst open upon consumption.

So, given the family name and the centrality of food in these two stories, is it not possible the Bel brothers chose the Red Heifer as a sly nod to the Book of Daniel?

Also interesting is that Bêl is not a name but a title meaning "Lord" or "Master".  Feminized, it's Bêlit, meaning "Lady" or "Mistress".  As in....the Scarlet Lady?  More on that later.

I iz not the Red Heifer you iz looking for

L'Homme qui rit

The Man Who Laughs in French, L'Homme qui rit (1869) is one of Victor Hugo's more obscure novels, written after he had embraced Spiritist and Deist religious views.

Is it also possible that the vache qui rit is a comical nod to Hugo's novel?  The first major character in the novel is a snake-oil salesman who "dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus (Latin for "bear"). His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for “man”). 

I was only attracted to the novel because the title was an echo (or vice versa) of our lovable cow, but I was surprised that this animal/human transvestism is a feature of the novel, because what is the Laughing Cow but an anthropomorphized animal?

The second major character is a starving boy lost in the snow.  He encounters a hanged criminal, and takes the dead man's shoes.  He then walks some more and encounters another corpse, a women in rags, frozen to death.  He discovers an infant child clutching at the woman's breast, from which hangs a single drop of frozen milk. (OK, not to take things too far, but milk?  And cows?)   He realizes the girl is blind. He eventually stumbles upon the caravan of Ursus, the animal man.

A flashback later in the novel reveals that in this first encounter, Ursus thinks the boy is laughing as he holds the nearly dead blind girl; upon closer look, he sees the boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, carved into a smile.  He is l'homme qui rit, Gwynplaine.

The girl is eventually named Dea (Latin = "goddess").  Due to her blindness, she can't see Gwynplaine's deformity and the pair fall in love.

As it turns out, Gwynplaine was the victim of court scheming, sent off to a group of kid traffickers who disfigured him in order to sell him as a freak to a travelling carnival or circus.  After intrigue involving an arranged marriage and investiture as the rightful Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone, he is ordered to take his seat in the House of Lords. "But, when the deformed Gwynplaine addresses his peers with a fiery speech against the gross inequality of the age, the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish features."

Gwynplaine/Lord Fermain (fer = "iron" / main = "hand") renounces his peerage and returns to search for Ursus and Dea, who he eventually finds.

Dea is delighted that Gwynplaine has returned to her. She reveals her passion to Gwynplaine, and then she abruptly dies. Gwynplaine then walks, as though in a trance to the edge of the ship, speaking to Dea, and with the reflection of a distant light in his eyes, though the sky is starless. He throws himself into the water, and is thus reunited with Dea in death. When Ursus, who has fainted in Dea's last moments, comes to his senses, Gwynplaine has vanished, and Homo is staring mournfully over the ship's rail, howling into the sea from which Gwynplaine will not return.

So, the deformed clown is united with the goddess by throwing himself in the water, and the wolf/man mourns their death.  This paring of a laughing man and a goddess, whom Christians would automatically label a false deity, may have some importance in our unfolding poetic discourse.

Gwynplaine incarnated by Conrad Veigt

Don't forget the Joker

Hugo's novel and it's various filmed versions have inspired several Batman comics over the years:

• 1940. Jerry Robinson borrows the physique and grotesque grin of Gwynplaine as his inspiration for the Joker, something revealed by Bob Kane in later interviews.
• 1998. Artist Brian Bolland is inspired by The Man Who Laughs film for Batman: The Killing Joke.
• 2003. In the "Wild Cards" episode of the Justice League animated series, the Joker uses "Gwynplaine Entertainment" as an alias.
• 2005. Batman: The Man Who Laughs.
• 2008. The Dark Knight. The Joker's permanent grin appears to be caused by a mutilation to his face.
• 2011. Batman and Robin, writer David Hine introduced a deformed French supervillain named the Man Who Laughs. His backstory states that his father, a fan of classic art and literature, carved a smile onto his face as an intentional homage to Hugo's novel.

The only reason these Batman references jumped out at me is because of the Aurora shootings, to which a host of Batman references have been associated by various Internet synchromystics, conspiracy theorists and people who pay attention.  Holmes himself said:  "I am the Joker" before opening fire on the apostolic dozen of victims.  This feeds back to our Red Heifer because I've recently run across a lot of references to a woman in red, but more specifically, with regard to Aurora shooter Robert Holmes:

Loren Coleman has been writing about the symbolism of a "lady in red" (Holmes' Harlots, July 30, 2012).  He links several appearances of the red woman to the Aurora shootings in Colorado, itself one in a series of shootings with patterns pointing to what Coleman calls "Red Dawn" scenarios.  This follows a post of July 22, Blood Red Movie Massacres.  Back on May 3, The Sink Hole's Will Morgan devoted a post to the topic, unrelated to shootings, entitled....Lady in Red.  Morgan links the red lady to the Sacred Whore of Babylon.  Coleman links her to prostitution.  Old acquaintance Tate Bunker, who I haven't actually spoken to in 20 years or so, premiered his first feature film, Little Red at the Milwaukee Film Festival (September 30).

