"Jacques DeMolay, thou art avenged!"

Funniest headline I've seen for a while:

Dried squash holds headless French king's blood, study finds

The article also has at least one choice line:

Two years ago, analysis of DNA taken from blood traces found inside the ornate vegetable revealed a likely match for someone of Louis' description, including his blue eyes.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-dried-headless-french-king-blood.html#jCp

Two years ago, analysis of DNA taken from blood traces found inside the ornate vegetable revealed a likely match for someone of Louis' description, including his blue eyes.

The title of the post is a quote said to have been uttered by an unknown man who jumped onto the scaffold and held aloft the freshly de-bodied head of Louis XVI.  It is a reference to the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, killed by French King Philippe le Bel after the latter had dissolved the Knights, covetous of their lands and riches.  (previous post)

In killing the king, vengeance was accomplished.  Freemasons draw upon Templar Lore heavily in their rights and appendant bodies.  Indeed, the Masonic body for young men is called DeMolay International.

In one picture I've seen of the gourd, it is inscribed with the image of Revolutionary leaders Camille Desmoulins, Georges-Jacques Danton and Jean-Paul Marat, all three Freemasons.  Freemasons were deeply involved in the French Revolution, some writers going as far to claim they orchestrated it for their own ends.  Michael Hoffman and Michael Shelby Downard have written an elaborate essay (King-Kill 33) claiming that the killing of the king is in fact a Masonic ritual, enacted on the masses; in their essay, they focus on the killing not of Louis, but on JFK, Catholic King of Camelot.  Great fiction, I urge you to read it...beware of the link though, there's some serious font and background-color crimes going on there.

This is a highly resonant story, by LoS standards.  That is why I link to it here!

I just wonder if the blood in the gourd ever liquifies for useful seances of Hemamancy?

Two years ago, analysis of DNA taken from blood traces found inside the ornate vegetable revealed a likely match for someone of Louis' description, including his blue eyes.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-dried-headless-french-king-blood.html#jCp

Life imitates conspiracy theory as art....

Note that I am a triangle....

Wow.  WDBJ 7 is reporting that schools in Narrows, Virginia, didn't open after Christmas Break on Wednesday due to an online article entitled The Next School Massacre Target?  Evidence that a little common sense won out over blind fear, perhaps, is that schools reopened on Thursday.  Still, the article was seen as a possible threat, which had the authorities jumpy enough to close schools for one day, at least.

And the article?  Apparently it was originally posted here, but the site seems to be offline now.  Maybe overloaded after being linked to by Drudge.

Google's webcache, however, makes it possible to read the original article. 

The Next School Massacre Target?  The theory of the article is that the mass shootings in Aurora and Newtown are linked and that clues to these events can be found in the Batman films and were timed around symbolic astronomical configurations.

For example: 

Mainstream media has not touched the fact “SANDY HOOK” is referenced on a map in the latest Batman movie. Commissioner Gordon, briefly drags his hand across the “SANDY HOOK” part of the map, at 1 hour and 58 minutes into the film.  What are the chances of this being a coincidence? Or is this a subtle blue print being followed by sick individuals? What other clues can be gleaned from the map?

The next strike zone on the map is “NARROWS” and just on a hunch I entered “NARROWS SCHOOLS” into GOOGLE Search and this is what I discovered.  Narrows Elementary Middle School and Narrows High School, located in Narrows, Virginia. This made me cringe when I saw a match and I hope there is no relationship to the map and another school massacre. I hope the professionals in law enforcement read this post and take the appropriate measures to protect the innocent, young and old (just as a precaution). 

Easy to see why authorities got a little jumpy; to them all this "synchromystic" stuff must sound like complete lunacy and the last line could be read as what they said it was, a disingenuous implied threat..... 

The article is also another in a long line of articles in the "Illuminati infiltrates pop culture" meme.  The author next asks, in boldface and italics and large font: 

I have been asking myself for months WHY on earth do the Illuminati always present (through occult masking) all their upcoming plans into medias, films, or music? What is the reason of their support to those hard-rock, pop musicians?” 

This conveniently gives us another example of the meme at work, recently discussed in Leave a good-looking corpse.  Given that we've recently been following the conspiracy theories around Aurora (here / here), Clackamas (here) and Newtown (here / here), it's only natural that we include it here, with a healthy dose of wtf?-like head-shaking at how the conspiracy theories are starting to determine the way things unfold not only onscreen or in the collective hallucination, but in the 3D + time space we call "reality".

I also thought it was pretty weird, given how I jumped on the figure 20 in my Newtown posts, that when I went back in search of a link for my first Aurora post I was startled to see that I'd called it 20 rosy fingers.  Maybe there was something to that number 20 after all!  Was this some kind of pre-cognitive sensitivity to some numerical symbolism....?

But of coure, you should immediately see the fallacy of this thinking, seeing where you'd foretold the future by repeating something you forgotten you'd said in the past....

Then again, in this year of the Mayan Apocalypse, around which there seems to have been a heightened mass apprehension of any significant event, it's innarestin' to read that:  The number 20 has little mystical significance, but it is historically interesting because the Mayan number system used base 20. When counting time the Maya replaced 20 × 20 = 400 by 20 × 18 = 360 to approximate the number of days in the year. (Britannica.com)

Fu*kin Mayans! 

