This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic.
With that said, have at it!
I want to welcome everyone to Green Wizards: http://www.greenwizards.com/
We talk about everything related to better living through less.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel by starting a new blog when you can post with us.
Bring your friends! We’re a welcoming group.
After all, who else is going to discuss the magic of cooling with fans or how to turn sheets?
Long scattershot contribution this month – I feel like I’m running low on people I can discuss these things with and so I greatly look forward to these monthly conversations, and am also looking forward to the upcoming Oregon Ecosophian gathering in August.
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Vaccine-induced COVID immunity appears to wane much more quickly than expected, with Israel once again leading the way in discovery as they were the first to carry out mass vaccination:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hmo-those-who-inoculated-early-twice-as-likely-to-catch-covid-as-later-adopters/
In the US, this is being hidden by an increasingly shrill and draconian attempt to blame and coerce the unvaccinated, which will almost certainly backfire.
This scenario was anticipated by renowned vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche, who now foresees an evolutionary arms race between the virus and vaccines that may ultimately lead to far more disease and death than would have occurred had we simply allowed it to reach herd immunity naturally, and also potentially more severe disease in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated people, i.e. antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE): https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/
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Health authorities STILL believe in masks and are trying to bring them back as case numbers rise. This despite the continued absence of any meaningful population-level epidemiological evidence that they work, especially the simple cloth and paper varieties that are most common.
“A bad storm is upon us, everyone must snuggle their teddy bears.”
“Conditions have improved; people in houses with approved lightning rods may now safely stop snuggling their teddy bears.”
“It’s getting worse again, so we now once again recommend teddy bear snuggling for everyone…”
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I have recently discovered the Dark Horse podcast by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to see real scientists fighting back against the religious dogma that stands in for science these days. They do still seem to inhabit the progress/apocalypse dichotomy, with little mention of the reality of decline. https://odysee.com/@BretWeinstein:f
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Finally, I came across a truly excellent critique of both woke ideology AND the reactive right-wing response to it by Malcom Kyeyune via UnHerd. Some excerpts:
“As the private school example above hints at, ‘wokeness’ in today’s America is arguably the primary sorting mechanism for the elite.”
“Being able to ‘cancel’ people under various pretenses is not so much an anti-social bug in a system of elite selection; it is a necessary and vital feature; cancelling someone is the same as taking them out of the race.”
“The US is currently in a crisis of elite overproduction, and there are far more contestants than there are seats at prestigious institutions. CRT or wokeness is not the name of some discrete set of ideas or a coherent ideology as much as it is a language or toolset one can use to compete against other people by means of a form of ritualized social combat. Unlike in the Aztec empire, the losers of this particular kind of ritual combat do not run the risk of being sacrificed at top of a bloodsoaked temple pyramid, but they do risk being marginalized and ultimately excluded from elite competition. The incredible flexibility inherent in this system – where a white elite woman can, without dropping a beat, lecture a black janitor for his internalized racism and lack of moral character – means that the people who win are the ones who are the most ruthless, the most cunning, and (more importantly) the ones that have the means to go to private schools or hire essay coaches and so on. Officially, skin color matters a great deal, but in real terms the people that win do so because they are masters of the insanely complicated set of rules, exceptions, and kinks inherent to the language.”
In the second half he summarizes Tainter’s “Collapse of Complex Societies” and the drive toward ever-increasing complexity even as diminishing returns become obvious.
“One way to understand the angry parents crowding the school board meetings of today is that the silent majority is finally heeding the tocsin bell being rung by the conservative radicals, thronging to defend truth and justice from the scourge of the anti-American ideology that is CRT. This is a flattering view, but it is also likely to be proven incredibly wrong by the end of this decade. A more humble interpretation is that the American system is simply starting to buckle under the stress of useless, harmful complexity it can no longer afford to maintain, and that many of the people who reap none of the rewards but pay all of the costs are starting to reach a painful breaking point.”
“The bitter truth that these young radicals will have to face is not that the period they live in is a twilight of the gods. That much should have been obvious long ago. The real horror they must grapple with is that their own gods died a long time ago; this time, the twilight has come for the gods of their enemies, and they will be the ones left to deal with the fallout. Rather than pointedly ask how we plan to keep living life in the case this patently decrepit, rainbow-colored Soviet Union lasts forever in all of its repressive, totalitarian, transgender glory, perhaps today’s dissidents ought to think somewhat seriously about what the (frack) it is they plan on doing when it actually doesn’t.”
https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/send-them-back-your-fierce-defiance-stamp-upon-the-cursed-alliance/
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Best wishes to everyone in these strange times!
Mark
Alright people, it’s game theory time:
You find a genie in a lamp. What are your three wishes and why?
Ground rules to keep it in a productive direction:
1. The genie is benevolent so you don’t need to burn a wish to keep it honest and ethical.
2. The genie likes being a genie so you don’t have to save a wish to free it.
3. Any attempt to get more wishes will backfire spectacularly.
I’m being systematically bullied into taking the vaccine, I’ve already had covid and probably still have antibodies but I work as a security guard and bouncer and my employer and customers are going nuts with no jab no job like a cult movement. My father recently collapsed with heart inflammation and thought he was going to die, he had the phyzer vaccine, and yet just 3 weeks later he’s telling me loads of old people and children will die a horrible death if I don’t get vaccinated. We also have a family WhatsApp group where my sisters are posting antivax memes and calling me a conspiracy theorist. And loads of people who have been vaccinated here in England are catching covid again including our own health secretary.
How long can this go for? Can vaccine passports really be implemented? I’m really struggling with all of this.
Sean from Walsall
Dear Mr. Greer,
I would be curious to know whether you see any nefarious motives behind the political and medical establishment’s near-hysteria in trying to force everyone, EVERYONE, into getting “the jab” (which is not a vaccine by any standard definition of the word) for COVID-19?
As for myself, I have utterly no intention of receiving one of these experimental treatments for a very slightly risky illness, and am concerned and appalled by the increasingly threatening and coercive measures being instituted by our policy makers (read: overlords) in their suspiciously frantic attempts to force compliance in this regard.
Ripped form the pages of Twilight’s Last Gleaming…
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2021-07-27/US-China-military-war-game-hyten-2326077.html
Pull-quote: “They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it.”
Separately, an article on China and climate change:
https://news.yahoo.com/china-going-fry-global-climate-095208689.html
Interestingly (and amazingly), the second article references the first. That author asserts:
“It would be unwise to simply trust China to do the right thing. So what might the rest of the international community do?”
The next paragraph is astounding–not for what it argues, but rather what it even considers: “Military force can be dismissed out of hand.” As though that is even a reasonable avenue. It is rejected not because it violates the basis of international relations, but because it wouldn’t be practical:
“China is a nuclear-armed power and nuclear war cannot be risked. America does have a gigantic military, but it has not faced a truly formidable opponent since the Second World War, and has spent the last 50 years losing repeatedly to ill-equipped guerrilla bands. Pentagon weapons procurement is profoundly corrupt; American forces are heavily based around ultra-expensive ships and planes that would be useless sitting ducks in a real fight. In recent wargames attempting to model a conflict with China, the American side was defeated easily.”
The article whimpers to a close with a trust in China’s self-interest after finally acknowledging the inability of the US to dictate anything.
The author is at least aware of the ever-restrictive limits on US power, even if he is unaware of the underlying arrogance of that power and of the fundamental belief in US *ahem* leadership.
Here is an interesting tidbit: The J&J vaccine is now acknowledged as being associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome (focal paralysis of a body part, with 90% likelihood of recovery in a few months) acutely after administration. As you may recall, JMG had been concerned about neurological complications several months ago, and I chimed in that this complication, GBS, is an autoimmune condition that has arisen arisen from other vaccines in the past.
https://www.fda.gov/media/150723/download
So far, this looks rare. What is concerning are possible long term effects; the jury is still out.
—Lunar Apprentice
Blessed Lughnassad/Lammas to all those who celebrate this holiday.
Pat
Just an observation: I have noticed that there seems to be something of a demographic overlap between Trump Derangement Syndrome and what Internet writer CJ Hopkins terms “Covidian Cultism”. What that means is, where one sees both of these phenomenon almost exclusively is within the ranks of the urban Professional-Managerial Class whose dominance was demonstrated to be on the wane with the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Aside from the fact that this class is very soft and pampered and is obviously easily terrified by the idea of potentially dangerous disease circulating around the world (nobody in that class has really ever previously lived through a catastrophic war, mass natural disaster, economic collapse, or pandemic), I think there’s another reason Covidian Cultism overlaps so neatly with TDS in them. Deep down inside, they really do believe that the authoritarian mindset being fostered by official society’s reaction to the quasi-pandemic will preserve the dying social and political dominance of their class.
Unfortunately for them, what I see happening instead is a backlash to Covid authoritarianism (at least here in the USA) that will very likely bite both these hopes and they themselves right in the posterior. What do you think?
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day? Or a case of things being so obvious even the technofreaks can see it? Dana Blankenhorn on “the lessons of the labor shortage.” Only in the last one, about people working from home, does his PMC persepective show.
https://www.danablankenhorn.com/2021/07/lessons-of-the-labor-shortage.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+danablankenhorn%2Fgfvj+%28Dana+Blankenhorn%29
Hello good sir!
I’ve been doing the LIRP and middle pillar almost daily for the past year or so now. I feel as though my practice has reached a plateau. Its begun to feel like I’m just going through the motions. Did you ever experience this when you first started your practice? Any recommendations for getting over this plateau?
Thank you
Stefan
I recall seeing mentioned that you wrote a series on will in the Magic Monday section, but I’ve been unable to find it. This question might be completely redundant if someone points me to those, but I was wondering what (if anything) your take on this article was?
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610384745
My interpretation of the study was that belief in one’s own willpower generates (connects to?) willpower, whether the placebo is previously using willpower as in the linked article or a sugary snack as in the earlier research it’s critiquing. Which is interesting research as far as it goes, but I was wondering whether traditional occultism has something more nuanced to say on the subject?
This Covid vaccine pressure is getting more and more shrill. The headlines say it all:
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cnn-segregate-unvaccinated-make-them-pay-tests-every-day
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/watch-fauci-cnn-white-house-newsom-cuomo-all-ratchet-attacks-unvaccinated-americans
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/nyc-requires-all-public-workers-get-vaccinated-or-submit-weekly-tests
Do you have an interpretation of this JMG, and where it might lead?
—Lunar Apprentice
We hadn’t heard from our friend onething in a while, so I looked back at her gofundme from last year to find her given name and location, leading me to find that she passed away on June 4th. Here is the notice https://www.taylorfuneralhomeinc.com/obituary/anna-mulqueen.
I thank her for her dogged persistence in questioning assumptions, for sharing her experience of the numinous, and for helping make this pot-luck gathering a good place. I pray that she’s at home in the arms of the One (as she expressed her experience),
I happened to hear on Marketplace tech [NPR} today that electric cars are booming–auto manufacturers are starting to negotiate directly with lithium mines for a longer supply. They also said there’s the “lithium triangle” in S. America & W. Australia. And also that the battery–lithium dependent–is 30% of the car’s cost My question/comment is doesn’t this show a vulnerability for electric cars that’s deeper than the traditional petroleum. Is lithium mining a pollution source similar to rare metals in parts of Africa or Iceland? How sustainable is the electric car? To me this puts the next wave of autos on shaky footing…
What’s your opinion of Valentin Tomberg’s “Meditations on the Tarot?” It seems to me there’s a fair bit of esoteric lore contained in its pages.
JMG, In regards to astrotheology, the idea that many ancient myths come from stories about the constellations in the sky and in these myths much ancient knowledge was conveyed, what is your take on this? Does this jive with your research? Some say the purpose of these myths was to record past catastrophes and warn of future cycles of cataclysm. I know you are not an apocalyptic thinker, but do you think there is any validity to these ideas? If so, do you see any particular author as having the most accurate interpretation?
Hi, JMG and commenters.
I’m not in the anti-vaccination league, but I’m wary when you read news like the following ones:
https://www.thelocal.es/20210723/there-will-be-a-third-covid-vaccine-for-people-in-spain-health-minister/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/israel-vaccine-pfizer-booster/2021/07/12/ce5ceed4-e30e-11eb-88c5-4fd6382c47cb_story.html
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/565210-pfizer-says-third-vaccine-shot-strongly-boosts-immune-response-against
What do you think about this -ahead- 3rd dose? (JMG and “commentariat”)
The monthly energy news sampling:
Not quite dead yet
https://www.euci.com/global-coal-fired-generation-rebounds-in-2021-with-continued-expansion-in-some-countries/?x=60621h242282Sy&utm_campaign=072821_energize_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=energize
But I have a constitutional right to free energy! [side note–yes, we run into people who don’t understand that power has to be paid for.]
https://coloradosun.com/2021/07/26/xcel-rate-increase-renewable-energy-grid/
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you
https://www.powermag.com/firstenergy-federally-charged-in-ohio-nuclear-bailout-scheme/
We’re saved! (Just give us funding)
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/long-duration-storage-mystery-revealed-form-energy-discloses-details-of-mul
Par for the course–everyone wants stuff somewhere else
https://electrek.co/2021/07/26/us-largest-solar-farm-is-scrapped-because-nevada-locals-dont-want-to-look-at-it/
And again
https://energynews.us/2021/07/20/condo-owners-appeal-could-be-last-legal-hurdle-for-offshore-wind-in-great-lakes/
Transmission cost allocation is the fight that never ends
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/cost-allocation-remains-key-challenge-for-ferc-ahead-of-transmission-reform/603597/
[Seriously. In MISO–the Midcontinent Independent System Operator– territory, this battle over who pays for what has been and will be litigated for pretty much ever. Everyone wants more stuff, but wants someone else to pay for it. Throw in the fact that there are many users and beneficiaries of these projects, and that those benefits are often quantifiable only in a “fuzzy” manner, and things can get…contentious.]
Finally, for the true nerds and policy wonks of the community, FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) recently released an ANOPR (Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) to solicit ideas and comments regarding transmission planning and transmission cost allocation. Here’s the full publication in yesterday’s Federal Register:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-07-27/pdf/2021-15512.pdf
~33 pages of triple-column text. One of the nicer aspects of the plodding process of regulatory rulemaking is that one can get a good summary of the history leading up to the present action, complete with references and footnotes. (Okay, I’m a nerd. What can I say?)
For those who are interested, an ANOPR differs from a regular NOPR (generally pronounced “noper”) in that an ANOPR is a bit more open, often only identifying issues and soliciting comments, whereas a NOPR is usually making a specific proposal and soliciting comment on that proposal. Essentially, by doing an ANOPR, FERC gets a preliminary round of comments and proposals on the public record in the docket for consideration. Ah, the joys of regulatory minutiae!
I recently learned something which makes both electric cars and trying to run the grid on renewables seem like even worse ideas. It turns out that it takes days to cycle most power plants up or down, and so most places produce about the same amount of electricity at all times of the day. This electricity needs to go somewhere, and so our solution is to pump water into reservoirs overnight, and then drain them to generate electricity during the day. It turns out that this process loses around 70% of the electricity put into it, at best.
Given that most renewables are intermittent and somewhat unpredictable, and it takes days to cycle power plants on or off, this raises a major problem: what happens if the renewable fails to provide enough electricity during peak demand? What happens if it provides a massive amount over night, but none during the day? The answers to these questions explains why the grid doesn’t use solar, wind, etc on any kind of large scale: they don’t provide energy with the kind of consistency and reliability that the grid needs.
The reason this new knowledge calls electric cars into questions is that if the best we have for large scale storage is 30% efficiency, this suggests that storage at the scale required to use electric cars is a nightmare, a fact which my teacher confirmed when I asked about it: batteries are expensive and not much better (for a variety of reasons; some of which are too technical for me to follow), but when I looked into it I found someone from Stanford who crunched the numbers and found electric cars are about 45% efficient at best!
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/sun1/
In other words, 55% of the energy which is generated for powering these electric cars is lost along the way. Additionally, the assumptions which went into calculating this are quite optimistic. I know it’s a decade old now, but I haven’t found anything more recent, and the concerns still stand. This doesn’t take the manufacturing costs into account either, which make the electric cars look even worse, given that lithium batteries are apparently incredibly energy intensive to make.
So, unless there has been a revolution in battery efficiency, and in the electric grid in the past ten years, then these are remarkably wasteful vehicles. Both of these would be rather shocking, given that the electric grid dates back to the late 1800s, and lithium batteries to the 1970s: both are fairly mature technologies.
Hello all, I just released an interview today with Mark Stavish where we talk about alchemy and the future of esotericism. I thought it might be of interest to some of you! Here’s the link: https://anchor.fm/plantcunning/episodes/Ep-43-Mark-Stavish-on-Alchemy-and-the-Future-of-Esotericism-e153pkv
Also, I asked him about mushroom spagyrics, since he worked closely with Jean Dubuis, and since mushroom spagyics have kind of exploded lately (especially on the West Coast) I wanted to warn people about the dangers. He suggested that what Jean was warning about was more Psilocybin tinctures than medicinal mushrooms. I’m not going to start doing mushroom spagyrics, but I still take Reishi (not spagyric) tinctures every day, and consider Reishi and Chaga allies, so it is an important topic to me.
I’ve only read what you’ve said about Oswald Spengler and his Wikipedia page. How do his ideas of how cultures develop and influence each other compare to Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development?
Short version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uneven_and_combined_development
Long version: http://www.rs21test.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/uneven-and-combined-development-modernity-modernism-revolution.pdf
Curious if it feels like to you all that things are spinning more out of central control lately in terms of national and state politics. I’m watching states beyond Florida and Texas make their own decisions and rules at a faster and faster speed. I’m also observing more and more people just tuning it all out. It feels like 6 months passed since last month’s open post.
In Covid news – My daughter’s college forced vaccination on the student body and has zero plans to test, quarantine, or make allowance for illnesses from Covid this fall. I’ve had an enlightening email exchange with the administration. In their view the vaccines are perfect, no one can catch or pass Covid this coming year, and I am weirdo parent for asking. (The vaccine failure is very obvious in Iceland and Israel.)
Hope everyone here is well and able to keep on keeping on.
@Mister Nobody
wow, just wow
comments like these are why I keep coming here. Totally spot on! Never thought of this before.
thx
Jerry
To hop on the posts of other Ecosophia members, the DoJ just came out and announced that it will be totally legal for public and private entities to require mandatory vaccination (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/breaking-biden-doj-declares-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-legal/). I imagine we’ll be seeing a very concerted push on vaccine holdouts over the next few months.
Of course, this comes on news that vaccines are failing to provide either immunity or reductions in non-transmissibility as compared to the unvaccinated as seen in less altered data out of the UK and Israel. There’s also increasing reports of vaccine reactions (miscarriages, heart issues etc) and that the vaccinated may be turning into super spreaders, and thats all before winter hits. Your mundane astrology prediction JMG of major disruptions in labor and in health seems to have been born out.
Anon
If anyone is interested, there are three days left of the complete works –I don’t know how complete– of Guirdano Bruno’s new translation of his magical work. Here is what is included in case anyone wants to grab a copy:
De Magia Mathematica
De Magia Naturali
Theses De Magia
De Vinculis in Genere
De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis
Medicina Lulliana
Lampas Triginta Statuarum
And the link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackletterpress/giordano-bruno-de-magia/posts/3248645?ref=ksr_email_backer_project_update_registered_users
Greatly saddened to hear about Onething. 😢
Mollari #20, do not prostrate yourself before the false god named Baseload. There are other ways to run a power grid. Electric cars are still a questionable idea at best though. 😉
Thinking over the past several weeks of posts, I had a lot to say, that wasn’t “on topic” so decided to wait for the open post. I’m old enough to remember how things were before “feminism” or as it was called women’s liberation. Yes, that was a great freeing of us, because there were so many restrictions on women. Some as silly as being arrested for wearing pants that zipped up the front rather than the back or side. Or needing a male relative to cosign a loan or credit card application. There were a lot of women owned and centered small businesses started that filled a need. Then the Purity Police got going. If you didn’t toe the line, you weren’t a “real” feminist, and suspect, and you were attacked, mostly in the media, though a lot of women were driven out of business by Purity Police demonstrations and boycotts. Then there was the insistence that “women=good, men=bad” and the ridiculous insisting that “equal” meant same. Women and men aren’t the same, though the differences have been papered over, leading to today, when we aren’t allowed to celebrate being male or female. As was mentioned, the PTB don’t want us the be androgynous much as they want us to be sexless lil consumers who fall into line. We have been convinced to give up our power, as men and women for some imagined future handed to us from the elites. Which is one of the main reasons alternative ways of thinking, living, being , the other paths, many hidden in plain sight are so ruthlessly attacked. This is also part and parcel of the thousands of years of Western bio-phobia. Which is expressed in such phrases as “The Conquest Of Nature” and “Manifest Destiny”, that one often has “Among The Stars” appended now days. Personally, I’ll pass on that “Future Amongst The Stars”, and slap them with my mermaid tail, before diving deep into the waters of the ocean of reality
Hi JMG, Having followed your work all these years, I think I know your views on wasting energy to escape Earth’s gravity, but thought it would be fun to ask your thoughts on the Billionaire space race.
Hope All is Well
Mac
Re: #2
Mark: I want to come to the Oregon Ecosophian get together! Living in Milwaukie and will travel…Couple you please post the particulars?
I too am concerned about the increasing pressure to get the jab; especially after events in France and developments in the US. JMG, what do you think the outcome of this totalitarian/mass psychosis will be in the USA? Is this where the Fourth Turning crisis comes in? I think so. I vaguely remember you saying something about this, or maybe just crisis in general? I can quite literally sense a crisis on the horizon..anyone else feeling this?
Sean bolger from Walsall,
I am sorry to hear about your situation. For whatever its worth, standing up to peer pressure is categorically easier when you can find someone to bounce ideas off of. As the social creatures we are, even just one person speaking sanity can lower your stress levels and cure you of a LOT of cognitive dissonance. I hope this group can help you with that and wish you luck in finding people near you who better align with your values.
Also, start thinking about putting yourself in a different social context. It sounds like your job is stressful. With the labor shortage going on right now there will probably never be a better time to transition into blue collar work. As a security guard/bouncer you might already have the strength to get a factory job and then start working your way up the ladder. I am not sure how the situation looks where you are, but here in the states people desperately need blue collar workers, and these groups are not at all interested in virtue signaling through vaccines. As far as your family goes, sometimes you simply have to take a step back from people you grew up with. It does not mean you hate them, but if they are causing you this much stress then stop interacting with them more than you need to for a little while.
I don’t know what your spiritual path looks like, but put some time into exploring that. There are plenty of wise thinkers in any number of religious traditions, and if you are not religious than go check out the stoic philosophers (oh which Greer is a great contemporary example).
Finally, if you have not done so already take up a hobby that gets you spending a lot of time outdoors. That could be gardening, hiking, bird watching, hunting, fishing, rock climbing, or any number of things. Just start doing things that force you to spend more time outdoors and the bully tactics will have far less impact on you.
Teresa, thanks for this.
Mark, and thanks for this also. The Malcolm Kyeyune piece especially — he’s one of the most brilliant social critics around these days. I don’t think I’ve yet gotten through a piece of his without at least once gasping and saying, “Wow. That’s spot on, and I didn’t see it coming at all.”
Yorkshire, maybe it’s my Aspergers, but conversations like that have never caught my interest. I’ll pass.
Sean, it’s hard to gauge how long a social panic like this will continue. The fact that people are freaking out so spectacularly suggests to me that they know that there’s something very, very wrong with the official story, and are trying to pretend otherwise — but what will happen before things reach a crisis point is anyone’s guess. Hang in there!
Alan, I think a lot of it is simply greed on the part of the pharmaceutical industry. They’ve basically concocted a scheme whereby every new outbreak of the common cold will be labeled The Next Variant That Will Kill Us All, and so they can rake in preposterous amounts of money every year from governments to provide booster shots. Since there’s a growing pushback against high pharmaceutical prices in the US, they’re clearly looking for some other way to keep their profit margins at an obscene level, and this seems to be it.
David BTL, fascinating. It’s good to see common sense slipping in at long last…
Apprentice, good heavens. So I called it.
Patricia M, and likewise!
Mister N, I think you’re spot on. It’s very common for people who are terrified of something, but can’t admit that this is the case, to find something else to be frightened about instead, and to engage in weirdly fetishistic ritual behavior to cope with the fear. The current virus panic is a great example. The comfortable classes in today’s America have plenty to be frightened about; just for starters, the US empire that generates the economic basis for their lifestyles is coming apart at the seams, and the pushback against their privilege and the policies that benefit them at everyone else’s expense is becoming increasingly forceful, smart, and unyielding — but they can’t let themselves think about that.
It’s central to their identity that they are the smart people, the good people, the ones who are leading humanity toward a better future, and the hard fact that they’re just another corrupt and gluttonous aristocracy that’s doomed itself by its own stupid mistakes is not something they can let themselves face even in their darkest dream. So they wallow in terror of The Virus! The Dreadful Virus! and don masks and other health-themed fetwear, partly to deal with the fear in a ritualistic fashion and partly to signal their membership in the ranks of the Good People. None of that will do anything about the forces that are dragging them down, of course, but that’s par for the course.
Hello Mr. Greer,
I have had a dark hypothesis that I have wanted to run by you for some time. If my reading of history is correct, then the end of slavery correlates with the rise of fossil fuel use. Yes, I know plenty of civilizations did not practice slavery over the ages. Nevertheless, it seems like a fairly common practice until it went into sharp decline in the 19th century. Seeing as we still use a watered down version of slave labor via sweat shops in the 21st century I have to ask, do you think slavery only went into decline because the price of energy dropped so low? If so, does that mean slavery will most likely make a comeback as fossil fuels burn out and the price of energy increases again?
1) So does anyone know what’s up with J.D. Vance? You know, author of “Hillbilly Elegy”, where he shared the story of his Appalachian family falling apart which he rose out of, attended an Ivy League university, adopted the characteristics of the east coast elites and became the darling of the professional-managerial class. Apparently he is running for the Senate, not just as a Republican, but a Trump Republican. The chattering classes have turned on him with fury.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-moral-collapse-of-j-d-vance/ar-AAM911p
https://newrepublic.com/article/162548/jd-vance-populist-fraud-ohio
https://time.com/6078483/j-d-vance-interview-trump/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/08/jd-vance-is-scaring-americas-elite-good/
2) Not long ago on JMG’s Dreamwidth blog, I commented on how there seems to be a coin shortage going on in my area.
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/137816.html?thread=16483672#cmt16483672
Last week I was at the big box store and I was supposed to receive $3.41 in change, but they gave me $4 instead. It said right on the receipt “Round up”. I did some searching, and it doesn’t sound like a shortage, but a circulation problem. Anyone else run into this, especially the rounding up of change?
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/why-do-us-coins-seem-to-be-in-short-supply-coin-shortage.htm
3) A lady I work with said she’s thinking about how to add to her retirement savings, and is considering of getting Bitcoins. I know there’s been some discussion here about the pros and cons of Bitcoin, and I don’t know enough myself to have an opinion on it. But I can’t help but wonder, if it was a portent in 1929 when shoeshine boys were giving stock tips, is it a similar situation when a not terribly high paid factory line-worker is planning on investing in Bitcoin?
Joy Marie
@ JMG, Mister N
Re elites, aristocracies, and the self-termination thereof
John, I recall you pointing out previously (and repeatedly, as I recall) that the nature of an elite lifestyle is not conducive to the maintenance of that elite. That is, the life-lessons and habits learned by subsequent generations (i.e., post-founding) of an aristocracy tend to undermine and ultimately terminate that aristocracy as another group rises to take its place, founding a new elite and continuing the cycle. This strikes me as a classic feedback mechanism, perhaps one hardcoded into societal relationships. (A fundamental premise of a Seldonian mathematical discipline, perhaps?)
Hi JMG and comentariat
As many commenters are saying, with the crystal clear collapse of the efficacy of the Covid vaccines, the campaign to vacciante everyone is increasing with stunning ferocity,
I have refused the vaccination and it is scary, because unfortunatelly is not only a matter of the authorities but the majority of the vaccinated people support the forced vaccination or at least heavy restriction of the unvaccinated “negationists”, as they call us.
Really it reminds me the film: “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.
Only two examples of very recent editorials in two newspapers in Spain:
https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historias/2021/07/24/60fafd8cfdddfff6228b45a7.html?cid=BESOCYEM01&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social_besocy&utm_campaign=BESOCYEM01
The article has the title; “The negationists are the new lepers; how the European countries are cornering the anti-vaxxers”. You can imagine the content…
Another article even “better”:
https://www.canarias7.es/opinion/firmas/tiempo-20210724151347-nt.html?ref=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2F
They say:
“They are a minority, but they are there, lurking, in the dark. Like little mice hidden at the bottom of a sewer waiting for night to fall to walk alone.”
If you read the same sentence in a newspaper in Germany in 1933, who would you think they were talking about?. The similarity in de-humanazing a group of people is truculent.
There is a huge call to force the remained public employees to be vaccinated, to not allow the access to public closed places, to avoid travel, to recommend eviction from some kind of companies…In general to make life a hell to the unvaccinated, and the real problem is that this is supported by the majority (now vaccinated), and, and the authorities are saying: “democracy rules!”
It is really scary and speeding up quickly! This is a madness.
But I am resolute to continue forming part of the “Control Group” they want to erase (as they did with the placebo group of the Pfizer and Moderna phase 3 trial in last february “to save their lives”).
I will not be vaccinated AT ANY COST.
Cheers
David
Hey guys – My girlfriend and I will be adopting a pair of kittens sometime next month; and I was wondering if anyone had any advice on keeping cats.
David by the Lake, I agree that energy has to be paid for, but how many entities do I have to support? Where I live, the provider of both electricity and gas–good luck finding an all electric rental–is National Grid, which is a British company. Then there is the extra charge for transmission of said energy from wherever NG buys it. NG has no offices stateside, so if you want to pay cash in person, which I prefer for reasons I think are pretty obvious, you have to find a drug or grocery store pay station. AND, now the payments are run through American Express. One grocery store requires my SIGNATURE for paying my bill!! DbtL, from your perspective, as an expert in the field, what does a company like NG do that a locally owned municipal energy company can’t do? At least NG hasn’t started any forest fires yet.
@MarkL #2 — Regarding the Covid-19 injectable biological agents, AKA “Vaccines”, you may be interested in this article:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1419713123787808812?refresh=1627326570
The article says, in essence, that researchers found the spike proteins engendered by the vaccines still circulating five months after vaccination in every one of the (admittedly small set of) subjects tested. This is potentially very bad news for people who have been vaxxed, as it is now known that the spike protein is critical part of Covid-19’s mechanism to cause disease.
One wonders if Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, etc. knew about the long duration of the spike proteins during the EUA process, and, if so, why this fact was not disclosed to those receiving the injections. If not, why not? Gauging the quantity, distribution, and duration of active components of vaccines is essential to the vaccine development and approval process.
Either way, this is not a good look. It’s either incompetence or duplicity, and it’s hard to see a scenario in which the regulators were either lied to or are complicit. One hopes that vaccine recipients won’t pay the price.
When doing a tarot card reading I often have an immediate, intuitive interpretation but then upon further reflection and meditation I come to a dramatically different and even opposite conclusion.
Is there a traditional consensus as to which view should be given more weight? Is my immediate reaction more trustworthy than sustained deliberation since I might be talking myself into an answer I secrety want? Or are gut reactions usually considered of a lower order than contemplation?
I watched a PBS documentary about American extremism (I think called American Insurrection). They discussed the ‘uniforms’ of the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Boys and I realised I’ve seen this before. Specifically how the Montague and Capulet boys dress in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) and the styles of the gangs in the game Manhunt (2003). Down to details like Hawaiian shirts. Not sure what that says about the nature of theatrical revolt. But if that’s the roots it’s coming from, I predict we’ll see a group basing their image on Latino culture. Some combination of Latino type suit, luchador masked wrestler, and matador.
Many people I know have been enthralled with the whole January 6th commission the past couple of days. There was some “new” police body cam footage released that was supposed to “change our whole perspective on uprising/insurrection that happened that day….. Basically the footage just showed more of the same, people breaking windows, shouting death threats at policemen, disarming policemen etc.
EN-SHORT THE VIDEOS SHOWED NOTHING NEW.
What the comfortable classes cannot admit to themselves, in my opinion is that the January 6th event was an insurrection against them. If you say the event was “The poor people revolting against the billionaires and the cronies,” you get told. “It can’t be so. They are racists looking to keep the system racist. That’s why they revolted.” You can’t mention that some of the people at the capitol were there because they’re tired of being screwed over.
If you mention that the people at the capitol by and large were people who wanted a leg up not a hand out, you’re shouted down. Most government policy at this point seems to be a bribe to stop the people from revolting. Thats what the housing eviction moratorium is. That’s all the covid stimulus checks were. That’s all the system has been since forever. I do not know.
JMG,
Apologies if this has been discussed in earlier posts. This morning I meditated on the element fire and realized it was a perfect metaphor for our Faustian civilization. We burn up and consume everything we touch.
I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on which elements will be important after the Faustian fire runs out of steam (Fire and water? Was that a pun? I’m not sure.)
Fire briefly transforms water and can modify earth, but not consume them, like it can air. Will the next civilization be a stone-working or water-powered one?
Mister Nobody and JMG, I was just reflecting on this very thing, which prompts these thoughts: So the PMC voters disproportionately trusted, and took the Covid mRNA inoculation. If there are delayed, severe long term reactions as might materialize in the upcoming flu season, then the PMC voters (‘cough, cough’ Democrats) are going to be disproportionately hit, while sparing, and vindicating, the vaccine refuseniks (largely Trump voters). What kind of fallout might we see from that?
Maybe fear of this prospect on the part of TPTB is what’s driving the shrillness of the anti-refusenik campaign.
—Lunar Apprentice
Denis, would you be amenable to an offlist conversation about college vaccine requirements? I wouldn’t even know who to contact or what to say to school officials and would be very keen to converse with you about what you’ve done. I can be contacted via a gmail account using my user name here. Thanks for considering it!
Hello, this is a bit of an occult or practical question. I have had a year of laying low and feeling a bit stuck with this one – I walked out of a shop without paying for a basket of items and was barred. Its a very small town and there is about one degree of separation, I tried explaining that it was an accident – I’m prone to disassociate and was going through a lot of lockdown stress but it wasn’t believed and the barring stood. I wonder if there is something practical or ritual I could do to clear my name.
In previous years I did go short on paying for a few things here and there and wondered if it was karmic payback though I do not steal now as a matter of principle and I feel a bit tainted by the whole matter and want this to no longer affect me or my family.
There have been a few opinion pieces in the UK recently – some in The Guardian, but never mind – about growing political resistance to proposed climate change legislation mandating all-electric cars, phasing out fossil fuel use in homes, etc. Some have speculated about what’s been called a NewKIP party – the name being a take on UKIP and its success on what was thought a fringe single issue – being formed to campaign against such laws and, as with Brexit, forcing the Tory party to adopt much of their agenda. I presume the line would be similar to Trump’s, that the science is debatable, the risks exaggerated, that we have to adapt, that too much legislation would infringe liberty and damage the economy, etc. I’d be interested in seeing the readership’s opinions on this possibility.
Robert
Marlena13, This is what happened with the second feminist movement, as I remember it and what I have managed to piece together since then.
Contrary to what many outraged conservatives will tell you now, Betty Freidan’s book was not about sex. It was about money. It was about us women being paid what we are worth. What I remember most clearly from that book was the chapter in which she explained that the function of women in the post war economy was to “buy products for the home”. I don’t know if you are old enough to remember the consumer culture of the 50s and especially 60s. To be considered respectable one had to spend. The matched living room sets, the new fashions every six months and the new cosmetics to go with the new fashions. The new car every two years. The matching fridge and range in fashionable colors. Remember avocado kitchen appliances? Shag carpet was all the rage until hapless buyers had to start cleaning it and found out how many bugs and how much dirt the shag can hide. So the shag had to be ripped out and then new wall-to-wall, also de rigour in those days, installed. Then we found out that when there is a heavy rainfall, water seeps up into the wall to wall and makes a nasty mess, even if one doesn’t get black mold.
In addition to the improvements in civil rights for women which you mentioned, a small but potentially influential subset of women realized that if they avoided consumerism, they had a lot of money left over. A girl could travel, finance a small business, even get together with family or friends and buy a small farm. Nobody among the governing classes cared if poor women had enough to live on, but non spending by their more privileged sisters was a definite threat. So, CIA agent Steinem was brought in to derail the feminist movement away from anti consumerism and into safer channels like sexual obsessionism. Earlier feminist leaders were mostly anti-abortion, rightly seeing legalized abortion as an invitation for upper class men to exploit poor women. Now, all of a sudden, abortion rights were THE feminist issue. Not making enough to live on, not subsidized child care, like other industrial countries have, not ending the abuse and exploitation of poor and minority women.
When the first issue of Steinem’s rag, Ms magazine, came out, it was on the newsstands and in the public library and the community college library of the very conservative small intermountain town where I was living. Right there in between Outdoor Life and Good Housekeeping. Now, how does that happen?
About vaccines, masks, etc. I assert, my own private unscientific opinion, that high heeled shoes are a far greater threat to women’s health than the vaccine. I could mention, the tilting of the body forwards, putting internal organs out of alignment, the long term effect on the skeleton, especially foot and leg bones, compression of lungs leading to shallow breathing and consequent loss of energy, etc. etc.
Hello JMG, there is something that I am not understanding and I am hoping that you can help me understand.
You have said numerous times both online, and in print, that nuclear power is a no go option because it is so expensive to produce that it can only exist with government subsidies. I can understand that.
But if fossil fuels go up in price to the point where they are more expensive than nuclear power, then wouldn’t nuclear power at that point be considered a viable option even though it would be far more expensive than what people are used to paying?
This is an as an oversimplified example, but I am just thinking that if in order for people to keep their current lifestyles, they are spending 50% of their income into fossil fuel power currently then they would in the future would be willing to spend 80% of their income into nuclear power if that was the only option to maintain their current lifestyle?
Or is non subsidized nuclear power just so incredibly expensive that even if people spent 100% of their income on nuclear supplied power, it would still not be enough to sustain their current lifestyles?
I hope the above was decipherable. I know what I am trying to ask but I am having trouble putting it into words.
Denis wrote:
” My daughter’s college forced vaccination on the student body and has zero plans to test, quarantine, or make allowance for illnesses from Covid this fall. I’ve had an enlightening email exchange with the administration. In their view the vaccines are perfect, no one can catch or pass Covid this coming year, and I am weirdo parent for asking. ”
As a life-long academic (happily retired for the last 16 years), this does not surprise me in the least. In my own experience, and with a good number of honorable exceptions, university administrators tend to be the dumbest of the dumb among the faculty–and often the most ruthless among them, too.