If you will, the Whore of Babylon is also known as the Scarlet Woman. Interesting that the red women in Coleman's post are harlots, or whores. Echoing Hugo's "Dea" and the stories of Daniel, the word translated here as "whore" can also be translated as "idolatress." Is the Scarlet Woman the "partner of the returning End Time messiah" referred to in Daniel 12:10? Hard to say. "Apocalypse" initially meant revelation, prophetic literature. Like most prophecy, it's pretty garbled stuff, encoded, cryptic. Fun stuff, but this tends to lead to as many interpretations as there are interpreters. So really who knows what the fuck Daniel or St. John were on about. Different Christians traditions have different interpretations. Funny thing is, we've got synchromystics going on about the current ubiquity of a Scarlet Woman, many appearances pointing back to the Batman mythos. So, from the Scarlet Heifer of Daniel to the Laughing Cow, thenceforth to the Laughing Man and finally to....the Joker and the Scarlet Lady. But where is the Antichrist?

Heath Ledger as the Joker

Enter Obama

A short time ago we posted Barack Obama is the Antichrist. We don't think he is, of course, but a lot of people do. www.beastobama.com may just be the best domain name, evah. We also looked at how Obama was depicted as the Joker in a post about the Batman links to Aurora (20 rosy fingers). This was all in the context of mass shootings, which for many on the conspiratorial right, are merely false flags to scare the sheeple into accepting gun control laws they might not otherwise push for or accept (see Cold, dead fingers). In fact, Obama has begun the process of issuing executive orders to regulate the access to firearms, a fact not lost on the right, to be sure. This is all a prelude, according to the BA is the AC crowd, for the pacification of the people, one more step towards One World Government/Religion and the New World Order of the Antichrist.

Batrack Obama as the Joker

If I don't get into whole Whore of Babylon thing, it's because no one knows for sure who exactly she is....each sect takes its prejudice and runs with it. Likewise the New World Order. Suffice it to say that for true believers, everything these days is a step towards that nefarious goal.

I have no conclusion here, but it was an interesting trip down the path of association. From the Red Heifer to Barak Obama, via cheese, Victor Hugo and the Joker. Not too shabby!

Cannibal Spring

Eschatology by Dummies

I'm a bit late off the mark, sure, but I have a few observations about the so-called "Zombie Apocalypse" which occurred last month as the sun was moving from the house of the fish into that of the twins.  Is this the beginning of The End, marked by the transit of Venus, an event as rare as the earth passing through the tail of a comet?  Are the Mayans in on this?

The Cooked....

April 13.  The seeds of this post were planted after reading the strange and amusing tale of "asexual" Japanese chef Mao Sugiyama who, post-op, seasoned and served up his own "meat and two veg" for five diners at 250 bucks a pop.  Make that four diners, one balked at the last minute.  Sugiyama is a true Iron Chef!  This story appeared in Huff Po on May 24.

April 16.  I'd forgotten about the Brazilian cannibals I read about back when that story first broke and have only just now remembered.  There's not much amusement here, only strangeness.  Two ladies and a fellow lured at least two young women into their home with an ad for a babysitting gig.  They then killed the women and dismembered the bodies, making meat pastries which they sold to the neighbors.  This "cannibal cult" called themselves the "Cartel", perhaps an homage to the cartels to the north in Mexico, where dismemberment and beheadings have become par for the course in the drug-related violence which has claimed lives on the scale of a full-on war.

Calling a cult a cartel isn't so strange.  There's a cartel in Oaxaca called Caballeros Templarios, that is, Knights Templar.  A cult, a cartel, a chivalric order....without pushing things too far, one could say they all share quite a bit of characteristics, including laws of silence....

Concerned with reducing the population, the "Cartel" apparently intended to kill three women a year.  Symbolically significant, perhaps, but not quite enough to reverse exponential population growth.  Another motive was "to purify their souls" according to a police spokesman.  This would not be without precedent.  I've read somewhere that both the Aztecs and some Kali cults practiced cannibalism in order to please or approach their respective gods.  This is my body, this is my blood....

...and the Raw

May 26.  Whatever amusement I got from the Japanese cook tale was completely absent from the events which went down in Miami.  Unless you've been living under a rock, you've almost certainly read about the "Miami Zombie," which began all this Zombie Apocalypse talk.  A naked Rudy Eugene was shot dead after being ordered to stop eating the face of a naked hobo by the name of Ronald Poppo.  We're told this attack lasted 18 + minutes and cost victim 70% + of his face:  nose, lips, one eye, forehead eaten to the bone.  The attacker is described by friends and family as a nice guy who smoked too much pot and read the Bible.  Obviously that book is a bad influence!  He was suspected of being on drugs, the current theory being "bath salts" after the newspapers suggested cocaine psychosis, then mutant LSD.  Even this is far from certain and apparently, some humanity remained in Eugene, for you see, no flesh was found in his stomach (it pays to wait before blogging).  In other words he spat, not swallowed.