PS  The post title was inspired by a book I'd read about then forgotten, until this came up.  I just bought the book and from a LoSian perspective, seems rather intristin'....we'll see when it's delivered.  You can read some about the book on Amazon....

Cryptoscatology: Conspiracy Theory as Art Form

Merry Christmas, Mein Führer

Now here's a group of guys dreaming of a white Christmas.

We cannot accept that a German Christmas tree has anything to do with a crib in a manger in Bethlehem. It is inconceivable for us that Christmas and all its deep soulful content is the product of an oriental religion.

So said Nazi propagandist Friedrich Rehm, 1937. 

Hate to say it, but he's right.  Take the Christ out of Christmas?  Yes, put the sun back in there.  The days are growing longer.  Solmas?  Heliosmas?  Jesus ain't the reason for the season in my house, despite the manger under the tree.  It's about the solstice, the return to life we anticipate in a few months, the great food, the fellowship, the comfort in the cold, wet, dark winter.  A few lights in the window to make gay an otherwise dreary time of year.

But I don't want to wax too poetic when I find myself agreeing with Nazi propagandists!

Here's a Time photo essay at a Nazi Christmas dinner.  Photos from 1941, Munich.

A Curious juxtaposition....

The devil you say

At the risk of being dreadfully inappropriate, I draw your attention to the following video from CNN.  This article about the memorial to Vicki Soto includes a photomontage with the following image, about 55 seconds in.

Soto was a teacher killed in the Newtown shooting and is widely being hailed as a hero after locking her students in a bathroom and standing guard outside the door.

Another version from ABC News prudently crops the photo so the offending hand doesn't appear, whether by chance or design, who can say? (about 52 seconds in).

I don't know who first saw this, or created the photo still, but I saw it on my Facebook newsfeed.

A strange photobomb indeed.

An unhappy list

Hoffman

The following list of US mass shootings comes from a post entitled The massacre of the children of America by Michael Hoffman.  I have to add that I don't agree with this editorial post, in which Hoffman condemns things such as usury, abortion and homosexual marriage and which one must presume are believed by Hoffman to be part of the cause of this massacre.  That said, it's a concise list of the "major" mass shootings in America since 1966; there is a stark power in seeing it laid out so dry:  date, place, number of casualties.  The tempo definitely seems to be increasing....

I'd like to see some data on mass-shootings prior to 1966.

Timeline of U.S. Massacres

Compiled by Michael Hoffman 

Compiler's note: All of the deaths listed are homicides, except in the case of a casualty statistic compiled by the media that groups a perpetrator who allegedly committed suicide, with the victims. Almost all of the deaths are by gunfire. I do not claim that this list is exhaustive. In almost all cases I have only listed as a "massacre" multiple deaths that occurred within a 24 hour period.

1966: Fifteen people are shot to death on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.

1966: In Chicago, Illinois, nine nurses are massacred.

1982: Eight workers are shot by a co-worker at a Florida machine shop.

1984: Twenty-one patrons of a McDonald's restaurant are killed in California.

1986: Fourteen postal employees are killed by a co-worker in Oklahoma.

1990: Nine people are killed at a GMAC loan office in Florida by a co-worker.

1991: In Michigan five people are killed.

1991: 23 people are killed in Luby's Cafeteria in Texas.

1993: 8 people killed in the San Francisco, California financial district.

1993: Six people killed on a Long Island, New York commuter train.

1997: Three students killed by a fellow student at a high school in Kentucky

1998: Five people killed (four girls and a teacher) at an Arkansas Middle School (the killers were two children, age 13 and 10).

1999: Coumbine High School, Colorado: 13 people killed by two students.

1999: Nine people killed in the financial district in Atlanta, Georgia

1999: Seven people killed at a church in Texas.

2000: Seven people killed Dec. 26 at an Internet company in Massachusetts.

2001: 2 students killed and 13 wounded by fellow student in California

2003: Five killed at a Mississippi aircraft plant by a co-worker.

2005: Five students and two others killed by another student in Minnesota.

2006: Five Amish children killed at their Pennsylvania school by a truck driver.

2007: Five killed at a shopping mall in Utah. An off-duty policeman exchanges gunfire with the perpetrator, preventing more killings.

2007: 32 students killed at Virginia Tech by a fellow student.

2007: Dec. 5 - eight people killed at a Nebraska shopping mall.

2008: Five people killed at Northern Illinois University.

2009: Ten people killed in Alabama.

2009: Thirteen people killed in a Binghamton, New York immigration center.

2010: In Manchester, Connecticut a co-worker kills eight people.

2011: Six people killed in Tucson, Arizona; among the eleven who are wounded, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is shot in the head but survives.

2011: Eight people killed at a beauty salon in California.

2012: A former student kills seven students at Oikos University in California.

2012: 12 people killed at a "Batman" movie in Aurora, Colorado.

2012: Six people killed at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.

2012: Five people killed in Minnesota by a co-worker.

2012: Three people killed at a beauty salon in Wisconsin.

2012: Dec. 11 - two people killed at an Oregon shopping mall.

2012: Dec. 14 - 27 people killed at a Connecticut grammar school, including twenty children.