Laurence J. Peter formulated his “Peter Principle” to account for this tendency in every hierarchical organization, to wit: People are promoted because of their competence. If the hierarchy has enough levels, eventually everyone reaches the level of their maximum competence, and is rewarded with one final promotion–a promotion into a higher position the duties of which he is incompetent to carry out. There he will remain for the rest of his career.
Peters also expressed it more succinctly: “The cream always rises as it sours.” And more crudely, too: “In any septic tank, the biggest chunks rise to the top.”
It explains so much about the modern industrial world, which is quite hierarchical.
Personally, I find it fascinating that even US olympians are now cracking up and refusing to compete. If a nation can’t even keep its top athletes in reasonable psychological health, then the rot must be really deep.
@temporaryreality – aww, that is bad news. Blessings on her, and may her passing have been gentle.
@Christopher Henningsen
I believe the series you are looking for is the “Training the Will” series on JMG’s dreamwidth. For convenience, here are the links:
Part 1: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/104078.html
Part 2: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/105135.html
Part 3: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/105911.html
Part 4: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/107357.html
Part 5: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/108250.html
Part 6: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/109289.html
Part 7: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/110367.html
Hope you find these helpful!
– Jeff
Mollari@20
Seems you are not alone in your concern regards electric car charging – this is in the news here in Britain today: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9834141/Fears-National-Grid-wont-cope-drivers-charge-vehicles-peak-times.html
Privately owned electric cars are just not going to work en masse. The powers that be must have known that but anything to kick the ‘keep it like it is’ can down the road I guess.
As regards all those concerned about the societal pressure to get vaccinated – I feel that too. Especially when these vaccines look to have been oversold on all their attributes beyond the short term. Wonder how long it’ll take for that to be widely acknowledged.
Ian Welsh has one of his best mini essays in a long time up today: https://www.ianwelsh.net/
This month, in my quest to understand what makes Buddhism tick, I took a detour into one of its main rivals: Advaita Vedanta. I’ve been watching the “Introduction to Vedanta” videos by Swami Sarvapriyananda:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBh-iYJ1Q_hQSUXzV7GtTDN5Tsoe4eRpv
I’ve made it to video 13. They’re highly repetitive, mostly about how you’re not your body or your mind, but pure existence/consciousness/bliss, which is also Brahman, the ground of being. Interestingly, after you fully disidentify with your body and mind, you then turn around and identify with everything and everyone, since they, too, are Brahman. What’s more: you can’t skip the first step, or all you get are mushy feelings about oneness.
That’s when I got it: solve et coagula. Advaita is a kind of alchemy, distilling your sense of self down, purifying it, and then recombining it with the world.
What, then, about Buddhism? Advaita says you’re consciousness. Buddhism says no, you’re not even that, and consciousness will also be purified away at parinirvana. So what’s left? The Buddha wouldn’t say.
What follows is speculation on my part.
What I think, in fact, the Buddha hit upon was a variation of the idea that occurs to many materialists: that since we are our bodies (they think), and since our bodies are just collections of matter, and that matter continues to exist after we die, there’s a sense in which we continue to exist after we die. (The Buddhist doctrine of anatman/anatta is often explained as saying that we’re simply assemblages of parts, albeit not merely physical ones.)
I think maybe the Buddha taught that the parts of us will tend to gravitate back together and give birth to us again, and since this leads to suffering it’s a bad thing. Better if they stop doing that and dissipate back into neither-being-nor-nonbeing.
Furthermore, I think this is why it’s been so difficult to place it as either attempting to return to the Central Sun or go zooming out to the Penumbra: To put Buddha’s ideas in Fortune’s terms, I suspect that the Buddha decided that creation was a mistake from the first movement of space onwards, and wanted to return to the neither-existence-nor-nonexistence of pure space.
Hence I think it tries to find a “Middle Way” between the two attractions — which Buddhists might well equate with eternalism (Central Sun) and nihilism (Penumbra) — while still getting off the merry-go-round of evolution.
Does anyone have pointers for more healthy/natural men’s hygiene products? I’m thinking specifically of deodorant, as I live in Texas and it gets pretty sweaty here.
Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!
temporaryreality,
I figure as much, but I’m still sorry to hear that about Onething.
May she rest in peace.
Re displaced fear. A personal example. Many years ago I was pregnant, after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that came close to killing me. Naturally I was concerned about the new pregnancy. I had been wanting a cat and a friend gave me a tiny little kitten–hardly larger than the mice that infested the house–the only survivor of a feral litter attacked by neighborhood dogs. Caring for and worrying about the kitten became an outlet for the free floating anxiety about pregnancy, giving birth, baby, etc. I only realized this later.
The cracks in the Good People are beginning to gape. The Good People (TM) must have compassion for illegal immigrants, people confused about their gender, drug addicts, petty criminals, the homeless– the list goes on. But now they can openly wish for the illness and death of anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, and people who refuse to mask (especially if they go un-masked to a Trump rally). It is really kind of sad–they are becoming so like the hate-filled Evangelicals that they despise. I shake my head at the faceplant posts of some people that I had had a great deal of respect for.
On Magic Monday over on dreamwidth someone mentioned that their magical practice dropped off and was a struggle after getting the jab. I have had a struggle with my practice as well but chalked it up to laziness, adjusting to new circumstances, one year anniversary of my mother’s death, etc. But, when I did a little chart–wow–huge drop in the month after the jab, slight rise, then more drop. Too little data, but suggestive. Not much use in discussion–the vaccine keeps me from doing magic–is not going to influence the “follow the science” crowd.
Rita
JMG –
Do you have a preferred translator/translation of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra?
As an aside, I picked a weird time to read Jacques Ellul’s Propaganda. Yeesh.
Thanks,
C
About renewable energies and the grid: I recently talked to a friend who is in the business. Renewables are very difficult to handle – both physically and economally – because of their instability. At one moment, when demand is low but production is high, you have an excess in the order of a few GW (one GW roughly corresponds to one nuclear rector block), the next moment you have no production at all but high demand. Natural gas is rather fast, but – at least in Germany and possible Europe as a whole – much more blocks would be needed to maintain grid stability.
From a physical point of view, I don’t believe that we will find a solution that allows us to maintain our grid and energy consumption the way it is when a switch to renewables only has to happen. Batteries won’t be the answer, too. I recently read an article (I don’t remember where, but I think it was in The Guardian) where they analyzed how much resources like rare earths would be needed to switch the UK to electric cars only. Let’s say it doesn’t look too good for electric UK…
Personally, I start making preparations to be able to unplug our house (we have a few kW PV on our roofs) from the grid in short time in the case of a major grid failure. Large parts of the electricity grid in Germany have been on the brink of collapse for several times over the last years and the decisions currently made (or not made) by our politicians pave the way for worse.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Thanks Stephen and John, I’m hoping the circular firing quad kicks in before they get to me.
https://youtu.be/tWrRGHu5Ttk
I’m also struggling more and more with the pandemonium and its lunacy.
Also afraid of being forced to be jabbed to keep my job. I don’t particularly like my job but I need the money. Weird how we are in this in-between place where the old world’s jobs still exist but the new world is steam rolling in with no clear alternatives yet. Would you leave your job on principle if you were forced to be jabbed? I think I might. I don’t want to take part in my own oppression.
My wish for the genie: please make it less painful to try and figure out how the world works. Or just take the desire to figure out away.
I have a question for anyone who can answer it. A friend recently went to Sedona, AZ which is said to be the site of an energy “vortex”. One of the faq sheets for Sedona describes it like this:
“A Vortex is a place in nature where the earth is exceptionally alive with energy.
The term Vortex in Sedona refers to a place where the earth energy swirls and
draws to it’s center everything that surrounds it like a tornado. At these magical
sites, trees often exhibit this swirling or twisting of their trunks due the powerful
Vortex energy at the core of a Sedona Vortex”
My friend said that she and her husband both felt at peace while they were in Sedona. My question is simply does any one know anything more about Sedona and these energy vortices?
^^^^^^^^^^^
Sorry, can’t resist putting in my 2 cents on Covid. First, I believe I’ve had it and recovered and that immunity is good enough for me. Personally, I have no intention of taking any of the Covid vaccines. That being said, one of the many remarkable things about this pandemic is the way that so many authority figures have jumped on the Get-Vaxxed bandwagon. Almost every nation on the planet, the mass media, the governmental health authorities, the corportations, the NGOs, even the churches are all singing from the same hymnbook. Never in my 69 years on the planet have I witnessed this degree of unanimity from our elites. This in itself makes me suspicious, but then I guess that makes me a conspiracy theorist.
Two additional thoughts I’d like to toss out for consideration this month.
First, has anyone else noticed the rather ambivalent press Kamala Harris has been getting recently, even from purportedly “friendly” sources? I know we live in a different political world these days, but I can’t recall a new VP being so openly questioned by her/his own party’s nominal supporters. (Actually, I can’t recall a new VP being the focus on much of anything past the election aside from being the President’s primary spokesperson.) Of course, her selection of VP was very much a box-checking exercise, but she’s the heir-apparent…apparently…and the excitement at that prospect seems to be engendering seems to me terribly underwhelming at this point.
Second, with the Jan 6th hearings now taking center stage and the ensuing kabuki theater that said hearings will inevitably produce, I find it fascinating, though not unexpected, that few if any people are asking the proper questions about that event. (For the record, I was profoundly disturbed by that day’s events and not at all impressed by the participants. The US Constitution and the constitutional order are much more important than any presidential election.) Far, far more important than who is to blame for what occurred, we ought rather to be asking why this extraordinary event took place, how perceptions of the Federal government have gotten to the point that something like this could even occur, and what those underlying causes might be. A classic root-cause analysis, in other words. It’s simple enough to say (as the final report undoubtedly will) that an amoral populist blowhard hoodwinked a mob of hillbillies into committing sedition [a paraphrase of the Good People’s view, not mine], but that assertion fails utterly to understand what is truly going on in this country, much less what can be done to counteract it.
@degringolade
Not sure what I’m allowed to post here but search through past open posts for commenter “solarfed” and the email address for announcements. Or perhaps he will post another invitation this month.
Hear hear, Marlena13!
No man will ever know the joy of realizing that period you had 4 months ago was your last. 😄. Or the sweet relief of removing a push-up bra or stilettos 👠 after a long, uncomfortable evening,
What puzzles me is, the men who want to know these things.
JMG,I Iiked your comment about mask wearing to , ” signal their membership in the ranks of the Good People.” That explains what I have been seeing in the last few weeks since most of the mask and occupancy restrictions have been lifted in Oregon. Where I live in the Western suburbs of Portland most of my neighbors are middle class folk who work at Intel or one of its suppliers. Mask wearing has pretty much disappeared except for people with obvious health problems or recent immigrants from Japan, Korea or China where mask wearing has been a social habit for years. But yesterday I went to a pet food store in a trendy part of inner Portland near my shop to find some treats that my wife’s Cat is hooked on. This store is staffed and frequented almost completely by fit looking 20 year olds ( except for me). But not only did they have a mask mandate, they had a 6 person maximum occupancy and a girl stationed by the door to spray you down with disinfectant. But they did have multiple BLM signs along with rainbow flags, and other trendy banners such as ” land back”, ” abolish the police,” Etc. So your idea that mask wearing is some sort of virtue signaling operation makes perfect sense.
@Darkest Yorkshire: My wishes are 1) to be entirely cured of type 2 diabetes and its corresponding insulin-resistance, 2) being shielded from or cured of whatever it is that is causing my chronic middle-insomnia problem [I’m guessing this would be psychic shielding from all the toxic spiritual energy there is out there right now], and 3) for the evil establishment’s ability to suppress Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid to be entirely thwarted.
Does anyone else have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and, if so, have you found anything that helps? I literally dozed off while typing the other day (feel free to joke about keyboard marks).
a couple of things:
1) I would like to plug a search engine with a similar name to Ecosophia, called Ecosia.org. when you use it, you plant trees.
2) doubt of (if not hostility towards) the Covid vaccines seems so prevalent on this forum.any dissenters who don’t feel that way, other than me? I gladly got the vaccine, mainly with game theory type of reasoning where I would rather get a vaccine which might do bad things to me versus getting Covid, which seemed the worst risk. I did not have to do any soul-searching over this (and this comes from me, who has internal debates a lot), I got the J&J vaccine as soon as I could. for the record, I also never suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome and I detest Critical Social Justice.
3) a question for JMG, specifically: you have often talked the idea that we will never get a spacefaring and utopian future. (I personally haven’t given up hope for it.) do you remember the point at which you said to yourself, “you know, this seems like bull****?”
The gods seem more wet-fish-slap-across-the-face-y lately – is that new, or am I just noticing it?
“Virgin Galactic acknowledged on Tuesday that billionaire founder Richard Branson never rode a bicycle to the launch site of his space flight on Sunday, US time, as depicted in a highly publicized video included in the company’s webcast of the event.
The video clip showed Branson riding his bike toward New Mexico’s state-owned Spaceport America near the town of Truth or Consequences, flanked by two SUVs…” https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/technology/2021/07/richard-branson-s-pre-launch-bike-ride-didn-t-happen-admits-virgin-galactic-official.html
And I don’t even know what part of this to pull-quote, except my sides hurt by the time I got to “She also refuses claims that the machines are broken, other than the dishwasher,” https://www.victoriabuzz.com/2021/07/staff-at-downtown-victoria-cafe-refuse-to-work-until-demands-met/
And your soundtrack for today is Grace, Too .
I couldn’t figure out why my Gen X family and friends loved this one so much, and he chose to end his last concert with it, because it’s bland on the Day for Night album. But when he did it live, Gord would do the thing Hip fans call letting his “dark passenger” in, and extemporize bits of other songs mixed in. Then it was clear, this is their song – the generation who came of age after the bubbles first burst, the Office Space generation. Sometimes, he would replace “he said I’m fabulously rich” with “he said I’m tragically hip” and the audience would go wild.
Three interpretive notes:
1) Gord was a film student and a huge noir fan – he frequently references silent movies. This is Double Indemnity .
2) “Grace, too” was the name of his teacher’s canoe, and they always asked him what it meant when they saw him paddling about, and he always gave them a different answer.
3) “the secret rules of engagement are hard to endorse” paragraph is, he said, critique of “the language of the United Nations and the complicated processes that are used to ineffectively delay or to justify after-the-fact, the inane and unending process of people killing people.”
@Marlena13: trans woman here… it does not have to do with “wanting” exactly. it has to do, in effect, with getting cast in the wrong part in the play, and knowing it, and taking steps to change it. you know, when you internally cringe whenever somebody calls you “he” or “him” or you know that men think of you as a man. with that said, I do believe that Ray Blanchard’s typology of MTF transsexualism holds true for most trans women. how I can reconcile the contradict, I honestly don’t know. have never worn push-up bras or high heels. not my style.
Dear JMG, are there effective ways for one on the ‘spiritual’ or ‘mystical’ path to cultivate access to the realms above the physical: the etheric, astral, mental, and others?
Lady C , I know, right 😉 As the one character in Pleasantville says ” OMG!! I’m wearing three pounds of UNDERWARE!! ”
As addendum, I consider wokersterism, virtue signaling, and political correctness just another form of Purity Policing.
HI all,
Of course, the US elite, that is inciting all the pressure to vaccinate the world, is also threatening everyone.
This is a good article that describe the escalating pressure to the unvaxxed:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-aristocrats?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNTMyNzU4MSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MzkyODU3MTQsIl8iOiI4eDhTZSIsImlhdCI6MTYyNzQ4NTg1MiwiZXhwIjoxNjI3NDg5NDUyLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTA0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.3C80tUqNvZSR0Z35CzRpLwfkGRaumdEY9K5PqdmDz2I
Some phrases of the article:
Margaret Hoover, former aid of George W Bush:
“If you’re going to get government-provided health care, if you’re getting VA treatment, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, anything — and Social Security obviously isn’t health care — you should be getting the vaccine. Okay? Because we are going to have to take care of you on the back end.
This is a direct death threat.
David Frum (GW Bush speechwritter):
“Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth — and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another… [But] the reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld…
Will Blue America ever decide it’s had enough of being put medically at risk by people and places whose bills it pays? Check yourself. Have you?”
This a direct “hunger” threat to red America
They are saying “our patience is wearing thin” with the unvaxxed. Good look with this strategy
I think the elites are very very affraid of how the “experiment” is working, and are stepping on the gas, but when you are in a hole, stop digging.
Cheers
David
Patricia M, interesting. So a blind mouse can find a broken clock. 😉
Stefan, good heavens, yes. It’s very common — I think my first one hit maybe six months into my practice. Just keep doing the work. You’ll find in retrospect that it’s during the times that felt like plateaus that you were laying the foundations for your next level of achievement.
Christopher, here you go. Thanks for the article — it’s always entertaining to watch scientists discover something that mages have known about for a few thousand years: in this case, that your understanding of the nature of will affects how you experience and use the will.
Apprentice, it’s very reminiscent of that sociological classic, When Prophecy Fails — have you read that? The short form is that a flying saucer cult that predicted the end of the world doubled down on their beliefs when the prophecy turned out to be wrong. Something has gone wrong with the covid serums; the question is what it is. My guess — though it’s only a guess — is that a lot of people who got the shots haven’t felt healthy since, and so they’re angrily insisting that the vaccine is perfectly safe and everyone must be forced to get it because the alternative is admitting to themselves that they’re feeling sicker and sicker….
Temporaryreality, thanks for this. I’m very sorry to hear that she’s passed — Onething was one of the regular commenters on my blogs since well back in the Archdruid Report days. I’d like to request that those of my readers who have a prayer practice consider saying a prayer for her.
Mark, excellent — yes, that’s a huge issue. There isn’t anything like enough lithium to meet the expansive predictions of electric car production, which is why car manufacturers are arranging things with mining companies — you don’t have to do that if there’s plenty of a resource. Expect lithium theft to become a major risk with electric cars in the not too distant future.
AA, there is indeed. Tomberg was strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner. It’s been a long time since I last read it, since it’s not really my cup of tea, but it’s well recommended by some people.
Clark, have you by any chance read de Santillana and von Dechend’s Hamlet’s Mill? If not, get a copy sooner rather than later. They don’t agree with the apocalpytic end of things but they make an excellent case for myths as a repository of astronomical lore.
Chuaquin, it was perfectly predictable, if you simply assume that the whole point of these antics was to convince governments to hand over billions of dollars a year to the pharmaceutical industry. The goal, as I see it, is to try to get governments worldwide to pay through the nose for a couple of booster shots a year for everybody.
David BTL, thanks for this!
Mollari, as long as we’re stuck trying to maintain a 24/7 grid, yep. There are other ways to use intermittent electricity, but not if you insist on being able to get all the power you want at any time of day or night!
Isaac, thanks for this. Glad to hear you’ve had Mark on!
Yorkshire, I haven’t read Trotsky. Why not read both and make up your own mind?
Denis, yes, I’ve been watching that. The federal government seems increasingly irrelevant just now.
Anon, this is one of the cases where I wish I’d been wrong. No such luck!
Marlena, many thanks for this! Slap ’em good and hard.
Mac, in the years of wretched excess before the Great Depression, the kleptocrats competed against each other to see who had the most lavish luxury yacht. Now private spacecraft are serving the same function. It’s just conspicuous consumption among the absurdly rich.
Youngelephant, we’ll just have to see. I also see crisis on the horizon, but it’s not yet clear enough for me to hazard a guess as to its nature.
JMG and others in the know – I’d be interested to hear your thought(s) on the Giordano Bruno text mentioned in Augusto’s comment (#26). Are you willing to give a one-sentence synopsis of each of the sections so those of us without facility in Latin can assess if the book would make a good addition to our personal libraries? Thanks!
David by the Lake @ 67, about the VPs bad press. The Democrats are realizing that they are in trouble, and Harris, despite being a loyal servant of the oligarchy, can’t help them. It seems that Trump might be gearing up to run for president again, and Harris clearly can’t beat him. Maybe she is not interested in being the sacrificial lamb; she gave up what would have been a long Senate career to accept the VP nomination, or, alternatively, this is a signal to her not to run to succeed Biden.
If I may, I suggest watch the special election in Cleveland, OH11, Aug. 3. If Turner can pull out a win despite having most of the Democratic establishment backing a highly uninspiring insipid nicelady rival, and don’t forget they only need to get the results close enough to make a steal plausible, we may finally see some reevaluating of priorities at the DNC.
To the best of my memory, what Mary Bennett said about second wave feminism is spot on, especially the parts about Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. I was there, and I saw a few marriages break up in the aftermath of Betty Friedan’s book. In each such case that I knew much about, the chief issue was economic, not sexual.
One brief comment about early feminist opposition to abortion. In the days of first-wave feminism, a significant number of the leading spokeswomen were indeed very strongly against abortion. It is instructive, however, to put this opposition of theirs into the context of their times, which were quite unlike our times in some ways. Back then, in many states it was the woman’s husband, not the woman herself, who had the legal right in those days to decide whether a fetus would be aborted. It seems to have been quite a common thing, way back then, for an abortion to be forced upon a woman very much against her will by her husband, simply because he did not want to support another child in his family.
Somewhere or other I once read a memoir written by a woman about her being strapped down to a table for an abortion she did not want, which moreover was performed on her without any anesthesia, so she had to feel her baby being slowly dismembered inside her own body. It was definitely a women’s rights issue, in those days, to prevent such a horror from being forced on any woman.
Hello)
A couple questions that you’ve probably answered 6000 times already and comments. Others can contribute too if they got anything.
In these times when the true cults and faux religions of authoritarian thought, what are perhaps the top ten books, not in the genre of the occult or “self improvement” as B&N would put it , that made you think of things differently and made a bold impact on you to this day?
What advice would you give a novice in magic and spirituality today in a culture that is obviously starving for energy?
Just grabbed The King in Orange, and needless to say im highly amused by the title and reference to the biggest memes to hit the internet… The literal pictorial manifestation or sigil of 4chan of which media giants are still scrambling to destroy or understand but simply dont get it and are dying. Welcome to the wild west of the internet where if you cross agreed upon boundaries known or not you’re going to get screwed. And that’s exactly what happened and is happening to media giants and the American left to this day. Chaos is no joke when it’s all relatively more tame when you address it and don’t contribute to it for yourself to begin with. But I digress. I’ve yet to get deeper into the book and im pretty jazzed about it.
As for vaccines, I dont care, get them or dont we each have our reasons, but by all means everyone has the choice and right to not honor a demand that is inherantly dishonorable and to strongly “bite their thumb at thee” whilst holding up the middle finger. To deny that and to make people out to be monsters or whatever is the exact thing they are pushing on. To say that everyone must get the vaccine no matter what denies each person their individual needs and wants. To say that vaccinated people are all sheep denies each person their individual experience and their needs. Either one deprives the individual of which I personally am starting to get sick and tired of as I find it immoral and hypocritical. I can see why certain orders prohibit certain discussions on divisive matters.
@Helix
I follow Dr. Malone and have read that, but I’m not willing to conclude much of anything based on a sample size of six.
If it is true, then the questions become how much spike protein, and is the level stable or declining? If the decay curve of vaccine induced spike expression is much slower than anticipated, that is potentially a problem. But if the spike sequence has integrated into the cellular DNA to cause indefinite expression that is a BIG problem.
@ria23
This group was much more evenly split between covid vaccine proponents and skeptics several months ago. I personally have moved more firmly into the skeptic group based primarily on the narrative, messaging, and censorship of the vaccination campaign.
If it had followed the pattern of past pandemic vaccine drives, we would have expected that the rushed vaccines would have some problems, that they would be given to the highest risk groups first, and that the rollout would slow to a stop among lower risk groups once those problems became apparent, and that a new generation of vaccines with a more favorable risk profile would be rolled out when they were ready.
Instead the narrative has been subjected to absolute control, everyone MUST be convinced to take the existing vaccines, further vaccine development is delayed, those who refuse are selfish and BAD, and severe adverse effects must NOT be mentioned or acknowledged by anyone who wishes to be respected, especially doctors.
I cannot see how the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines can be reasonably assessed within this narrative environment. I remain somewhat ambivalent about the risk/benefit ratio of the vaccines themselves for various covid risk groups, but I am extremely put off by the rhetoric and divisiveness, and especially by the dismissiveness of the medical establishment toward people who *have* suffered severe adverse reactions. In a reasonable scenario, those people would be celebrated as heroes, as casualties of war, as people who endured personal harm for the benefit of the larger whole.
This sort of thing worries me a lot, and no she is not the only one:
https://mobile.twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1420429786527240194
Mark
Hi JMG, I seem to remember you saying many years ago on the ADR that before major inflation (or was it hyperinflation) we would be seeing deflation. Recently you have commented on considerable inflation in some areas like construction materials. Has your view changed at all in this regard?
ria23 @ 75, I had both shots of I think the Pfizer vaccine, at the insistence of my daughter the LPN, as in I was driven and escorted to the vaccine site. As she had to deal with a massive covid outbreak at her facility, I thought she knew more than I did about it. I have had no side effects that I can tell and that are not better explained by advancing age. I think the elephant in the room here is the effect of most Americans’ highly toxic diet. Naturally, no one is going to track wholesome diet against survival of covid and or lack of adverse reactions to the vaccine. By ‘wholesome’ I do NOT mean vegetarian, vegan, keto (whatever that is) or any other fad; I simply mean food prepared as much as possible free from chemical ingredients, and no, I am not typing about baking soda. I already know that MSG is a “natural” product. So is cocaine. I choose to ingest neither one. My own metabolism seems to require vegetables and grains and only minimal amounts of meats, but that is just me.
I don’t care who does or does not want to wear the spike heals, but please no one tell me I have to wear them. I consider them slow motion foot binding and think they should never have been obligatory.
Greetings JMG and all,
David by the Lake’s and some other commenters’ comments upthread about the wileyness of the Chinese military reminded me of something I’ve been pondering lately……on the last open post there was a lot of interesting talk about a spike in oil prices. So I wondered and asked the geomancy genius (who allows me playful hypothetical questions) if I could make money by trading oil company stocks. This was after observing several high school students I know on summer vacay who are spending their time laying around switching from glassy eyed stares at TicToc to trading stocks and crypto…..they aren’t pretending, they are actually trading. Are they not the proverbial shoeshine boy giving stock tips?!
The resulting geomancy chart did not perfect (so, no you can’t make money) and was filled with the most giddy figures…however, Albus was in the second house so I thought I would do a bit more research….finding several articles much the same as at oilprice.com, they declared oil stocks were a no-loose bet and reviewed the best oil companies in which to invest. Each one was brilliant, innovative, switching to renewables and blah, blah. But the one thing they all had in common was an (we were assured) iron fisted control of oil rights in Africa. Not only that but this African oil was super easy to extract and there is LOADS of it. Cue Jed Clampett missing the rabbit with a shotgun blast and bringing in a gusher! 😉
But doesn’t all this easily exploitable African oil depend on the US maintaining Africa as a colonial backyard?? Enter the plot of “ Twilight’s Last Gleaming”, the page-turning novel by our host and spinner of disturbingly plausible yarns!! After this eyebrow-raising idea, I started to see articles here and there about how the Chinese investments/incursions into Africa are just starting to crap out. Nothing to see here folks. And now this about the Chinese military cracking along in fine form…..
I then asked the geomancy genius if I could make money trading commodities (any commodity) only going long (prices would only rise) and the court and whole house chart replied by perfection with fortuna majors and minors everywhere along with some general happiness. So guess it’s time to stock up that pantry with some rice and beans sooner than later!
Has anyone else been seeing little under-current news items in this direction? Thanks so much JMG for this forum, all the work you do and for writing wonderful novels that make people think!
PS also very sorry to hear about the passing of Onething. Her participation in our conversation will be missed. May she be at peace.
@63 Nachgurke:
Not sure if this is the same analysis you are referring to (it’s from Consciousness of Sheep), but fits:
“The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes of cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes of copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry.
The worldwide impact: If this analysis is extrapolated to the currently projected estimate of two billion cars worldwide, based on 2018 figures, annual production would have to increase for neodymium and dysprosium by 70%, copper output would need to more than double and cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times for the entire period from now until 2050 to satisfy the demand.”
@waffles
-Get liners for the litter box they are a life saver -clean the box every day
-The simplest things are often the best toys
-Get a spray bottle and dont be afraid to use it on them when they get too out of hand.
-Get rope and cardboard scratch posts and rub catnip there to make sure they dont destroy your furniture.
-Spay/neuter them as soon as you can and get them chipped at the same time.
-Better to train them early on to walk them on a harness or use the toilet.
‘Let them associate the kennel with home or a place of security rather than a place of holding or punishment (makes it easier to get them inside).
-Get them used to regular nail filing and baths.
-Can basically train them like a dog or child just takes far more time, effort, and patience because well, cats grow up to be a pathetic roommates who like to cuddle every onvlce and a while.
-Join cat groups on FB like cocainekitties and share the cuteness of your little fur babies (and ask questions)!!!
Hi.
Have you seen the anti vac passports demonstrations in France, Italy, Australia, etc?
What do you think of them?
Do you expect,at any point, the rise of an effective opposition to this passports, or to covid totalitarianism in general?
WRT your response to my initial comment: My original thought was that the PMC was looking to Covid-authoritarianism (of both the social and political varieties) to shore up its waning power and influence, but it wasn’t immediately apparent to me that part of it was also what you once called “Starhawking the Privilege Game” (“We really don’t have any time to talk about how I’m benefiting at everyone else’s expense because we have this really big other problem we have to deal with right now!”). So thanks for fleshing out my perception of this issue!
Temporary Reality, I don’t know Latin nor have I read the text but it is a compilation of all, or a big section of, his magical writings only. Based on my basically non existent Latin and my knowledge of Spanish I think these are the translated titles, but if someone knows latin corrections are more than welcome.
Of Mathematical Magic
Of Natural Magic
Magical Thesis
About principles, elements and causes
The general link
Lullian Medicine (I assume, this is related to Ramon Llull, the Catalan 12th or 13th century mystic)
The last one I can’t tell but something about a lamp and statues, perhaps a symbolic title.
Hey jmg
Do you by any chance have a favourite book on personal finance/ money management?
I ask because I am currently reading the classic “Rich dad, poor dad” by Robert kiyosaki, and while it does have some good advice I think that it is really a book for people higher up the socioeconomic strata than me since it mostly suggests stocks and real estate as assets for getting money.
Dear Temporaryreality: Thankyou sincerely for letting us know about Onething’s passing. As with so many others of us on this site, I’ve grown very fond of her, and to describe my relation as love would not be to overstate it. When she asked for prayers on her behalf, I was glad to offer them, and, you may be sure that now I remember her in prayer as someone dear to many of us, and for whom we pray for a beautiful and good after-life, ‘at home in the arms of the One.’
Friends, know how very special this group is, how many thanks we owe to John Michael Greer from bringing it into existence and wisely nurturing it, and the extent of fondness and real caring we share for each other. Blessings to all, dear ones!
This video discusses a theory of how the vaccine might be harming people. Do an internet search for the names of the doctors and see what kind of news has been written about them, and if they are still doctors…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sIWb9GTbbE
@Loren, #88 – yes, that’s exactly the text I’ve read – though I am rather certain that I didn’t read it there. It was some guest comment somewhere else. But anyhow, that’s the data I was referring to. Thank you!
Nachtgurke
A fun observation which may or may not mean anything. I recently listened to a lecture here in Sweden about new technology. Yes, it included flying cars, but also other stuff: self-going trucks, AI, robots, and so on. The interesting thing was that the lecturer asked “was it really better in the so-called good old days” and then proceeded to diss…the 20th century! I mean, they had two world wars and the Spanish flue, which was much worse than COVID! The best year in world history was 2019!
Now, he has a point of course. Still, as recently as the 2010´s, believers in Progress argued that the 20th century really was the best ever, despite the world wars. Wasn´t this the argument of Steven Pinker, for instance?
It struck me that the lecturer was old enough to have lived most of his life during the accursed 20th century, yet dissed it. For the benefit of a younger generation, perhaps? I found it intriguing that People´s Exhibit A for Progress (the good ol´ 1900´s) were so unceremoniously tossed out as if nothing…
And yes, he was a brave man for pointing out the Spanish flue thing!
@mollari #20
Pumped storage typically has a worst case efficiency of %70, meaning you get back 70% of the energy you put in to pumping the water uphill:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41833
(there are likely many other references)
I am very curious where the 70% loss number came from. Was it a specific pumped storage project that had some poor efficiency for some reason? Was it an article? I have a professional interest. Anyway, I have never heard of pumped storage efficiencies that low.
As far as electric car efficiencies go, the calculation in the paper seems accurate. The author includes the efficiency loss of converting Natural Gas to electricity (60%), and power grid delivery efficiency. Internal combustion engines are much less efficient than combines cycle turbine generators. From wikipedia: “Passenger car diesel engines have energy efficiency of up to 41% but more typically 30%, and petrol engines of up to 37.3%, but more typically 20%.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency
Wikipedia’s numbers also seem about right to me, but do not include any energy used to deliver fuel to the gas station.
So anyway, I think the 45% efficiency does not necessarily kill electric vehicles, at least as compared to internal combustions engines. Not to be interpreted as a defense of a Star Trek future.
Re: Anon #25, my first comment #7, and JMG- “Anon, this is one of the cases where I wish I’d been wrong. No such luck!”
Well JMG, with luck you may yet prove to be relatively wrong. So far, the Guillain-Barre Syndrome has only amounted to small potatoes epidemiologically speaking. If this flu season doesn’t result in the epidemiologic equivalent of an atomic bomb, then you can claim your mundane astrological analysis is sensitive to even fairly small epidemiologic events. If, may the gods forbid, there is an epidemic of GBS or other dire neurologic sequelae, your mundane forecast will be seen to have been an epic call, and become the premier text-book case for the validity of mundane astrology… then again, there might be so much social and political mayhem that no one will have noticed…
May you prove to be relatively wrong.
—Lunar Apprentice
ria23, I am somewhere in the middle. I don’t have an inherent hatred for the vaccine nor a visceral reaction to people that don’t agree with me. What I am against is arrogance, stupidity, binary thinking, near sightedness and idiocy, and those are happening in both sides. At least in my case I actually think it’s worse to get the vaccine than covid, though I am not informed about actual number –which today are probably heavily massaged– but I know more people that got nasty side effects from the vaccine, and here I mean besides the expected effects, than people that got nasty side effects from covid. I look at it this way, if almost everyone gets bedridden for a few days from the vaccine and only a minuscule fraction get any symptoms at all from covid then what is the point?
On the other side there are people that getting it would be a viable option but that is far, far from everyone.
Even though I might get the vaccine, though I will push against it strongly, I don’t appreciate that it’s pushed to people and even if I get it I will keep telling people that I didn’t to piss them off; only when needed I’d get my certificate out. Not getting a treatment on the excuse that you are selfish is incredibly stupid for example, which is what people are insisting. For that matter people should stop driving completely because people die in crash accidents, attack the fake food industry because people die of diabetes and get sick from not getting proper nourishment and stay under a rock because some people get melanoma. For me, it’s nothing about public health but about standing for the principles I think are worth keeping.
So I don’t oppose it, but definitely do not stand by it and people pushing it to my face at work et al just makes me want more to not get it to stand my ground of what is proper for them to decide about my own body.
Slithy Toves (no. 58), as a Buddhist I can assure you that “Buddhism” is not just one thing, but there is a great variety of views within it. Rebirth / karma is among the oldest elements–to the extent that we can know anything at all about Sakyamuni Buddha, he surely taught that–so “materialism” doesn’t really work. (And there were materialists in ancient India, with whom other groups disputed. They had guru-disciple lineages and everything.) “Consciousness” is a tricky term (are we talking about citta?), and different types of Buddhist have different views about what goes on in the mind of an enlightened being. The faction of the Tibetans that I’m most familiar with holds that they key difference is subject/object nonduality, since an enlightened being would not distinguish between “self” and “others,” but feel love and compassion for all.I assure you that this discussion is an endless rabbit hole, if you are interested in tenet systems and whatnot.
Vedanta caught fire in the USA after Vivekananda’s speeches to the World Parliament of Religions at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and its metaphysics has percolated into all sorts of other areas. See Philip Goldberg’s “American Veda” (2013). Advaita Vedantin sage Sankara(-carya) was historically accused by his rivals of being a crypto-Buddhist, since his theology bears a certain resemblance to Nagarjuna’s. But Vedanta was a latecomer among the six “orthodox” darshanas, and Tibetan Buddhism seems to have borrowed more from Samkhya / Yoga, and many aspects of tantric Buddhism share a certain family resemblance with Kashmir Shaivism.
Besides “Advaita” (nondual) Vedanta, there is also “Dvaita” (dualistic) Vedanta and many others. The Hare Krishna, for example, think poorly of Advaita and teach Acintyabedhabedha (“simultaneous difference and nondifference”). That is, they are suspicious of rhetoric to the effect that “I am God,” but prefer a more dynamic relationship with the deity (Krishna, of course) as his devotee and lover.
cdfitz5376 (no. 62), Walter Kaufmann’s is probably still the standard English version. But I haven’t looked at any newer ones from the last couple of decades.
Motown Doug (no. 66), Sedona had been a hippy / New Age mecca since the 1960s, but its big moment came in 1987, with the Harmonic Convergence (led by Jose Arguelles). Basically a bunch of people went there to meditate. The date was inspired by Mayan astrology or something, and some kind of planetary alignment. The idea was to use the “power centers” to bring about world peace. Not sure if the “vortex” language happened then, or earlier. This writer names Page Bryant and Sun Bear:
https://chantae.com/sedona-vortexes-explained/
Anyway, after that a bunch of New Age bookstores opened there, and a few spiritual groups moved into the area.
>It’s getting worse again, so we now once again recommend teddy bear snuggling for everyone
They’re not masks – they’re face blankets. A security blanket. A blankie. A childish talisman. I wonder, if you look at it as a talisman, is it effective?
MotownDoug @ #66: you asked about Sedona. Here’s some info, below.
This is the woman who invented the Sedona “Vortexes”:
https://www.winddaughter.com/page-bryant
By the way, the English plural of “vortex” is “vortices”, not “vortexes” as was popularized by Ms. Bryant.
Page was a talk-radio host and all-out opportunist! I find it amusing that she “discovered” one vortex near the end of the airport runway there, and when the airport manager complained about people running onto the runway to access the “vortex”, then the vortex maps were updated to move the vortex to another spot!