In an interview with his girlfriend after the attack, the girlfriend said that Eugene was either "drugged or cursed."  She hadn't believed in Voodoo before this incident but after she saw the victim's face, she was a believer.  Eugene, incidentally, was of Haitian descent and of course, the Zombie is associated with Haitian Voudon.

May 25.  Another cannibal murder. Kenya-born Alexander Kinyua eats a houseguest, 37-year old exchange student Bonsafo Agyeai-Kodie, a Ghanaian.  Police were alerted when the head and hands of the victim were found in a trash bin by Kinyua's brother.  The killer had disposed of the torso and legs near a local church after consuming the victim's brain and heart.

We've already looked into the significance of the severed head and severed hands, both symbols of power.  In a lighter post, we also discussed the Egyptian misunderstanding of the heart as the seat of intelligence.  Without this specifically Egyptian inspiration, I would propose the dismemberment was in fact a way to disempower the victim both literally and symbolically  (deep, huh?).  Eating the heart and brain might have been a way to ingest something of the victims intelligence and emotions, his character; in this the killing becomes the ritual accompaniment to an act of sympathetic magic.  As we will see, another recent cannibal killer took off the hands and head of his victim.

The Kinyua killing happened, by the way, in Joppa, Maryland.  Joppa is another name for Jaffa, a port city in current-day Israel with a rich Muslim history (a history the Israeli authorities have done their best to gloss over).  It was also the turf of the Tribe of Dan.  A fitting provenance during the talk of a zombie apocalypse, for it is from this tribe that some Millenialist groups have ascribed the origin of....the Antichrist.

Kinyua also ranted about death cults and mass human sacrifice and had been kicked out of the ROTC. His past violence and notoriety as a ticking bomb will do little to assuage people's suspicions that this kind of behavior was in fact programmed.

Waiting for the War

In some forums I've read, comments imply these cannibal attacks are somehow Barack Obama's fault!  Others don't beat around the bush.  According to one, these attacks are a sign America must cut all immigration (now!) according to a post I can no longer find.  [I swear it's true; I read these comments before I started the post and lost the articles I'd read them in among the welter that followed.  This makes what I've just written unreliable hearsay....]  Indeed the "race war" theme seemed to have gained steam in the wake of the Trevor Martin killing.  Drudge often has headlines about black on white crime, usually about gangs of black youths attacking a lone white or a couple, often with a quote "This is for Trevor".  Of course, these are real events, but it's also a none-too-subtle attempt to stir up fear; I propose Drudge is assembling these incidents on his perpetual front-page in order to create the impression of a pattern whose tempo is increasing, linking these events to the Obama presidency without directly saying it, so that swing voters might be persuaded that a black man in the White House is encouraging this kind of behavior.

The specter of black mobs and violent uprising is a potent and visceral image, which, as well will see, has already been evoked by at least one mainstream politician--a year ago Mike Huckabee made the connection between Obama and the Mau Mau, for instance.

Ooh Mau Mau

A few days after all this cannibal stuff broke I got a message on Facebook:  Happy Madaraka Day.  This was on June 1.  This Kenyan holiday commemorates the day Kenya achieved self-rule.  I thought here of the Mau Mau uprising which preceded independence, grokking at the same moment that Kinyua was himself a Kenyan.  Incidentally, the Mau Mau were primarily from Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu; the name Kinyua comes from their language and means "one who drinks".  Presumably, the reference is to water, but for our boy Alexander the thirst seems to have been for blood....

It is said that:

"The horrors they [the Mau Mau] practiced included the following: decapitation and general mutilation of civilians, torture before murder, bodies bound up in sacks and dropped in wells, burning the victims alive, gouging out of eyes, splitting open the stomachs of pregnant women."

The Mau Mau uprising is another event evoked whenever someone wants to drop hints about the "upcoming" race war, and the Mau Mau have been linked to our Antichrist/President by more than Mike Huckabee.  There is some basis for this, in fact:


Sarah Obama, President Barack Obama's grandfather's wife told him that her husband was imprisoned for six months and tortured before being tried in a British court.

Thing is, this uprising was primarily "black-on-black" crime.  Only 32 white civilians were killed, the rest of the vicitms blacks and soldiers.  Many of these deaths were spectacularly barbaric.  But the English killed about 10,000 Kenyans supressing the uprising, which adds a little perspective.  The Mau Mau didn't hold a momopoly on savagery; English atrocities are well-documented:

"[E]lectric shock was widely used, as well as cigarettes and fire. Bottles (often broken), gun barrels, knives, snakes, vermin, and hot eggs were thrust up men's rectums and women's vaginas. The screening teams whipped, shot, burned and mutilated Mau Mau suspects, ostensibly to gather intelligence for military operations and as court evidence."

Cannibals All

But let get back to the present.  A man, Chinese exchange student Lin Lun, 33, is reported missing on May 24.  In this case one Luka Magnotta, born Eric Clinton Newman (New Man) films himself murdering the poor fellow.  He masturbates with a severed arm and commits another sex act with the corpse.  He also eats some the victim with a knife and fork, so it's not entirely uncivilized.  Unlike another Clinton, our "new man" Magnotta inhaled.

He mailed a foot and hand to the HQ's of Canada's major political parties.  The other hand and foot ended up in Vancouver, the nearest city to the series of discoveries of dismembered feet floating in local waterways.  Is Magnotta making a citation here?  Is he trying to plant the idea that he may have been responsible for these killings as well? 

Earlier on, some papers were reporting that Magnotta claimed to have dated notorious killer Karla Homolka.  Her tale involves the abduction, rape and torture and ultimate murder of three female victims.  Now papers suggest this was just another lie by Magnotta, whose very name is false.  (He played a rich porn star online, posing with fast cars and good clothes, but in fact was a bankrupt waiter).  Mythomania and narcissism among his lesser character flaws!

This initial report of a liaison with Homolka is chilling.  Homolka, you see, did not act alone, but with her husband.  The Canadian feet mystery was first brought to our attention through the theory of the Smiley Face Killings.  This flawed theory suggests that a series of gruesome killing across the nation were carried out by an organized band.  Could the Magnotta/Homolka link be evidence that this is true?  Hey, even if its false, the seed is planted.  A kind of terrorism along the liminal.  Like Kinyua, seekers of signs that something fishy is going on are easy to find...an internet trail of animal cruelty and accusations of necrophilia already had people out for this guy even before he turned his attention to human victims.  An encounter with England's news media alarmed journalists there so much that they called Scotland Yard.

Magnotta wrote:  “Once you kill and taste blood it’s impossible to stop.”  Another line: “I’ll be back — and this time the victims won’t be animals.”


Apocalypse Whenever

Magnotta's story has some parallels with Kinyau's:  both seemed to be mythomaniacs with violent pasts, known to the police.  Their victims were both foreign students.  They both  left a "large online footprint".  Like the Miami cannibal, the attack was captured on film.  Terrorism in the digital age.  Brings all the horror onto your laptop.  (The Brazilian cannibals may have also filmed their crimes).

As it turns out, Magnotta also frequented white nationalist message boards and penned rather harsh anti-immigrant screeds....and some are questioning whether this was a racially-motivated killing or if the screeds were more of Magnotta's seemingly pathological need to create himself anew online.

So, these killings are more than rife with weird conspiratorial details which lead us down a variety of rabbit holes.  Anyone looking to construct a conspiracy theory is well-equipped with tantalizing links.  The internet cesspool is a swirling miasma, where the murky waters turn round and round, bits of flotsam floating back into view again and again before going down the memory hole.

2012 is the new Y2K and we here at LoS marvel at the continued strength of the apocalyptic mindset, how one incoherent book of the Bible continues to exert such force upon the American mind.  Then again, with footage of people killing, dismembering and eating each other so readily available, maybe it's not so difficult to believe that indeed, these are the last of days.

Tag of the Beast

666: Many scholars think it was a coded way of referring to the Emperor Nero; Martin Luther thought it might refer to a Pope named Benedict. Iron Maiden is somehow mixed up in all this.

Evidence suggests the infamous "Number of the Beast" might not be 666 at all, but 616--it all depends on the Language--Greek or Latin--upon which you work your gematria, a "system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like." Clear?

According to a recent poll, almost a quarter of self-identified Republicans think Obama is the Antichrist! Or not. We're not the only ones who think this is a dubious statistic. Hell, by some accounts, even the Hutaree didn't even consider the end times to be at hand; they just wanted to Be Prepared, as it were.

Anyway, this photo is from the wall of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia church. Maybe the Antichrist is just some dumb stoner with a can of spray paint.

Yeah, I Know It's a Drag... But Wastin' Pigs Is Still Radical

You may have heard that a self-proclaimed Christian militia was raided over the weekend and nine arrested. According to the indictement, the group intended to kill a policeman and then attack (and kill) others at the funeral.

Apocalyptic thinking at its finest: "Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive."

Amazingly, the militia's website is still active. Now, you might not expect a group such as this to have a sense of humor, but you'd be wrong. Check out the "Beast Watch" section (itself inadvertently funny), which includes "The beast's number (humor)":

Examples:

670 - Approximate number of the Beast
DCLXVI - Roman numeral of the Beast
1-900-666-0666 - Live Beasts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute. (Must be over 18)
$665.95 - Retail price of the Beast
666 F - Oven temperature for roast Beast
666k - Retirement plan of the Beast
666 mg - Recommended Daily Allowance of Beast
666i - BMW of the Beast
668 - Next-door neighbor of the Beast

I actually found this funny and damn curious among all the serious allegations of "the mark of the beast" etc. Which leads me to ask. Can a militia who strikes my funny bone really be out to do so many dastardly deeds? Not that one has anything to do with the other....

I'm gonna hafta read that site in more detail -- while it lasts. As much as I'd like to point my finger and say a-ha! I told you so, and as much as the videos and photos of these guys supports the feds' claim, my immediate reaction was one of caution. Let's see what facts unfold. It's a given this will be seen by many as a setup and/or psy-op, but who knows? Maybe the paranoids are right.

Epistomology is such a wonderful minefield these days!