Page Bryant’s obituary:
https://ashvegas.com/news-obit-page-bryant-psychic-who-identified-sedona-asheville-vortexes-dies/
Page came to regret what she had set loose. Here’s a quote from an article about her: “Before long, Bryant developed qualms over the flood of tourists creating fears that her efforts could be copied by others, and they’d distort her findings, that Man has lost connection with Mother Earth and must change, and soon. She began to wonder why she ever let out her findings. Said she to me: “I never wanted to start a new religion.” What really upset her, as the vortex boom gathered momentum, were the phony psychics preying on old women, stealing their savings, promising them marriage and security. “I hate all the exploitation—it makes me sick,” she told a Phoenix reporter.””
Here’s an LA Times article from 1991 that mentions many of the tensions inherent in Sedona: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-04-mn-534-story.html
Those tensions are still there, BTW. The above article mentions tensions between all sorts of groups, including that of Native Americans, who in their own very quiet way basically despise what has happened there.
There are numerous places in the American Southwest that have deep spiritual resonance (and mystery!) to those who take the considerable time & effort to seek them out, and who are duly respectful of the thousands of years of human and spiritual habitation in that region. Sedona, on the other hand, has long since transitioned into a sort of hippy-dippy New-Age Disneyland.
Hah-hah, I just noticed before posting this that the avatar photo I use of me and my wife is in one of those spiritual places/regions! No, I will tell no one where it is or how to get there!
@Copper #89
Thanks for the advice!
@Darkest Yorkshire #3
1. That COVID and all of the surrounding nonsense would just go away
2. That all politicians everywhere around the world, regardless of how high or low they are, would compulsively and habitually tell the full and complete truth, with no omission, all of the time
3. That all business everywhere would accept cash as a form of payment.
JMG –
In Twilight’s Last Gleaming, there’s a comment in Ch9: “The Navy lost one F-14 and one F/A-18, and they were right in the thick of it with us.”
As I understand it, the US Navy stopped flying the Tomcat in 2006 or so, before both when the novel was released and the 2025 timeframe. Is this an alternate history when the Tomcat wasn’t decommissioned, because the alternates flat out didn’t work, or just a slip of pen?
I’ve decided now is a good time to read through the trilogy (Twilight’s Last Gleaming, Retrotopia, Star’s Reach) with some friends, as we stumble towards that sort of world with the various idea-emitters suggesting that war with China may not be such a bad idea…
In regard to lithium supplies; The US has substantial deposits in Nevada and the California desert. Attempts to develop them are being fought tooth and nail by the environmentalists who want the externalities dumped on a third world country.
The US also has substantial copper supplies, development of which will also be fought by environmentalists. But the US does NOT have significant supplies of nickel, and almost no cobalt. There is a small nickel deposit in Oregon near Riddle, and a tiny cobalt deposit in Idaho on the shore of the Salmon River between Challis and Salmon.
Canada has that huge nickel deposit by Sudbury, but I don’t know how they are situated with cobalt. By the way, cobalt is usually found with arsenic. From Wikipedia; “[Cobalt] is the major metallic component that combines with sulfur and arsenic in the sulfidic cobaltite (CoAsS), safflorite (CoAs2), glaucodot ((Co,Fe)AsS), and skutterudite (CoAs3) minerals.
What we really need is a battery using arsenic. We have lots of that.
Malcom Kyeyune´s article (referenced in another posting above) sounds very much like a certain J.M.G…
“Something has gone wrong with the covid serums; the question is what it is. My guess — though it’s only a guess — is that a lot of people who got the shots haven’t felt healthy since, and so they’re angrily insisting that the vaccine is perfectly safe and everyone must be forced to get it because the alternative is admitting to themselves that they’re feeling sicker and sicker….”
There is mounting pressure on the lepers, sorry, unvaxxed, to get jabbed. The UK government just made it compulsory for everyone working in a Care home so given the constant mission creep I am worried about who they will target next.
JMG, I agree with what you said above – but I also think they might be envious of the unjabbed. Again, they can’t articulate that without looking stupid, so to quell their envy they insist we must all be jabbed, (so we can all be in the same boat and get sick together!) This coming winter will be very dark indeed, when pathogenic priming occurs in the jabbed when they encounter the wild virus.
@Sean – hold firm. Check out Thomas Sheridan on youtube or Gareth Icke on Twitter if they are starting to get to you.
>Get a spray bottle and dont be afraid to use it on them when they get too out of hand
Eh. I’ve tried the squirt gun and the spray bottle. What I discovered pretty quick was that she knew that if my back was turned or if the squirty device was not within reach – or both, then it was game on. She did behave while I was watching but only when. Squirt guns are fun when you’re a kid but as a cat training aid, they are not all that effective. Maybe I have a maddeningly smart cat and maybe yours won’t make the connections mine did?
Here’s what did work. There’s a motion sensor activated compressed air device called the Sssscat, I think. It may go under different names though. That works. She became very good at figuring out where it would go off and avoided the places where it did. Also compressed air fired manually, that also works and keeping a can within reach is something she pays attention to.
She’s a good girl now, I haven’t had to get out the compressed air for many months.
Something I picked up on from one of those cat whisperer shows, if you want your cat to get friendly with visitors in your home, have them put out cat treats in front of the cat and make sure the cat sees them putting the really good stuff (like tuna) in the foodbowl. The cat will figure out pretty quick that visitors = goodies and they will get friendly. Never be afraid to bribe a cat. Cats are easily bribed. Tuna is the currency of the cat.
Tonight I’m grieving over the death of my beautiful cat Sunny, who was so sick and in so much pain, that I couldn’t bear to see him suffer any longer. So I did what I know was the most humane thing. But now the grief is like this huge hole in my heart that I can’t believe will ever be filled again.
So I’m interested in what others here believe about the souls and afterlife of animals, and specifically what modern day druids believe. Any reply would be appreciated.
Hug your pets for me too!
Stephen, slavery never went away. There are somewhere between 38 and 46 million slaves in the world today. (By comparison, in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, there were a total of 3.9 million slaves in the American South.) So yes, there will be slavery in the future, just as there is today.
Joy Marie, oh my. That’s hilarious. “How dare you refuse to follow the party line handed you by your betters, you deplorable!” As for bitcoins, good. Yes, that’s a classic sign that a bubble is about to run out if bigger fools.
David BTL, that’s an excellent point! I don’t have anything like the mathematical chops to work it out, but yes, you could very likely reduce that to a formula.
DFC, their terror is palpable. Hang in there!
Grey Holm, ignore the traditional consensus; you are an individual, and thus not predictable by majority vote. Take notes on both interpretations, your immediate read and your later analysis, and see which one turns out to be correct. Proceed accordingly.
Yorkshire, I could see that!
Austin544, good. That’s correct, of course.
Jon, that’s a good question to which I don’t have an answer.
Apprentice, yes, exactly. If in fact the covid serums turn out to have severe long-term side effects, the Democratic Party in the US may have just voted itself out of office for the next generation and handed the country to the deplorables. If they’re aware of it, that might explain a thing or two…
Re-questing, this isn’t really something that rituals can help. Put yourself in their shoes. If somebody did that to your business, what would it take to get you to trust them again?
Robert, that seems very likely to me. The right is beginning to figure out a trick the left learned long ago — you can get what you want by outflanking the major parties and attracting voters to your side — and as that sinks in, they’ll use it to the hilt.
JAD, you’re assumng that nuclear power will stay the same price while the price of fossil fuels rises. Not so. Uranium is mined by diesel equipment, for example, and every other stage of nuclear technology is dependent on fossil fuels in similar ways. As the price of fossil fuels climbs, the price of nuclear power will climb accordingly. The same thing is true of high-end renewable technologies — think of how much fossil fuel energy has to go into making one of those gargantuan wind turbine eyesores! All energy resources these days depend on stealth subsidies from fossil fuels to keep their prices down; as fossil fuel prices rise, the cost of all energy resources will rise in synch.
Logan, I heard about that. I think you’re right.
Mary, thanks for this.
Slithy, interesting. That makes sense.
Jeff, since I don’t live in Texas, plenty of soap and water have always worked for me. Anyone else?
Rita, interesting — thanks for this. As for compassion, having to have compassion all the time is a strain for anyone, and so they were probably desperate to find someone they could hate and still feel good about themselves. With regard to the virus serum, is it a matter of feeling tired or unwell, or is there something else going on?
Cdfitz, I like R.J. Hollingdale’s. His Nietzsche translations generally are my favorites. As for Ellul, he’s worth reading but like a lot of modern French philosophers he really likes wallowing in despair.
Nachtgurke, that’s an important point, of course. A society run by intermittent renewable energy is very different from a society run by on-demand fossil fuel power, and the grid is one of the things that will not survive the transition.
Pinghanling, if I still had to work for someone else, and I was threatened with loss of my job if I refused the vaccine, I’d refuse and let them fire me. (I’d then look for companies owned and staffed by people on the conservative end of things, who would be likely to hire someone who did that!)
MotownDoug, I’ve never been sure what to make of the talk about Sedona; I’ve never been there — but it’s true that different places on the Earth’s surface have their own distinctive energies. As for the weird uniformity of the elite classes, yeah, I’ve wondered about that also.
David BTL, two good points. Harris would be a disaster as the Dem nominee — she’s a worse campaigner than Hillary Clinton, if such a thing is conceivable, and all she has to do is laugh that nails-on-the-blackboard laugh of hers and people back away from her with nervous looks on their faces. As for the January 6 theatricals now under way, people in the comfortable classes can’t ask those questions. Remember that they think of themselves as the smart people, the ones who know what the right policies are. In order to ask the real questions, they’d have to come face to face with the disastrous impacts of their pet policies on most Americans — and they would sooner dine on live tarantulas than even begin to think about that.
Your Kittenship, er, some of us guys love women, you know, and tend to be happy about the things that make them happy…
Clay, the same thing’s very visible here in Rhode Island. In working class East Providence, where I live, the moment the mask mandate went away, so did nearly all the masks. Across the river in the ritzy neighborhoods of Providence proper, masks are still all over the place, and the wealthier and more self-consciously liberal the business, the more sure you can be that everyone’s got their face diaper in place.
Ria23, if you decided to get the vaccine, that’s your choice, and I’m fine with it. My issue is that I’m not willing to have a bunch of blowhards in power pressure me into making that choice. As for when I realized that we’re not going to the stars, I can tell you exactly when that happened. It was when the first pictures came back from the Viking 1 lander on Mars, back in 1976, and it became instantly, brutally clear that Mars is just a lump of airless desert and colonizing it makes less sense than building a city in the middle of Death Valley.
Pixelated, too funny! Thanks for these.
William, you’ll have to talk to a mystic about that. It’s not my path.
DFC, here again, their fear is palpable.
Waffles and Copper on cats: My 2 cents— I disagree with the squirt bottle; it elicits resentment in my experience. To remonstrate misbehavior, use a quick, VERY soft tap on the nose with your finger, as this is cat lingo (from mom to kitten) for “STOP IT” or “DANGER”. If you are out of reach, then give a good, loud hiss. Augment these signals promptly with a “No”. They’ll soon learn what “No” means (which isn’t the same as them respecting it of course…). Be consistent.
Make sure they have perches to look out of windows, or to survey a wide space. Give them lots of attention; petting, scritching, holding and such. Play with them often with strings and such. They like hide-y holes such as boxes, grocery bags lying around, especially in out-of-the-way places. Let them sleep when they are sleeping, lest they get anxious and irritable.
—Lunar Apprentice
I compare what officialdom would say to you about the yearly flu shot and it would be something like mild finger wagging to go get it and if you mentioned those flu shots made you sicker than when you got the flu itself, they’d chuckle and say that’s not possible but then they’d shrug their shoulders and walk away saying something like “You do you, buddy”.
And then you get all the fist shaking, the threats, the suppression, the censorship, all of it for this untested half-baked experimental weird gene therapy that doesn’t seem to protect you from the WooFlu, that they are absolutely leaving you completely on the hook for if anything goes wrong (and it has gone wrong for quite a lot of people) – and you wonder “Are they wigging out? And if not, is there something more sinister behind all of it?”
Covid vaccines: neither my wife and I are vaccinated, but my wife may find herself pressured to get the vaccine for a new teaching job. Like many here, I am finding the ratcheting up of pressure quite difficult to deal with. In any case, I am delving through the arguments for and against.
The main argument I find convincing against the vaccines is that there are no long term tests of efficacy and side effects. Then again, we also don’t have long term tests about Covid’s side effects, either. I’m not in a high risk group, so I’m frankly not worried about dying of Covid, I’m more worried about Covid’s potential side effects. I need to look for past links, but these may be cognitive decline, blood clotting, much the same as possible vaccine side effects. So if it’s true that there’s more risk involved with Covid’s side effects than from side effects of the vaccine, does it not make sense to get vaccinated?
I’ve heard this argument made in the media, and it does make sense, provided that there really is a greater risk of side-effects from Covid as opposed to the vaccine. I understand also that by getting vaccinated means you are definitely exposing yourself to these risks, whereas you may not get Covid at all. However, if the vaccines don’t prevent transmission of Covid, which it appears to be the case, then the likelihood of getting Covid increases as the virus continues to spread. That rests on the assumption that Covid will become a widespread disease that we will have to live with from year to year. Yet I also note another unknown: we don’t know if the virus is weakening in strength as it mutates. Yet another factor is that the vaccines, as commenters above have noted, seem to be losing their efficacy.
So it’s hard to judge the probabilities here. Can you or anyone else spot errors in my reasoning about this, or factors I’m not accounting for? Thank you!
Yes, for those privileged to “know” her, the site just won’t be the same without Onething.
Mary Bennett. yes I remember all that consumerist stuff. The name for it was “Keeping Up With The Jonses” It wrecked a lot of lives. Part and parcel of “Progress” *eye roll*
Lady C, I have fibromyalgia, one of the many symptoms is CFS, and all that helps is to nap when you feel tired, if possible. Not over doing or pushing yourself also helps.
ria23, yes I understand. I have number of trans friends, both transmen and transwomen. Many of them say it’s as if their body has betrayed them, and they need to correct it as much as possible. While I didn’t mention heels and push up bras, I will say I have worn them, often. A lot less as I’ve gotten older 🙂 Whatever fits your style is fine.
Robert Mathiesen spot on about abortion.
And in case it wasn’t clear, I wasn’t trying to smuggle in pro-vaccine rhetoric in the form of a question, I am genuinely puzzled.
Serum seems to be a better descriptor than vaccine, thanks for that.
Temporaryreality, the first four set out Bruno’s theory of magic; the fifth is a basic philosophical treatise adapted to mnemonic use; the sixth I haven’t read, and the seventh is I believe an art of memory treatise.
Copper, the books that influenced me were all books on occultism, so I don’t really have a list for you. Of course, I did end up becoming an occultist. 😉 As for the vaccine issue, that’s a good point. Freedom means everyone gets to decide for themselves, after all.
Uwelo, I was clearly wrong about that. Here in the US, at least, we’re seeing robust inflation.
Sundara, I hadn’t seen those articles about African oil. Hoo boy. Here we go…
Nati, it all depends on whether those protests turn into effective pressure at the ballot box. If so, expect the virus panic to implode in short order.
Mister N, you’re most welcome!
J.L.Mc12, no, I don’t.
Boo Da, instead of flinging around clickbait, please go ahead and make the point you’re trying to make!
Tidlösa, no surprises there. To believers in the great god progress, The Past is bad by definition, and now that the 20th century is definitively in the past, it’s got to be badmouthed. Otherwise people might notice that the present isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and the future seems likely to be much, much worse…
Apprentice, well, here’s hoping.
Russell, it was a mistake on my part. It should have been two F/A-18s.
Tidlösa, yes, I noticed that also. I’m not sure if he’s read me or if the two of us are just seeing the same things.
Bridge, that’s kind of what I’m thinking.
Fran, please accept my condolences! That’s always a hard experience. In Druid teachings, animals have souls like ours; they’re simply at a slightly earlier stage in the process of spiritual evolution than we are. Not that long ago, we were where they are; not that far in the future, they will be where we are — and we and they will continue up the path into Light. So Sunny’s soul is now in the early stages of the same afterlife process you’ll encounter at the end of your current life, and he’ll proceed to a new incarnation in due time, enriched by the experience of sharing his former life with you. You may well see him again, in this life or another.
To Jeff Russell (#59) re: deodorant. For almost 20 years I have used nothing except white vinegar on my pits. I keep a spray bottle in the bathroom, spritz my fingers, and wipe down the pit. I am a farmer so I do get my sweat on, and although there are days that I really want a shower by nightfall, I very rarely stink.
Re: vaccine, since discussion has been invited. I am very vaccine hesitant after both my mother and son experienced nasty side effects from different vaccines. My son (now 23) had neurological damage that took years to overcome.This said, my mother, all four of my children, and I all chose to take the Pfizer vaccine. I at least have experienced no adverse side effects, and neither my mother nor son have mentioned any either. Mom is 86 and has terrible lungs from decades as a smoker. She lives independently in a senior living community. I wear my mask EVERYWHERE, indoors and out, when I leave home, because I want to stack the odds as much in favor of keeping her healthy as I possibly can.
Bei Dawei,
Oh, I grant you that Buddhism is not one thing. I’m specifically interested here in the ideas of Early Buddhism. My understanding of consciousness as something that will be released at parinirvana comes from a talk given by Ajahn Brahm to his fellow Theravadan monks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l7M0PdqxPs
(I grant you that Theravada and Early Buddhism are not the same thing, but this is what I have to go on.)
I’ve also looked at Pure Land Buddhism, and found it quite interesting. I said in a previous comment that if I were to convert to Buddhism, it would probably be to Jodo Shinshu.
@teresa from hershey,
I am interested in the Green Wizards forum. I have tried to sign up for an account in the past but never received the email I needed to complete the process. I just tried to sign up now. Nope… I filled out the form too fast. Please wait and try again. Nope. Now please turn off your VPN and try again. Nope. You’ve submitted too many forms. Please wait and try again. Nope. You didn’t wait long enough.
Sigh. I understand you have to protect the site from bots, but at some point, it’s just too frustrating to keep trying…
On Kamala Harris’s nails-on-chalkboard laugh and what it signifies:
Kamala Harris has a habit of launching into peals of laughter when she is asked questions, even serious ones. It’s likely a nervous tic, and it’s possible that she doesn’t even realize that she does it.
In the world of gambling, this is called a tell. An unconscious and often uncontrollable behavior that serves as a clue to others that a player is bluffing or lying.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/10/the-kamala-harris-nervous-laugh-is-what-gamblers-call-a-tell/
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for providing this forum. Just for your interest petrol was at $1.75 per litre yesterday (3.8 litres to the US gallon). Last I checked, down under we now import over 90% of oil, mostly from refineries in Asia. The thing is, you’d think that with all of the crazy lock downs (affecting three states, two with the largest cities on the continent) that demand would have fallen through the floor for the stuff – and yet here we are at record high prices at the bowser. That old peak oil business never went away as you well know, and for your interest in the realms of international trade, the powers that be must have gotten – dare I say it, woke to realities! 🙂 (others may believe the word means different things but that is their problem, bad Chris!) – because for the past few years they’ve been getting the house in order and we’ve been running a trade surplus.
I’ve been wondering for a long while whether in the higher echelons of decision making whether the realities of the current predicament in relation to put it simply, the Limits to Growth, are known about and understood – and the rest is just theatre where some greedy actors are trying to use their weight to get more slices from the declining cake? Dunno, what do you reckon about that possibility?
Cheers
Chris
Hi JMG, I have a question about cell salts. Do you (or anyone else) know where I can find information on how to use them, such as what combinations and dosages for particular problems? I’d like to try them for my son’s acne since nothing else has helped (and we’d prefer to avoid the antibiotics and other harsh medications), but I’m not sure how to dose them.
I was also interested in your latest dreamwidth post about the connection between obesity and pollution. While I’m not obese, I am very concerned about environmental pollution. My son and I would like to relocate from where we currently live, but I’m having trouble finding a place that has clean air and water. It seems like so much of the country has a pollution problem, which saddens me so much, and it’s particularly difficult because my son and I both have chronic health conditions that necessitate a clean environment.
My question for you and any others who’d like to chime in is, since so much of our environment is getting increasingly toxic, how do you personally handle any air and water quality problems where you live? I know I’m not going to find that goldilocks place where the air and water are free of contaminants. I’m just going to have to choose a cleanish place and mitigate the problem the best I can, and I thought I’d ask how others of you deal with this problem (if it’s a concern where you live).
Many thanks!
“Being able to ‘cancel’ people under various pretenses is not so much an anti-social bug in a system of elite selection; it is a necessary and vital feature; cancelling someone is the same as taking them out of the race.”
What better way to take them out of the race/open up their musical chair seat than to force them to choose between an experimental “vaccination” and their livelihood? There’s an element of ruthless natural selection at work in the elite classes. It’s interesting that high-paying jobs in public school systems, colleges, police forces, and health care are forced-jab environments. All are highly paid jobs with benefits. As for those who have taken the shot and for now have not had adverse side effects: some are getting a placebo instead of the graphene time bomb — the lucky ones. The sad thing is that far more have been killed or horribly injured… they obviously received the real thing, like this Instagram influencer: https://www.bitchute.com/video/4EWoKthMZYqy/
Long before the Coronapocalypse, I maintained that it is no good to be able to afford a $400 dollar bottle of champagne if you can’t swallow or hold your head up without the help of a nurse. Personally, I will die before taking the shot and whoever tries to force me into it before we fight to the death will lose at least one eye.
Fran – I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your kitty, Sunny. His spirit is now resting in the lap of Bast, the Mother of Cats. And perhaps one day a kitten will come your way…
Pat, who went through that two years ago.
Lady Cutekitten, I also have CFS as well as Fibro, and while I haven’t fallen asleep on my keyboard recently, I got quite a laugh at the image of you awakening and lifting your head from the keyboard to discover some arcane message imprinted on your forehead!
I do a lot of things to help my symptoms, but the thing that helps most is being on a low oxalate diet. It keeps the oxidative stress/inflammation low and increases energy, which makes everything better. it can be hard to stay strict about what I eat, but it’s so much better than the alternative (which is feeling very sick!).
I don’t often get a chance to talk to anyone about handling CFS and such. Let me know if you want to swap ideas! 🙂
Waffles, #39
My beloved cat Kiki, age 15, lived a long and happy life. We had her euthanized a couple of weeks ago and it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. Nevertheless, I believe that her time on this planet was the happiest a cat could have. Here is my advice.
Go with the flow of your cat’s personality. Kiki was shy and had she been adopted by someone else would have likely spent her life under someone’s bed or cowering in the shelter. I did a lot of work drawing her out, getting her to play, and I never forced the issue of touch when she was a kitten. Kittens in general love to be entertained and enchanted. Build a fort for them out of couch cushions and blankets, leave the cardboard boxes open for them to play with, and bring them lots of new toys and cat grass.
Give them lots of places to perch and/or a catio.
Don’t introduce new cats or big changes in general without a great deal of thought and preparation. Do your homework. Watch Jackson Galaxy videos. Think like a cat — how would you feel if a new roommate was unceremoniously dumped into your house?
Don’t give them treats with animal byproduct meal such Temptations. They do NOT clean your cat’s teeth and they are addictive. There are treats without byproduct meal that cats will enjoy.
Always do a kitten check before leaving the house or going to bed. Kittens get into all sorts of trouble. CHECK THE REFRIGERATOR. They jump and hide in there, thinking there is food for them, and then get stuck in the fridge all night!
Cats can be trained just like dogs. Kiki came when I called her and knew how to sit on command.
Best of luck with your new fur-children!
JMG, what do you invest in, financially? I’m in my early thirties and have never seriously considered that retirement might still be a real thing by the time I’ve travelled that far into the Long Descent.
But maybe I’m wrong? Sensible people around me are recommending I get into mutual funds and develop an investment portfolio and so forth, like everybody else is doing. I’m skeptical, but from what I understand, forecasting the speed of the Descent is not something you can time out to a matter of years or even decades. Unfortunately for my hypothetical nest egg.
Funny how I didn’t much care to contemplate my old age when worldwide crisis was lurking somewhere in it, but now that the crisis is here it is pleasant to think of the far-off future.
TemporaryReality, thank you the obituary link. May God rest her soul.
Well JMG; once again you called it: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/530509-lesbians-gays-had-enough-lgbtq/
Hey JMG,
I notice that you often recommend people reduce or eliminate debt in response to collapse which seems more than logical from my perspective. However, the opposite seems to be happening around me with people taking on more debt in order to invest in housing predominantly. I am not surprised by this (greed being one of our primary drivers) but when I question these people about debt and the risk of default they are convinced that the government can and will take action to prevent them losing out. They mainly mention negative interest rates and debt forgiveness. Going by western governments performance up until now, this logic appears to ring true but I wonder how far governments can actually go and will such measures be effective at all or for any length of time when things really start to slide? To answer this properly probably requires a complete blog post so just a quick 2 cents worth now would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
There is no a priori reason to suppose that long effects from a vaccine are no different than those of the disease itself. There are many instances of vaccines causing problems down the line that were not caused by the disease being vaccinated against. IIRC, the vaccine for the Swine Flu back in 1976 resulted in 520 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, months after the shot, yet GBS was never a complication of the Swine Flu. The very point of Phase 3 in vaccine safety trials is to suss out these long term risks. Since the Phase 3 trails were not done, those risks are unknown, and these vaccines were accordingly NOT given FDA approval, but rather an EUA (Emergency Use Authorization).
Phase 3 trials usually take 3 to 10 years. That makes covid vaccines “experimental” by any reasonable definition.
So that is the objectively rational and iron-clad reason not to consent to the vax: You don’t know the long term risk you are being asked to consent to. You don’t know the likelihood of experiencing a delayed effect, you don’t know what that effect might be (it could even kill you), and you don’t know when that effect might hit you. No one knows.
—Lunar Apprentice
To chuaquin (#18)
I don’t wear a mask unless somebody asks me to. Even then, I prefer to leave a shop rather than put it on. Some people close to me thought I was stubborn (which, I’ll admit, I am), and that wearing a mask is not such a big deal. I told them (and I specifically remember lecturing my kids about this last summer) that the masks were just a warm-up exercise – and that once we all got used to that, then they would tell us to do something really stupid. Sure enough, along came the experimental gene therapies, and the call for everybody to subject themselves to unknown risks in the name of protecting us from a disease that poses no risk to otherwise healthy people.
I never suspected for a moment that one round of “vaccines” would be enough, or that our masters would give us our freedom back after we complied. I expect it to keep ratcheting up and up until everybody either gets tired of it or dies (whichever comes first). We can already see a never-ending series of shots coming down the pipeline. I will bet anybody that something even worse than that gets foisted on us within a year. Any takers?
PS: I forgot the obvious— GBS has been shown to be a rare short term complication of at least one covid vaccine; see my first comment, #7, but is not caused by covid itself.
Jeff Russell #59:
I suggest a deodorant that contains tea tree oil. I use a lavender-scented stick from Desert Essence (desertessence.com).
It seems to kill smell-causing bacteria for a long time. It has worked so well for me over the last ten years that I only need to use it a few times a year. Now I only apply it whenever the smell starts to return, and then I don’t need it again for months.
Hope it works for you as well as it has for me.
Gerry
An article that all druids, botanists and plant-lovers in this group may appreciate:
https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/plants-feel-pain-and-might-even-see?utm_source=pocket-newtab
To DFC (#38)
FWIW, I’m with you. My wife and I have talked it over, and we are prepared to drop out of society (if it comes to that) rather submit ourselves (and, gods forbid, our children) to forced medical experimentation. When it comes right down to it, food, shelter, and clothing are the only necessities, and most of what we stand to lose are things we can do without. We’re not willing to gamble with our health just to enjoy luxuries (which may not be available so much longer anyway).
Archdruid and Company,
Since I’m surrounded by working class and lower rank salary class people, I have very little interaction with the middle and upper ranks of the salary class in casual settings. Most of my friends are left leaning and so the vaccine and mask discussions haven’t been as angry as they have on the internet or in many of your personal experiences. Everyone I know, even the conservative Trump voters, are vaccinated, without too much complaint. The only weird stories I heard were from people in retail who had anti-maskers yell at them and threaten them. I pretty much thought all of you who were speaking about your experiences with mask wearers or pro-vaccine people were, to put it politely, exaggerating your experiences.
Then today happened.
We had an older women client come into work and she spent her whole 10 minutes in the shop singing the praises of Fauci, telling us how she went to med school with him, how smart he his, and how we should all listen to him. We’re all pretty practical about the virus, we get it’s dangerous to people with preexisting conditions, and our work puts us in contact with high risk people and companies, but this lady was another level of weird.
Regards,
Varun
JMG, that is not the only neurological disease that has shown up. There have also been cases of Bell’s palsy and similar. What informed your speculation towards neurological disease or why was that your speculation? I’m curious.
Ref: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/covid-19-vaccines-safety-side-effects-and-coincidence-2021020821906
Cat training: How to keep cats off flat surfaces, like the kitchen table, or counter tops. Take a sheet of newspaper. Roll painters tape into circles. Attach to newspaper. Flatten, out, a bit. When the cat leaps onto the surface, it finds itself in a rather unpleasant, sticky situation. Might take a week or two. And maybe, a few boosters. But the cats can’t see where they’re leaping. Lew
JMG, just three days ago I was driving at night, on the highway, when suddently I hit a feral cat trying to cross the road (it literally jumped in front of my car). I stopped the car and tried to help the animal, but, as soon as it woke up from its torpor, it hissed and went hiding. I didn’t managed to examine the cat closely, but I could see it limping – a broken paw, probably. I don’t think an injured feral cat can survive long with a broken limb, and that’s putting aside other possible injuries, such as internal bleeding. Do I accrue bad karma from causing its death? Is there any way I can mitigate and reduce that loss? Thanks.
Dear JMG and commentariat,
A few question, if I may:
1) I’m 33 years old, being born in 1988. The past few years have been, collectively speaking, the darkest spiritually that I’ve ever seen. During the past years it has seemed to me that every month exceeds the previous in the dire energy and I’ve been frankly astounded by how bad the atmosphere has become. That said, I’m still rather young and have only lived in the United States. This causes me to wonder:
a) has anyone here experienced times in which the collective unconscious felt spiritually darker than they do now? I’m especially curious those who are older than I am and those who have lived or do live in other countries.
b) For those who have lived through darker times, may I also ask what you did to keep your sanity?
2) JMG, I’m very curious your ethics involving prayer — do you think it’s something in which one ought to ask for explicit consent for all and every instance or are general blessings something you consider okay to pray on the behalf of anyone with or without their knowledge or consent?
Mr. Greer, my apologies. I did not see my behaviour as click bait. The video is a panel of Canadian scientists discussing adverse reactions to the vaccine they have seen in their patients. The main speaker says that to investigate this he asked patients going through his office who choose to get the vaccine to follow it up with a general blood clotting test. 62% of those volunteers had elevated levels of some component of blood clotting.
The video says it much better than I do. The video ends kind of mid-sentence when Dr. Hoffe suggests that the long term effects might be heart failure. I assume the people speaking went on to discuss things further, but in trying to locate their voices elsewhere all I have found are news articles smearing them and that some had perhaps even had their medical licences revoked.
There really weren’t any points I was trying to make, just sharing the video because I thought others might be interested. I’d seen people post links to videos here before. I recognize it is frightening information, but it is also just people talking, just people trying to figure things out…
To Jeff Russell (#59)
I live in a country with horrendous humidity and summer heat. I get by alright with crystal deodorant (alum) and baby powder (I manage to find some without perfume in it).
I don’t know what you do about shaving, but I recommend using a safety razor (the kind where you can change out the double-edged razor blades). I switched ten years ago and it is way better than the over-priced cartridge razors. Get yourself a nice bristle shaving brush, and you can use regular hand soap instead of shaving cream. I also make my own bay rum for after-shave, which is as easy as putting a few spices into a jar of rubbing alcohol and letting it sit for a couple of weeks.
ria23
I am in much the same situation with regard to the vaccine as you. Getting it seemed like the lesser risk, so when it was offered me, I took it (moderna in my case). Vaccine uptake in BC and Canada generally is higher than that of the USA, and there’s a lot less in the way of vaccine refusal.
First vaccine dose is just over 80% of eligeable, and second dose in the 50s and rising rapidly as they work through to the younger age groups for second doses.
@jmg — I’ve been following the water level at Lake Mead for awhile (used to live in AZ).
http://mead.uslakes.info/level.asp
Since it is below the magic number of 1075 and most likely will be thru August, it looks like an “emergency” will be declared. (see https://nypost.com/2021/04/19/us-west-prepares-for-possible-1st-water-shortage-declaration/)
Interested in your take on how the “water wars” will play out.
thx
That paragraph I typed in my sleep was the most coherent ever. Yes! i’d love to swap ideas.
Here’s an data point from St. Louis County, MO, where I live. StL County has the highest population of any county in MO, just under a million people. It surrounds but does not include the city of St. Louis, which is its own county.
Last week, when StL County announced it was re-imposing a mask mandate for indoor spaces, it made the national news. Our county exec is an MD and kept the original mask mandate and attendance restrictions going for longer than most places in the US. He’s a Democrat, as are 4 of the 7 County Council members (the county’s legislative body).
The new mask mandate was imposed on the 26th. He imposed only the mask mandate because the MO state legislature passed, and the governor signed, a statute now in effect that any public health order that closes or restricts attendance in any public or private place can last only thirty days before the appropriate legislative body has the right to vote on whether or not to keep the order in place. I assume the county exec believes that the mask mandate doesn’t close or restrict attendance, therefore it can last as long as he wants. I’m not a lawyer, but that’s also how I interpret the statute.
The interesting part is that the monthly Council meeting took place the following evening, the 27th. At that meeting the Council voted 5-2 to rescind the mask mandate. Notice that the Council has 4 Democratic members who normally vote the way the exec wants them to. This means that two of the four Democrats voted against the mask mandate. The county exec says he doesn’t care, the mask mandate stays, but the state attorney general filed a temporary restraining order against the mandate today. I’m starting to feel a bit of a shift in the wind …
The topic du jour seems to be the pandemic, lockdowns, health passports, the vaccines involved, etc. JMG, may I request that you apply your unique powers of observation and offer us an in-depth itake on the matter? The ‘science’ which appears indistinguishable from ‘magic’ is of particular interest to me.
World’s best cat toy: a paper grocery sack. They all love one.
Most cats also seem to love jingle balls, little plastic open-sided balls with bells inside.
Good games:
The laser pointer.
The old favorite, I-wiggle-my-foot-under-blanket-and-you-pounce. Even more fun if the mountain lion has a blanket-cave to hide in before attacking the wily foot.
Cat wraps all 4 legs around your arm (they can do this with claws retracted). You wave your arm in as wild a ride as cat prefers. If he stays put when you set him down, it means he wants another ride. Start out slowly and gently so he doesn’t think you’ve gone crazy. Cats who like this REALLY like it.
regarding lithium and batteries:
I have been told that there are a lot of up-and-coming battery technologies which have all sorts of promising characteristics. “Vaporware,” I answered, but there are a lot of these technologies at varying states of development, and some of them may prove useful, if less miraculous than the people selling them promise.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, following a lithium supply crunch, car batteries start using different types of battery.
Not sure how good they’ll be, though. I have a hunch that for a lot of people, electric cars 20 years from now are going to be somewhat golfcart-esque rather than tesla-esque, and that there will be fewer cars of any kind in the western world than most people expect.
Does anyone on here know much about these upcoming battery technologies, and what the actual potential there is, as opposed to the hype.
To ria23 (#73)
I’m very firmly against getting the vaccines for me and my family. I should clarify that that is because for us (young-ish people with no existing health issues) the risk of the vaccine is clearly worse than the risk of the virus. Also, it has been known for a long time now that “asymptomatic transmission” was just a rumor and it doesn’t happen (even though the propaganda organs continue to push that lie), so I am not worried about unwittingly infecting some vulnerable person.
For certain people (namely the elderly and those with health conditions that make them more vulnerable), the balance can be tipped in favor of getting the vaccines. I could see how people working in certain professions would want to seriously consider it, too. Even for those people, though, there are alternative ways to boost immunity, as well as effective drugs for both treatment and prophylaxis (if the health authorities where you live will let you have them). Not to mention that a lot of people are already immune through prior exposure/infection or cross-exposure to other coronaviruses.
So it very much depends on a variety of factors. It makes sense for some people, and some people might consider it an acceptable risk for one reason or another. Which is why the push to inject everybody regardless of circumstances is so frustrating.
Galen, that makes a great deal of sense!
Chris, it seems like a very plausible theory to me.
RavenWillow, here’s a good little introduction and here’s the best general book on the subject, both free for downloading. As for pollution, there’s only so much you can do, but a good charcoal filter for your drinking water will help quite a bit.
Dylan, I don’t. Seriously, I don’t. Until not that many years ago, I didn’t make enough money to worry about investing. At this point, now that I’ve followed the usual writer’s curve from impoverished youth to mostly-getting-by middle years to the brink of affluent old age, my wife and I are planning to donate a lot of money to some of my favorite Masonic charities. On the one hand, I don’t plan on retiring; on the other, I’d be very surprised if investments of any kind are worth more than used snotwipe by the time I die. So I’m not going to worry about it.
Ric, that was shooting fish in a barrel. Once transgender activists started insisting that lesbians didn’t have the right to refuse to have sex with people who have penises, i.e., men, and that gay men didn’t have the right to continue to enjoy the drag culture that’s been part of their scene for centuries, it was a given that gays and lesbians would realize that what they were getting from the transgender lobby was plain old-fashioned homophobic bigotry and they needed to push back the same way they did at Stonewall and thereafter.
Standing O, I think they’re crazy. Did governments bail small borrowers out when people went overboard on real estate debt in the runup to the 2008 crash? (Hint: no.)
Ron M, thanks for this. Here again, nice to see scientists finally catching on!
Varun, I’d be surprised if you don’t see a lot more of that.
Augusto, I made the prediction on the basis of astrology: a lunar eclipse in the 6th house with the Moon in Sagittarius. Moon in the 6th predicts a public health crisis (or a crisis in the work force — we seem to have gotten both) and Sagittarius rules the motor nerves. If I turn out to be right, it’ll be fun to watch the rationalists lose their cool…
Bruno, you did your best to help the cat, so no, there’s no negative karma involved. You might, if you have a relationship to a deity, pray for its well-being.
Violet, (1) this is as bad as I’ve ever seen it. (2) I tend to be very, very careful about consent issues, but your mileage may vary. A lot of mystics hold that general prayers for blessings are always appropriate.
Boo Da, thanks for clarifying! A lot of people who post videos and ask questions about them, instead of making specific statements, are just trying to get people to click the link. Do you know of a text source for the same information? I dislike videos — it’s a personal thing, I just find jerky little pictures on screens excruciatingly boring — and prefer to read text instead.
Jerry, I’ve been watching it also. Depends on just how dire it gets; if it comes to people turning on the tap and getting dust instead of water, expect a comprehensive flustered cluck.
SLClaire, good heavens. Wind is definitely changing!