"God is stronger than the NWO"

Just happened upon this article today, about the Georgia Guidestones. In light of recent posts on sacred stones, the apocalypse and even the cultural/political conflicts of our times, it is especially relevant to our discussion. Sample quote:

"The four vertical slabs that dominate the Guidestones are inscribed back and front with Christian's 10 principles, each side in a different modern language. The capstone is inscribed in the alphabets of early human civilizations -- Egyptian hieroglyphics, Babylonian cuneiform, Sanskrit and classical Greek.

The center column has a slot through which the transit of the sun throughout the seasons can be observed, while a hole higher up focuses on Polaris, the north star. Another hole in the capstone focuses a beam of sunlight onto the central pillar at noon. Those features would allow the survivors of Christian's feared apocalypse to reproduce three of the basic tools of civilization: the calendar, clock and compass."

Can't believe this is the first we've heard of it! Actually, though, this article from Wired is much more intriguing. A mysterious stranger obsessed with secrecy turns up and says he and his group had wanted to do this for 20 years; a local minister predicts it will become a magnet for occult groups--and is right; the sandblaster who made the inscriptions reported hearing "strange music and disjointed voices"; Freemasons are intimately involved etc. etc.

Fun stuff....

Ouvrez donc les yeux! Reichstag 911, redux.

The following post originally appeared on a website operated by Daurade sometime after 9-11. It was intended to be ironic and in some versions the word "Satire?" was emblazoned on the page. Several websites linked to the page and some comments were made, but everyone seemed to take it at face value; that is to say a serious accusation that Bush is part of a Satanic and or alchemical cabal of some sort. A question mark was used because there were indubitably some weird symbols which appeared in researching the satire, and to be truthful, was intended to be taken humorously. In light of recent LoS posts, it seems appropriate to revisit this story, which seems to fall into the Bush as Gog theory The Gid has mentioned in a recent post. The original text is in red. Current commentary is in black. Gid's commentary is in yellow and Jon in blue.

White house photographers have a fondness for photographing political figures under rotundas or with symbols behind them which cast a kind of halo or nimbus around the head. This is such a shot. What's strange about it is the makings of a grin on W's lips and from the heavy posture and the shadows around the eyes it's as if he's shooting daggers. The halo is almost certainly a governmental seal of some sorts, perhaps even the seal of the POTUS. Which becomes more meaningful in light of what's to follow.  

They intentionally shoot Bush with a halo because these people really do believe they are God’s true anointed. They both cynically use the myth and believe in it. Like all secret societies pursuing earthly power, they engage in acts that are exactly opposite to the values they espouse. Lying, homosexuality, drug use, torture (not that being gay is inevitably any of these things; arguably these people aren’t gay at all, they are rapists), masks, secret meetings, hording of wealth, the use of symbols, are all indicative of a cabal and a reversal of values. Consider the Cathar leaders who felt they were liberated from God’s law and were free to violate it, or various forms of extreme tantrism that came to dominate courts in Java in the pre-Islamic period.

It is sometimes suggested that the Republican Party under Rove, Cheney, Norquist, Delay, Gingrich et al is a black-hooded homosexual cabal. Closeted gays are intentionally chosen because they can be blackmailed. But it is also possible that buggery is used as an initiation rite, as it is was purported to be for the Knights Templar, for pirates, for ancient Egyptians (cf the buggery episodes between Seth and Horus, where semen is hidden in lettuce and consumed, appearing in the intestinal track to fool the gods into thinking an act of buggery has occurred).

People will believe what they want to believe about the hand signal, at least consciously. But unconsciously matters are not so libertarian. The unconscious mind recognizes the primordial archetype of the horned hand and therein lies its transformative power in the process of human alchemy. When the sign of the horn is elevated to national prominence by "the most powerful man in the world," the unconscious mind groks that the reptilian tail is not far behind. Believe it or not, that's the "twilight language" message in this case; a message intended to go over the heads of the cattle on board the truck bound for the abattoir."

Michael A. Hoffman II, Plausible Denial: "Hornwinking" the Bush League January 21, 2005

Quite frankly, Hoffman comes across sometimes as a bona fide nut-case and a raging anti-Semite. But there is an eloquence of writing, and independent spirit and a penetration perception of contemporary culture which is startling.

Whether or not Bush is flashing devil horns or not is irrelevant; the fact remains that aside from people familiar with Italian hand gestures or the Texas Longhorns, the "Horns" will always be a heavy-metal devil sign, associated with Satanism. When our born-again and quite publicly croyant President flashes it, alarm bells are going to go off among our uncanny fundamentalist brothers and sisters: they're gonna see the Antichrist. Especially when they see such photos as these. 


Bush et al dare people to disbelieve them by openly lying and manipulating symbols clear in meaning to anyone with a brain. They demonstrate their power of intimidation by walking about naked asking us all to admire their beautiful clothes.

I think it would be mad to say that Bush is some sort of Messianic pretender. This photo says more about the photographer than Bush. But even so, none of that matters to the viewer, triggered with poetically resonant images. The President at the kairotic crux of the cruz, crowned by architecture parlante: "LORD" and an actual crown. Remember the Moonies? Remember the moon? The cross and crown motif can be found as a symbol of the Freemasonic Knights Templar, early Christian Science and early Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Others said you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.

Bush as magician. Using a well-known magical gesture, Bush is indicating his allegiance to the Horned God. Notice his robes. Ostensibly they are those of an academic, but that is part of the arrogant humor of the Cabal; they stage their rituals publicly under the guise of regular events. No wonder he looks so smug.

He does look exceedingly smug. And he does resemble a magician. This is probably the most ironic barb towards the twilight language theory. The idea of a subliminal message staged in a public ritual. I don't even know the context of this photo. It's probably a graduation ceremony of Long dongs, er, horns. We could probably go on about Mithraism at this point, and be well within our rights. Fact is that this is such a pregnant image how could it not evoke such sinister claims? There is indeed a twilight message here, but if it's Bush, or some photographer's editor somewhere sending it, is to be debated. We tend to think of it as ourselves sending this message, Heisenberg-like as we observe from within the shadow of the valley of the Book of Revelation, agog and Gog-hungry, thoroughly Googled and definitely goggled, as in with blinders on. 


This example comes from a FEMA press conference in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks. (It is telling that Bush would display the symbols of his true office here, for FEMA has long been suspected as the real agency of domestic repression--under the guise of national emrgency--when it came time for the Cabal to seize control of the country). The horns are only the most flagrant Cabal joke in this photograph; the real story lies in the alchemical symbolism. The position of Bush's head in the FEMA seal, relative to the position of the presidential seal is a way of projecting the message: L'Etat, c'est moi. You could write a dissertation of the symbolism of this image.

As an artistic composition this cannot be beat. The reflecting circles, the motif of the eagle in the seal below and the wings above, the microphones. All the better as it appears that horns are coming from his head. He does appear to swoon but a photograph's quick-like mid-motion capture creates strange effects. "A Nation Prepared" reads the motto. But yeah, grok that circle and triangle, an alchemical symbol if there ever was one. The composition of the photo into light and dark halves, the repeating imagery vertically arranged is such a hermetic composition: As above, so below. Again, we're dealing more with a snarky photographer than a calculating President.

These photos would never have appeared if they didn’t want them to. But my concern is, after reviewing the photographic evidence so far, in support of an evident thesis, is that they are appropriating the Perpetual Art, the Most Ancient Arcanum, for their own perverted uses. Those who mess with the occult for evil purposes place both themselves and the world at great risk, but they inevitably fall, because the perennial heresy is before good and evil, and is an apprehension of the one and the many as an ongoing process of unfolding and return. Their division is one of divide and conquer. The Fall of Being into division is one of divide and create.

Notice the similarity of the presidential seal and the sigil of Baphomet. Concentric circles inscribed with words of power. Inside the circles an animal totem is circumscribed by a pentagram. In the Baphomet sigil, the pentagram is explicit. The President also displays it openly, but coded. In the presidential seal the pentagram is implied in the shape of the Eagle: its wings form the legs, its feet, the arms. Its tail forms the head. In this photograph the bottom triangle is made explicit in the angles of the microphones--which in the top circle is where the Eagle's tail would be if Bush's head weren't taking its place. The triangle finds a mirror image in the halo above Bush's head: as above, so below. The interplay between the FEMA seal and the Presidential seal reinforces this most basic of hermetic doctrines. Notice how Bush swoons as the Horned God enters his body to address the nation.

I stand by the comparison.

The flipside of the Dollar--Washington's sacred currency--reaffirms the hermetic motif of circles, triangles and stars. It is also quite clearly an expression of faith in the One. The interrelationship of symbols is a divine interplay between earthly might, spiritual authority and the implied solace of faith in their unity. Although it doesn't appear here (it appears above the Eagle on the obverse of the quarter), this is the real meaning of the national motto: "Out of many, One."

Okay, the idea of the motto is a bit-farfetched, "Out of many, one"; but I stick by "The interrelationship of symbols is a divine interplay between earthly might, spiritual authority and the implied solace of faith in their unity." 

Like father, like Son.

From the Inaugural of George Bush Sr., 1989. Three alchemical triangles soar over the phallic personification of George Washington, state Godling. The Washington Monument dominates the skyline of the city that bears his name. It is as if it is the phallus of the city. And now a second Bush has descended upon the city. The coming of the Sun.


Do a web search for the "Apotheosis of George Washington" and you will find several sculptures and paintings depicting the ascension of our first president; becoming one with or becoming--Mormon-like--God Himself. He is a Godling of sorts in the national mythology, replete with weird tree-cutting fables and coin-tossing stunts. The phallic aspect of the obelisk is a trope needing no further elucidation. The trinity of triangles is exceedingly resonant. Remember all that talk of pyramids and power? Doesn't is riff nicely with that weird FEMA seal? Let alone that of the Information Awareness Office....

Federal law ensures that the Washington Monument will always be the tallest building in the nation's capital.