Karalan, I’ll consider it.
Pygmycory, that strikes me as a very sensible prediction.
Regarding golf cart like electric cars, you can buy them already, in Asia. They are faster and more powerful than actual golf carts, but the limitations of lead-acid batteries in terms of specific power and energy are very real. Then again, lead acid batteries are the most sustainable battery technology yet invented, and while semiconductors still can be obtained, electronics can smooth over their particularities nicely as well as greatly increase the cycle life.
Violet: I’m 54, and I’ve never experienced spiritual energy this….thick, black, gunky, and congealing. Back in the day when I considered myself mildly psychic, I would always wonder if I was just unusually mentally insightful and maybe just using “a bunch of woo” to explain that. But now…I just can’t sleep like a normal person anymore, and challenging astrological aspects to my personal natal planets seriously exacerbate this. If you’re thinking maybe I just have sleep apnea, yes I do, and I was just starting to derive benefits from finally being able to get a APAP machine after having to go through an unbelievable amount of procedural song-and-dance. And then the curse of this “black gunk” energy happened. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that this happened around the time Donald Trump was closing in on the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
So now I know I really am psychically sensitive, and I’m not enjoying it. This isn’t happening to every sensitive, I suspect I may have at least partially brought it upon myself by spending so much of my life focusing on the energy of sorrow, disappointment, and alienation. But it’s now at the point where if something terrible has to happen to make this “black gunk” energy dissipate, part of me is saying, “Bring it on”, though when the thing happens, I suppose I may regret that.
And once again, any comments that purport to tell me the “real reason” why I can’t sleep well anymore will be resolutely ignored by me.
I do not disagree at all with our host (particularly #34) and the commentariat regarding covid, pharmaceutical greed, etc.
I would simply like to point out there are many of us that are severely immune compromised, or living with someone that is. In my case, my wife has leukemia, and any viral infection (even just a cold) at this point could kill her. As is with many cancers of course, it’s the secondary infections that get you. (as an eye-opener, an estimated 1.8 million people in the US were diagnosed with cancer in 2020)
So, I always wear a N95 mask in public, and I got the vaccine. Would I have gotten the jab if I was single? Probably not, I would have waited. But we all have tough choices to make.
We’re currently living in northern Wisconsin, in a very conservative county. If I’m wearing a mask in public, why do people assume the worst? What have I done to deserve being on the receiving end of a dirty look while masked up in the grocery store? I’m just trying to do the right thing for my spouse.
Sorry for the rant. The polarization in our society is depressing.
JMG,
I am on the last volume of your Weird of Hali series and I am loving it even more the second time around. It *really* helps to have the Companion at hand to do a quick reference for characters in the books.
Could I get an analysis on this (very odd) Geomancy reading? Our family business has a new client who has the potential (if they decide they want to) to buy us out. I did a shield reading asking what would be the outcome of us taking them on as a client.
I got:
1M: Fortuna Minor
2M: Fortuna Minor
3M Via
4M: Populus
1D: Cauda Draconis
2D: Cauda Draconis
3D: Albus
4D: Albus
1N: Populus
2N: Via
3N: Populus
4N: Populus
RW: Via
LW: Populus
J: Via
I read that as they will be clients and will bring us work, but that a boy out isn’t likely,
Do you concur?
AV
Anyone see the CDC lab alert hidden away by the media that they are going to stop using the PCR test on 31 December 2021? This is because apparently it can’t distinguish covid from influenza. Surprise surprise. Who’s betting that they introduce a new test that shows that unvaccinated people have covid while vaccinated don’t? Or that covid will miraculously disappear and a ‘vaccines saved the day’ narrative will be pushed endlessly.
Are we not just seeing the classic civilisation decline example of an elite making more and more insane demands upon the population while the population either follows to their doom or rolls their eyes and gets busy with the basics of survival? A fell wind blows…
Waffles, my cat philosophy and practice is similar to those of Lunar Apprentice and Kimberly. I’d expand the “pay attention to your cat” from its common meaning of “play with and talk to your cat” to that of actually giving your cat your attention and observation. Cats are masters of nonverbal communication and you might find this a good opportunity to learn a new language. For example, mine tell me they’re hungry with a lick of the lips. They hug by standing close to us with a tail relaxedly draped around a leg, etc. They’ll indicate things with simply a shifting of the eyes, they’re that subtle. It’s good exercise for us hyper-verbal primates.
My cats are calm and communicative and well-behaved because they know that their messages get through and that I’ll actively work to understand what they’re communicating. Likewise, they know what I mean. On the rare occasion Tibby hops up on a kitchen counter (ostensibly to view a cat outside, because I swear they’re all psychic and there was no way he SAW that cat) all I have to say is “Hey, get down” and maybe snap my fingers and he’s down.
I don’t recommend squirt bottles. There’s no need to scare or intimidate or bully. Communicate with them. Also, don’t let the cats on the tables or counters in the first place and indicate calmly (or unceremoniously, with a gentle shove, which kind of embarrasses them) that you don’t want them there and they’ll figure it out.
Cats are naturally clean and when they make a mess, it’s not because they want the house to be dirty – investigate what’s going on! But be prepared for cat vomit – they have short intestines and so their systems reject what the intestines can’t handle by expelling it the way it came in.
Consider letting them make their own decisions about what degree of friendliness they want to offer to other people.
Investigate raw diets, perhaps – Tibby’s reaping the effects of a life on a commercial diet and I know diet-related illnesses are common.
The only things I haven’t solved: 1. Russell – a late-to-the-family and mostly-outdoor neutered grown male who jockeys with Tibby for status insists on periodically marking/spraying in the house, which is totally unacceptable to us. That results in immediate expelling outside and his being granted only limited indoor access (relegated pretty much to our office/bedroom where he can be observed). Nobody gets to question Tibby’s status 🙂 and meanwhile, a product called Smells-be-gone is fantastic at removing odors, and 2. Zelda, the coy and diminutive, really would like to scratch the couch while stating, “I’m just going to put my paw here and strettttttchhh”but won’t scratch slipcovered furniture, so I’ve safetypinned a strip of cotton muslin that blends into the couch right where she wants to put her paw. I so prefer having my cats’ trust that I’m willing to put up with that. When she’s caught and I say “Hey!” she stops right away, but I haven’t figured out how else to stop her when nobody’s around.
Once your cats realize that you’ll try to understand them, it takes the relationship to a higher level.
JMG, that’s rad!
To Fran
My condolences on the loss of your beloved pet. You may find after a grieving period that taking another cat into your life will fill that hole in your heart again. That has worked for me.
I believe our pets have an afterlife. I had to euthanize one of my dogs right before the 4th of July and received 2 signs from her that afternoon. This has happened with another dog as well and I am not one that receives signs or does animal communications, so it was pretty unusual. I like to think it is them saying thank you and it is all ok now.
As a change of pace from concerns about the vaccine (and believe me, I share the concern):
Last weekend I picked up a hitchhiker while driving home. He immediately launched into the rambling, disjointed conversation of the habitual drug user.
Topics included: Local history, the folly of smartphones, the Afghanistan war, the transgender craze, how he’s been looking up translations of the Bible from the Greek and the Hebrew so now he really knows what’s going on, how the transgender and S&M “freaks” (his words not mine) are meant to breed with the alien Grigori (aka the Watchers) and produce a new generation of Nephilim, and how the Marvel movies are meant to get us ready for the coming of the Nephilim, so we don’t lose our minds at the reappearance of giants.
It was… an entertaining ride.
Also, I’m sorry to hear of onething’s passing. She was cranky as all get-out, but there was an endearing human quality that shone through.
Simone Biles quitting in the middle of the Olympics really freaked me out. I get that people have mental issues from being raised as performing seals since early childhood, but the widespread message of celebrating victimhood seems very dangerous for our current fighting-age TikTok generation. Combine that with the ideological purges and vaccine mandates going on inside the military, not to mention the inferior equipment from appropriations fraud, and I can easily imagine a scenario where Chinese soldiers are effortlessly mowing down our defenses like drought-withered wheat stalks. These are especially disturbing thoughts out here on the soon-to-be edge of empire in Hawaii.
In Twilights Last Gleaming there was not a lot of mention about the Aloha State. If you were to release an updated version of the novel that includes us, what would we have to look forward to in your latest wargame scenario besides soldiers overcrowding the bases here as they retreat from Okinawa/Guam/etc. ?
Violet, for me it was worse a year ago. If I had to speculate, the lower astral has discharged considerably with all the events of this past year, certainly the suffering, even though stupidly, has burned some karma individually and collectively. But I can’t judge squarely since I haven’t been in the US since, but soon I’ll be able to provide a better perspective when I get back.
@Waffles (post #39):
I use a 12 gallon storage box for a litterbox. My cat and I are both happier. It is similar to this one (but mine came from Costco): https://www.campingworld.com/greenmade-12-gallon-flip-top-box-123801.html
I have a small clipper that runs on a single AA battery (from Wahl) that I use to clip off the occasional matt. My cat has a medium length coat. For whatever reason, he tends to get feces embedded in his posterior fur from time to time. I have taken to clipping his fur back there to stop some unpleasantness.
My dog has taken to enforcing some rules like not allowing the cat to claw the furniture. My dog learned what I don’t like and has become my enforcer. She doesn’t bite the cat, but does bark and jump at him a bit. Your cats will need something to claw, so get a post at least. My cat also likes to claw the cheap rubber-bottom carpet I got from Costco for $20. My dog has learned to allow the cat to claw these things. So I don’t know, maybe get an English Shepherd to keep the cats in line.
RavenWillow, I have similar concerns about not just pollution but noise and plastics, as I seem to have a low tolerance for both. I try to contrate on what I can control, things like natural fiber clothing, often available 2nd hand, and unadulterated food. An amazing array of weird alloys are found in modern cooking ware, from the cheap to the very expensive. I use exclusively cast iron and stainless steel, and do, IMO, buy now as cast iron in particular is getting rather thin on the ground. If you are stuck with some weird alloy for baking pans, a thick layer of oil or grease will keep your food from interacting with the pan. For water, you might want to consider a rain barrel, and carbon filter for indoor use. I find detox tea very helpful for all sorts of toxic overload. I try to use as little plastic as possible, not for virtue signaling, as no one will notice anyway, but because it makes me feel better to not have it around. I am convinced, no proof, that plastics do shed molecules into the ambient air. Buy food in glass jars, and you get a useful jar. A neat trick I learned on youtube is to soak newly bought veges in a baking soda bath, followed with a sprinkle of cider vinegar. It does seem to help with pathogens, retards spoilage, and helps with whatever gunk might have been sprayed on by the grocer or processor. If you live in a house, trees and shrubs can help clean the air, and I make a point of not destroying outdoor webs of the non venomous spiders. It is amazing how much spiders can decimate the fly population.
Lady Cutekitten #72. “Dozing off” is somnolence, not fatigue. If that has become a problem, you might want to have your primary care doctor investigate for a sleep disorder.
@Mister Nobody and Lady Kitten#71 and #72
I find much of my daytime sleepiness is due to nighttime awakeness. I have seen what I consider credible evidence (though not conclusive) that eating within four hours of going to bed will spike your insulin and cause nighttime awakeness and daytime sleepiness and aggravate type 2 diabetes.
Here is one link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-H4siBaMg
There are others sources. Despite this information, I have trouble not eating before bed. I told my mom about this and she told me changing her eating habits helped her sleep, but one cannot rule out placebo effect.
Anyway, if you are not already avoiding food within four hours of bed, you could try it and see if it helps.
One question I have:
I have taken up solving rubiks cubes and similar puzzles as a hobby. I find it really relaxing, for some reason. Despite being not very spiritual, I have been wondering anyone would consider it a spiritual practice, given that sacred geometry is a thing. I suspect not, but I am still curious.
“health themed fetwear” just about made me spit my gin and tonic, and “Peter principle” just about killed me, omg you guys. (I once had a boss who was so incompetent they had to promote him twice, immediately).
Marlena and Lady Cutekitten, have you ever read about Gertrude Bell? I have a great biography about her called Daughter of the Desert.
She was unreal – mountaineer, explorer, linguist, archaeologist – and actually did all the things that Lawrence is Arabia gets credit for in the public imagination – he was her boss. Based on her sheer independence and badassity quotient, I would have expected her to be a feminist of her time, but she and her mother were staunch and vocal anti-suffragettes. Their rationale was that, (as factory owners who actually paid attention to their workers) they thought getting the vote would be a ridiculous burden on actually working class women, who wouldn’t have the time to get involved enough to grok the political issues and make an informed vote. Furthermore, it made no sense that women of all classes should be able to vote before their respective men, who were disbarred from voting at that time without landowner status, and would have similar limitations to the women. They argued that the criteria to extend voting rights should be based on capacity to participate and be informed; thus, by extension, either political participation remained with the higher classes – could be extended to both sexes – with time on their hands, or was extended to all classes along with the requisite opportunities. A remarkably modern argument.
jbucks at #114, 117 my comments at 133 and 135 were intended for you. Please, all, accept my apologies for omitting that.
Don’t know if you saw this already (it was posted on naked capitalism) but I thought this would be of interest to you
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/gaya-herrington-mit-study-the-limits-to-growth
An article about the Club of Rome Limits to Growth in the Guardian of all places – never thought that I would see this!
REGARDING THE VAX… no way in **** will I take it, and there’s no job in the world that’s worth sacrificing your life and health.
The documented consequences — deaths, “long Covid”, etc. — already far exceed the levels at which prior vaccines were pulled. There are numerous indications that there will be very serious implications for “the vaxed” starting this fall. I fully expect that by the end of the year the pro-vax narrative will have completely fallen apart and there will be very many very angry people across the globe.
Seriously, like anything else, if the vax was as safe and effective as they promote it then they wouldn’t need to resort to such forceful tactics, would they?
@Fran:
My own faith is my own peculiar fork of Kemetism with significant influence from JMG’s writings, and furthermore my personal goddesses are Bast and Sekhmet. In addition to JMG’s own reply to you, then, I can say that I have particular faith in cats being looked after, even if I have no more knowledge of the particular details than I do of those for humans after death. I have also sent a prayer to Bast with Sunny in mind, and, of course, you have my condolences as well.
Violet, #143. Your question is intriguing; I’m 62, so maybe I can offer some perspective. Never have I experienced anything remotely like the ‘spiritually dark times’ we are experiencing now; and yes, that descriptor is apt. If anything, I regard the early-to-mid 1970’s as the golden era of my life-span to date, and it’s been a jagged downhill ride since, with a steep drop-off these last few years. I perceived the election of Ronald Reagan in Nov 1980 as a kick to the gut then, but consoled myself that “this too shall pass”. But nope, at least not on the time-scale I envisioned. It was a watershed event.
Even now, when people ask how I’m doing, I’ll sometimes quip: “Look, I haven’t gotten over the election of Reagan yet! And guess what? Trump makes Reagan look GOOD, but I had to vote for Trump! Twice!!!”
My Father, lived from 1923 to 1991, my Aunt, lived from 1927 to 2018, and to whom I was close, my Grandfather, lived from 1891 to 1986, and my Grandmother 1896-1983, I also knew well. I’ve always been interested in the past, and how they experienced it, so it was an occasional, though explicit, topic of conversation, even in the 1970’s. I can tell you flat out none of them related anything remotely like the darkness, the insanity frankly, of what is happening now. If anything, their recalled experience had a sunniness that I perceived in their reminisces, and that I experienced firsthand in the late 1960’s and 70’s when I came of age. I remember my Grandfather telling me around 1975: “Kids don’t know how to have fun anymore! Why is that? That’s so d****d crazy!” For all the hardship and trauma they had experienced (e.g. getting orphaned at age 4, or being a POW in Nazi Germany), the future seemed bright to them, and to me. And their world seemed suffused with optimism, confidence, and mutual solidarity. Now? All gone.
—Lunar Apprentice
I was hoping to ask two things about religious practice.
1) I have started doing the elemental cross and sphere of protection as a morning prayer routine. Is this suitable for beginners?
2) I have been using the Welsh deities introduced in your Druid Magic Handbook. Does it matter that I am in Queensland, Australia and hence a very different natural environment from Wales? It may seem like a trivial question, but I find it hard to visualise an oak tree for Hesus to sit in, as local trees spring to mind more vividly!
Slithy Toves, I’m afraid Theravada is one of the types of Buddhism I know least about (and I can’t read the Visuddhimagga to save my life). Jayarava Attwood sometimes writes about reconstructing early Buddhism and Buddhist theories of mind / consciousness. His blog is http://jayarava.blogspot.com (A lot of the recent stuff is on the Heart Sutra, or other topics that have nothing to do with what you’re looking for, so click around.) I would describe him as a skeptical writer and self-taught academic who belongs to the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in the UK.
Greetings all!
Has anyone studied the works of Jack Goldstone who published “Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World” and those of Peter Turchin?
Last year they published a rather interesting piece “https://www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-the-turbulent-twenties/” which seems to tally with what JMG has been saying for years about the US.
Comments from US citizens most welcomed….
Violet, I’ve lived in a place were the pressure built up like that and got very dark. At some point something snapped and everything seemed to go insane for awhile, one bad thing after the other and then the next and the next from all angles while everyone purged, a few years worth. You have to pull your energy in and then up because it seems to pull at you from your lower chakras (death can seem to be knocking, don’t answer).
And relentlessly do good things that you focus on, relentlessly mind your own business, relentlessly pleasant, boring and impartial to all people no matter how rubbish you feel until it passes and listen to your intuition at all times, it does pass. A side note is that it can be used as a time that sheds your own deep pains and can be used as a healing time although its important to keep moving your own energies positively.
All praise the kitties who seem to be a subject this week!
Dear Violet,
You ask the most interesting and penetrating questions, for which I am always grateful!
I was born in 1942, so I grew up during the decades when everyone our age was certain that none of us had any future of any sort whatever. We “knew” for a fact that world-wide nuclear catastrophe would kill almost everyone on the planet within a very few years. “We are all doomed, and sooner rather than later” was the motto of our generation during our ‘teens and early twenties. (Our parents, having fought and won WW2, were far more optimistic about the future than we ever could be.) Of course, we turned out to be wrong, but even so our ‘teen-age despair colored all the rest of our lives
The current level of spiritual darkness is only somewhere around half-way to the level of those years, to go by my own memories of them. In retrospect, our entire generation–the Silents–was shaped and formed by those very dark years, which did not have the faintest glimmer of hope to lighten them. I sometimes speak of myself as a “grim old man, because psychologically the myths that resonate with me most deeply are those of the old Pagan Scandinavians about a world in which even the Gods themselves will perish at its end, and by and large they have no interest in mere humans and their doings except as cannon fodder.
That said, since early childhood I have always had a sense that my own deepest ancestral line has aways served as a bellwether for the future of whatever land it lives in. Fourteen generations ago (exactly 400 years ago in 2020) these ancestors of mine left England for the unknown dangers of New England. From the early 1800s onward generations of them slowly advanced across the continent from East to West, from what is now Massachusetts through New York, Michigan, and Illinois, to California, like a wave breaking onto a beach.
Yet in my own generation, that wave finally began to pull back toward the ocean whence it arose, having spent its force on the “beach.” My wife and I left California for New England; our son left the United States for France, and our only grandchild at age 18 is most definitely a young European woman, not an American at all. She is the one and only 16th-generation descendant in that ancestral line of ours anywhere on the planet. (This line of descent has been very thin ever since generation 10. Each generation from 11 down to 15 has contained only one person who had any children of their own.)
I take that long family history as an omen, which i read as saying that the United States has no future of any sort ahead of it, nor is any region in it going to continue the cultural and political traditions of the USA. (Thus there will be no Lakeland Republic in our future, alas!)
Of course, all these intuitions of mine are colored by the pessimism and hopelessness of my generation during its formative years. I would be the first to admit that things may not turn out as dire as I expect. But as old as I am, I will likely not be here to see the outcome.
Since you like Hermann Hesse, have you ever read A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin? It goes into some of the same themes. The depiction of places like Rome and the Alps are unbelivably beautiful. Most suprising when I read it was a description of a waterfall that came out of a circular hole in the side of a mountain, that exactly matched a dream I’d had somewhere around 5-7 years old.
Question: Are any of you familiar with the Drukama group in California, founded by Steven Levey (aka Raziyahu Halevey and Daishi Nagiyah)? I’ve listened to their podcasts, googled around, and read parts of his book on Amazon, but find it very hard to pin down what kind of group this is. They reference everything from Hermeticism and alchemy to Hinduism and Buddhism. Levey himself is apparently from an Orthodox Jewish background, grew up doing martial arts, and at some point went into finance.
Hi JMG and commentariat,
In the following links you can find gathered information about the covid jabs’ safety issues as well as their claimed efficacy and lots of other covid info. “Key scientists are Robert W Malone, MD (vaccine expert), Dr. Jessica Rose (VAERS expert), and Mathew Crawford (lead statistician) and many medical doctors who have treated vaccine patients who fear retaliation if their names were revealed.”
https://trialsitenews.com/vaccine-truth-cdc/
https://trialsitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Vaccine-safety-FAQ-1.pdf
https://trialsitenews.com/should-you-get-vaccinated/
http://www.skirsch.com/covid/Vaccine.pdf
One theory (conspiracy theory of course!) that is troubling my mind is the following, (very briefly):
The elite that is ruling the current fossil fuel operated industrial empire must have experts in the energy field who know all about peak oil and resource depletion. These experts should have warned the elite that an imminent crisis is coming, actually the crisis was already here, years ago. So, the race for what’s left of earth’s resources must have a victim and, following your catabolic collapse theory, the next victim – after the work class – is the middle class. How could the elite sacrifice the middle class without too much resistance from them? Why not release a virus (a pre-discovered benign biologic weapon), let it become a world pandemic by not doing the obvious early closing of the borders, spread fear, stop the economy, pass freedom restricting laws, apply censorship and mandates, offer pre-covid patented jabs as the only non-censored solution, jabs that kill, cripple and potentially sterilise (make infertile) people (see links above), thereby stopping the population growth. Then, they use the usual divide and conquer technique by forcing dissidents to obey the authorities by calling them sprayed and anti-vaxxers and forcing them to succumb or lose their jobs, etc. By that way, they have ruined the economy but only for the non-elites, and they will use the same austerity measures (blame goes to the pandemic and not to the ruling class) to further destroy the middle class…
Well, you can imagine the rest… I am saying this could be a clever strategy, but I believe that the elites are in their senility phase and their tricks will fail in the long term. I know you say that’s all about money and greed but it’s just a thought, after all, money and greed are the main motives for this theory as well.
Keep teaching us in these difficult times.
@JMG and Chris at Fernglade
Oops! I have just seen that my theory is just an enriched version of Chris at Fernglade’s theory. I am glad that I am not the only one who sees a pattern there!
Jon Goddard #45, not related to states of civilisations but last night I meditated about spirit below. I see earth as biosphere and shallow lithosphere, and spirit below as the molten and electromagnetic part. When spirit below rises up in the mid-ocean ridges, water cools it to earth. Then when it finally reaches the subduction zone, water again lubricates it so it can sink down and be reabsorbed into spirit below.
JLMc12 #93, on Robert Kiyosaki, consider this: https://www.johntreed.com/blogs/john-t-reed-s-real-estate-investment-blog/61651011-john-t-reeds-analysis-of-robert-t-kiyosakis-book-rich-dad-poor-dad-part-1.
Pygmycory #152, do you mean just vehicle batteries or static energy storage as well? If you don’t have to worry about power-to-weight ratio other interesting possibilites emerge. Such as domestic-scale flow batteries that look like a cross between an intermediate bulk container and the liquid binary explosive bombs from Die Hard with a Vengeance. 🙂
JMG, remember our disagreement about “go woke, get broke”?
I thought that the big companies don’t care about money anymore since they are part of the repressive govt. You said “we’ll see”.
Given that Fb, goog etc are even tighter integrated now with govt agencies and the alternatives are actively censored (like bitchute in some European countries) have you changed your mind?
If not, what would convince you?
Thanks
It seems I’m in a minority here. I’m looking forward to receiving my covid-19 vaccine. Unfortunately the ones which are effective against the Delta variant are not readily available for my age group due to administrative failures of my country, but fingers crossed I’ll receive it later this year.
Reading the comments of those who are concerned about it, I agree that one should not have to accept the vaccine as a condition of their employment. That is unnecessarily coercive. I can understand, too, the suspicion that the elites want their minions back to work as soon as possible, the risks of vaccines be damned.
It may pain the anti-capitalists to admit it, but on this occasion our overlords want the same thing as everybody else. Healthy people not subject to lockdowns make the best workers and consumers. Look at the numbers: over 600k lives lost to covid so far vs 12-61k/year for influenza (according to the CDC). It’s not good for business, and it’s not good for you or me. I won’t tell you to get vaccinated if you don’t want to, but I haven’t heard many convincing arguments against it either.
@Robert Mathiesen Thank you for your perspective on college administrators. Last year I was frustrated and disappointed with their every decision and finally got to the point that they were useless. They didn’t give two shakes about the students, the college, the effects of their decisions, and underneath it all was a level of stupidity or feigned ignorance (hard for me to distinguish and could be both), I hadn’t experienced in years.
Both my kids decided to get the vaccine because they were told by their colleges that 1) the college would return to normal operations if they got it, and 2) if students didn’t get it by the deadline set, disciplinary measures would begin. I cried about it for two days (to myself of course). They did listen to my reasoning that the college has no idea what is going to happen in fall, the college has done 180 degree reversals on every decision they made so far so they likely will be do the same here, and no one knows what the long term effects of these vaccines are, never mind the short term issues.
I’ve notices many college presidents are in the process of resigning. The captain has jumped into the lifeboat ahead of the passengers! The rats will be next. Where all these people go after ruining the lives of so many is what I’m curious about. I’m assuming government somewhere because its the next best place to create misery through stupidity.
I recently read an article by Alex Berenson asking how many of us know people, first hand, who died from COVID 19. He was trying to make the case that this whole thing was vastly overblown. I am not convinced of that, but I did the exercise: I don’t know anyone first hand who died from COVID. Second hand, a co-worker of my son died and a friend of my daughter’s boyfriend’s family died from COVID. So I know of two people second or third hand who died from COVID. Alex Berenson didn’t ask the other logical question: How many people do you know who died from the vaccine? I don’t know anyone first or second hand who died from the vaccine (so far) but two co-workers that I see and talk to every day had serious reactions. One had heart inflammation and the other has neurological problems, joint problems, and “COVID digits” which all started within 48 hours of getting the first dose of the vaccine — she did not go back for the second. Then this week my 22 year old step-grandson was admitted to the hospital with CTEPH, which is a very serious heart and clotting progressive disorder. He had his second dose of the vaccine in June. It is not at all clear that there is a connection to the vaccine or to COVID, but the symptoms of clotting in the lungs are weirdly similar.
I had COVID in April. Not a big deal. Tired, headachy, and a slight cough and food tasted off for a couple of days and that was that. But my immediate family has been pounding vitamin D, Elderberry, and anti-inflammatory herbs (turmeric, ginger) since this whole thing started. I won’t take the vaccine and will push my employer to fire me or lay me off if they try and force it. So far they have not. I am curious about other’s experiences: i.e., how many people do you know who died from COVID or the vaccine? How many do you know who had serious side effects from the vaccine? To our host, JMG, if this is not an appropriate use of the open post, feel free to delete. I am just curious and wanted to query this larger group of acquaintances whose input I value.
Jean
@temporaryreality I don’t know that I have anything to share about vaccines and colleges to share that is helpful.
The most effective thing I said to my kids is “If someone is forcing you to do something – do this or I’ll punish you – that person will hate you complying with their order. They will forever view you as some less than human thing to be dumped on. And they will just keep forcing you to do things for little reason other than they can. And worse, you’ll end up hating yourself in the long run. Not right away, but over the course of years.”
Strangely people only respect people who don’t agree with them and push back. I worry that I didn’t do the right things as a parent to have my kids know their boundaries fully. They were doing well under normal conditions previously. I meditated and journaled on all this for weeks and settled on some life lessons have to be experienced not taught, and I only think I know what is best is for them but am not a god and can’t know for sure.
Hope that helps anyone reading this.
Dear JMG, regarding ley lines: should it rather be “the view over Atlantis (John Mitchell or rather ” the new view over Atlantis” (same author)?
Regarding the magic books you adviced me about: at the Moment I ruminate about it and it will probably be a mixture of keeping most while getting rid of some (e.g. if I’m fit / interested enough to tackle the picatrix, i should be fit enough to lay my hands on it again, seeing that it managed to hang around since mideaval times).
That said, a probably wrong but to me funny english line going from easy to Superlativ: to ruminate, to journalate, to meditate/ divinate – maybe haha.
Bestell wishes & thanks Emily 07
@jbucks If I may, don’t argue with vaccine pushers. The only response they deserve is “I chose not to at this time.” Leaves the door open for you to choose differently in the future (why be fanatical either way?) and leaves them flailing to do all the arguing and thinking about it. Don’t waste your energy coming up with arguments and reasoning. They aren’t listening!
Hello,
I’d like to post an open question to everyone. I read step 1 of the Sphere of Protection, that part where it says that you have to name three deities based on what Faith you profess. Here’s my predicament, I am not sure.
I am atheist, that I know. I don’t have Faith, can’t sense or feel anything weird that I can’t explain with just Natural philosophy. I am sympathetic to Gaia’s theory. I also kind of like the idea that complex life systems can be modelled as spirits at different levels of complexity, but don’t truly believe it. Even if I consider myself a part of Gaia, the same a liver cell is part of me, I don’t see how a cell of my body that is reverencing me would make any difference in my behaviour (a nerve cell triggering an alarm is quite another thing).
In the instructions for the SoP, it kind of says that it really doesn’t matter what you do believe, it’s the practice of the ritual what works. I guess I could fake any believe and it will still work. However, that question made me really question myself in what do I believe. A pure atheist would dismiss magic as nothing but superstition, but I’ve noticed some personal improvement upon the magical practices, just as I would notice some improvement with physical exercise. So here’s something I can’t proof, that apparently can’t be proved, where I don’t believe the explanations given why it works, but that seems to be working if I keep to the rules.
I know I am not a completely skeptic, otherwise I wouldn’t have started magical practices.
What is then an atheist that practices magic? I even seriously questioned myself if I was no longer an atheist and have begun to believe in gods and spirits, since I’m positive to the idea, but faith is not there. I’ve seen some references in the internet about ‘Godless Spirituality’, ‘secular paganism’, ‘atheopaganism’, there’s even a Gaian cult which is basically atheist, but whose sin based creed doesn’t appeal to me. FB groups of such cults are in depressingly small numbers.
—-
@Jeff Russel. I have stopped using deodorant. The more natural thing is washing frequently with just water, maybe humid towels, then keep the armpit as dry as you can. Use of clean cotton clothes help. Let your skin rest of any kind of products for a month and it will find balance. If you think you have to, then soap and water is usually enough, (alkaline enough for killing your fungal biota) but you can supplement it with soft acids like vinegar and lemon for some days, soft alkalines like sodium bicarbonate for some others. Beware that all these products will kill most of your skin biota, giving you a good smell for a day or two, then as they recover it will be very imbalanced and will smell really bad.
Thank you Makes sense re shop dilemma it hit my shame button and I’ve felt debilitated especially in the current climate which feels like mistrust is everywhere
Jmg When you say its the worst spiritually it’s ever been in your reply to Violet do you see a tide change imminent, I have a lot of trepidation about the younger generation.
Sorry to hear about Onething. I will miss her comments. It is a shock to realize so many years have passed.
Official Question:
Can anyone recommend some good cleanses to go along with the latest dreamwidth post? There are plenty of supplements on sale for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but in my experience the ingredients probably do not cost that much on their own. Thanks!
Regarding new cats:
It is easy to ruin a relationship with them by using negative reinforcement. The best advice I got was from Jackson Galaxy, who unlike Caesar Milan is a mass media personality worth listening to. Also the Kitten Lady is a real life saver if you are trying to figure out how to keep the tiny ones alive.
Dear Violet,
Occasionally, I wonder what society must look like from the top. If I were ultra rich, would I be concerned about the same issues the lower stratas are? Or would I be relieved they are at each others throats continually about anything and everything except just how much wealth and influence I possess?
I was born in 1979 and grew up in a cult. For such groups, the world is necessarily dark and in need of saving or replacing. Every such construct needs a (phantom) enemy. I experienced the 80s as darker than the present, overshadowed as they were by the cold war, the constant threat and rhetoric of nuclear war and the very real threat of IRA bombings in the UK. Also, I lived in fear that the authorities would come to take me away from the only home I knew, awful though it was in hindsight.
To me, the current climate is not worse – but social media acts as an amplifier for fear and rage, and subsists on a feedback loop which drives that fear and rage to ever new heights. False choices are continuously forced upon us, driving that feedback loop: you are either pro-vax or antivax, a climate change believer or denier, selfless or selfish, exclusive or inclusive, for or against gender identities, etc. In my view, the present is characterised by dark, exaggerated theatricals designed to elicit and feed fear and rage.
To retain my sanity, I draw on my lifelong experience with cult propaganda and noticing the gap between it and reality. Even so, I do get riled up over issues, particularly the lack of critical thinking on display. At those times, it takes conscious effort to step back and try to see the third/middle/another way as JMG has suggested.
From your previous writings, I gather you are transgender? That puts you in the uncomfortable position of always being in several worlds at once. My own background of being gay in a conservative and socially marginalised cult (yay, fun times! /s) has left me seeing several sides to issues. I try to not pick sides and above all, to not force others to do so. The reason I mention any of this is I believe that sort of position exposes and makes you sensitive to additional turbulence all the time. It’s hard to find peace when you feel pressured to pick a side in the village fight. And it’s hard in general when the tone in society has grown so viscious and obtained totalitarian overtones.
If you have a practice or activity that brings you some sort of inner peace, perhaps expand on or deepen it? The two minutes of hate is a feature, not a bug. It may be with us for a long, long time.
I offer my sincere apologies if I overstepped my bounds or made inappropriate assumptions about your person. I have the feeling none of what I wrote is really news to you.
Commentariat,
Stay calm, carry on.
Just a data point, I recently left a job because I was asked to get vaccinated. There was a passionate discussion, a little bit of a guilt trip, followed by declarations of mutual respect, and finally sincere expressions of concern on their part for my continued health. “Be safe, be safe!” they exhorted me as I walked out the door. I was thinking similar thoughts, but more along the lines of, “surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.”
JMG,
I wonder if you have any advice for aspiring novel writers. I am finding that novel-writing is a ridiculously difficult thing to do, and that my pages often devolve into gibberish. Is this normal? However, I plan to keep at it. I have read that it can take at least a year to write a novel. Are novels born out of the editing process or do they emerge mostly fully formed with just some tidying up to do at the end?
One more thing, regarding karmic backlash of the PMC and narcissism in the workplace: the current situation seems like a typical narcissist’s plan of attack when things are going wrong: to double down on the mistake and insist that, “It is not a mistake! How dare you even suggest such a thing! And just to prove how wrong you are, I will repeat this non-mistake until you finally learn that I am invincible!” And so the narcissist conducts his or her affairs until we are all worn out with the mess they have made of everything, and we ask them to please leave.
JD
@Lunar Apprentice:
Thank you for the response about potential differences in long term effects of the vaccines vs Covid itself, and for the reminder that the Phase 3 trials haven’t been done yet. I forgot to mention above that the Emergency Usage Authorization is another reason why I’m cautious about the vaccines (or serums, as JMG has been calling them).
But it’s hard to untangle it all. I watched the video that Boo Da linked to above (thanks, Boo Da!) which pointed out many instances of blood clotting in patients who had received the vaccine. However, in a Quillette article I read recently, they linked to a meta analysis which seemed to indicate a high risk of blood clotting from Covid itself. I guess this is why we need more time to research the vaccine to make a proper comparison.
I’m curious if you’ve seen any useful research about the long term effects from Covid? In of themselves, are these effects significant or widespread enough to be worrying about when making a risk assessment?
@Kimberly Steele:
Thanks for the Bitchute video! It was powerful, and made me feel terrible for the effect on that person’s life. Pulling myself outwards from that initial emotion has made me think of a few things. The first is that I am reminded of the current chapter in the Lévi book club about dualities, and how to put those lessons into practice.
In the introduction, Lévi writes (page 25): “… their apparently contrary dispositions only come from their natural tendency to meet and to unite.” He was talking about religion and philosophy, but throughout the second chapter he’s discussed ways of resolving dualities by the same technique.
Early on, when the pandemic first started, I remember how the mainstream media published lots of stories about individual Covid cases to stoke fear about Covid. Headlines like ‘healthy 30 year old dies of Covid’. So the podcast which displayed that influencer’s videos is doing the same thing: using a person’s terrible story to stoke fear. This point isn’t directed at you for posting the link here, rather at the podcast; especially because they used the double bind ‘we aren’t trying to cause fear, but…’.
In addition to the lack of research and the ‘fog of war’ as events unfold, that is what makes it so difficult for me, and others, to assess risk properly.
“There’s an element of ruthless natural selection at work in the elite classes. It’s interesting that high-paying jobs in public school systems, colleges, police forces, and health care are forced-jab environments.”
You’re quite right! My wife and I are, truth be told, PMC (if in my wife’s case you include teachers in that). But we became PMC before we knew what PMC meant, and since learning about the vices and typical behavior of many of those in the PMC (and seeing it in action), we try to avoid falling into it ourselves.
But we don’t have skills (yet) that allow us to earn a living in any other way, so we’re caught having to make that awful decision you’ve described when it comes to getting the untested vaccine versus earning a living. Neither my wife and I have the vaccine nor do we want it, and I’m quite angry to say the least at being pressured by the powers-that-be to make the choice you described in your quote above. But I’m trying to be as dispassionate as I can in order to make as rational of a decision as I can about the risks of the vaccines versus the risks of Covid itself.
RE: Masks… I am not vaxxed and I still wear a mask at work, and sometimes in stores to keep my spouse happy. I wear it at work, even though the restriction has been lifted, just in case some shenanigans ensue -if I got sick, say, and passed it to someone else. I wouldn’t want it to interfere with the living I’m making, basically. So not everyone who is still wearing a mask is necessarily in the “true believer” camp.
That said I’ve been at smallish to largish gatherings since the pandemic began and not worn a mask (family & friends usually) and knock on wood, haven’t gotten sick.
What gets me is how some vaccinated people, who are supposedly protected, are still cautious about being around unvaccinated people. If the vaccine is as effective as they think it is, shouldn’t they be protected? That has been one of the strangest phenomenons to witness… apart from being bullied by luckily only a few people in my life.
RE: Bitcoin Bubble. I’ve heard a few different people talking about how they might become millionaires by investing in bitcoin also. They are both cooks, i.e., in the service industry. It’s certainly nice to imagine, but I doubt will be a reality for them. A bubble seems like it is ready to pop.
@Violet and others: I’m 35, currently living in Brazil, and it’s bad here. Terrible atmosphere. Never seen or felt things being worse than they currently are. And no, I’m not projecting my personal situation, which is not the same (I’ve had much, much worse); but the climate between people, the feeling of the public atmosphere, is terrible. An impeding sense of doom and a sensation of dread looms over all.
About the Capitol 6 festivities. Depending on who you talk to – it is either a riot or an insurrection. What I find hysterical is how the Wash. Post is trying to push the narrative to be a crisis in Democracy, blah, blah, blah. What I have noticed on the news reporting is that the major networks are bored with it.
Meanwhile, Pelosi is going nuts screaming “science, science……” I do believe that the hearings are her way of putting the stake through the heart of Trumpism. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy, her Republican counterpart, knows how to yank her chain. He does a good job of yanking all their chains.
Bring popcorn people.
About the vaccine. My son doesn’t have it. I do. However, I see the panic setting in with the various media of “oh no, the medieval plague is still with us!” “That is not supposed to be. We are supposed to conquer this thing with Science!”
We, my son and I, have decided to make friends with the medieval plague and live our lives according.
@jbucks and all
Your analysis makes sense; lots of unknowns, and no obvious correct choice given those unknowns, so we all must make a decision based on insufficient information, as with much of life.
Part of my increasing hesitancy comes from the observation that little to nothing is being done to reduce those unknowns over time, e.g. by conducting a transparent longitudinal health assessment of vaccinated and unvaccinated people over time.
One factor to add is the real possibility of negative efficacy (also referred to as antibody-dependent enhancement or ADE) due to waning immunity or to viral mutation, in which vaccinated people are actually at higher risk of severe disease outcomes than unvaccinated people. Given the rapidly declining efficacy currently being observed, such a signal may become apparent in the next few weeks or months. Dr. Robert Malone had an interview with Steve Bannon yesterday in which he claims to have seen this signal already (i.e. evidence of a higher viral titer in breakthrough cases vs. unvaccinated cases), although I personally would want to see much stronger evidence before making such a claim so I’m not going to link it here.
Negative efficacy/ADE is a possibility with some viruses, most notably respiratory syncytial virus and dengue fever virus. In both of these cases vaccines were developed that ultimately led to worse disease outcomes in some people, and worryingly the same effect has been observed in animal trials for closely-related SARS and MERS coronaviruses. Reading the scientific literature from last year, vaccine developers *think* that they have reduced the risk of ADE by focusing on the spike protein in particular, but this is one of those unknowns that can only be fully revealed by the passage of time.
Should it be true that efficacy of the vaccines drops below zero over a relatively short time period, that will mean that vaccinated people are effectively signing up for an indefinite series of booster shots simply to avoid becoming worse off than unvaccinated people – in which case we will need to compare the risk of adverse effects of natural infection to the risk of adverse effects from potentially a large number of repeated injections.
—-
I also get the sense that this story may be playing out in a way that encapsulates the overall tragedy of industrial society and the religion of Progress:
1. Nature is bad so we must develop technology to save ourselves from nature. (We will conduct gain-of-function research to understand and head off zoonotic disease.)
2. Our technology is harmful in unexpected ways. (One of our improved viruses escapes from a lab and causes a global pandemic.)
3. The solution to a failure of technology is more technology. (We develop novel vaccines and deploy them with the full faith of our institutions despite limited testing.)
4. We enter a phase of diminishing and ultimately negative returns. (Vaccination must be repeated often simply to remain above a baseline level of immunity, resulting in overmedication and decreased health over time, while also potentially driving the evolution of the virus to cause more harm.)
Hello @Sean, I’m very sorry to hear about your situation. I’m a bit protected due to remote professional type of work but expect to be there in not too long. I’m even more afraid for my daughter. I think the lack of familial support that you’re describing would hit me the hardest.
My family is at least being gentle and my employer doesn’t likely want us all to come back anytime soon as I think they’ve gotten used to the lowered costs from the all remote work arrangement; even if productivity/quality is suffereing.
I’m not in the UK but several of my coworkers were recently there, one got Covid from a local contractor and all of them had to spend 10 days in isolation in each alone in an apartment without AC. They then got to finish the job in a rush as it was now 10 days ‘late’ … before getting to come home. So this seems to be the new normal that employers feel employees just have to live with. To me this seems to parrellel JMG’s Retropia portrayal of the ‘refugee’ family with both parents working 60 hours a week just to make ends meet.
I appreciate the more positive replies to your comments as I feel like I’m floating down a river watching someone else going over a waterfall a few hundred yards ahead of me and other than saying Good Luck! and waiting for my turn there’s a real shortage of constructive ideas since I’m still at a previous stage in the ‘situation’.
@JMG Thought I’d ask. Lol.
Currently listening to Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek.
If anything I recommend this book, Gulag Archepalego( Solzhenitsyn), Mans Search for meaning (Frankle), Commmunist Manifesto (Marx and Engles), the federalist papers (along with the Declaration of independence and the constitution), Beyond Order and Beyond Chaos by Dr. Jordan Peterson, as cheesey as it probably is The Kybalion as well as Corpus Hermeticum, and Up from slavery by Booker T. Washington. Of course id recommend more but I’m capping it at ten.
Really I find all of these things to have a profound impact on how I saw the world and certain ways of which issues of spiritual and mental nature seem to manifest themselves and what to do to remedy or help mitigate such things. Ccertainly an interdisciplinary approach to learning, but honestly it personally helped me understand many things and teachings much better. Most of it isnt occult in but a couple are or have occult references (Kybalion, Corpus Hermeticum, Beyond Order, and Beyond Chaos are the only ones with such), and two of the books are witten by or contributed to by Masons, two are recollections and are for historical comparisons to eachother as well as The Road to Serfdom, as warnings about something like the consequences of ideas produced via collectivist thought.
@ Mary Bennett
Re electric utilities and their discontents
“Expert” might be a bit much, though I suppose 20+ years in the industry ought to count for something 🙂 I can certainly give my thoughts and perspectives, for what they are worth.
To begin with, as with most other things, the reality of the power industry is more complex than it appears from the view of the typical ratepayer. There’s an immense amount of work, by multiple interacting entities, that goes into supplying high-quality, 24×7 electric service. We often joke around our office that when we at the utilities (we’re not only power, but also a water, steam, dark fiber, and partial wastewater utility) are doing our job properly, the ratepayers hardly know we’re here: the lights come on, the water flows, the toilets flush, etc., and no one thinks twice about it. That can be to our detriment, though, in that those same folks also don’t realize everything going on behind the scenes. We’ve begun to try to rectify this by holding an annual open house and doing more outreach and other ratepayer education.
Supplying power involves that “last mile” to your residence and, of course, the customer service aspects, but that’s just the final leg of the journey. Whether your service provider is a municipal or an IOU (investor-owned utility), they are interacting with a whole ecosystem: other utilities, independent power producers, regional grid operators, transmission companies, just to name a few.
Now, I have a preference for co-operatives and “municipals” (the latter to include all publicly-owned utilities, whether by municipalities, states, or the federal government) versus IOUs, largely because I feel that the for-profit business model should not be applied to a natural monopoly. As a municipal electric utility, my employer operates in a not-for-profit manner, with all excess funds either being reinvested in the utility or returned to the ratepayers in the form of lower rates. There are no owners receiving dividends from stock.
Take a typical residential rate, say 10 cents/kilowatt-hour (kWh). For the record, our residential rate is little over 8 cents/kWh 😉 Of that nominal 10 cents, only 3-4 cents relates to the cost of power itself–that is, the fuel and other variable expenses involved in power production. The remaining 6-7 cents pays for the infrastructure necessary to make the power and to get that power to your house. Those costs, which are largely fixed in nature, include things like O&M (operations and maintenance) dollars for the generators, transformers, distribution and transmission lines; also, capital costs, like depreciation (capital recovery), return on capital (for debt service and–for the IOUs–profit on investment), taxes, and the like.
The utility I work at owns some generation (we’re somewhat unusual in this state, as most “munis” buy all of their power from an external supplier and we own a significant amount of generating capacity relative to the amount of load we serve), but we are always buying and selling. We interact with other utilities, power traders, and the regional grid operator– in our case, MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator). Of the ~$50M we had in total operating expenses in 2020, close to a fifth of that (~$8M) went to paying for transmission and transmission-related costs charged to us from the regional grid operator and the transmission company.
I don’t know if any of this answers your question, but I hope it helps.
Hi john,
Still standing strong on the experimental vaccines! Most people have been vaccinated now and nothing on the local media about side effects.
However, anecdotally I know of a few cases of people who 1) had horrendous reactions to the jab and 2) have had rather mysterious illnesses or miscarriages after vaccines. One miscarriage, one healthy young lady who may have either cancer or a autoimmune disease 6 months after 1st Pfizer jab (awaiting results) so enough to put me off!
On a different note, iran is facing increasingly severe water shortages and this could be the precursor of a massive migration wave coming later on this decade or perhaps in the 2030s.
“The water crisis is a serious threat to the government. In 2015, the head of the Iranian Department of the Environment (and former agriculture minister), Isa Kalantari, declared that Iran’s endemic water mismanagement would force 50 million Iranians — around 60 per cent of the population — to leave the country. Earlier this year, he claimed a ‘water war’ might pose a threat to the state’s very existence.”
Gosh guys. I had no idea so many of our community were concerned with the push to get people to take big pharma’s offerings. I was asked by the VA whether I wanted to take the Pfizer shot, told them no twice was offered again and consulted the inner daimon, who unswervingly (I asked numerous times) said “take the shots.” So I did. I’m following the immunity protocols for those who haven’t taken the shot (D3, zinc, Vit. C. etc.) and also C60, etc., which some sources say reduces the possibility of the “side effects” occurring. Lots of turmeric, too.
So, instead of worrying about how this dang thing is a death sentence (which may be the intention) I’d be more interested in hearing from other folks who have done their research about how to mitigate treatment’s awfulness. I’m among the tiny part of the population who might have been vulnerable to CV19 with or without experimental treatments from big pharma. So far, I’m doing fine, FWIW.
I suspect that, my ancestors having come from places (16th and 17th c. London, prominently) where having a robust immune system was quite literally vital, this may be why I survived the 1970’s and now (so far) the craziness of the current business. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but that’s part of what I’d like to hear from y’all about.
I agree with stephenderose; that was an excellent comment. But recently, trying to make sense of all the furor about illegal immigration, I began to wonder if we’re importing a new class of slaves in the illegal immigrants. Some say that the illegals are bringing down wages for the working class. But how is that accomplished if we have minimum wage laws? Is the intention to employ the illegals at less than minimum wage? And are these people slaves of a sort? It’s not as though they can complain much, given their illegal status. Mr. Greer, do you think there’s anything to this line of reasoning or am I just suffering from lurid fantasies?
One caveat about using soap in various situations: check to see if you’re in a hard water area first. A good many soaps, like Dr. Bronner’s, do not do well in hard water areas, and you might need some sort of detergent or other product.
Pat, from living in hard water-areas since 1962/
Walsall, I suppose it depends on your position and what you believe. If you believe, as some do, that the vaccine may long-term disable a large number of people, then by waiting – even losing your job – you would become astonishing more valuable and well-paid by being the minority that remained healthy. …But this depends on what you believe and will sacrifice for. But as I feel we don’t know the facts right now, it’s a possible strategy. You may also feel as some do, that they cannot maintain this level of fury, and will have to relax their attack on humanity to some extent and shift to long-term.
Asking: if it works, why are 40% of cases presenting in U.K. vaccinated, and why are they re-recommending masks to vax-holders with immunity falling after a mere 6 months? And perhaps the vaccinated are actually more contagious, although this research is not fully confirmed. Won’t they have to adjust again if these are true?
Solari.com has a lawyer-created downloadable that says you’ll be happy to vaccinate if the employer signs a legal understanding that, given the vaccine is mandatory, all resulting consequences and liability will be paid by them until you die. …Most businesses and schools have backed down instantly, because this isn’t a new contract or law, it’s just reminding them of the state of *existing* law. That’s not even going nuclear to point out that ANY pressure to be involved in a medical experiment is against Nuremberg and U.N. Human Rights Laws. That would include enforcing different rules for you, or even saucy attitudes.
Can I see unthought-of effects? Yes, you and probably most people are probably already naturally immune and the vaccine won’t add anything, only adds whatever risks.
“what happens if the renewable fails to provide enough electricity during peak demand?”
What happens? Everybody dies. Freezers go off, all business stops, A/C, CPAP and oxygen machines stop running, insulin warms up, massive insurance claims are had, and therefore pensions fail. Is everyone sure they want this? While yes, cars can charge at night in low load, a normal “gas station” charging station would require a high-transmission substation EACH, for millions of new substations needed overnight, where we have no transformer manufacturing, and still there is no electric grid, no lithium and no engineering chance of their being any for decades. Lithium is also very toxic, psychoactive, and un-removable from the environment once spilled or dispersed, in a fire or a junkyard. Like: will destroy normal brain function – for generations, centuries, perhaps forever. If you thought a small amount of birth control or glyphosate was bad, this is galactically, “land-war in Asia” level bad. But I’m sure humans would never spill anything or be irresponsible.
The point was both to sell expensive nonsense to taxpayers while the RICH get cars, while later we would find out price rose and it wouldn’t be possible for the poor to have them.
We are already re-instating slavery as fossil fuels decline. Question answered.
Coin shortage is easily tracked. The Treasury and banks list in their papers that they hoarding the coins, as always in history, because there is about to be inflation and perhaps a re-issuance of the currency as the US$ fails. Coins will retain value, even being far above face value, so they want to keep them from you and keep the inflation-profit for themselves. Always happens and proves they know it.
I remember hearing natives, perhaps Russell Means, point out everything Europeans do there’s a fire at the center of it: cars, metals, nuclear, factories, etc. While true of all human houses, that’s not true of all human cultures. Africa for instance appears to be based on unique animals, and the New World unique plants. They do not consume as fire does.
Men’s hygiene, both as I hate rapacious oligarchs and they’ve told me they return the feeling towards us men, I have shifted from modern razors not to silly 25-bladed alternatives, but simply to an old heavy safety razor. Blades cost 10c and can be used 4 times. Razors are not a major expense, but paying 50 times more than I have to and create more non-biodegradable waste is bad citizenship on their part.
Rita: you don’t want to take their hate away from them; it just feels so good! They’ll fight to the death to keep it.
Kamala I suppose when Joe goes, they will chuck her too as a weightless amateur and install Nancy Pelosi, or another trusted insider. Pelosi has suggested this and they’re tilling the ground. Kamala’s actions suggest she knows she’s been sidelined. Maybe.
@temporaryreality
Sad to hear about Anna’s passing. She was a real trooper, fighting her cancer for years. I’ll pray for her and plant a tree in her memory.
So if magic is “the art of causing changes in consciousness in conformity with the Will”, what exactly separate magic from propaganda and/or persuasion? Can anyone here help me understand this?
Also I recall another characterization of magic from the “The Kek Wars” ; “Magic is the politics of the the excluded”. Is it possible to come up with an explanation that unifies these two definitions?
@Jeff Russell regarding your question in #59, here’s what works for me. I expect this is one of the many areas where folks’ individual experience will vary widely, though.
The number one trick for me is keeping the hair trimmed. A handheld hair trimmer works great. Unless you specifically want the look, though, I’d recommend against shaving, as it’s not a great place to have stubble.
I used to use a cornstarch/baking soda blend too. Mix the two — I did about half and half but I never measured — and dab it on with a dry washcloth. Unfortunately, yes, it does have the problem of visible white powder. Also, don’t use pure baking soda. I don’t remember it doing any better than the mix, and over time I ended up with irritation (probably a minor chemical burn from having a base directly on my skin day after day after day).
Otherwise, soap and water with each shower is my main thing. The level of odor isn’t zero, but with a clean shirt it’s fine in most cases. If I know I’ll be close to strangers for extended periods of time (e.g., flying on a plane) I use a small dab of a commercial product (I use a paste from Lume) for extra insurance. That’s maybe a couple days a year at most though.
I vaguely recall someone saying somewhere that when you stop using regular deodorant, it can take time for the surface microbes to rebalance. In other words, even if something doesn’t work at first, it might still end up working for you later on.
Hopefully that helps!
Interesting to see over the past week especially that Limits to Growth has been mentioned in some more mainstream outlets’ articles I’ve seen getting more hits, probably with all the news about the worsening fires and droughts, and most importantly the shortages. Oftentimes they just refer to it as “the 1972 report,” perhaps because the actual title of it sounds too scary. Most likely won’t lead to real changes in thinking around Progress & Infinite Growth for most people who read these, thinking that we can still innovate our way out of things, but I thought it was a little hopeful to see that maybe a few more people will at least start questioning that story we tell ourselves. Also, any discussion of LTG unsurprisingly frames it as “Society could collapse by 2040” or whatever year etc, playing into the apocalyptic narrative, not even entertaining the possibility of a long descent instead.
Also, William Shatner himself now says that there will be no Star Trek future. I think that’s pretty big too, considering how much of a cultural icon of Progress he is. Though he too frames it in those apocalyptic rather than realistic terms, saying that “humanity won’t even survive,” not considering that we probably will survive, just in a deindustrial civilization:
https://www.bigissue.com/culture/film-tv-radio/william-shatner-humanity-wont-survive-to-reach-a-star-trek-future/
This is my first time commenting after lurking for a while, finally got around to it. Just wanted to say to everyone that it’s always a breath of fresh air to come here in the midst of all the static of other news and discussions these days!
@temporaryreality, thank you for finding that information for us. May onething/Anna rest easily in the embrace of her ancestors. She will be missed.
“Some say that the illegals are bringing down wages for the working class. But how is that accomplished if we have minimum wage laws? Is the intention to employ the illegals at less than minimum wage? ”
Sometimes it’s cash under the table at less than minimum wage, other times it’s just we pay them regularly but don’t send the feds or state their cut. That’s 15% at least the employer can keep. I worked for a temp agency that was doing that. They didn’t send their share of my SS to the government and I had to fix it myself a couple of years later. They did give me my W-2. That might actually be an example of White Privilege: knowing that they owe you a W-2 at the end of the year.
JMG
I have been looking at houses recently as part of relocating and been surprised at the widespread dearth of thermal insulation. Do you have any clue why American houses were built for hundreds of years without a shred of insulation?
It’s not like cold weather is a new phenomenon here in the northeast. Yet everything I come across is an uninsulated bundle of sticks. I could blame cheap oil for the newer houses but even most older houses from before 1900 lack insulation.
The only reasons I can think is that coal must have been so cheap for so long that nobody cared. I also wonder if people used to spend much more time outdoors so they were more adapted to outdoor temperatures and/or relied on their clothing for personal insulation. I find it hard to imagine that no one conceived of the idea of insulated walls and roofs until the 20th century. Is it really that recent of an innovation?
(I guess if insulation was not a 20th century innovation, perhaps upfront cost was the issue.)
blue sun
To tack onto the vaccine discussion, a link to news of the kind of contract Pfizer is negotiating with state bodies:
https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/pfizer-contract-with-albania-for-covid-19-vaccines-raises-eyebrows-details/
The emphasis being on
A. The gov is obligated to fully pay out for the order, regardless of quality or timing of deliverables
And
B. Pfizer states it doesn’t know the effectiveness nor potential side effect outcomes of these vaccines and cannot be held liable.
Not exactly the type of contract that builds a lot of confidence for those on the fence. This coming to light at that same time pfizer is building up messaging regarding annual or semiannual booster shoots to prevent covid immunity deterioration.
JMG- This recent double down on mandatory vaccination really seems like a sign of panic at the top. How likely do you think it is that pharma companies lose their liability coverage, at the very least, should government officials need to throw someone under the bus? I suppose we may have to wait for potential mundan charts that point to large scale public justice events. I’m guessing the Watergate trial charts might be a good indicators?
Q- To those who have legal backgrounds/experience, what are your thoughts on potential pushbacks against mandatory employer vaccines? The courts aren’t actually neutral parties these days and I’m not sure how effective it would be to request an employer accept liability in the case of injury or stand firm to HR by refusing to disclose health information. I feel like there’s fairly substantial evidence that at the very least, one could showcase evidence that those with the vaccine are just as likely to spread covid, thus meaning workplaces can’t disparately enforce masks and testing on the unvaccinated.
Anon
@char #215
I think John covers something like this in his book The King in Orange and about the Kek wars….
JMG – thanks for the links to the cell salt information! I’m looking forward to learning how to use them so I can have another means of treating health issues without having to see traditional doctors (who tend to default to prescribing meds). And I do use a carbon water filter, which does help a lot!
Lady Cutekitten, if you’d like to talk cfs, kittens, and/or how to decipher mysterious forehead text, feel free to email me at ravenwillow 3 9 3 at g mail etc. And anyone else who has an interest in the above or general ecosophia-type topics, feel free to join us!
Mary, thanks for sharing these ideas. You and I approach things very similarly. I’m also concerned with plastics and noise (I’m a very environmentally sensitive person), and I try to wear 2nd hand natural fibers and use only cast iron and stainless steel for cooking. The rain barrel idea is a great one, and soaking veggies as you described would probably help a lot. i hate to be so fussy and particular about everything in my environment, but these things really do affect my and my son’s health something awful.
RavenWillow
@Abraham:
You might try inventing your own Gods, or taking them from fiction (as the graphic novelist Alan Moore did when he began to work with Glykon, and started getting results).
I’d wager that you’ll still get results from your ritual even with invented Gods, and–the same as with historical Gods–your results will improve with time. Experience has shown me that Faith or Belief is not necessary to do effective magic.
I wonder how much of Canada’s new policy on conversion of all cars to electricity has to do with the economics of this hydroelectric project?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/muskrat-falls-hydro-newfoundland-labrador-1.6119276
I guess the plan is to “make it up on quantity”!
Temporaryreality – thank you for letting us know about Onething. I remember her with such fondness. I always loved reading her interesting comments and questions and will miss her presence very much. Blessings to her on her journey.
William Allen, I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been reading JMG’s posts since back in the early years of the ADR, and while I mostly read and don’t comment, I feel a special connection to the people here. I’m so grateful to JMG for making this community possible! My son (17) has been a frequent reader for years, too, and just recently he commented on how remarkable this space is, the only online conversation he’s found that is smart, polite, and interesting, and “not toxic” like so much of what he encounters. It’s truly something special.
Well, this could turn into a world class mess: the DOJ is apparently threatening to sue states who try to revert voting laws to what they were before Covid….
https://nypost.com/2021/07/29/doj-may-sue-states-for-returning-to-pre-covid-voting-laws/
Pixelated #171, that sounds like some bourgeois audacity – “Our factory workers work too long hours to learn about politics, so obviously we can’t let them vote!” It reminds me of a documentary about a town on the south coast of England with a lot of recent immigrants. A landlord said there was a lot of racism in the town and she didn’t want blacks to be victims of it, so she wouldn’t rent to them.
Abraham #194, you can do the SoP without gods. I just do the first phase “By the sky above me – By the earth beneath me – By the life force within me.” Back when I was in a more materialist frame of mind I wondered if you could design a magic system around the concepts and imagery of complexity theory. Thinking about those principles already felt like secular mysticism and a lot of the images are beautiful. Though you may run the risk of your life turning into the film Pi. 😉
A good maxim for our times from musician Kim Cascone:
“Head down, Hands Busy & Never Mind the Hungry Ghosts”
(I thinks it’s a variation on a zen saying or something, but I like to remind myself of it when things get murky out in the world!)
Jean @ 190, my daughter the LPN works at a long term care facility in which 20 deaths from covid occurred in one month. The patients were old and frail, but truly stupid, as in level of criminal negligence stupid, decisions made by top management, AKA Carpetworld, severely exacerbated the problem. A number of the nursing and CNA staff jeopardized their jobs by privately reaching out to relatives and the media, all to no avail. My suggestion, for what it is worth, if you are considering placing a relative in such a facility, in addition to the usual due diligence, take a very close look at the membership of the governing board. Who are these individuals, what are their allegiances and sympathies, and so on. For example, if a board member is active in “immigrant rights” issues, you can possibly expect to see groups of semi-trained staff from overseas inserted into the facility. If, as I suspect is the case where my daughter works, a board member has close ties to local media, you can expect a quiet phone call to “Go easy on us, OK” to a curious reporter’s publisher.
At the risk of giving offense, if JMG will allow, I will repeat what I typed earlier, the elephant in the room is the overall poor health of the American public, and especially, especially our toxic food supply. ‘Toxic’, IMO, is not too strong a word. I am afraid I am not able to take seriously complaints about the vaccine from people who have no problemo with the presence in our foods of glyphosate and other legal and dangerous chemicals. I understand you all have the right to your own opinions, and I have the right to ignore those opinions.
Greetings all,
May we have a post on artificial intelligence one day. It is being promoted like hell these days, after covid vaccines of course!. Even in my far away country, Mauritius, Government set up an artificial intelligence council some time ago. AI is being viewed like a saviour of some sort.
Many thanks!
Pixelated #171 I did a bit of quick reading about Gertrude Bell. She does sound interesting. I’ll be looking into her some more Course the vote in the US had a long history of being restricted to the “elites”
Abraham #194, you can call on natural forces, or principles of nature. You may find that they personify themselves after a while.
Unappreciated Rationality #211. Yes, they are importing a new class of slaves. Been happening for many decades. As far as “minimum wage” yes, many of the domestic type workers are paid less. If they complain they get fired, deported, beaten, or even killed. As far as the skilled ones, they will often work for less than the so called “going rate” Consider, if you can hire a highly skilled, yet illegal brick mason, for $15 an hour, while the “going rate “ is $26 an hour for a legal one, who gets hired? On top of that, the people who hire illegals are very rarely prosecuted, unless it’s so blatant it made the news. What many don’t grasp is that most of the illegal activity comes from the EMPLOYERS. Who are often politically well connected.
If I’ve missed responding to anyone, sorry. Lots of posts this week.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
The wait is over and the Great God Progress doth bequeath His great promise of FUSION POWER to the people!
https://energycapitalmedia.com/2021/07/27/helion-energy-fusion-power-washington/
The facility will grace the Earth in Everett, WA, where all good ideas go to take root. Rejoice! Rejoice! Worry no more about fossil fuels, pollution or climate change! The future is here!
(Well, once they actually break the fusion barrier, which they haven’t done yet, but the experts tell me that they’re working on it and it will hopefully happen very soon after the facility opens. I mean, it has to… right?)
Sarcasm aside, I’ve seen headlines touting AI achievements and interstellar travel breakthroughs before, which always amounted to little more than tiny steps forward and what-if scenarios disguised as thinly veiled science journal articles, but this smacks as pretty desperate to me even for the press flaks. I can feel the sweaty hand wringing coming through the screen. Anyone else hear about this?
Archdruid,
Maybe, we will have to wait and see. The management class is clearly going to pieces, that must is certain.
Violet,
I don’t sleep as deeply as I used to that’s for sure, and I’m constantly dealing with this sense of waiting. Something or things are moving in the deeper currents of existence, and I don’t want to go an investigate.
Regards,
Varun
JMG: any word on when the “Weird of Hali” roleplaying game will be available? I am dying to [ahem] borrow the heck out of the ideas and mechanics therein. I borrowed your conception of the Earth as a hypersphere from the “weird” novels for a campaign I ran and it was well received.
As long as we are all talking cats that have passed on, I still miss my little stripey cat, Pandora. She was completely hyper and yet very friendly. i remember taking her to the vet before she died because she lost half of her weight. The tests showed cancer, but Pandora was 14 so I wasn’t going to bother with treatment. Even at half her weight, the vet remarked on how energetic she was. However, she was at only half her usual energy level at that point, but in fairness still energetic than every other cat I knew. She died a few days later. Pandora did not seem like she was in pain, and I hope that was the case. She was like a kitten than never quite grew up.
I’m saddened to hear of Onething’s passing…I’ve always valued her contributions here and will miss her. Her chosen name always made me think of the opening 8 lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 105, which may contain hidden truths. It seems a fitting tribute to her to share it.
Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
I am sorry to hear of Onething’s passing. I also wanted to add my thanks to temporaryreality for looking into it after not hearing anything from her in a while.
@ Jean. I live in Minnesota and I know one man second hand (he was the area wood stove salesman) who died from Covid here. I have connections in Mexico. There I know 5 people who died. One of them very dear to me. In my very limited experience Covid was much harder on Hispanics than white folks. As far as vaccinations go. I know several people who got very sick with their second dose but then recovered fully and quickly. I also know one fellow who got Ulcerative colitis suddenly about a month after his second shoot but I have no way of knowing if they are connected.
https://phys.org/news/2021-07-zealand-survive-collapse.html
July 29, 2021, New Zealand is best placed to survive collapse
by Anglia Ruskin University
Quote:
——————————————————————————————————————
New research has examined the factors that could lead to the collapse of global civilisation, with New Zealand identified as the country most resilient to future threats.
The study, carried out by Nick King and Professor Aled Jones of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), focuses on “de-complexification”—a widespread reversal of the trends of recent civilisation, potentially seeing the collapse of supply chains, international agreements and global financial structures.
Published in the journal Sustainability, the study explains how a combination of ecological destruction, limited resources, and population growth could trigger a reduction in the overall complexity of civilisation, with climate change serving as a “risk multiplier,” exacerbating existing trends.
This could happen during a “long descent,” over years or decades, or very rapidly, in the space of less than a year, with no warning of the coming disruption. The academics suggest that a hybrid of these might also occur, with a gradual initiation which then gains momentum through “feedback loops,” leading to an abrupt collapse. The effects could spread quickly due to the increasing hyper-connectivity and interdependency of the globalized economy.
…
It found that New Zealand—along with Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia (specifically Tasmania) and Ireland—were the nations currently most suited to maintaining higher levels of societal, technological, and organizational complexity within their own borders if a global collapse were to happen.
—
BTW, I’m highly skeptical about the motives to include the UK on that list, not least because of its currently severe overpopulation.
Also, in Ireland, there’s worsening erosion:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3_dJayH6e6gZxHj_zS8MWPNklrEjAPqB
I’m sorry, bad DJ’ing; I got your soundtrack wrong. It looks like some people are asking for <a href ="https://m.my.mail.ru/mail/plant-1961/video/23585/33538.html" faith and others <a href ="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QulBUdp-SAQ" freedom.
I actually don’t know if the whole Faith album is any good, because part way through my husband says he can’t handle anymore 80’s and puts on Molly Hatchet. I like Faith, though – when it came on the radio when I was a kid, and George got to “throw my heart back on the floor” my dad used to yell “Kali MA!” and mime the heart ripping scene from Temple of Doom, which I thought was metal enough, but apparently not.
@ Fran #110 and all the other cat commentors: we had to put down our 15 year old Luigi about 2 months back. Most nights, he would start off the night sleeping on my bed, then relocate sometime in the dark. Several times after his death, I was sure I felt him walking on me ( a common occurrence before). His sister Sascha has taken up his place in the bedroom, although she sleeps between me and the door, not on the bed. I think she does not want anything to happen to me overnight. I still tell him goodnight every evening.
@ the many Covid Vaccination comments: I had the J&J jab in early May. I felt that I sank into a fog for weeks thereafter, and have only recently come out of it. Meanwhile, I’m still stuck with the muscle weakness in the legs which came on after the Cipro I was prescribed in February, the Cipro which did nothing to cure the condition it was prescribed for. Best healthcare in the world, baby!
Godspeed to onething.
@Waffles #39
In regards to the keeping of cats, you do well to keep this quote in mind (I forget who said it first, but it sure rings true):
“Dogs prepare you for having babies; cats, for teenagers.”
Data points from Gainesville, FL:
The price of gas at Gator Gas, downtown: $2.75/gallon.
Seen also, downtown, “The Progressive Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The air conditioning in the big off-campus-trips bus is has been down for at least a week. The driver said, when someone else mentioned it, “We’re still trying to get it fixed.” This is the best retirement facility in the county.
The oddest thing with this whole pandemic is how few government officials that face the cameras have tested positive for Covid and then been hospitalized or died from it. Also so few Hollywood types, the kinds that grace the pages of People magazine.
Given the age of many of those in charge, I honestly expected to lose a few congress people, maybe a governor or two, etc. Not trying to be morbid, just looking at it logically.
We’ve had lots of athletes test positive and that’s been splashed across media, and they usually are just quarantined and that’s it. Expected given their fitness.
But isn’t that weird?
If I was a conspiracy theorist I would think that they were somehow inoculated against this virus before it was released. But that is obviously something that could only be in a movie.
Justin, that’s good to know. Having those around will help make the transition from car culture to pedestrian-and-horse culture a lot easier.
KenP, I’ve said all along that it makes perfect sense for those who are actually at risk from a communicable respiratory disease — people over 70, people who are immunocompromised, and the like — or who live with or take care of such people, to take appropriate protective measures. If we’d responded to the current virus in a sane manner, we would have put all our efforts into protecting the people who are actually at risk, and since there are a lot fewer of them than there are people who are not at risk, that targeted effort could have done a lot of good. Unfortunately that’s not what happened.
AV, thank you! As for the geomancy reading, they’ll certainly bring you business, and with Via as the judge and right witness, there’s a very real chance that they’ll buy you out –Via means change, and Via in those two positions means changes affecting you as well as the business.
PumpkinScone, can you point me to a source for that story? I’d love to link to it in a future post. As for your analysis — why, yes, that’s exactly what we’re seeing.
Augusto, just one of the services I offer. 😉
Cliff, entertaining indeed.
Honu, one of the crucial points of Twilight’s Last Gleaming was that the military clashes between the US and China were all far from US territory — that was essential to the way things worked out. As we saw in 1941, a direct attack on US territory is a very good way to unite a fractious and divided nation. So Hawai’i remains far from the field of conflict in any of my scenarios.
BCV, not a spiritual practice, but excellent training for the mind and imagination, and so potentially helpful in preparing you for spiritual practices.
Pixelated, I do my best! 😉
Marie, okay, that’s definitely a sign that things are changing. The Grauniad taking limits to growth seriously? Good heavens, the moon must be blue…
TJ, I ain’t arguing. The more angry and frantic the demands that everyone must get the serum, the more certain I am that there must be something very, very wrong with it.
Russell, (1) entirely suitable; that’s what beginners were taught in several orders in which I’m an initiate, and it seems to be safe and effective for them. (2) Druidry caught on very readily all through the Anglophone world, including in Australia, so clearly the gods in question travel well. You might try visualizing Hesus sitting in whatever the biggest and grandest of the local trees happens to be!
Karim, I haven’t, sorry.
Yorkshire, nope. I read his Winter’s Tale and found it lively and interesting, but haven’t read any of his other work. I’ll consider it.
Bei Dawei, nope.
Kassandra, thanks for this. I tend to think that the current situation is more the product of mindless greed on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and their enablers (and slush fund recipients) in politics and the media, but we’ll see.
NomadicBeer, we’ll see. Historical change follows its own timeline, which is slower than a lot of people like to think these days.
Treefrog, and if getting the covid serum appeals to you, by all means. Just don’t go around trying to bully everyone else who makes a different choice.
Jean, I know nobody who’s died or even become seriously ill from the coronavirus. My wife and I both got it in April 2020 and treated it at home with alternative medicine; I got over it promptly, and my wife (who has immune system problems) had a little slower of a recovery but never showed any signs of serious trouble. I don’t know anybody who’s had problems with the serums, but then most of the people I know have refused to get it.
Emily07, I like the original version — The View Over Atlantis — but that’s because it’s the one I read and reread in my teen years, and there’s some nostalgia value. Either one is fine.
Abraham, from an occult point of view, belief is irrelevant. If you do the practices, results will follow. Choose a set of deities you find appealing and call on them — and see what happens.
Re-questing, I get that.
Priya, yes, I think we’re moving toward crisis, and things will likely ease up considerably once the crunch is over.
Aloysius, that’s a good question. I haven’t used cleanses, though. Anyone else?
Jade Dragon, writing is at least 50% editing, and the earlier you are in the learning curve, the more important editing is. It’s good that you’re letting yourself churn out gibberish — that’s an excellent habit. Keep doing it, and save it all. Once you’ve got a good stock of it, go through it, and see what you can edit into a workable story. In the meantime, read plenty of good fiction and pay attention to how the authors are getting their effects — that’s the most useful way to learn technique. As for narcissism, you know, that may be the best explanation I’ve heard yet.
Know Brainer, two good points.
Copper, glad to hear it.
Forecasting, I’m watching the water situation in the Middle East closely. That’s one of the things that could trigger mass migration in the not too distant future.
Clarke, interesting.
Rationality, the whole point of bringing in illegal immigrants rather than legal ones is that employers can force them to work for less than minimum wage in substandard conditions. If they complain, why, the boss drops a dime to La Migra and they’re deported. That’s how they’ve been used for decades to drive down wages and working conditions for the working classes. They’re not quite slaves, but the differences aren’t huge, and there have been cases where illegal immigrants have been quite literally enslaved — given no pay, just room and board, and kept there by force. (This is especially common for women in domestic service, btw — that rich lady’s housekeeper may be a slave…)
Patricia M, so noted! I’ve never lived anywhere with hard water, so I don’t tend to think of that.
Char, you’ve fallen into one of the deliberate traps Fortune wove into that definition. I’d encourage you to meditate about that, or if you don’t practice meditation, think about it; you’ll figure it out.
Gray Tuesday, yes, I’ve been watching that with amusement. Of course they frame it in apocalyptic terms — the word nobody, but nobody, is willing to use is “decline.”
Blue Sun, exactly. Energy was so insanely cheap for so long that nobody worried about insulation. That changed during the 1970s, but one of the things that happened when our society embarked on its 50-year vacation from reality in 1980 was that everyone did their best to forget about energy conservation. The good news is that you can save huge amounts of money with very inexpensive retrofits.
Anon, that doesn’t surprise me in the least. Corporations love that kind of deal — they get the profits and everyone else is saddled with the costs. As for the longer term, it’ll depend on just how bad the consequences turn out to be.
RavenWillow, you’re most welcome. Spread the word!
Steve, a real possibility!
Anonymous, the desperation among the Democrats is palpable.
Karim, I’ll consider it.
StarNinja, that is to say, we’re definitely moving into another energy crisis, and so the grifters are out in force trying to cash in on the clueless. Thanks for the heads up!
Chris, I’m still waiting for a release date. You might try dropping an email to the publisher, Aeon Games — they were going to do a Kickstarter in June, and I’m not sure why that didn’t happen.
A. Karhukainen, okay, that’s reason to avoid New Zealand at all costs. Every yuppie in sight will be trying to move there.
Patricia M, fascinating. Thank you for these!