"Welcome to Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

OK, I admit this is a bit of whimsy. But it does tie back into the idea that humanity is running out of space here on earth, so space out there in, urm, space, is the logical destination: The Stars My Destination. Also, they’re damn funny Bushisms. I say this without malice, but the man made me laugh so.

I would say it with malice! The man was malicious!

The quotes are whimsical, but the pilot aspect is not. Relating back to pyramid power, one can easily see that the aristocracy of old were cavalrymen. Today they are pilots.

A disembodied eye casts its gaze over the world, illuminating it."Knowledge is Power."

For anyone seeking to prove that the government is an Illuminist cover story, the IAO logo will be a clincher. Interesting that is embodies all the theses we’ve been going over in recent posts: the pyramid, the symbol of illumination, the link of knowledge and reason with progress and authority, the missionary ideal of bringing light to the world and then dominating it. In this case a domination through science, or, more specifically, technological prowess.

And just to really rub it in, DARPA named this program “Information Awareness Office” or I.A.O., which is a magic formula for Aleister Crowley and “as a gnostic godform … both a sun-god and mystery-god” (see Thelemapedia, “IOA”).

While the seal is surely supposed to represent the all-seeing eye casting light upon the world, consider some other creepy reads that we can layer onto the image. First, consider the eye as a projector. Pynchon’s phrase “Shall I project a world?” (from “The Crying of Lot 49”) has become synonymous with the enveloping layers of paranoia that wrap around us as we consider that such vast conspiracies may simply be constructs of our own mind, a projection of our own mad instance of meaning and structure upon a Newtonian world devoid of purpose.

This notion of projecting a world also invites a Gnostic interpretation of the image, with the eye over the unfinished pyramid suggesting an imperfect god, shown here in the act of creating a world. While it appears that this will be a world of light, note that as viewers, we can only see a glimmer of a lit world, for from our perspective, almost all that we see of Earth is cast in darkness, reinforcing the suggestion that this an incomplete god, caught in the act of trying to create life, but rending a world of shadows unable to see the True Light.

For a final alternate take on the image, consider the eye as the Sun, which, in addition to reinforcing the scientific and Egyptian mumbo-jumbo, means that this image shows the Earth orbiting the eye, which casts light on half the globe but leaves the rest of the Earth in shadow.


And of course this brings us back full circle to the IAO “as a gnostic godform … both a sun-god [shown here bathing the orbiting Earth in shadow and light] and mystery-god [shown here in its imperfection as it struggles to project a world].”

Is the point of all this just that Bush’s boys created a cool-looking symbol that they knew would trigger the paranoid radar just to f*ck with us? Or does this demonstrate Bush’s boys thumbing their noses, a demonstration of power, power so unmatched that They simply reveal themselves and speak their own true names?


Consider this infamous quote from an unnamed aide to Bush: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” That’s a quote from the New York Times, by the way, and after hearing this—the way it so perfectly fits this image of the “all-seeing eye,” a godly form that fails to even see its own unfinished foundation as it projecting a world of darkness and shadow suspended in its own imperfect godly glare—after hearing this, you must stop to marvel. On LoS we have been attempting to tease out a methodology of revelation through crypto-analytical deconstruction (“CAD”); it is amazing, is it not, the “Information Awareness” that a CAD can provide?

Consider, finally, the pyramid as monument rising upward to the god and note that one of IAO’s projects was “Babylon.” My God! Who would dare to flout their hubris in the very face of the maker? Hmm, could it be … SATAN!?!

Babalon, aka "Babalon" is given lengthy treatment in the aforementioned Thelemapedia, where it is discussed as, among a myriad of things, "the Gateway to the City of Pyramids."  This is "s a step along the path of spiritual purification, and a resting place for those who have successfully shed their attachments to the mundane world."

What are we to make of this image? Is it saying, "The whole thing was orchestrated, look to the recordings," or is this another way the Cabal has of thumbing its nose at us? There it is: the towers are burning, the conductor is waving her batons--they form a triangle around her head--and above it all is a signature: "The Coup." According to the label, this image was conceived of months before Sept. 11.

The towers always inspired apocalyptic images. After 9-11 I went back to my book Specimen Tank, written in the 80’s. In it I describe it as a giant syringe and the narrator/protagonist, Wally, imagines it smashed to pieces in the future, a heap of glass that archaeologists must number in order to reassemble it. The first time I went to try to go to the top I chickened out, it was too terrifying. The second time I had dinner at Windows on the World.

Another weird personal event (and I think things like the 9-11 attacks constellate meanings, hence all of the conspiracy theories that also swirl around the assassinations of the sixties), has to do with a video tape of The Wizard of Oz. My father-in-law taped The Wizard of Oz off of broadcast television on the day of the first World Trade Center Bombing. In 2000 my 4 year old daughter was watching this tape and I was talking on the phone to my ex-wife. I came into the room where Z. was watching and stared at the t.v. Suddenly a news alert rolled across the bottom of the screen saying the towers had been bombed. “Holy shit,” I said to my wife, “They bombed the Twin Towers again!” We couldn’t believe they would do it twice and she got off the phone to call friends and family and tell them. Seconds later I realized that I was watching an old video tape and that it wasn’t the news at all. I called her back and we laughed about it, realizing that of course it was absurd that the Twin Towers would be attacked twice.