@blue sun:
A traditional well-built American house (here in the northeast) is not a simple container for people, but a sort of machine with a few very slow-moving parts–and a few other parts that the inhabitants can adjust at need. Such houses need to breathe, and they breathe mostly through their walls; the slow flow of air through the walls fosters the health of the inhabitants. So the absence of insulation was quite deliberate. They certainly knew about the possibility of insulating the walls of a house, and it was thought to be quite unwise. (There are also other vents–soffet vents–under the eaves to vent excess moisture from the attic, so the wood won’t rot there.
The windows in such a house will be double-hung windows, that is, they will have an upper and a lower half, each of which slides up and down independently of the other. (There’s some specialized carpentry needed here.) Both halves, top and bottom, are to be opened half-way during the hot seasons. Then air that is too hot can flow out through the upper opening, which draws somewhat cooler outside air in through the lower opening. You can put up summer screens in frames, hanging them outside the windows, if you like; you have to use a very long ladder to reach the windows in the upper stories. In the winter, you could–and usually do–put up frames with glass in the same way: these are called storm windows. Each sort of frame was hinged at the top and fastened from the inside at the bottom, so you could push the bottom of a storm window outwards to let some fresh air in when you needed to. And from time to time you might well need to! People bathed maybe once a week, and maybe less often than that in the winter.
Back in the days before air-conditioning, one dealt with the hottest summer days by wearing as little as possible–skivvies–indoors (out of view of the neighbors, of course), and also by sleeping on cots in the basement, which (being partly underground) is the coolest part of the house. Sleeping in the root-cellar or the spring-house, if you lived on a farm, would also be an option.
And, of course, on a farm even the nearest neighbors will be much too far away to see what you are wearing. This is why, back in the day, one never walked right up to the front door of a farm-house, but hollered something like “Hello, the house!” at the front gate, and waited for a welcoming reply before coming any closer. Sometimes you might have to wait a while, which might indicate that the family was quickly pulling their clothes on.,
Traditionally, heat came from a central fireplace, where one also does the cooking and the baking. High-backed benches (“settles”) are set at the sides of the fireplace, where one could sit to warm up at need, or when the day’s work is done. Mostly, however, in the cold seasons one wears layers of warm clothes–and even hats or bonnets–indoors and outdoors, which help conserve one’s body heat.
I lived in a house of this sort for about seven years as a boy, in Pleasantville, NY, and got to see how this was all managed by the locals. (Our house did have a central furnace with a coal-bin, as well as a gas stove in the kitchen, but it also still had a working fire-place with a storage closet for firewood.)
Justin,
I saw a couple of articles on those asian electric microcars, and thought that they are probably the future of cars. Partly that was me gawking at the idea of a car that I could a) afford to buy, b) afford to buy new, and c) afford to run. They’d be really good at what a lot of people here actually use their cars for most of the time, and a lot more affordable than what you see people running around in.
In huge numbers, they’d probably still be a problem for the grid, but how many minicars could you run for the same amount of electricity that it would take to run an electric SUV? I bet it’s multiple minicars per SUV.
To try and sneak an unrelated question into the middle of the Covid vaccine debate…
I’ve recently developed an interest in Egyptian deities, not a topic I know too much about. I was wondering if anyone here could tell me something about Kemeticism as a possible religious path? Are there active groups with good reputations (i.e. religiously focused, not taken over by the woke political rot that’s been destroying so much of alternative spirituality) that are worth learning from, or potentially getting involved in? Kemetic Orthodoxy is the one that comes up most readily in any search (while I’m sure there are other active groups, it’s been harder to find them, though I should note I am not on Facebook or Discord); looking over their web site and the blogs of current and former members, what I see is kind of a mixed bag, particularly around the potential of woke political rot further in.
I’ve already learned the hard way to be careful who you get involved with spiritually, I’m very wary of even lightly brushing up against another dysfunctional group with a toxic egregore. If anyone here, in this rare bastion of online sanity, has any advice in the matter, I would love to hear it.
Onething’s screen name always reminded me of the ancient Greek proverb, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Her comments were always well worth reading.
About the most resilient places, my own suggestions: Hokkaido, which is the island of approximately the same size and population density as Ireland. And in any kind of collapse scenario, the social cohesion is important, and Japanese famously keep their cool even in the midst of tsunami. In that respect, maybe also Switzerland and Taiwan, except in both the current population density is very high, especially in the latter. But in any real pandemic scenario, that aspect might soon change.
Then there are other Nordic countries than Iceland, e.g., rural parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, maybe also some of the Baltic states. But those nearer to big chaotic neighbors are more vulnerable to foreign predation, when things do not go smoothly. Mongolia has the same problem, even though I trust its nomad population to take full care of themselves.
Probably also many parts of the US and Canada would not have it so bad.
@ StarNinja, JMG
https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html
“CDC encourages laboratories to consider adoption of a multiplexed method that can facilitate detection and differentiation of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses.”
Hi marlena13 (#232),
Yes, I guess it’s obvious that we are importing a new class of slaves. I’m usually so busy with work and family that I don’t give these puzzling topics in the news too much thought. Although these days, when I do, the answers I get become real ugly real fast. But there are more mysteries to be plumbed in this topic. Like, how is it that chattel slavery, which was abolished in this country in 1865, is super duper extra evil and the media says we should give it our full attention and provide reparations; yet it’s perfectly okay to ignore the illegal immigrant slave class that is growing in our country. Perhaps it’s less threatening to worry about chattel slavery than having to deal with the working conditions of one’s unusually inexpensive house maid, gardener or brick mason.
@ JMG RE: African oil leases
The offshore stuff has been leased for several decades, with similar leasing on land. Google Warri Nigeria as it is a big oil town – Chevron and lots of others have fenced and guarded compounds there. I have been there and other places in W. Africa – I have zero plans to return.
II was involved in a project for Petronas in Ethiopia; one needs to take into account the tribal wars that are nearly continuous – all across the continent. There is a reason that FORCE MAJEURE clauses are in every contract, with details for African nations not usually included in typical contracts. My Petronas work was completely shut down due to fighting. Two years on, it was shut down again due to the plague clause.
The business about that oil being “east to get to” is misleading – as some places are easy, yet others are far from it. It isn’t just the geology – what happens at the surface where the rigs are is even more problematic. Geology is fixed, but not so much the goings on of the surface.
And if there is no pipeline, then you have to ship by truck amongst the warbands…
Darkest Yorkshire,
given the different requirements for static storage batteries as compared to vehicles, I suspect we may end up using different types of battery for that. Probably something cheap but heavy per watt stored, that lasts a long time. Not sure which tech that would be, though.
jbucks #200, you ask (in effect) about delayed effects, long-term effects, and sequelae of Covid-19. Well, this is a new disease, so no one knows. I’m not an infectious disease expert, but infectious diseases from what I recall, generally do not cause much along these lines. Anyone out there who knows better set me straight please… Here are the ones that come to mind:
Polio can leave long term weakness or partial paralysis. Late in life, even a fully recovered polio patient can (in fact usually will) develop post-polio syndrome, whereby the motor units that took over from the motor units destroyed by the polio, themselves succumb to a late death through natural attrition and, it appears, from a kind of “overwork” resulting in premature motor unit loss (“motor units” are motor neurons in the spinal cord that project axons to muscle fibers).
Chicken pox often has a late-in-life sequela of shingles.
Herpes is chronic and often results in recurrent, minor outbreaks.
Hepatitis B, C and AIDS are chronic (chronic infections are not good reference points for covid)
Rheumatic fever in childhood may lead to an early adult demise from a sequela of rheumatic heart disease, though rheumatic fever is a bacterial infection (strep) so again is a poor reference for covid.
I have never heard of any other corona virus (Covid 19 is far from the only one) resulting in delayed effects, long-term effects, or sequelae. IIRC, 20% of colds for example, are corona viruses (the other 80% are rhinoviruses).
There is another factor to consider: The mRNA inoculate technology. This is totally out-of-the box new. This inoculate is not really a vaccine as it not composed of either dead, or weakened live, virus particles (“serum” is technically also a bad descriptor. “Inoculate” is better IMO). It is an mRNA sequence that commandeers the protein-synthesizing machinery of human cells to make the covid spike proteins, and those proteins go into circulation, to presumably take on the function of weakened or dead virus particles as targets for the immune system. mRNA technology has never been tried on humans before Covid-19, is a true wild-card, and there are already 150 million or so guinea pigs out there. There is absolutely no way 150 million US citizens gave informed consent for this. I am continually aghast that this has been done.
There is no way one can compare the downstream risks from covid-19 to the downstream risks from this mRNA technology.
—Lunar Apprentice
Regarding the person who asked if we know anyone whose death certificate claims they died of COVID, I know four such people: the father of one of my closest friends, who I last saw at her wedding and had seen several times while she and I were in college; an acquaintance who I saw most often at the houses of mutual friends; an ex brother-in-law who I saw on occasion because we share nieces and nephews and their children; and my mother. My mother was 86 and would have died before long anyway because her bone marrow was failing after several years of leukemia. My friend’s father was at least that old and had Parkinson’s. The acquaintance, in her late 50s, had multiple serious health issues and was often hospitalized. I don’t know anything about the ex brother-in-law’s health but age-wise he was in his 60s.
I know one person who has long COVID: the friend of mine whose father died of it. I know several other people of varying ages who were diagnosed with COVID and made full recoveries.
I had a reaction to the second jab of the vaccine but it only lasted for 12 hours. I haven’t noticed any changes in health since then, and my magic practice hasn’t suffered either. The only person I know who has told me of any long term changes since the jab is my husband. He says he now notices a faint taste of mint if he pays attention to it.
@Lady Cutekitten (#72)
Get checked for food allergies. Be sure to go to a naturopath or other “alternative” healthcare provider, NOT a mainstream clinic who can’t find anything wrong that they don’t have a patented procedure or medication to counteract. Frequently ingesting something your body has a tough time with could be a major factor contributing to the fatigue.
My best friend from the good old daze in small-town high school got seriously ill with Covid, and had Dr. Pierre Kory (the main public champion of treating Covid with Ivermectin) not succeeded a mere two or three months earlier in convincing the medical establishment to use cortical steroids to disrupt the cytokine storm caused by severe Covid, I think it’s possible the old friend might have died. Before that, the official treatment for severe Covid was palliative care only.
I think it is worth pointing out that like a lot of people who ended up in the hospital from severe Covid, the old friend is chronically rather overweight and has never really prioritized taking good care of himself. And also, he suffers from a mysterious lung affliction known as sarcoidosis that I’m sure was the clincher for him. He was sick for about three weeks or more before needing to go to the hospital. The last time we talked about it on Facebook-chat, he said he has “Long Covid” in the form of shortness of breath. I’m hoping that his bout with the virus simply inflamed his sarcoidosis and that this inflammation will gradually recede over time.
He ended up getting “the jab” because the white coats didn’t feel the need to tell him that his bout with the Coof gave him better natural immunity that any faux-vaccine ever could. There is even some research that suggests that getting “the jab” after having Covid might interfere with this natural immunity. So yeah, I’m a little bit worried about him right now, though of course I haven’t told him of any of my misgivings about his decision. I really, really want to avoid being one of those butthurt Covid narrative skeptics who mirror the PMC Covidian cultists in fanatacism.
First time commenter, long time reader. Thank you for all your wisdom! As for Malcom Kyeyune and the similarities of thinking that you both share, it was through him I found you and your writing. He often recommends your writing when he appears on podcasts and thus I decided to start reading first the Archdruid Report and then this blog. He has also said, repeatedly, that you are one of the most important intellectual influences on his thinking.
You might be amused to learn that Malcom Kyeyune is affiliated with a politician in Sweden, Markus Allard, who runs a local populist party. A party that is founded on principles worked out by Markus and Malcom, with partial influence from you. Your influence reaches as far as Swedish municipal politics!
Violet, I too always appreciate your penetrating questions and comments. I was born in 1954 and have not witnessed anything even remotely close to the derangement miasma we’re in the midst of. The turbulent 60s, the Reagan revolution…even 9/11 pales in comparison.
The astrological influences set into motion in 2020 are pretty revealing. The year started off with an intensely potent conjunction of Saturn and Pluto (36-38 yr. cycle) in Capricorn, followed by Jupiter conjoining Pluto (12-15 yr. cycle) in Capricorn. The theme ‘Welcome to the Panopticon’ seems apt. Then Jupiter and Saturn moved on to align in the first degree of Aquarius initiating an elemental (and historically monumental) beginning to a 200 year era…a massive shift. I know our host doesn’t agree with my assessment but I find these times to be profoundly Plutonian in character. Next up is the US Pluto return early next year. I keep thinking of the weird sisters in Macbeth chanting: “Fair is foul and foul is fair: Hover through fog and filthy air”. As for preserving sanity, I’d say persist and keep the faith with core spiritual practices foremost and also allow room for seeing the mad, absurd humor in all of it.
What a spectacle!
I’ve been looking for a good historical guide to the Christianization of Europe, one without (too much) bias. All I’ve found so far has been either very pro-Christian or very pro-pagan and they generally discuss the conversion of various kings and other important persons of the time. I would like a more realistic description (also) of the conversion of the ordinary people and how this was achieved on such a large scale.
Would you have any suggestions for me?
Lady Cute Kitten and others
re: fatigue related to chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia, I find that reducing reasons for me to lie awake are very helpful in not being exhausted the next day. For me, that means making sure I’m not in pain, as best I can. I usually take an anti-inflammatory painkiller before going to bed, and use a fabric bag of rice stuck in the microwave.
I also make sure I do a series of exercises every day, to make sure inactivity isn’t causing sore muscles (and also so that I can do physical things when I need to), and go for a walk or a kickscoot. The amount depends on what my body is willing to do that day, and what I need to get done, but I make sure not do nothing without a really good reason, because that’s an open invitation to extra pain, as is doing too much. Being in pain means not sleeping, and being exhausted, and that always seems to make the pain seem worse.
Being outside reduces my problems with depression, which is an energy suck all of its own that tends to get tangled up with my fibromyalgia to steal my energy and stop me doing things.
Hi JMG and all
One of the main reasons I decided to wait at least one year before even considering the possibility of taking any of the Covid-19 vaccines was the pile of garbage that was de official EUA approval document, I still cannot understand how the physicians, virologists, epidemiologists and the rest of well formed people did not protest how the government could start the biggest vaccination program in the history of the human species based on this bulk of shale….
This is the document for Pfizer, similar to the rest:
https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download
Apart of the “unknown”, as for example:
will it prevent severe disease? = we expect so but the information from the trials is not statistically significant
will it prevent death? = we expect so but the information from the trials is not statistically significant also.
will have it medium-longterm adverse events? we do not know after more than 2 months
Etc…
But the most important risk in ALL, that happens in the previous attempts to have a coronavirus vaccine, in animals or in humans, is the ADE (Antibody Dependent Enhnacement), that was the main reason that after 60 years there were no successful coronavirus vaccine, and then you read this in the document of the EUA of the Pfizer vaccine, page 52 :
“Vaccine-enhanced disease .
Available data do not indicate a risk of vaccine-enhanced disease, and conversely suggest effectiveness against severe disease within the available follow-up period. However, risk of vaccine-enhanced disease over time, potentially associated with waning immunity, remains unknown and needs to be evaluated further in ongoing clinical trials and in observational studies that could be conducted following authorization and/or licensure.”
So basicaly they say in the official EUA approval document = ” we have no idea if ADE will hapens, but in any case, please, vaccinate some hundred millions of people and after that we will see if ADE happens, as in all the others coronavirus vaccines in the past, or not, at the end we are not liable…”
But there are recent studies that show that may be the ADE is starting to hapens at least with the Pfizer vaccine:
a) Study of gold miners in Guyana comparing vaccinated with Pfizer and with unvaccinated, the infections was: 60% of the full vaccinated affected and 75% of unvaccinated, 0% (zero) of people previously infected with Covid-19 and not vaccinated (natural immunity has almost 100% of efficacy, at least if you are NOT vaccinated after recovery). So you can see the so poor efficacy of the vaccine, and almost in all cases the infections were symptomatic
But may be the more important data was in the appendix tables, where you can see that the higher viral loads (Ct = 18) were always in the vaccinated infected, and all the unvaccinated has Ct>=25 and in general much higer than the vaccinated (the lower the Ct the higher the viral load has this person)
This is the link to the study, you can download the table of data cliking on the “appendix”:
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1427_article
b) There is also the video of the doctor RW Malone where he knows from people from the CDC alerting that the viral titres of the vaccinated (in the blood) are higher than the unvaccinated, and that could mean clues of ADE:
https://rumble.com/vkfz1v-the-vaccine-causes-the-virus-to-be-more-dangerous.html
What he is saying is that the authorities should stop the vaccination campaign immediately in order to be sure the ADE is not happening because this is the “worst possible scenario”, of course nobody will hear this men or Luc Montaigner or many others “negationists anti-vaxxers”.
I think because of the risk of ADE, Israel has just started to inject the third dose of Pfizer to people older than 60, and, of course, without any known previous trial to assess efficacy and/or safety of the third dose, because “$cience says it is the safe and effective”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/29/delta-variant-israel-to-give-pfizer-covid-booster-shots-to-elderly-.html
In any case, do not worry, Pfizer is making trials of some new hi-tech, expensives, patented anti-virals, just in case they need for the ADE promoted by their faulty vaccine; “win-win” strategy:
https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/antiviral-efforts?linkId=125685685
All the health authorities in the world have gone crazy and all the physicians lost their critical thinking capabilities? Because how can you explain that RIGTH NOW they are vaccinating the children?
I have started to think that this is the case, and they under a kind of spell…
Cheers
David
I haven’t made it quite through all the comments, but I saw this a couple of days ago and if anyone needed proof that the vaccine thing is political rather than medical, here it is:
“People jabbed with PLACEBOS during vaccine trials will have same privileges as those who are ‘fully’ vaxxed, UK minister says”
Having gotten a placebo means you didn’t get the vaccine. You’re not vaccinated, but according to this scheme you’ll be considered vaccinated. Unbelievable.
https://www.rt.com/uk/530020-zahawi-fully-vaccinated-placebo-nhs-app/
Don’t forget that here in the US, Covid-positive, already-symptomatic illegal aliens are being welcomed into the country and bussed all over the place by the Biden administration (or whoever is actually in charge at the moment) with nary a concern about them spreading disease.
Waffles #39:
Long time, many cat owner here. Some tips:
1. Get your kittens a carrier and take them on drives often. Get them used to the carrier and the car and it will make your life easier when you need to transport them in an emergency or get them to the vet. If you live in a place that welcomes pets inside stores (we do), put the carrier into the shopping cart and wheel the cat around while you shop. You’ll thrill all the little kids and your cat will get used to new places and smells and learn not to freak out.
2. Watch your cats’ diets! After dealing with a diabetic cat for six years – we kept him alive, happy, and active until he was 19 – give your cat quality food and skip the dry kibble except for those occasions when you might be away overnight and can’t feed fresh food. Insulin is prohibitively expensive and the cat had no insurance so I paid out of pocket for the drug and the syringes, also not cheap. Diet affects a lot of chronic cat diseases so a little extra spent on better food will pay you back handsomely. One of our vets told us years ago that cats do not have the drive to drink the way dogs do, that cats have evolved to get most of their hydration from their food (mice and other small animals are apparently mostly water) so feeding dry kibble can cause some level of dehydration even if you leave fresh water out. We feed wet food to our cats to which I add a little warm water to be sure they’re getting all they need. They have a cat fountain, but don’t need to use it much.
I have no experience with pet health insurance so I can’t speak to that.
Regarding cats, it has been my experience that taking away the litter box and letting them go outside makes them happier and the household. All you have to do is let them go outside and they will go outside. But be careful letting them out when they are very young. I have found that people like to steal kittens. When confronted they claim that they are trying to save them from the big bad outside, but for whatever reason, this has happened to me more than once. You may want to wait until they are fully grown and past their cute stage, before letting them free to play outside.
As for the Covid hysteria, I anticipate that the powers that be will attempt another lockdown this winter due to the variant phobia, unless there is tremendous push back. Given how much lack of courage folks have shown, I am pretty sure that we have at least one more round of lockdowns coming.
JMG, do I recall you saying something pro or con to The Limits to Growth’s subsequent versions? Original editions are pricey and I’m wondering if later editions convey the same message.
Also, I’d be interested to hear if you (and anyone else here) has a non-medical opinion about ADD/ADHD and its treatment options (like, is the medical model less-than-helpful because this is a subtle-body issue? or?).
And, we’re starting to accumulate our own hall of the ancestors: Bill Pulliam, Shane W., John Roth, and onething/Anna. There are probably more who we figured just drifted away. I guess they did, in a sense. A cup raised and a prayer for all of them.
Temporaryreality and Denis (and anyone else) – there are active groups on Twitter and elsewhere discussing the magic ritual phrases need to craft a spell to avoid forced vaccination – aka “vaccine exemption letters” in modern lingo. If you dig around you may be able to come up with a good letter that jobs/colleges will accept. Start with a Twitter account called “bowtiedjesus”. He claims to be a former lawyer and former Big Pharma banker/insider and he is offering to help people who DM him on Twitter write exemption letters. Who knows if any of it is true, but you don’t lose anything by trying (he is trying to avoid being cancelled off Twitter so has recently started posting a lot of pro vaccine stuff – don’t worry he doesn’t believe any of it).
Whoever asked about Bitcoin – there have been many discussions about it in these comments and there are supporters of both viewpoints. My view is that it is all irrelevant. Is it a speculative boom/bust type of investment? Yes it clearly is. The only question is whether you think there will be another cycle – there have currently been at least 6 or more full boom/bust cycles for Bitcoin. We recently had a full cycle in 2017/18, and then another boom that ended in May 2021, with the price down a lot since then. As long as you are willing to take the bet that there will be a 7th or 8th cycle – which seems like a pretty good bet to me – albeit no guarantee – just buy it and wait for it to go up. The trick – as with any speculative investment – is knowing when to get OUT.
@PumpkinScone and JMG
You mean this?
https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dls/locs/2021/07-21-2021-lab-alert-Changes_CDC_RT-PCR_SARS-CoV-2_Testing_1.html
To BCV (166) you have an English Shepherd, too? They are amazing for enforcing rules. I have three – Mama, Papa, and daughter – and they make my small farm possible.
To Fran (110) I’m so sorry for your loss. I too said goodbye to my cat recently. I’d only had her for 7 1/2 months. The shelter thought she was about 12 but my cat whisperer said she felt closer to 20. I chose her specifically so that she could have a loving, safe, peaceful retirement, and she did – went from yowling in terror to purring in my lap and sleeping on me over those 7 1/2 months – and I am so thankful to have been part of her journey. I too encourage you to consider another cat when you’re ready. I have a heart for senior cats, and another old girl from the same shelter will be joining me on Saturday <3
May Onething's journey have been peaceful, and may she rest in glory.
Took a look at the guardian article. The first part was interesting, but then it got bogged down in binary ‘we’re headed straight for doomsday! but we can avert it if we try hard enough starting right now’ thinking the way they usually do. Good to see them admit the scope of the problem, though.
Following on Jerry’s #146 post about Lake Mead, I thought I would share my observations from a very dry Utah.
I took a back road trip to the family cabin in southern Utah last week and noticed that one of three reservoirs was totally dry and the other two were very low. However, since everyone has been encouraged not to water their lawns, and I have seen a lot of brown lawns in the Salt Lake area, we seem to be under our ten year average of water usage by 7%. I guess that is a good thing, but at the rate apartment complexes are being built, I don’t think it will matter much as these places will suck a good share of the available water just for domestic purposes instead of landscaping.
Also another sign of the times here is the number of people who park their car, truck or motor home along the side of the road or on waste land in stead of in an RV park. I counted 50 today and I didn’t include diesel tractors for freight distributions which are also parked with these RV’s. There are several tent camps around the city, but I am impressed with the unoffical motor home parks. Looks like the bad times are really moving up the economic ladder. Those who can still afford an RV but not an RV park use the roadsides. If you can’t afford an RV, you use a tent.
Thank you for your kind answer. I blame myself for not being clear enough in my question.
Following the intructions for the Sphere of Protection, it was already clear that beliefs didn’t matter. What startled me was the part where your teacher asked yourself for your Faith. Then I asked myself, what is my faith? I was no longer sure about it.
Being born in Spain means that you are Catholic since childhood. No questions here. Then you keep at it by custom or you drop it. Some become truly religious, some just fake it, only few openly dismiss religion. Very rarely someone seeks a different path (my parents seems to be amongst those few).
When I drop Catholicism, it was a simple thing to do: I was just rejecting the fairy tale my parents told me once I found it to be impossible, too many contradictions, just as I drop the fairy tooth and the three mages.
But I am faced with a perfectly rational explanation about gods which merits a meditation. After serious thinking effort, I accept that there’s a posibility that gods exist, at least as a mental model that explains things, but that it can’t actually be proved since we are dealing with conscient beings beyond our understanding who can get angry if reductionistic tests are performed on them, thus ruining the validity of the tests.
Then I asked myself if just accepting that there’s this posibility means that I was no longer atheist. I never considered myself one hard atheist who says “No way God exists!”, more like “there’s no reason to belief in any god”. And now it’s like “Ok, your explanation is better than most, but still I find it hard to believe”. I’ve been able to follow your posts on these issues just because believing in them was not required, using it as an useful metaphore was enough. No need to question my faith. But now I question it.
And here is my struggle: I don’t know any longer what Faith is. A very religious person might believe in something not just because it is rational, not just because they were told so, but because they can sense it. Even if it is a delusion, for them it would be as the real stuff. But I don’t have this sensorial organ, so to speak. I usually trust people unless proven false, but with religious stuff it is the opposite, I can’t trust anyone on the issue unless proven true, but religion can’t be proven.
Meditation on occult texts have expanded the way I see the world, but still no sense of gods. I suspect, if I ever talk to one entity of a higher degree of complexity I will just analyze the episode as something happening inside my brains, fruitful as it might be.
But then I ask myself, is this really what I believe, or is it what I want to believe?
My question, I guess, it’s how can I tell the difference between what I actually believe, and what I think I believe, so I don’t fool myself. I am sure this requires personal meditation, but I would love some hints to start it.
By the way, I’m making my mind on what to call for the SoP: Nature, who dictates what it is possible; Life, who brings balance to chaos, and Gaia, the supreme being on Earth. I’ll ask them for guidance, then show gratitude for accepting me as a part of them.
I don’t see Nature and Life as entities, but I can get along if it is just a metaphore.
To our esteemed mm and co-v: where mm = our bearded majik mage.. × co = the blogish company of the day.. over v = variety/spice-of-life as per the multi, intertwinning commentary ….
I’ve take some much need time out, to put up with something more rational. The fruitree gods were merciful this year, as our sour cherries produced a very large crop ..compelling moi to can both cherry chutneys and conserves. Both of which came out very tasty. All the ag/arboreal signs were in perfect alignment this year. Will spead the wealth to family and friends as is polecat’s way. Ton of berries picked and frozen, waiting to be put-up soon .. followed by our yearly pasta sauce larder .. and, when they’re ripe, tomatillo green chilli sauce. All, courtesy of the local climate, for select actions taken by the slave of the domicile(ME!), the laying chickens .. for their never-failing excretions, and the bees(both our’s and the locals too .. for their unrelenting endeavors in all things pollination!
All doing our part to put the virus at bay.
My niece 15, nephew 12, and former sister-in-law live in Vancouver BC, just a hop over the border from my daughters (17, 11), myself and former wife.
This coming November, my nephew is having his bar mitzvah in Vancouver, and of course daughters and ex are invited. Trouble is Canadian customs at the border demands proof of Covid-19 ‘vaccination’ to enter the country. It gets worse: My ex-sister-in-law won’t even let her kids visit my kids, or anybody else in the family unless they are C-vaxed too!
My older daughter had not been planning to get the shot, at least not soon, but now she wants too! This is dreadful news for me given how risky I consider this. She is well acquainted with my concerns, enough that she has shied away from it up till now. But she did ask me to send her info that supports my opinions, and I have done so. She is chewing on it now. All other members of my ex’s family got the Covid-19 mRNA inoculations, and are very pro-vax. Everyone in their social circles, the teachers, the school counselors, my daughter’s psychology counselor, every one of her friends and their families, have all received it and support it for every one. I am the only hold out in my family and social/professional circles except for many of my Freemason lodge brothers, and 2 other friends (met through this blog).
I asked my daughter to wait until after the flu season before deciding, as events could well reveal the inoculate to have been a bad idea, and it will just go away. She sees the logic of that, but is having a tough time, as she doesn’t want to miss her cousin’s bar mitzvah, and the family pressure on her will be intense. So between the info I sent her, and my strategy of asking her to wait “just a little longer”, I’m hoping she will decline until the danger passes. Wish me luck, pray for us, and I’m open to other advice on fortifying her resistance.
—Lunar Apprentice
To PumpkinScone (#159)
I have seen the news about the test here and there. It’s not an admission that the PCR test can’t distinguish between influenza and SARS-Cov2 (although the wording could easily be misunderstood that way). They are now recommending that instead of using the PCR test for SARS-Cov2 alone, it should be used as part of a multiplex test that tests for influenza (and presumably some other things) at the same time.
Many people have noticed how influenza infections have almost entirely disappeared from the world since COVID came on stage. Various complicated explanations have been offered, but the most obvious explanation is that testing for influenza has stopped. In the BC (Before COVID) era, if somebody showed up at a clinic with fever, aches, and a cough, he would have been suspected of having influenza and been tested to confirm that diagnosis. Nowadays, such people are tested for COVID (SARS-Cov2), and sometimes assumed to have it even if the test is negative. Nobody bothers to check for influenza, so naturally they don’t find it.
What we will see now is that some of the influenza cases that are being misdiagnosed as COVID will start to be moved back into the influenza column. Of course this should have been done from the beginning, but the effect at this timing will be to show a reduction in COVID cases just as the vaccines have been rolled out. It’s a rigged game.
Of course, we shouldn’t forget that the PCR test for SARS-Cov2 is a sham anyway. When it isn’t generating false positives it is detecting things that are not necessarily indicative of disease. An entirely illusory pandemic could easily be generated on the basis of this faulty test alone – no need for an actual disease. I’m not sure if that’s what happened this time or not. My current thinking is that there may be an actual new virus, but it probably would have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for the incessant testing and propaganda.
I read the William Shatner article for curiosity sake. Shatner himself seems fairly realistic about the future:
“It is going to be, not the end of mankind, but it’s going to be the decline of mankind.”
In truth, I don’t hear him say anything that hasn’t been said here. I think the author gives him a more apocalyptic tone than the actual quotes seem to indicate. Probably so the article will sell. The only place the word “survive” appears in the article is in the headline/title. Hard to tell how much is Shatner being apocalyptic and how much is the author/editor trying to sell clicks.
Dear JMG,
There have been many comments about people feeling like something big is going to happen this late summer/fall. I read a comment on-line of what might set-off said big event, if the fed gov’t tries to forcibly mandate the vax in rural parts of the country that have a low vx rate. A heavy handed Ruby Ridge or Wacco type event could set-off chain reactions in other parts of the country, and there maybe no turning back. Might seem like a far-fetched scenario, but the fed gov’t is definitely on a power trip and feeling invincible against the deplorables after 1/6. Thoughts ??
@Darkest Yorkshire hmm, that reminds me of a song… one of these things is just like the other… 😉
When I ran for local council, on the day of the election, when we were waiting for the polls to close and people were coming by for last minute well wishes, a man approached me to say he had decided to vote for me after all. He told me I was demonstrably politically naïve, as my “folksy mannerisms” were grating and made me sound dumb, but he believed I really did have the community’s best interest at heart. Besides, with my folksy-ness, he could be assured I wouldn’t bootstrap my way into higher offices*.
I couldn’t stop myself, and said “Aw, why not? It worked for George Bush”. I thought, especially in the second year of Trump’s term, I’d get a laugh-cringe, maybe even the trifecta of bad joke laugh-wince-groan, as he realized what he’d said. But while there may be dark corners of the continent where that joke would have worked, I really failed to read that particular room, and got a stony glare and a very awkward silence from onlookers. Ever watched a comedian die on stage?
If we will all recall- before Trump became the real anti-christ to the Left, and they decided that they missed Bush and he was actually kinda sweet and doddering after all – WaPo ran this laugh-a-minute: The Beer President to support Obama. I wonder what the difference was? 🤔
* this was a jab at another municipal candidate who was rumoured to be being groomed to jump for the province at that election a year later if she was successful. She did, and there was much furor in the papers about the cost to the city taxpayers for the byelection. Everyone with political knowledge knew what Laurel was going to do before she did it but that uneducated electorate still voted for her twice anyway, for some strange reason…
SiliconGuy @ #219: on my first post-college job (1974), I was a technician at a fruit dehydrator. Got a call from the home office: they needed the social security # for employee XYZ who did hand-work out on the line. Tracked him down, and he turned to one of his fellow line-workers: “Hey, what’s our Social Security number?” OUR number, I’m thinking, did he really say that? The co-worker shouted it out, I wrote it down. I asked the employee, gee, how many of you share that number? He shrugged: “Oh, fifteen or twenty.” I told him golly, it’s a long time away but when you’re old enough to collect SoSec benefits, they’ll only pay out to one person. He laughed; obviously didn’t care. Wow.
To Treefrog (#188)
You’re certainly welcome to judge the risks for yourself. I hope it works out well for you. We are all working with limited information, doing the best we can.
You should understand that the picture of the pandemic you are seeing is a product of propaganda. The official number of 600K deaths is without a doubt inflated, possibly wildly inflated. COVID deaths are counted in a completely unprecedented fashion (as never before for any other disease), and the definition is overly broad, designed to rope in as many deaths as possible. An early estimate from the CDC recognized that something like 96% of COVID deaths had other causes (comorbities) listed on the death certificate.
So the real number is unknown, somewhere between zero and 600K. Some credible estimates put the real number at around one third of the official count. In that case, it would make it 200K over two winters (two flu seasons). 100K per year is still considerably higher than a typical flu season, and nothing to sneeze at, but it’s a far cry from the apocalyptic plague that we’ve been hearing about. The risks of the vaccines need to be weighed against the actual risk of the disease.
Waffles, re advice on your new kittens –
Keep one thing in mind – cats, particularly kittens, continually prove that the earth is NOT flat. Why? Because if the earth was flat cats would have knocked everything off it long ago.
Nail everything down.
Also, don’t even try to engage in a war of nerves with your cats. You will lose. Every time.
Good luck.
wm
Talk about the senility of the Democratic Party. As you know JMG Oregon has a very extreme urban rural political divide with the Dems holding power. The current democratic governor is term limited. The leading candidate put forth by the party is the current speaker of the House who is an almost exact replica of Rachel Maddow including the haircut and rainbow flag. But the party bosses started thinking she might be a bit extreme to win so they have come up with another candidate. A Career ( drum roll please) New York Times Journalist ,Nicholas Kristof. He did grow up on a sheep farm in yamhill county ( I competed against in 4H when I was a kid) but has spent his entire life in NYC after graduating from Harvard. He did write a book about all the kids in his high school class becoming hopeless poor and addicted wretches. I mean why couldn’t they get cushy jobs writing propaganda for the empire.Who is better equipped to heal the economy and help out poor working class people than a life long NYT Scribe and his Goldman Sachs wife? I am sure the rural folks will run right out to vote for this guy.
To be blunt, every billionaire is already eyeing off New Zealand, much to the disgust of the locals who are already struggling with eye-watering house prices. It and Tasmania are both physically islands, lots of fresh water and good soil. There are downsides to being that physically isolated that I don’t think our overlords have quite grokked yet, though.
Is it fair to understand vaccination with the serum/attenuated virus as the “circumcision” debate of our secular age? It has odd resonance with the ancient ritual…
Just a short contribution, since ria above asked about different perspectives. We believe we had Covid in March 2020, though there were no tests available: high fever and very exhausting cough for several days, during which I fainted once, coughing for a couple of weeks, and physical weakness for even longer. At first we considered ourselves immune, but now it seems natural immunity doesn’t last much longer than for other respiratory viruses.
I see good reasons to be skeptical about the vaccines (and vaccines they are, however imperfect, not sera – a serum is derived from an animal’s blood). In fact, my birth family and colleagues heard a lot of skepticism about the vaccines from me. My boss never asked me about my vaccination status. However, when June came around, I felt the upper bound for any side effects of the vaccines was coming lower and lower. At the same time, my wife and I felt there was a very low, but still non-zero risk that the situation in Canada could one day come to resemble the one in Brazil, where each of us knows several previously healthy people below 40 who died from Covid. Weighing one against the other, we got the first Pfizer dose. I had no reaction at all, while her injected arm was sore for several days (proving, by the way, that this was no placebo!).
Just my judgement call. I would go to very far lengths to prevent my young daughter from being vaccinated against Covid (she did get all approved and recommended vaccines against other viruses).
Hullo JMG and the Commentariat!
I recall you, (JMG) stating in a recent Magic Monday, something to the affect of ‘For complex reasons, related to the karma of our species, the destiny of the west is Sand Dunes.”
Where can I find more reading related to this, these grand climactic changes and their inevitable results?
Any idea what the general time frame of this is? Decades? Centuries?
As the fires become ever more frequent, and the droughts longer, and now with this, I think I am being forced to confront the fact that I don’t think the kind of life I want to live will be possible in the very long term here in the west where I was raised.
I want to homestead, and garden, and raise animals. But as it gets drier and drier here, I think that will be more and more difficult. Perhaps I will chase the water east.
Especially because it’s likely that I’ll have children, I don’t want to leave them in a place where they or their children will almost certainly have to move to chase the basic things of life, like water.
Does anyone else have thoughts or feelings about this? It’s been weighing on me.
Thanks all,
-WindMan
Hi John Michael and Kassandra,
I tend to agree with you John Michael in this regard. Years ago you made the point that the elites in society aren’t a cohesive unit and will possibly persue self interest even when it is not in their long term interests to do so. This matches my experiences where I’ve had the occasional encounter with such folks. A cohesive response from such folks would be a scary and frightening thing to be on the wrong side of, and fortunately this is a remote and very unlikely possibility.
On the other hand, years ago I read the first edition of the book ‘The Limits to Growth’, and the book certainly toured the upper echelons of civilisation. They went right to the top. And I was rather bemused that from the accounts back in the day, the response to the book was something like (and please excuse me if my memory fails me here): “Yes, that may well be, but a response to such knowledge is perhaps a step too far”. And then they went back to doing whatever it was that they were doing beforehand. It doesn’t mean that the outcomes from the book went away, nor does it mean that the authors thought to themselves that they’d would do a better job if they had the chance to do so.
As to the health subject which dare not be named, the predicament is that allegedly both the disease and the vaccs have a chance of doing you in. It is not good, but I see the story as a tragedy, with all that that entails. And in any society where there is stagnant or declining resources and energy, someones gain is someone else’s loss, and inevitably someone is persuing a gain. It is not lost on me that as fracking output appears to have declined in your country, well the stuff produced might have been rubbish, but someone, somewhere was probably using it to do something.
At a wild guess I reckon based on what I’m observing, that the standard of living here has dropped by about a third down under from where it was two years ago. There is a part of me which suggests that down here we’ve taken the early hit to the standard of living and that is how things roll. Other countries are perhaps taking a different path, and that’s their choice to make. It is not lost on me that whilst we appear to have retained the ability to work, what we’ve lost is the ability to do the fun and enjoyable things in life.
All that’s a bit dark isn’t? But you know, I’m pretty upbeat about things, but maybe my expectations are lower than others in the first place – I mean I was just happy to be able to go to the local pub last night for a pint and feed, and that the business was open. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Wow. The Catholic PMC, aka, the bishops, are striking back at the laity.
Many Catholics suspect that the reason the Latin Mass has become restricted is because the progressive bishops are having a temper tantrum. As the faithful leave the modernist churches of the Novo Ordo and flock to the traditional mass, the bishops are locking the doors. The author writes that it is envy, pure and simple.
I take this as another desperate attempt at the elite to maintain control of their crumbling order.
https://www.crisismagazine.com/2021/traditionis-custodes-as-a-hermeneutic-of-envy
I also wonder if the predictions of Saint Malachi are actually true. Francis really does look like the anti-Pope.
I’ve had a very weird issue with the LRP (CGD version) the past couple days, and I’m wondering if you can help me figure out what’s happening and how to address it. I can do the RoR no issue, draw the pentagrams, but when I start calling on the elements I feel this weird pressure on my chest, and then have to force the words out. The visualizations have improved dramatically, but it’s been a struggle to get through from calling the elements until the end of the LBRP itself; and then I have no issues with the final RoR.
Do you know what could be causing this and how to address it?
Pumpkin Scone (and JMG) – Here’s a Reuters story addressing the Covid vs. Influenza PCR test. Hint: it’s not what the internet says it is. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19-pcr-test/fact-check-cdc-lab-update-on-covid-19-pcr-tests-misinterpreted-idUSL1N2P42U5.
Violet – I claim no psychic sensitivity, but I was born in 1959. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis (one of my earliest memories, obviously), and MLK, JFK, and RFK being assassinated. I remember atmospheric nuclear testing, and the reasons for it. I remember being a young teen, and being worried about getting drafted to fight in Vietnam. The Kent State Massacre. Orlando Letelier was assassinated by car bomb in Washington DC. That was a grim time, too.
… and the original Limits to Growth report came out. At summer camp, we debated “lifeboat ethics”: when should you let someone drown rather than risk overloading your own lifeboat and dooming everyone? (The two are not un-related.) (I concluded that I should avoid sea journeys. That is, look far enough into the future to avoid such hard questions.)
There was even talk of a new ice age, and colder winters (in Michigan) to make the point. Some of us Christians were anxiously reading “The Late Great Planet Earth”, and weighing the evidence for the imminent return of Christ to overturn the world order (hoping that we would be spared). KISS was popular music.
It was, indeed, a grim time. I’m not the person I was then, so it’s hard to make comparisons.
@Michelle, @Gerry V, @Weilong, @Abraham, @Florida Druid
Thanks very much for the recommendations! I tried a supposedly pro-biotic spray from a company called “Mother Dirt” that some others have strongly recommended, but left me with some odor issues (but I also might not have given it long enough or had other issues).
RandomActsOfKarma said: “I am interested in the Green Wizards forum. I have tried to sign up for an account in the past but never received the email I needed to complete the process. I just tried to sign up now.”
Sorry to hear you had problems. I just sent out emails to everyone who just signed up, with a first log in password. Check your email.
What user name did you sign up with? Tell me that and I can track it down if the email isn’t there. You can contact me at green wizard dtrammel at gmail dot com.
RE: healthy/natural men’s hygiene products
I’ve developed allergies/sensitivities to all deodorant products, which is of course troubling in itself. Best solution I’ve found so far came by way of Brazil, and that is Milk of Magnesia. I put it in a small spray bottle and apply it daily. You can use plain or mint flavored but no other kinds as you don’t want sugars. Be sure to read up on it if you have concerns other than mine.
@DFC #38 – I think one way to fight the mandatory vaxx mob is to begin labeling them in the same way they’re labeling the vaccine-hesitant. My own personal favorite is “Vaxx Nazis”.
I’m considering sponsoring a contest where readers can submit entries which are then published and voted on.
The most popular label gets a $100 prize.
Clever Name, I’ve never interacted with organized Kemeticism, but I’ve worked with Egyptian gods — you kind of have to do that in trad Golden Dawn magic — and gotten excellent results. So I wish you well in your quest!
Anonacea, thanks for this.
Oilman2, thanks for the data points! Definitely something to watch.
John, good heavens. I’m delighted to hear this.
Reloaded15, the one that I found most interesting was The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe by Valerie Flint. She argues — with plenty of documentation — that the thing that made so many people ready to convert to Christianity is that Christian monks and priests provided more effective magic than their Pagan rivals.
DFC, I saw that. Yeah, it’s jawdropping. I am increasingly concerned about the risk of antibody-dependent enhancement, which can be fatal.
Temporaryreality, the original version is much less political. Later on the authors increasingly got up on a soapbox, to the detriment of their study. As for ADD/ADHD, I don’t — which is probably shortsighted of me, because I have mild ADD.
CLR, thanks for this.
Kay, many thanks for the data points.
Abraham, if the word “faith” sends you into a tailspin, ditch it. It’s beside the point. Use whatever set of words and symbols you need to.
Karl, gods, I hope not.
Clay, seriously? A New York City carpetbagger? That should be, er, colorful to watch.
Celadon, you know, that makes enormous sense.
Windman, the word you want to look up is “Hypsithermal” — that’s the old term for the warm period that followed the end of the last ice age. E.C. Pielou’s After the Ice Age is a good book on the subject if you prefer print media.
Chris, unless you’re among the well-to-do, the standard of living here in the US has been falling for decades. I’m sorry to hear that the same thing is happening on your side of the planet — but I’m not at all surprised, of course.
Jon, thanks for this! I suspect a lot of people are thinking of Malachi these days.
Anonymous, it may be internal resistance or it may be external. Push through it — one way or another, it’s crucial that you keep doing the practice. If it’s like the modes of resistance I’ve faced from time to time, it’ll give way if you keep pushing at it.
Lathechuck, thanks for this.
@Wind Man:
Does anyone else have thoughts or feelings about this? It’s been weighing on me.
I live in the West too, in deep rural Colorado, where I grew up. It’s also where, as a child, I came to understand nature as a living and sacred thing, worthy of veneration. And it’s where I returned to, in order to replenish myself, when my despair grew too deep down in Phoenix.
I think it’s fair to say the land has a hold on me, and I do not know if I will be able to relocate to the east, or if I will be able to stand seeing this place turn into sand dunes.
I know that videos aren’t the preferred digital medium here, but on a whim I decided to check out what Iron Maiden was up to, and well, it’s rather on point – perhaps, even in their rather advanced age for popular musicians, the times are finally catching up to Eddie and the gang:
These lyrics are publicly available, so I’m free to post them, and the (excellent) associated music video can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBnW7bZHEE.
Lyrics here:
Across a painted desert lies a train of vagabonds
All that’s left of what we were, it’s what we have become
Once our empires glorious but now the empire’s gone
The dead gave us the time to live and now our time is done
Now we are victorious, we’ve become our slaves
A land of hope and glory, building graveyards for the brave
Have you seen the writing on the wall?
Have you seen that writing?
Can you see the riders on the storm?
Can you see them riding?
Can you see them riding?
Holding on to fury, is that all we ever know?
Ignorance our judge and jury all we’ve got to show
From Hollywood to Babylon, holy war to kingdom come
On a trail of dust and ashes, when the burning sky is done
A tide of change is coming and that is what you fear
The earthquake is a coming, but you don’t want to hear
You’re just too blind to see
Have you seen the writing on the wall?
Have you seen that writing?
Can you see the riders on the storm?
Can you see them riding?
Can you see them riding, riding next to you?
Have you seen the writing on the wall?
Have you seen that writing?
Can you see the riders on the storm?
Can you see them riding?
Have you seen the writing on the wall?
Have you seen that writing?
Can you see the riders on the storm?
Can you see them riding?
Can you see them riding, riding next to you?
Wind is changing indeed – although I would say that Iron Maiden has always been ahead of the curve, but then again, I’m a shameless fanboy.
Despite big dogs with wagging tails doing their best, cats continue to hold a commanding lead in the ancient sport of Knocking Things Off Shelves And Tables, especially in the elite Expensive Breakables Division.
I put forth a brief prayer for Onething, and will do a full ceremony when I get some time (extremely busy with work these days). A big thank you to Temporary Reality! Every person I’ve had the pleasure to meet through acquaintance at this blog has been someone I can look up to, and those I haven’t met yet I really would like to. It is great that we care enough about each other here to make the effort to find out what’s happened to people when they go quiet and offer prayers to help. Looking at Temporary Reality’s post again, I just realized that one of the two short prayers I happened to have memorized for these occasions and gave just now–the one from the Fuji Faith, in fact, had a reference to returning home to the “young palace of the Sun” (those terms were among many in the spells in the Fuji Faith intended to provoke the imagination–it’s a long story which I still hope to publish on) and being in the arms of the Divine. So it was even more appropriate than I thought.
She will be missed on this planet.
I agree with Mark L #2, Dark Horse podcast is helpful at understanding the data behind Covid and shots.
Temporary reality #14 thank you for that. Rest in Pease One Thing.
Great comments this week everyone. Be well! Thank you.
(@Karl)
I’m pretty sure the forced vaccination fears are about as real as the forced disarmament fears of the rural conservative areas – which is to say largely unjustified. The feds have nowhere near that amount of power, and they would face a constitutional crisis and rebellion from entire states if they so much as took steps in that direction. And no, knocking on your door and offering you a ride to a vaccination center does not constitute use of force.
I also feel that there is a storm immediately ahead, but I do not think it will have a single cause. There are simply too many trends in motion that cannot possibly continue for months let alone years at this point.
1. The covid vaccines are failing, in terms of adverse effects and rapid declines in efficacy. This may soon tip over into negative efficacy, i.e. antibody-dependent enhancement. This cannot be covered up forever, and will cause incredible mental strain on all whose Progress believers who view the injections as the prophesied coming of techno-Jesus in answer to the terrible plague.
2. Many businesses are just barely holding on after the lockdown disruptions. Perhaps millions of renters will face eviction and possible homelessness if and when the eviction moratoriums are ended.
3. We are clearly in the final stages of a speculative economic bubble.
4. Shortages are everywhere, and these are very different from the consumer shortages of 2020 that arose from distribution issues. These are supplier-level shortages, which will soon begin to cause serious disruptions in critical services. They are very close to reaching compounding levels, e.g. a shortage of fuel will disrupt transportation of fuel, which will cause further fuel shortages.
5. Cognitive dissonance between the approved narrative and reality on the ground is reaching near-term unsustainable levels. An attempt to cover up vaccine failure could well be the straw that breaks this – or if that doesn’t happen something else will break it soon. All it will take is for someone prominent enough to state the obvious – Elon Musk maybe – and suddenly everyone can stop pretending, and the narrative managers will lose control. That alone could precipitate a crisis.
6. Extreme drought in the western US – including much of the north-central agricultural heartland – and in central Asia is going to manifest as a marked reduction in grain yields, which will potentially lead to food shortages.
@Jeff Russel,
I’m in Japan, where it is hot and humid half the year. I relied heavily on deodorants for many years. The Japanese bathe once a day and that’s enough that they don’t develop armpit odor, but I’d get to midday and have to run to the restroom to deal with the embarrassing phenomenon. I’d been sold on the notion of deodorants as the only solution, but later learned there are others. These days I keep a vial with a bit of coconut oil with lavender. Just a couple drops of that suppresses the odor-causing bacteria for even longer than the commercial deodorant did. If I don’t have that with me, I just run to the restroom and wash off with soap and water, and that holds it at bay for several hours.
DFC, I think they might just be scared to speak up and lose their reputation, which is why I’ve tried to engage some people, surprisingly a lot of them have told me “thank god, I thought I was the only one!”.
Lathechuck, I heard a story related to the “Late Great Planet Earth” craze. This is at least third-hand, but apparently there was some Christian college where all the students and faculty were reading this book, and most of them believed it was true–that they were living in the Last Days predicted in the Book of Revelation, and soon believing Christians would be “raptured”–taken into heaven to be with Jesus, while the others were “left behind” (as they say) to endure the seven-year reign of the Antichrist and the Battle of Armageddon. Anyway, it seems that not everyone in the student body was entirely pleased at the prospect of being raptured. In particular a number of them felt it a shame that they might go to be with Jesus before losing their virginity. So a whole bunch of them contracted hasty marriages in order to experience the (licit) pleasures of the flesh before being whisked away to a place where “there is neither marriage, nor giving in marriage.” Ever since hearing this story, I have always wondered what school this was, and what happened to all these marriages when Jesus / the Antichrist failed to turn up as expected.
@Jean, to offer a little drop of anecdotal evidence, only two people among my friends and family have been diagnosed with COVID, both in the US, and both recovered fine if they got sick at all. Meanwhile, one healthy older relative developed a sudden heart condition, from which he died instantly a couple months back. Most of that part of the family had gotten the jab, but it would be impolitic of me to ask if he had. Two had such high fevers after the first or second jab they nearly went to emergency, but recovered.
Oddly, I know of one lawyer involved in anti-5G litigation who died of heart failure after the jab, and a second, also involved in anti-5G litigation, who was hospitalized in serious condition, and no word if she survived. The one person with electrohypersensitivity I know of, Dr. Andrew Goldsworthy in the UK, who got one of the mRNA jabs (everyone else is too suspicious due to long-term bad experiences with mainstream medical practitioners) and who had prior to that had a long bout of COVID, said the vaccine nearly killed him and was much worse than the disease, which was itself harsher than the symptoms he would get from radiofrequency radiation, though similar to them.
My own reaction when cell phone service first arrived where I was living in Tokyo at the time was an endless cold with severe brain fog, which cleared up when I took steps to shield myself from the radiation, coming back whenever I failed to. Another friend in Tokyo also experienced that, but it cleared up when she was given a two-week course of antibiotics, which leads me to think Lyme or Babesia may have played a role in it, too.
Karl (no. 277), I don’t think a Ruby Ridge type situation is farfetched at all. In fact, I think we’ll probably get one sooner or later. (Maybe somebody will attack vaccine centers.) As to whether this will provoke a more widespread revolution, well, it didn’t before. On the other hand, right-wingers of a certain stripe have never forgotten Ruby Ridge either.
Dear JMG, many thanks for your responses!
Dear Mr. Nobody, I’m sorry to hear of your sleep problems! For what it might be worth, I noticed the same timing.
Dear Augusto, for whatever it may be worth I strongly suspect that being outside the United States might be responsible in some part for the sense of better vibes. The rapid deterioration of the atmosphere on the week to week level here in the states has frankly astounded me.
Dear Lunar Apprentice, many thanks for your response, and especially your notes regarding your older relatives. It’s been a dark time for sure, and it seems to me that the United States now looks on the precipice of serious crisis which it may not survive.
Dear Rose, many thanks for your reflections and advice!
Dear Robert, first thank you for the kind words! Personally I very much appreciate our exchanges, and especially how generously you share your vast learning and experiences. Your reflections on your formative experiences are very helpful and organizing on my end — recently I’ve read _When Prophecy Fails_ and the intensity of the events makes far more sense in the sort of atmosphere you describe. As for your family line, that is fascinating. Something similar happened in my maternal line — they made it out as far west as the Dakotas and then moved back east and now both my mother’s and father’s lines look they might very well end in this generation.
Dear Eldritch Piglet, thank you for your response. That’s an interesting consideration regarding social media acting as an amplifier. That said, if the evil atmosphere were amplified would that ipso facto make it worse? I feel very fortunate to have many practices that nourish and comfort me and help me grow as a person even in these times.
Dear Bruno, many thanks for your perspective! I can relate — I’ve lived in pretty extreme squalor, with drug addicts, a lot of mentally ill people, and poverty. Those days seem so very sunny and wonderful to me compared to now!
Dear Varun, thank you for your response. I can relate to both the disturbed sleep and to the desire not to stick my head into the dark currents!
Dear Jim, thank you for your response — certainly I can agree that 9/11 has nothing on the current year. Thank you as well for the thoughts on maintaining sanity — certainly a sense of humor is worth far more than its weight in gold in these dark days.
Dear Lathechuck, thank you for you reflections! Certainly I sympathize with the difficulty in drawing comparisons with something as polyvalent and multifactorial as the psychic atmosphere.
JMG said, “if the word “faith” sends you into a tailspin, ditch it”.
Thanks. This is not what I expected, but maybe this is what I needed to hear. Thinking on it, I suppose that what I ‘truly believe’ doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t get in the way of what I want to accomplish, Living with this uncertainty should not be hard.
It was just startling to figure it out that what I thought rock ground is actually sand; it behaves differently when you start to dig it. I can walk over sand, too.
I couldn’t help but notice the discussion on vaccines. I don’t know for certain if they are good or not, but what I see from most comments is that there’s a lot of FEAR. Please, consider doing a banishing ritual to dispel fear so you can look at the issue with a clear mind.
Abraham (no 272), I’m not familiar with your exercise, but in case an outsider’s view can help… The idea that religion has to involve “believing” in certain things, especially tedentious things, is far from universal. Christianity has its creeds, of course, and Islam its shahada. More narrowly, Protestant revivalism encouraged an emotional approach to religion characterized by sudden decisions and conversions on one’s personal road to Damascus. But even within Christianity and Islam, there are more balanced, communitarian aspects of religion which acknowledge that the struggle is not just about you or me as individuals, and God does not really care about our theology
I personally don’t believe in woo things (God or gods, afterlife, soul / spirit, magic, etc.), and in fact see most of them as too vague to be true or false, but still consider myself to be Buddhist. Maybe a bad Buddhist, or a below average Buddhist, but I am serious about the tradition. According to what I was taught, “faith” (ded-pa in Tibetan) means confidence in the teachings. If one doesn’t have this, then that’s unfortunate, but the solution is to study and practice (“hearing, reflecting, and meditating” is the usual formula), and perhaps it will come. Not everything in a tradition is going to be true or helpful, but if you focus on what is most worth preserving–well then you’ve got it. To me, none of those things I listed (God or gods, etc.) really matter. What matters are our own choices and values. Some things you believe in, no matter what the truth about the universe may turn out to be. What are those? What are the most noble voices around you?
Reloaded15 (no. 261), have you seen Richard Fletcher’s “The Barbarian Conversion” (1999)?
A. Karhukainen (no. 250) You have to consider whether fuel will be available. If not, then living in a cold country is probably a bad idea. Taiwan has mild winters, but if the oil ships stop coming, I don’t know how food will get harvested or distributed to 24 million people. (Demographers expect it to decline to 16 million in a couple of decades just from low birthrates. On the other hand, an invasion could easily introduce millions of newcomers.)
Maybe the tech bros are onto something with their New Zealand bunkers! Aldous Huxley’s “Ape and Essence” did have New Zealand send explorers to check up on post-apocalyptic California, after its descent into devil worship.
Karl @ 277, and JMG: Oh bright gods.
Last night, my 17yo daughter and I went to see a movie in the cinema, our first since before Covid-19. She selected the movie, “Forever Purge”. Here is a synopsis and review:
This dystopian story begins on a Texas ranch owned by a benevolent, woke, white male rancher. He employs some Mexicans, and is a just employer, though his son, a young man, is resentful towards the Mexican workers, and portrayed as racist.
There is a backstory in which the US allows a “purge” once per year, from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am, in which all laws are suspended, and anyone may commit any crimes he might wish with impunity. But if you hunker down in your house, with steel doors and window-covers closed, you are in sanctuary from the overnight mayhem. During this period, a colossal nationwide organization of vigilantes comes out of the woodwork, and slaughters whoever they might find who is not sheltered. All those who get found and slaughtered are Mexican it turns out, and the vigilantes are all White-supremacists. Not only that, but the vigilantes are obviously working class Whites: Yes, Deplorables. Overnight the Deplorables slaughter whoever they find with impunity, and at 7:00am, they cease and desist, go home and resume normal law-abiding life for another year.
The plot derives from a departure from the back-story: The allotted 12 hours lapses, and everybody emerges from their sanctuary-shelter to resume life as if the “purge” never happened, apart from clean-up of course. But wait! The White working class vigilantes don’t stop their mayhem at 7:00 am as they’re supposed to, but continue slaughtering Mexicans non-stop, along with their woke friends, wantonly all over the US. So the plot centers on the affluent White rancher family and their Mexican workers, who try to escape the evil, marauding, blue collar White supremacists (who of course are armed to the teeth, and are poster boys to justify gun-control). Mexico declares a 6 hour window in which they open the border for US refugees to escape the mayhem, so much of the movie suspensefully chronicles the violent journey south to escape to Mexico. I won’t spoil the end for you… Need I add that the working class White-supremacists are depicted as supremely evil, Evil, EVIL, almost zombie-like! Even their women! Of course the rancher’s son looses his bigotry later in the movie…
As my daughter and I walked out of the cinema, I said to her, “You know, White working class people are not like that. That’s my side of the family you know, and I resent that depiction of us as zombie-like killers. All they’ve ever really done is vote for Trump.” My daughter replied “Dad, I know that. I just thought it was entertaining”.
The movie shook me more than I let on to my daughter. Clearly it was a hate-fest, targeting White, working class people, who were depicted as so evil and irredeemable, fit only to be shot. Great gods, why? What is the point of that? Then I read Karl’s comment- “A heavy handed Ruby Ridge or Waco type event … but the fed gov’t is definitely on a power trip and feeling invincible against the deplorables after 1/6…” Oh man… I can envision this movie prefiguring a reality in which working class Whites are the ones hunted with impunity. After all, isn’t that obviously what they deserve? Where might this kind of hate-fest lead? As per Violet’s query, dark times indeed…
—Lunar Apprentice
JMG, perhaps I’m just slow on the uptake, but I’m beginning to notice just how many occult movements trace their origins back to Bavaria/Austria/Czech Republic area… especially the city of Prague. Am I seeing patterns that aren’t there, or is there something afoot?
@Waffles #39
If your cats are indoors-only then you may need to protect pot plants from them. Cats like to dig in soil, even if they use their litter for its intended purpose. How to do that is another matter; I never found the supposed deterrents like stones on the surface had any effect.
Since we’ve allowed our cat to roam in the garden, he has left my pot plants alone.
Mark at #15 I used to live about an hour away from the largest Lithium mine in Western Australia and I would consider it as benign as any mining, less destructive than the bauxite and coal mines I also lived near. The mine has been operating a long time producing tin and tantalum before lithium. You can park by the local childcare center and walk less than fifty yards to the lookout where you can see straight down into the pit. If you want to google it, it is at Greenbushes.
I believe some other methods of Lithium production are less benign.
Sean Bolger – please ask anyone with any authority over you (workplace, for example) to give you, in writing, the legal and health and safety rationale for their request. What risk assessment have they carried out? What work related injury compensation has been worked out in the event of any adverse events suffered by their workers? What insurance provisions are in place to provide medical and living support to yourself and your dependents in the event of any adverse events? What authority are they citing that is greater than your right of informed consent (the corollary of which is your right of informed refusal), the law they are enforcing, the contractual arrangements they are invoking, etc, etc
If you ask for all of these in writing, the likeliest thing that will happen is that nothing will happen, and the pressure will ease, or at least you will gain a breathing space while they figure it all out, because bluff and bluster is the main content of the bullying you are facing.
In the far less likely event that you do receive something in writing you will then be in a position to get legal advice on how it squares with whatever legal rights you have in the workplace in your jurisdiction. Also you will have something answerable.
Which all of the bluff and bluster really isn’t because it is about constantly changing the goalposts and keeping the pressure as high as possible, unremittingly, until you comply. Closing the sale is the whole of the goal, and these folks think “all is fair in love and marketing”.
I see, JMG. 3rd shot vaccination= Business as usual. I thought so.
Blue sun:
Everything that Robert said.
One additional problem here in the Northeast that was discovered when people started insulating their homes is the issue of radon. Uninsulated, leaky houses don’t allow radon, a dangerous, cancer-causing gas, to concentrate indoors. Now that homes are better insulated, safety and health demand that owners test for and, if necessary, install mitigation systems, which we had to do in the home we owned years ago in Pennsylvania, a radon hot spot. Realtors will tell you that you must test for radon prior to selling your house and must disclose the test results to any potential buyers.
Hello JMG and fellow Ecosophians!
I add my sadness at the death of “Onething”. I too looked forward to reading her comments and will miss hearing her voice here. I pray for her well-being.
I wish to begin learning about tarot and am wondering if there are some basic, simple, or rote questions that a newbie might ask the cards. I am thinking along the lines of training wheels on a bicycle or an early reading primer such as “Dick and Jane”.
Thanks to our host and everyone here. Ecosophia is an oasis for me amidst the growing chaos of the wider world.
Cheers!
Courtney
Greetings all. I’ve just put up my eighth profile of an eccentric and or iconoclastic American, part of my work in promoting and exploring “Johnny Appleseed’s America.”
This biographical sketch comes from my home town of Cincinnati, and features Raymond Thundersky, known locally as the Construction Clown or Chief. He was someone I actually saw a lot around town as a kid and teenager. He died in 2004 when I was in my early twenties.
Raymond was part Mohawk part Hungarian. He dressed in a clown suit and wore a hardhat and carried around a construction workers lunchbox. He would be seen all around town at construction and demolition sites, hence his nickname. When I was a kid I was scared of him when I saw him on the bus or at bus stops with me. Later I learned that what he was carrying around in the lunch box were his art supplies. He’d go to to construction or demo sites to draw pictures of what he saw, and added whimsical phrases to the pictures such as “future site of 4th of July Highway” or “future home of clown suit factory”. He left behind around 2000 drawings and was Cincinnati’s very own consummate outsider artist. Though never diagnosed it was very probable he was autistic. Get some more details about his life and background from the link below.
http://www.sothismedias.com/home/raymond-thundersky-the-cincinnati-construction-clown
Thanks to all who read, and thanks to JMG for writing about Johnny Appleseed’s America, and for hosting this space.
John,
It’s looking like we are heading toward another Covid lockdown. I have been wondering about something for a while. The resolution to the 1970’s oil crisis was the opening up of North Sea and North Slope oilfields which last for roughly a quarter of a century. The resolution to the ~2008 oil price spike was shale oil fracking which lasted a decade. Could the resolution, such as it is, to the current building oil price spike be not another new hydrocarbon goo that is brought on line , but lockdowns instead? Could we have run out of new hydrocarbon goo’s that could even semi-plausibly be assigned the role of the savior of mankind, so we have to turn to other means? The timing of only a few years for this new solution to work seems about right.
Hi John Michael,
Sorry to hear about the passing of Onething. We’d had plenty of the occasional lovely chats over the years.
It’s been a long journey hasn’t it? If it means anything, I still miss old Bill Pulliam who used to give me so much stick. We just never quite got along, but I always respected his views, insights and opinion. I’m sure he wasn’t trolling me, maybe… 🙂 Ah the journey is long, boon companions enjoyed, and the loss will always be with us whom remain among the life, and life flows and bounces along and goes in its odd ways. That’s the tragedy of life, but it’s also fun too. And I’m still not sure that old Bill wasn’t trolling me, the cheeky scamp! 😉
Cheers and thanks again for providing this forum and boon companionship.
Chris
A recent find – the 2007 article by Wendell Berry subtitled “The Joy of Sales Resistance”. https://web.archive.org/web/20120519115338/http://home2.btconnect.com/tipiglen/resist.html
My reading of the current drug pushing, drug cheerleading, and drug bluff and bluster that is going on, is that it is the biggest, most successful marketing campaign ever, and that there is no incentive for it to stop until people decide for themselves that they are vaccinated enough. For the salesmen, by definition, no one CAN ever be vaccinated ENOUGH, so long as there is one more sale to close.
Wendell was extraordinarily prescient in this piece.
I was just checking out The Babylon Bee, and clicked over to their store to see what was available. Oh my; tee shirts announcing “I Identify as Vaccinated”.
https://shop.babylonbee.com/collections/most-popular/products/i-identify-as-vaccinated-t-shirt
They also have caps available. I’m really tempted to pick one up.
Joy Marie
Here’s a straw in the wind:
https://news.yahoo.com/navy-charges-sailor-setting-fire-211723801.html?ncid=twitter_yahoonewst_sjwumo1bpf4&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD49X_YIp4iB-CSIhzsBmbfAD-fiGahyh9TfEznY0NjCVx_4NtZdDUDEV_X3IsEwzV2ryMiIrzt0EpivipAhudn35NqKQzw3_P034TVZY5cqeSkvLm-Jr43NuRz3avoZJ1MRTwwEPRMRDxqN-0Za9v3xi18CvCJQK2TAPWN0q9-y
Note how quiet the media has been about this, and the vagueness of the details given.
@marlena13 @JMG
I think one of the reasons those restrictions started to exist was because Man space involves hogging all the most dangerous and stressful occupations out there. Turning it into sacred space that are Men only.
Similarly to how the Old Testament Temple involved a Male only Priesthood who must carry out the rituals properly or be killed by God.
The Christian religion involves a Man suffering on the cross for the sins of Mankind with all the horrors of supernatural wrath. Immense suffering and sacrifice involved.
Hence also there were terms like “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” Since Politics does involve a greater possibility of being assassinated or killed in battle historically.
And the sexual restrictions is to guarantee that the Man’s investment into his family with all the blood sweat and tears is worth it. By minimizing the chances of cuckoldry.
Of course it went out of hand and resulted in a counter-reaction.
In regards to the women’s movement I believe there was a bit of a bait and switch going on with the women’s liberation movement.
Promise liberation but turn women into slaves of corporations and being taxed just like the Male cattle. Maximise those spreadsheets whilst suffering from high blood pressure from all that stress so that the CEOs can rake in record profits and park children off at “childcare” to be taken care of by a 3rd party which is basically a euphemism for daycare.
I mean in comparison to being a corporate slave being a stay at home wife is heaven.
@Clever Name:
Good luck indeed!
As far as organized groups go, though, I’m afraid Kemetic Orthodoxy is the only one I really know of, and I’m not and have never been a member (though I did find it interesting when I discovered their practice of discovering two Kemetic deities each as personal patrons, basically, as by the time I found that I’d already had that happen to me independently). My own peculiar fork is peculiar enough that I could probably be counted as its only member, and in large part it’s based just on a personal relationship between myself and my goddesses (which I also recall finding an interesting connection to JMG’s tamanous model of North American spirituality with a while ago).
Perhaps it would be a useful start to look through some pictures of statues of Kemetic deities and see if any particularly call to you, then research more any that do? That’s not at all how I found/was found by mine, but I was trying to think of _some_ idea to help, and I doubt that would _hurt_.
(Actual artifacts would be better than pictures, but are of course a bit more difficult to access.)
If you really want a spiritual community, that, as I said above, I’m afraid I don’t know how to help with; while I have certainly wondered what it would have been like to live back in the Black Land when this permeated the local social world, here and now I seem to be doing alright enough keeping my introverted head down for the most part. I _can_ say, though, that if you don’t need a community for a community, and are just looking for one to learn from, it does seem that beings answering to those Names are out there and willing to interact privately. While I can’t speak for your particular situation, I would guess that there’s someone good out there you could find or be found by if you looked.
(Just do, of course, not conduct such a search _entirely_ without caution. Be willing to listen, but make sure the one speaking to you is who they claim before going too far with anything.)
(I do hope I’m giving good advice here; this isn’t something I’ve done before, and my own experiences aren’t directly applicable here.)
Dear John Michael Greer,
Thank you for hosting this blog.
For me the realization that something was “off” in the virus narrative came early in the winter of 2020, and it significantly deepened when, by happenstance, I came across a copy of Kris Newby’s BITTEN: THE SECRET HISTORY OF LYME DISEASE AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, which covers gain-of-function research and the possibility that Lyme may in fact be something that escaped from a laboratory. I would not have entertained delving into such book if not for the fact that the author has some excellent credentials as a science writer at Stanford. I found BITTEN to be a well-researched and well-written book. I warmly recommend it to anyone interested in Lyme disease.
Lo and behold, we have what looks like a similar story with the covid. The gain-of-function research on covid is now, after heated denials and confected narratives about bats and pangolins in a Chinese wet market, public knowledge. Meanwhile, we are seeing many medical doctors, expert scientists, and an ex-VP of Pfizer, all censored on YT and FB. Not to mention the swirly knots of conflict of interest around Dr “the science” F.
For anyone who is open to further education I would suggest having a look at BITTEN, which, though it is not about covid, just might open your mind to some very unusual possibilities. Then, for up-to-date covid and jab info, I can recommend Dr. Peter McCullough’s podcast. Dr McCullough is a professor of Medicine at Baylor U Medical Center, yet he has been censored on YT and FB for speaking out about his concerns.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mccullough-report/id1562849542
A few more thoughts on the world:
Everything old is new again
https://news.yahoo.com/first-afghans-served-alongside-american-090011756.html
I was only a few years old in ’75, but this story struck me as yet another way in which Afghanistan parallels Vietnam.
Everything old is new again, redux
The utility where I work has been holding open houses these last couple of years (not in 2020, obviously), and this year we’ve expanded the event to include electric vehicles, an EV charger demo, and invited local retailers with electrical versions of traditionally gas-powered equipment (lawnmowers, snow blowers, etc.) to set-up demos of their products. (“Electrification of everything” is very much an industry strategy these days, and if that means sticking a shiv into the oil & gas guys to keep our piece of the pie non-shrinking, then that’s apparently the path that’s being taken.) It was before my time, but back in the day, electric utilities actually sold electric appliances (e.g. stoves). Looking back in this utility’s archives, I’ve seen photos of “Hot Point” brand appliances that were promoted and sold. Funny how things circle back around.
DC Elites
Some weeks ago, I “attended” a webinar sponsored by our trade organization on the social cost of carbon. There were several discussion panels, the first of which was populated by folks from the EIA (Energy Information Administration). When the lead panelist was giving her presentation, which focused on the regulatory development of the calculations leading to the preliminary updates to the federal estimates. I was struck by the embubbled nature of her experience–it was all “EO this” and “CFR that”–not at all unexpected, I guess, given the subject. But I got a definite impression of how immersed she was in the world of DC and federal bureaucracy. I’m finding the experience difficult to describe well here: it was almost as though I were listening to someone from a foreign nation, who spoke perfectly understandable English, give a presentation–I could understand the words, but sensed a cultural gap that was very much there.
@ Joy Marie (#325)
Re those t-shirts
I *did* get vaccinated and I’m still tempted to order one!
Dear Violet,
I do have difficulties with conveying an experience in words. The reason I referenced cult propaganda and social media acting as an amplifier is that both don’t necessarily effect reality as much as people using either might like to believe. So yes, the tone is worse, the smoke and fireworks are impressive, but the reality on the ground isn’t (yet) deteriorating at the rate it would suggest, at least where I live (lucky me, I guess!).
That said, I have noticed a darkening, a sort of ‘pressure’ over the last few years, starting perhaps with 9/11 and surging in Obama’s second term all the way through to the present. But I also suffer from depression and have real trouble discerning how much of that is owed to my past, the present circumstances of my life or the state of the world in general, so I don’t feel confident enough to say outright that yes, things have gone downhill in general. In my case, it might just be my depression speaking.
Thanks, Temporaryreality, for the news of Onething’s demise. I had wondered what had happened to her of late, as she was such a regular contributor. Her presence shall be missed on this forum. May she enjoy her respite from the mortal coil.
Jean (#190) and all: my next-door neighbour died of Covid this spring. He was in his early 50s and appeared to be healthy prior to the infection (not sure if he was diabetic or had other health problems; he certainly was not obese). His was a sad case of losing his job as a driver for an industry (due to lock-down) and, unable to find any other job in a locked-down economy, became an uber driver. That’s how he likely got exposed… and then died. This is in Canada. If any of my relatives in India were reading this posting, each one could identify numerous deaths first-hand. I have a strong suspicion, however, that the death rate during India’s huge March-May wave was exacerbated by urbanites’ exposure to truly horrific levels of air pollution over the past 30+ years (on top of that cigarette smoking is still very common and severe asthma is also extremely common), so with badly damaged lungs to begin with, if the lungs get infected, it is pretty much ‘game over’.
@Copper #83 – I think you are right that the kind of debate about whether you should or shouldn’t get a vaccine (both sides of which amount to denial of personal agency, autonomy and choice, neither side of which is defensible) is the one we are all hearing the most about.
I tend to assume this is deliberate, in order to distract people from other aspects of what is going on. There is a common playbook whereby max airtime is given to people getting hot and bothered about some small side issue AND TURNING ON EACH OTHER loudly and cuttingly in public, while other significant aspects of an issue are obscured.
In this case, aspects of the issue that get lost in all the “should/shouldn’t” noise, include all the ways in which the interests of BOTH those who have opted to accept a vaccination or not accept one, are being subordinated to mis-allocation of public resources to private interest, creeping authoritarianism in governance, financialised theft, corporate over-reach, regulator [under]sight. These are all threats to agency and autonomy, too, but since that is the whole point of the exercise for those who own the media outlets and the fact-checking industry, these do not get nearly enough attention.
The powers that be are admittedly most afraid of the prospect of us ceasing to attack one another and joining forces to turn on them, so they will continue to stir up the mutual attacking among ordinary people as long as possible.
@ Onething – may your spirit be filled with light and may your passage into your next “becoming” be blessed. I enjoyed all our exchanges and will miss you.
Beekeeper in Vermont #264,
“If you live in a place that welcomes pets inside stores (we do), put the carrier into the shopping cart and wheel the cat around while you shop.”
Please remember that about 15% of the population is allergic to cats, some severely. (I’m part of that 15%; in fact, I’m allergic to both dogs and cats.)
Thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts and observations about Covid and the vaccines, and thanks to JMG for patiently allowing the discussion to take place. I’m mulling it all over.
@Jean: Thanks to you for asking the question about what people have observed with effects from Covid versus the vaccines, the answers people have posted have been useful. I don’t know anyone who has had severe side effects from the vaccines and I don’t know anyone who has been hit particularly hard by Covid, either.
@Denis: thankfully so far I haven’t had to deal with anyone heavily pro-vaccine.
@Mark L: Thanks for those notes, for confirming my analysis, and for pointing out something I didn’t think of: the possible need for repeated booster shots due to declining efficacy and ADE.