The Twin Towers were always an affront, aesthetically. They should never have been built and no one liked them, that is until the first bombing. They then became beloved and more familiar as the neighbourhood around them was gentrified and populated with affluent young New Yorkers.

To Do

There's only one thing that's important: Populate the universe.

Gog and Magog

“Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.” -- A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

The news is agog! So, it was a holy war after all? I knew this was LoS terrain soon as I read it, but I have to confess: I didn't know my Gogs from my Magogs ... so I decided to dust off my Bible and goggle and Google my way deeper ... I still haven't figure out what to make of it all, but I have worked out a general sense of the history, which I’ll splay out here in hopes that any readers can correct my misunderstandings and fill in the gaps in my thinking.

Magog in Genesis and 1 Chronicles is, on face value, an actual person. Ezekiel reinterprets Magog as a nation (Genesis is certainly open to an interpretation of Magog as a peoples or a place, although 1 Chronicles resists this reading). Ezekiel and places Gog as the leader of Magog (i.e., presumably, "mat-Gog" = "the place of Gog"), and he prophesizes that Israel will squash a Gog-led invasion from the north. Amos and Numbers also, by some scholars' reckoning, mention Gog. I don't quite have this straight yet, but Amos’ rendering of Gog as the king of the locusts seems to be key to the kind of interpretation that Bush and other contemporary Christian apocalyptic "thinkers" take.

Anyhow, flash forward to Revelations which reinterprets Ezekiel's prophecy by suggesting that Gog/Magog are not some specific peoples north of Israel, but are instead the enemies of the righteous in general. Not only are Gog/Magog generalized, but so, too, are the people they attack. In other words, Revelations opens up the notion of who is besieged, presumably to include Christians not in Israel.

Ezekiel is, of course quite open to this interpretation, just as Genesis was open to Ezekiel's interpretation—but with each new prophecy, there is an reshaping of the combatants, and therefore the nature of the battle. John's (Revelations') expanded sense of the besieged allows his community to join the ultimate winners and line up against a common enemy pressing from all sides.

This proved to be popular—so popular that we apparently have Bush quoting Revelations in attempt to inspire Chirac: "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea” (v.20:7-8).

Contemporary Christian apocalyptics seem to maintain John's notion of the generalized righteous under attack—yet they seem to revert back to Ezekiel's notion of a specific enemy located somewhat north of Israel. During the Cold War, these contemporaries often pegged Scythians as Magog, and there was an assumption that the U.S.S.R. was actually holding back the relevant Muslim population (i.e., the Magog) who were too busy with being downtrodden Soviet "citizens" to be bothered with fulfilling the prophecies by invading Israel.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, some people assumed that, in Ezekiel's words, the "hook" was released from the fish's mouth—i.e., Magog was now let loose to start the apocalypse by invading Israel. When that didn't happen, these theories sort of floundered (groan), I think ... until the current line of thinking that holds Bush.

One curious and key thing is that unlike John (i.e., Revelations), Bush and other current crackpots seem to maintain Ezekiel's sense of Israel as the "navel of the Earth" (v.38:12, NAB). Why? I think that there must be another piece of their apocalyptic vision at play here. I seem to recall something about a temple in Israel that needs to rebuilt or captured or something before the Final Kingdom at the end of times? Need to track this down....

Anyhow, this odd re-focus on Israel which contemporary apocalyptic Christians seem to have picked up from Ezekiel has really got a whole 'nother set of crackpots all riled up, somehow turning everything on its head by presenting Bush himself as Gog and, I think, Israel as Magog? How do they pull off this interpretation? I haven't gone down that rabbit-hole of research yet. I do know that Gog/Magog are in the Koran but this seems to have nothing to do with it? The Sibylline texts do seem to reinterpret Gog/Magog, but again I don't see this as relevant here?

But in short, and most importantly, what's the real story here? Why are so many people yearning for the world to end and assuming that they can somehow help to orchestrate the playing out of the fates? The ego is astounding: "I am an agent of God!" they cry, unable to sense that this eliminates their own freewill and therefore the freewill of others and so therefore the possibility of controlling destiny at all, and thus they fail to see the utter black puppetry, nothing but marionettes grasping at each others' strings, f*cking Punch and Judy with actual real nuclear bombs....

I can only assume that relaxing by a lake will reveal all, so I’m going to take the next week off and mull it over.

Meanwhile, here are a few final tidbits to consider:

* The word “gog” means bog or quagmire, which of course has often been used to describe the U.S.’ role in Iraq.

* People also used to use the word “gog” when they were scared to use the Lord’s name in vein, i.e., “by gog’s blood!” Did they somehow invoke Gog’s wrath?

* Why on Earth are there are pair of giant statues in London named Gog and Magog? This type of idolatry cannot be a good idea....

Meanwhile, stay tuned, post corrections and answers, and lemme know yr take on it all....

___________________
Addendum, 8/25/09

* A list of sources is published here.