@Lunar Apprentice at #255: thanks for the further considerations about the effects of Covid itself, much appreciated! Best of luck with convincing your daughter to hold on a bit longer!
@Matthias Gralle: Thanks for your perspective as well!
@JMG: Two data points for you:
1. In Canada’s mainstream newspaper The Globe and Mail, I noticed this opinion piece titled Millennial families can’t expect to live the way their parents did (behind paywall). The piece outlines the rising cost of living of that generation compared to previous generations. It doesn’t touch on the deeper reasons why. It’s interesting seeing a point made often on this blog showing up in the mainstream media.
It concludes: “Millennial couples and their children won’t be living the boomer life, but that doesn’t mean we should feel ashamed or guilty because of it. We need to adjust to a new reality and remove the archaic expectations from previous generations about home ownership, investing and saving. The reality is millennial families just can’t do it all, and it’s time we admit that’s okay.”
2. The mainstream media has noticed another theme discussed on this blog previously: the problems with mindfulness. This opinion piece, intended it seems to be a mildly humorous column, is entitled ‘My critical inner voice is driving me to distraction. Can I get it to shut up?’.
“The key to getting rid of the voice is to be in the moment more. To think less. This seems to be the opposite of everything I have been taught.”
The author seems to criticize the idea of thinking less, then goes ahead and tries it. I’ve read past criticism of mindfulness meditation here on the blog, but I never thought of it in Jungian terms before: if you are stopping your critical inner voice, you’re also shutting off a channel between the personality and the higher self or individuality. That critical inner voice is actually quite useful! Maybe I’m tone deaf to the humour in the piece and I’m missing some irony, though.
@ darkest yorkshire
silly i know, but i would wish:
1. that i could visit the antediluvian past, just once
2. that i could visit the distant future, just once
3. that after the 2 visits, i had the good sense to write something about what i saw that might give people courage and hope
Hi JMG,
In the midst of all the Covid insanity, one of the things most haunting and disturbing me these days is the imminent rollout of inflicting these experimental vaccines on children under 12. To me this seems criminal, but soon millions of kids will be getting the jab. I’m eager to know your thoughts on the matter.
I like the term serum for the jab’s mojo…potion wouldn’t be too bad either. It certainly ain’t no vaccine.
Thanks, as always, for hosting this open post and to all the thoughtful contributors.
Jim
Something that occurred to me: fascism is the Shadow form of Utopianism. It takes the authoritarianism and totalitarianism at the heart of every political ideology aimed at Making the World a Better Place(tm) — the belief, shared by socialism, libertarianism, and most forms of liberalism and conservatism, that they have the One True Way that will usher in an age of peace and prosperity if only everyone will get on board (and by George, they better!) — and instead of denying it, it revels in it.
Hence why every ideological camp of every stripe for the past century has cast their enemies as brownshirted boogeymen.
To Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat 72
I have had ME for 42 years. Here’s a few things I do to help myself. Get some thresh air each day, a little walking helps, and a bit of sun is good too. Avoid noisy and crowded enviroments, they are very stressful to the nervous system = tiring. This makes socializing hazardous, so keep to small not too noisy groups and time limit them, some of my worst ME benders were after good nights out! Eat small meals, it takes less energy and time to digest them. Stick to a regular sleeping pattern and get a matress that is really comfortable for yourself. I learned how many hours a day I can be active at a particular task and stick to those limits, manyana if the job is not finished. NEVER rush to get things done, slow and steady and you will get a lot more done without ending up in a bender. Get a good wide spectrum of food allergy tests and avoid the suspect foods especially those that effect your gut, and avoid junk food and alcohol generally even if not allergy suspect. Avoid TV, driving and extended computer use, they require high levels of concentration which is tiring. Rest with your feet and shoulders up, I use a short sofa that I can ly on with both my legs and shoulders elevated, it helps drain your lymph system. Two or three hours of resting peacefully this way after having wasted myself after over doing something and I am OK again, it particularly helps with the ME muscle pain.
The tiredness is always there, lurking, respect it, check yourself regularly, how tired am I? Take a break. Please look after yourself Lady Cutekitten.
There is another item you could have checked, if your physcian will go along with it, that is to have tests for blood clotting disorders. Mine is Factor V Lieden, which I found out the hard way. What has that to do with CFS/ME? Serotonin is released from blood platelets when they clot. Serotonin is a vasocontrictor amongst other things, which means it triggers the narrowing of blood vessels, handy when you have a cut, but not so handy when it is doing it to all your body all the time. It restricts the flow of oxygen, energy, nutrients, and the flushing out of waste from your tissues. Both times I had pulmonary embolisms caused by the Factor V, the ME got a lot worse. Serotonin is not just a vasoconstrictor it is also a neuro-transmitter and a few cases of ME have been associated with diseased ganglia which may have been pumping out too much serotonin. Serotonin is also in the gut, 90% of the bodies total, and is involved in vomiting, reflux, and to be polite gastrointestinal motility. So keeping your gut calm and serotonin quite is a good idea. Lastly, I had a new physcian a few years ago who thought it a good idea to have me try Prozac, the serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. Well I had a hangover for six weeks (alcolhol is also a vasoconstrictor) and it did nothing for the ME. Serotonin has many other roles in the body, so is not to be messed with lightly, but living cautiously is not harmful. There is a little research in to serotonin and ME, but nothing definitive to date.
PS The term bender I use, I have borrowed from aqua diving which refers to air bubbles that form in blood vessels during to rapid decompression, ‘the Bends’, which is extremely painful. Many a time I have been curled up in my youth in great pain and feeling very ill after trying to be young.
Best regards to all Philip
More news from my medical practice: As many of you might know, I’m a physician in solo practice. My business partner is the psychologist in my clinic, and his wife is the office manager. I pay them a cut from my take, and they rent the clinic space we share. My practice has long been on the ropes since the Covid shutdown. Last year, revenues were so down that we could no longer pay rent, or renew our rental contract. I announced last Autumn I was ending my practice as of 12-31-2020. Right after my announcement, the landlord agreed to let us stay on gratis for a year, so I rescinded it, and stayed, and we’ve been limping along on 60% revenues since.
My business partner and his wife are well and truly of the Woke persuasion, and regard Covid-19 as if it were the Bubonic Plague. They got C-19 vax’ed last January, but are still scared, and have never been comfortable with my un-vaxed status. I told them a number of times since April 2020 that I had Covid in March, but that has not reassured them.
Last night, my business partner pulled the trigger, and wrote me a note demanding that I get the inoculate or submit to periodic testing (“in compliance with the Federal guidelines”), then he concluded the note by terminating our business relationship. So my medical practice is wrapping up, formally by Sept 30, but I’m already down to seeing patients only one day a week, so I’m sure I’ll be cleared out before then.
I’ve got other irons in the fire. To be honest, I feel relieved by this development. But in light of the recent intensification of the government and media campaign to get everybody injected, I find this experience quite harrowing; the covid 19 scare campaign has specifically and finally put me out of business.
—Lunar Apprentice
Dear John Michael Greer,
I meant to add to my comment above, I most especially thank you for so frankly sharing your views on the covid & jab situation, which I have found very useful, and for hosting such an unusually civilized comments section.
Justin, thanks for this! That’ll do very nicely as a sound track for our time.
Your Kittenship, I think the Cat team has the gold medal in that.
Abraham, exactly; beliefs are tools, not truths. As for banishing fear, I do that daily.
Apprentice, now surprise me.
Imp, there’s something afoot. That part of central Europe has been a hotbed of occultism since the early Middle Ages. I’ve never been there, so don’t have any sense of the energetics of the land, but I’d bet they’re very, very interesting.
Chuaquin, yep. Until it isn’t.
Court, I like to ask “what do I need to understand about what I experience this day?”
Justin, thanks for this.
John, well, we’ll see. It’s not completely implausible, though…
Chris, I’ve been thinking about Bill, and Shane and John Roth as well. Fifteen years of blogging, and the list of voices who’ve fallen silent is lengthening.
Scotlyn, that seems like a valid analysis to me.
Joy Marie, okay, that one very nearly had tea on my keyboard. Funny!
Logan, yeah, that’s worth watching. I wonder if we’ll ever hear the details.
Info, there’s a lot to be learned by watching the way that feminism got coopted, and transformed from “women should be free to do what they want” to “women should only be free to do what corporate culture tells them to.” I’ve seen women who chose to become stay-at-home moms receive the most vicious abuse imaginable from other women — and it was all too clearly a matter of pressuring them into doing what would benefit their corporate masters.
Diplodocus, interesting. Thanks for this.
David BTL, I remember ’75 fairly well — I was twelve — and yeah, it’s familiar stuff. As I recall, the US embassy in Kabul has a flat roof…
Jbucks, hmm! Many thanks for both of these.
Jim, I think it’s frankly insane to inject millions of children with an inadequately tested experimental drug of any kind, and especially so when children basically aren’t at risk from covid. I just hope the side effects don’t turn out to be ghastly.
Slithy, excellent! Yes, exactly.
Apprentice, ouch. I’m glad you were ready to make the leap.
Diplodocus, you’re most welcome.
I’d love to hear thoughts on the crypto craze. (Not sure how much it’s been covered here before.) Obviously the environmental impact is high and the whole thing appears to be symptomatic of a broader breakdown in institutional trust. To the extent that computers and the internet will be available and functioning, is crytocurrency a worthwhile endeavor during a period of decline and collapse of formerly trusted institutions and socioeconomic structures?
Look! More hate coming from the elites towards those who don’t submit:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/piers-morgan-calls-unvaccinated-be-denied-medical-treatment
What with the all the coercive mandates, we appear to be moving from the realm of media campaign into the realm of overt oppression. Piers Morgan’s call is a far cry from “Two weeks to flatten the curve”, remember that? How far will this go?
–Lunar Apprentice
Slithy Toves # 340 Reminds me of the old cartoon, a scruffy revolutionary on the street corner preaching to a few people “Comes the Revolution, we will ALL have strawberries and cream, every day!” One of the on lookers says “ But I don’t like strawberries and cream.” The revolutionary replies “ Comes the Revolution you WILL like strawberries and cream”
@David By the Lake: Cue up Billy Joel’s Goodnight, Saigon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjzjhl-QztE
Also, from that old, old lament, “Where have all the flowers gone,” another staple of the period,
“When will [we] ever learn? When will [we] ever learn!”
Pat,who was 36 in ’75.
If I found a genie my strategy would be to become as independent of the genie as possible. Sort of like ‘teaching a man to fish’ or the third world develpment strategy of import substitution. This is why in Aladdin I thought Jafar’s wish to be the greatest sorcerer in the world was a very good decision. But if you word it right you can get even more out of one wish.
My first wish would be to be optimal – to be everything I could be. But without becoming a different category of being like a deity, which could drop me into something I wasn’t ready for. If I was an RPG character I’d have just maxed-out every stat, and gone beyond that to develop a whole bunch of superpowers.
One lesson from mythology is if the gods offer you wisdom, power, or sex – take the wisdom. Then you know how to get the other two for yourself. This wish gets me wisdom to know what would be the best further wishes, along with everything else I just got. But just as significant, I’m now brilliant at everything and don’t need the genie for much. Most things you’d think to wish for – I’d know several ways to do each. Every possible concept of personal success will be easy.
I can now reform the world – socially, politically, financially, with science and technology, or magic. I can write the greatest novels, produce the greatest artworks ever made. I may not be able to turn other people into exactly what I’ve become, but I can write a very fine correspondence course. 🙂 I can see the structure of the world and know exactly where to apply effort to change things how I want. And I’ll know how to do it in a way that everyone will love me…or never know I even existed.
However there’s going to be a limit to what I can do, and convince others to do. Maybe I can fix renewable energy but realise there’s no way to fix all the damage we’ve done to the environment. This is how to use the genie at maximum efficiency. Do everything humanity can possibly do, and the genie can fill in the rest – anything that needs truly cosmic powers.
There are a couple of ultimate endgame wishes. One is wishing for everyone to be optimised. Another is to get over the hump to some kind of utopia if that had proved intractable. There are also certain safety and security precautions to take in the event particular things go wrong, but I’m not going to talk about that in case I have to do it for real some day. 🙂
Of course this plan has been made by me as I am now. The moment I make that first wish – perspective shifts and everything would change.
jbucks, on the usefulness of the inner critical voice:
Yes, it can be quite useful. Thanks for the link!
The author’s problem seems to be the false dichotomy of either training the voice to be nice to you, or getting rid of it entirely. The author explores both options finds them unsatisfactory.
The author then discovers, after consulting his wife (in Jungian terms, his symbolic anima): “…that she also has a voice in her head, and really likes it: it’s her constant companion. Ever since she said that, it feels quite lonely up there.”
The reconciling third option would then be to give his critical voice expression, but only within the “magic circle” of what Jung called active imagination, or a suitable equivalent.
It’s analogous to gently training an animal, such as a horse, to pull a wagon (or chariot), but not to run away with it. As a participant in the ongoing Ecosophia Lévi book club, I’ve been meditating on tarot symbolism. This rings a few bells for me.
patriciaormsby: many thanks for mentioning “the spells in the Fuji Faith intended to provoke the imagination.” This stirred a little wind chime in my mind related to the usefulness of my tarot meditations, and other practices.
JMG and all,
Ever since I was a kid I’ve been struggling with something related to binary oppositional thinking. I’ve always liked to see me self as someone who doesn’t take any sides or if I wanted to be poetic that I stand by the side of truth, whether truth favored my cause or not. You can imagine, as a kid, that this took the form of calling for foul play on a soccer match on the side of my team for example, which didn’t exactly made me the popular kid on school and certainly to be picked last even though I was not terrible, actually even good.
Now things are seriously more complicated as in times of crisis people fall back to the football match mentality en masse, me against them –if you are not with me, you are against me. Do you have any advice on how to be wise in situations like this? Or perhaps there are some situations were truth and careful pondering can’t and shouldn’t be spoken out loud and maintain secrecy? I take my principles seriously, not only out of poetic sentiment but because standing for what I believe truthful transforms me and giving it up also does, but perhaps there are times were there needs to be a compromise? How can I compromise something which I hold dear in the face of adversity? I certainly do not wish to be a mártir in any sense, but I also wish to preserve the principles that I stand for and not giving in makes my stance much stronger.
I somehow feel like Owen when Nyarlathotep tells him that he must take a side.
JMG # 344. Your reply to Info about “the way that feminism got coopted and transformed from “women should be free to do what they want” to “women should only be free to do what corporate culture tells them to.” is exactly what I remember happening, where “Women’s Liberation” with myriads of local female owned and operated small businesses sprang up, to feminism, to corporate sell out, along the way losing most of those businesses. It was all about economics, and the corporations were losing too much money and power. They had to “do something” We see the results of that today.
One thing that I noticed, back in the day when I was still teaching classes, showed up rather suddenly right around 1996 or 1997. Before then, undergraduates at my very upper-crust Ivy-league university seemed generally to be happy-go-lucky young people, unworried about their future prospects. Almost as if someone had suddenly flicked a toggle-switch, that came to an abrupt stop in that year. Afterwards almost every undergraduate I taught seemed to be running scared about their future, and this fear of theirs became somewhat more palpable every year. (I retired in 2005, so I only had about 8 years of observations under my belt. I can’t say whether the fear continued to increase since then.)
The first and youngest undergraduates who first exhibited this fear for their future would have been born aound 1978. So something big was shiftng during the first half of the 1980s. I don’t know what that was. Anyone have any ideas?
(Curiously enough, the events of 9/11/2001 did not produce any sort of abrupt change in the level of fear that I observed.)
Info @ 327 Spot on!!
Jim W, re Pluto Return,
I’m with you. The upcoming national Pluto Return might induce a much needed psychological rebirth. I have been thinking about this a lot lately.
Pluto is the planet of collective instinctual drives, as well as psychological transformation — psychology having the potential to be a spiritual science, but which has unfortunately been derailed by Advertising in the service of Dead Universe philistinism.
Psychology in the guise of Advertising asks: What do you need to believe (with regards to Life and Death), and how can I sell it to you? Answer: “Coke is Life” and “Please Mister Scientist, make me safe…”
Psychology as Spiritual Science leaves out the profit motive and simply asks: What does it mean? Perhaps it should be thought of as more of a Spiritual Art.
Sometimes when meeting new people, in order to break the ice, I will ask: Are you an Artist or a Scientist (as in, there are two kinds of people…) The subtext is: How do you go about knowing what you know? Art or Science?
Morning All,
Mean to post this on Wednesday; unfortunately I came down with a cold. Feeling better now.
Anyhow, for those interested we are having our first Southern Oregon Ecosophian Meetup on August 22nd, 2021.
It will be a potluck.
Message me for details at B i l l Q u a n s o n a t p m d o t m e
Looking forward to seeing everyone.
Regards,
Sol
I was thinking about the unsolved questions of COVID, the vaxx, and What Is Going On. Something “twigged” when I read a recent piece about paternalism, and the idea that maybe, just perhaps, the establishment would offer the public a “noble lie” if they believed there was some benefit.
My memory was jogged back to medical school, when we were instructed about the pillars of medical ethics – one of those being “autonomy”, meaning, the patient must make his own medical choices, and is to be given all the relevant information.
But autonomy and informed consent were not always considerations. It may shock some moderns to realize that it used to be a legitimate question whether cancer patients should even be told their diagnosis – see this paper from 1934:
https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/abs/10.1148/23.6.751b
That’s not very long ago, all things considered. Is it really so hard to believe that the Establishment would lie to us about what exactly is going on with COVID? I don’t know in which direction they’re consciously lying, but I believe with virtual certainty that they are. We are the cancer patient who “mustn’t be told.”
@Violet, @Ecosophia Readers and JMG
I have also pondered Violet’s question as it does seem rather dark these days. There are some Ukrainians working in the U.S. IT sector that I know who have all agreed that the situation in the U.S. looks just like things did in the USSR in the years right before it imploded. The all said U.S. society is demonstrating the same bizarre symptoms, enmity and problems as happened in the final years of the USSR. They were all quite agreed about that. Not a single one of them disagreed. The general consensus of them all was, “We all know how this plays out.”
I found this quite interesting because these IT Ukrainians were kids when the USSR fell apart and were teens in the dicey, hard-scrabble years afterward. They now find it eery to see the same cycles and symptoms happening in the U.S. that they experienced while growing up in the Ukraine.
Take note of the word used – Cycle – because Sadhguru actually had some fascinating insights to at least some those questions. All you Astrology fans might want to take note of the following too.
In terms of life on this planet and humans in particular – The longest cycle in our solar system is 144 years. India has a Kumbha Mela celebration once every 144 years to celebrate the ending of one solar system cycle on humanity and the beginning of a new one. Obviously, unless you belong in the Guinness Book of World Records for Longevity most people are not going to personally experience this complete solar system cycle although society over all will.
But everyone who lives past the age of 12 will see the next most significant cycle in terms of a typical human life. In terms of physical-mental-emotional health of a human system the next major cycle is 12 years and 3 months. The one after that drops to 3 years. Then 18 months, then 16, then 12 months, then 3 months. And that’s just for the physical body. Each of the sheaths are influenced by these cycles too according to Sadhguru.
Here was the part where I sat up.
Sadhguru said,
“Depending upon how unaware you are, how destabilized you are, how unfocused you are you become available to those cycles. If you are completely scattered you become available to the smallest cycle. If you are a little focused, you become available to longer cycles. But everybody is subject to these cycles. These cycles can mean a bondage or these cycles can also mean transcendence; that from one cycle of life to another you can transcend, or you repeat the same cycle. That depends on who you are.
The difference between astrology and spirituality is just this…Astrology is trying to tell you how these cycles bind you. Spiritual process is telling you how you can get away from these cycles. We are not denying the cycles. It would be stupid to deny the cycles. The cycles are definitely there. But we are looking at the possibilities as to how you can slip away from these cycles
I saw this as why the phrase The stars incline, they do not compel has meaning. Astrology is telling you what kind of cycles are binding you. Spiritual process is slowly gaining you true freedom from those bonds. You, not the cycles, are becoming the master of your own destiny. Part of that is of course learning how one can live in harmony with the universe but the other half is learning how to make the most of the hand you’re dealt. Sadhguru didn’t mention it but I suspect other forms of divination are doing the same thing for the same reason – tarot, i-ching, ogham, etc.
He then said anyone can begin to observe what cycles are affecting them the most. Is your physical-mental-emotional make-up cycling every 3 months, only every 9 months, or only once every 16 or 18 months? Or only every 3 and a quarter years? Or is it cycling only once every 12 years? These cycles are not only mental and emotional. There are myriad different cycles he was just naming some significant ones that one might begin to take note of. In actuality he said there are thousands of cycles that effect us. He says if you are truly beginning to awaken to higher consciousness you will begin to notice even your physical situations around you will begin to repeat themselves at certain times. The shorter your physical-mental-emotional cycle the more often it’s a sign of how unconscious you are.
Then I remembered the IT Ukrainians and how unfortunately they are experiencing the same cycle they thought they emigrated to get away from – here it is right in their faces again in their adopted country.
What all of this tells me is a whole lot of people in the Overdeveloped Countries are spiritually unconscious. There was another talk Sadhguru gave on these cycles and mental illness in particular. If someone is experiencing the 3 month cycle as the strongest in their system he said (and I quote) “they need to be in a mental hospital”. Generally, unless you are a spiritually oriented person with daily spiritual practices the shorter the cycle, the more mentally and emotionally unbalanced and destabilized you are. He did say that women in general are more constantly aware of the cyclical nature of the universe since it manifests more strongly every month in the female system. He actually maintained this was a good thing in some ways because it can be a constant wake-up call to women to get on the spiritual path so that cycles don’t bind and define who they are. He says it takes a lot more work for men to achieve that same kind of awareness of their own cycles but he says rest-assured – everyone, absolutely everyone has cycles.
I now have a hunch that large sections of the overdeveloped countries’ populations are slipping into shorter and shorter astronomical-biophysical cycles and the Covid hysteria is one of the results we are seeing but if I’m right – even if or when the Covid hysteria finally withers away – unless all these people take up some kind of spiritual practice or religion (2nd religiosity?) the destabilized emotional and mental cycle will remain strong in them. If that is so then all it will take is another shock to the societal system to tip them over again. All the more so is it necessary in my opinion to define who you are internally rather than letting people and circumstances outside you do that for you. Those Ukrainians are reliving the cycle of their childhood and teens but if they’re smart – and I think they are – they’ll be among the most prepared people to endure the long term shocks coming to the U.S. (and Europe) of anybody I know.
I am transcribing my 2nd commentary from my Transcript Blog here so that you and other Ecosophia readers may hopefully find something of interest.
****C&P of a commentary I had to a Sadhguru Exclusive transcript*****
2nd Commentary:
One reason Sadhguru has said (in other videos) that he took up Shambhavi Mahamudra is that a staggering number of the world’s population are experiencing their own lives in a “terrible way” (his words). The constant negative experiences with which huge numbers in every country are getting hammered with over and over in their lives is a tremendous obstacle on the spiritual path. He said just getting people to a point where they are joyful by their own internal nature has turned out to be a huge task.
In short, the way the world’s societies are currently functioning has made a large majority of people’s daily lives sour. Hence why he said there’s an explosion of mental and emotional illness occurring in humanity all over the world and it’s set to rise even further over the next 50 years if the world keeps going down the path it’s presently on.
Yes, he actually did say all that! He said he wasn’t making a prophecy when an audience member asked him if that’s what he was doing. He said he knows it because the causes for the coming psychological tsunami are there in all the countries he’s visited for anyone to see (he’s been to every continent except Antarctica). Every single country he’s been to he says this is what he sees. He said he expects at least 50% of the world’s population to have some kind of mental and emotional illness by the next 50 years because of the way modern societies are functioning.
Shoonya is likely out of the question for most people if this fundamental problem is not addressed first. So Sadhguru shifted over to Shambhavi Mahamudra to introduce people to their own self-nature and inject sweetness and true empowerment (ie changes in consciousness in accordance with Will) back into their lives.
Hi Joy Marie,
From the same people you put the link:
https://babylonbee.com/news/for-maximum-protection-vaccine-now-offered-in-continuous-iv-drip-you-carry-around-for-the-rest-of-your-life
Cheers
David
@Waffles, lots of good advice already! I would encourage you to keep your cats indoors. There are too many dangers for small creatures out there–automobiles, infectious disease, wild predators, dogs, getting trapped in garages/sheds/basements/etc., eating poisoned prey, and worst of all, evil-minded humans. I hope I don’t need to discourage you from declawing!
Our vet has advised us to brush our cats’ teeth. We have yet to attempt it, but if you can get the youngsters used to it early on, it’ll save them pain and you money.
Supervise them around power cords, flames, needles, pins, twist ties, and dental floss/thread/yarn/string. They may chew the first, stick their tails into the second, and eat the rest. Remember, too, that any opening big enough for their heads is big enough for their bodies, and you do not want to have to wreck one of your walls to get your kitten out. At least you shouldn’t have to worry about them sticking metal objects into power outlets…
Males are most prone to urinary issues, but we have a female who needed surgery for bladder stones at age 2 1/2, so be aware as they get older and watch for blood or straining in the litterbox. Someone else mentioned diabetes, and older cats are also prone to kidney disease; those, along with upper-respiratory infections, are the major conditions to beware of.
Many cats love to chew plant material, so only bring safe species of houseplants and flowers into your home (the ASPCA has a list). Also, keep your food away from them–they will be curious about what you’re eating. Some cats develop tastes for unlikely things (such as tomato sauce. olives, or bread, and yes this is personal experience), others may accidentally swallow something they’re playing with. Raisins, onions, and garlic are just a few of the foods that can kill dogs and cats.
What gets on their feet and fur gets into their mouths. I knew a cat who nearly died from walking in some kind of floor sealant. We don’t use chemical cleaners on our floors or furniture because of that.
Along with putting away or sticking down anything breakable, make sure that anything you want them to use, like a cat tree or scratching post, is sturdy and won’t fall over on them. That’s a good way to get a cat to avoid scratching posts and use your furniture instead.
Finally, have fun with them and take lots of photos and videos! Their cuddly sweet kittenhoods always go by much too fast…
Denis, thanks for your comment, and for sharing your experience – it’s been of some comfort to know that I’m not the only one struggling with this bind. My daughter said yesterday that she’s going to look for an appointment soon. She knows (and shares) my concerns and yet… for a school program she’s not burning with enthusiasm for, she seems to be willing to take the chance – most likely because nobody she knows has so far shown sign of harm from the vaccine and because she’s caught in the middle of two worlds (college WAS a possibly appropriate option for a person with her inclinations but the non-college options haven’t opened up fully enough for her to imagine NOT doing it). I don’t want to sound shrill, and at this point asking “Would you consider deferring for a semester to see if the policy changes” comes across as pathetically so.
RPC, many thanks for the ideas. I’ll investigate, though time is now running short for us.
Lunar Apprentice – you have my sympathy. Like Denis, I’m having to practice equanimity as people make their own decisions. I’m also praying that things turn out ok for our young people.
Jean, my cousin’s family of 5 (2 adults, 3 kids) all had Covid with no issues. My husband’s colleague in the UK got it and it was a slog but she seems to be doing fine now. We know nobody who was hospitalized or died from it or who has long-term effects. Of my friends (8 of them in various parts of the world), all are vaccinated. Both my son-in-law and the youngest kid’s boyfriend are vaccinated with no ill effects. One of my friends suffered “the most severe pain” (in her back) she’d ever experienced in her “whole life” (and that’s not a low bar, so it must’ve been severe and she said nothing helped). She said it was present for the first shot and extreme for the second. She has an autoimmune disorder, so I was rather surprised that her adamant “pro science” stance didn’t suggest the precautionary principle wrt the vaccine. I’ve not followed up with her since then because she’s always been a true believer in the progressive message and she made it clear before Covid that she despises “anti-vaxxers” and I’m guessing I’d be lumped in there and I don’t desire having to explain or defend my position.
RPC – unfortunately California is one of a handful of states that does not allow vaccination exemptions on the basis of belief or religion.
It suddenly occurred to me it might be useful to back up on why “health – themed fetwear” was really funny to me; one of my little Beavers had a black face mask with a white tongue sticking out smiley mouth on it, and it looked like a zipper to me. I spent like two hours trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with his parents – did they think it was a joke about kids talking too much? Or like… Keep it zipped until your mask is off?? Did they not have any idea… Then I realized what it was.
And so my husband and I thought for sure this was a rule 34 of the internet situation (or 42? unclear), but I couldn’t find any actual mock gimp mask covid masks. We didn’t look that hard, though, since our jobs would somewhat preclude our wearing them safely in public.
Which is too bad, because I bet if anyone did make some, they would clear by the caseload, for people who didn’t have that restriction…
Hey JMG,
I did a personal yes/no tarot reading asking “Would I have negative long term health issues as a result of taking a vaccine?” The card “the world” was the answer, with “Strength” as a clarifying card. Normally, the world is a positive card, but another way of understanding the card would be a firm “Yes”. How would you interpret it?
Thanks,
Anon
Jasper said:
Solari.com has a lawyer-created downloadable that says you’ll be happy to vaccinate if the employer signs a legal understanding that, given the vaccine is mandatory, all resulting consequences and liability will be paid by them until you die. …Most businesses and schools have backed down instantly, because this isn’t a new contract or law, it’s just reminding them of the state of *existing* law. That’s not even going nuclear to point out that ANY pressure to be involved in a medical experiment is against Nuremberg and U.N. Human Rights Laws. That would include enforcing different rules for you, or even saucy attitudes.
A huge shout out to Jasper for the Solari.com tip!
Here’s the link I found to the relevant page with the various documents to download for schools or employment situations.
https://home.solari.com/employer-school-disclosure-form-for-covid-19-injections/
There’s also links for religious exemptions, and other assorted things like Notices to hand to employers and schools.
Even Elon Musk (!!!) agrees with you now…sort of. Note that “latter” refers to “whimper”, rather than “bang”!
https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-population-risk-civilization
@waffles
I recommend a strict no play biting/scratching policy for kittens. It seems really cute at first but not later.
This is very effective: the instant the kitten starts biting – disengage and turn away, you don’t need to say “no”, just turning away and ignoring the kitten for 30 seconds is a huge punishment.
I did this with my cats as kittens and they would absolutely never bite or scratch me even when I’m cutting their nails. This method doesn’t work as well on adult cats.
#342 lunar Apprentice. Thank you for sharing your burden and strength with us. It helps all of us to hear from medical people, especially MDs, sharing our doubts. I also will leave my job if forced to jab. I see post #317 has very good advice to delay or divert workplace shot pressure for others. There is a guy, Allan Stevo, selling stuff of course, but with some good advice similar but more comprehensive to post #317. Some of it looks useful for more conventionally employed people.
Again, thank you Lunar.
@ RandomActsOfKindness #121
I’m sorry to hear that! I’ve been out of area for a few days.
I was able to email David Trammell, who runs the GreenWizards website.
I asked him to look into the problem so we can get you aboard.
1) Commenting on Covid-19:
I know of three people who’ve died from the disease. Two of them were dialysis patients, the other eighty years old and having health issues. I also know of one long-hauler (about my age but thin and with a good diet) and one morbidly obese person who went to the ICU and survived (he had a wheelchair, but he always got up and stepped into the front seat on his own power whenever I picked him up). I also think that I got an earlier version of COVID – I had a week’s bout of loose bowels (not diarrhea, but close enough – and I now have to watch that I not eat certain items, something I never have to do before), low-level headaches that happen infrequently to this day, and a case of A-Fib that took a few months to deal with (Learned at one of my hospital stays that sudden heart trouble is a symptom of COVID-19 infection. Wish I had tested for antibodies before getting stuck with the vaccine.).
I’ve had no reactions from the vaccine myself (bosses’ orders, with no warning of imminent closure of the business), but I’ve heard from three or four others who had reactions to the Moderna vaccine. And as for all the fear mongering in reference to the virus, I believe we’d be seeing these comments even if it turned out that the vaccine/serum/whatever-the-hell-it-was worked perfectly without any possibilities of side effects or delayed reactions, as trust in the Medical Establishment keeps dropping and the only reason many people got vaccinated was the promise of going without masks – a promise that looks like it’s about to be revoked, Darth Vader style (“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”).
2) As for the Zeitgeist being as dark as it’s ever been:
I can’t say the psychic atmosphere is dark – I felt that through all four years of the Trump Presidency, a large portion coming from the unearthly screaming from the left that peaked right as the riots started. I can say, however, that I’ve had a sensation of instability and the threat of a collapse that cannot be recovered from (not only are things about to get worse, but better won’t be an option even AFTER the drop). Stuff is going on in the background, even when we see what’s going on we’re not seeing what’s driving it, and when those underlying energies figure a way of busting out, watch out.
Pythia:
It is very, very, common to see pets, usually dogs, in stores in Vermont all the time. The state has a very strict law against leaving animals in cars so people bring their leashed pets inside with them. Some stores, the tourist mecca Vermont Country Store included, have signage specifically inviting pets inside. I suppose Vermont wouldn’t be a good place for you to vacation. 😉
When one lives in a very rural area – that would be most of the state – and has to drive quite far for everything, a trip anywhere inevitably includes many stops, so on occasions that I have had to bring a cat to the vet, about a 35 minute drive each way, and have needed to go into a store or pharmacy during that trip, the cat goes in with me because of Vermont’s strict law against leaving pets in cars. The livestock vet is an hour away and I have twice brought a chicken (in a carrier) into a store with me, no complaints from anyone – and I did ask at customer service beforehand. Henny Penny was well behaved.
I would assume that the percentage of animal-allergic people in Vermont is roughly equal to the percentage everywhere else, but there hasn’t been any backlash against the practice to my knowledge and I’m not aware of any attempts to loosen the law so that animals stay in cars while the humans shop. I guess those with serious allergies take precautions knowing that they’ll inevitably come into contact with pets in public places. The law was in place long before we moved here; perhaps those issues were discussed at the time? Don’t know.
Jean:
I know no one who has died of Covid, nor do I know anyone who’s had it. Quite a number of my MSNBC-watching, NPR-listening, relatives have had the jab, but none has mentioned side effects; that could be because I haven’t been in touch with them of late. Most worrisome to me is that my cousin’s pregnant wife was advised to get the jab by her OB, even though there hadn’t been any data about the shot and pregnant women at that time. Both she and the baby, now 3 weeks old, seem O.K., but will that change in future?
@Mark L.
Time will tell, but the rhetoric around the unvaxed is heating-up and now all gov’t workers and military members have to get the jab. I’m sure some of them are going to resist. Today the CDC said the Delta variant is more contagious than chicken pox, Ebola, and the Spanish Flu. They don’t seem to be letting-up on the propaganda any time soon.
You might be interested in Bjorn Andreas Bull Hansen’s new vid on YT called “The Unvaccinated Will Be Targeted”. Even more interesting is the comments on the vid from around the world on how ppl aren’t just going to roll-up their sleeves when ordered to.
You’re list of possible Black Swans is a good one, the one that concerns me the most is an extended drought out west as I live out that way.
Take care and prep as necessary.
Carl
RMS, in theory, possibly. In practice? It’s a huge speculative bubble right now.
Apprentice, it’s really starting to sink in that we don’t care what our soi-disant betters think, and they’re losing their shale completely as a result.
Augusto, silence is an extremely useful tool when dealing with irrational people. It does nobody any good if you get beaten to a pulp because you didn’t keep your mouth shut.
Marlena13, I’ve heard the same thing from many women, and of course I watched some of it happen myself…
Robert, hmm! Fascinating.
Bofur, and it’s not as though there’s been any shortage of ignoble lies…
Panda, that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Pixelated, oof. That’s funny.
Anon, you asked a yes-no question, and you got a yes: “Yes, you’ll get a whole bunch of them, and they’ll be strong.”
Tidlösa, well, no, not really. He thinks that the peak and decline of world population under way is a bad thing. I think it’s the best news I’ve heard in years.
Happy Panda and Jasper, the problem with the solari document is that organizations are under no compulsion to read, let alone sign such a document.
I think too much faith could be put in that document on the part of those who are trying to get around school and workplace requirements. Check out statements 5 and 6, for instance: “The FDA’s guidance14 on emergency use authorization of medical products requires the FDA to “ensure that recipients are informed to the extent practicable given the applicable circumstances…[t]hat they have the option to accept or refuse the EUA product….” Are you aware of this statement? Have you informed all students that they have the option to refuse?”
and
FDA (blahblahblah) “reiterates that individuals be informed of “the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, [and] of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product,”
Not only is it irrelevant if the organization is aware of the statement, they’re already across the court with the ball in the basket: the consequences of accepting or refusing are explicitly spelled out. The issue not being addressed is that the school or workplace are not trying to enforce the use of any medical product (they’re not saying everyone has to get the vaccine or that you or I specifically need to get it). They’re saying, we have a right to make our “product” (paycheck or college classes) available to only those who *decide* to get the vaccine, and the consequences of refusing are the revocation of your right to be part of the organization.
This document amounts to blank paper. It’s toothless.
@Lunar Apprentice,
That sounds like a horrible movie you were subjected to, but not surprising it came out of Hollywood. In the present era, bad guys can only be straight white working-class males/women, and they’re going to be made to look as evil as possible and beyond redemption. There’s a war going on, but it’s not on a battle field yet.
@Karl
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the folks in my life respect my nuanced position with regard to vaccination, and today’s mainstream news regarding vaccine immunity failure and asking vaccinated folks to take precautions again is only creating more doubters.
I think that rather than being the instigator of crisis, the vaxxed/unvaxxed brouhaha is the contrived media big deal of the day, to distract from the six factors I mentioned, and perhaps others. They are not black swans, in the sense that it is very clear in all cases what is going on and where it will lead us. I think we are rapidly approaching a point at which no black swan will be necessary to lead to crisis.
But I may be wrong. I really feel for all of those people who are being forced to make difficult choices on the basis of vaccine mania.
@Imp & JMG about Bavaria/Austria/Prague: I don’t think I qualify as sensitive or whatever you want to call it… but if you venture to the south of Germany, the vibes are truly different. I’ve never lived in the southern parts of Germany but I travel there maybe once a year. All (!) my contacts to spirituality and occultism have happened there or were inspired by people who came from there. I know of no other region in Germany with such a density of alternative practitioners, healers and the like.
There are certain cities in the south (Munich not so much) that truly stand out in this regard. In my experience, those places form an arc starting in the north of Bavaria around the city of Würzburg then along the border to Baden-Würtemberg to the south passing Ulm and then bending eastwards along the foothills of the Alps. Farther to the east Vienna is certainly part of that “structure” and truly has a very special, very un-European vibe. Even the most unspiritual people I know acknowledge this. How it might continue from there, I don’t have any first-hand experience, but the city of Prague is certainly renown to be something special. From there it might come back westwards passing the cities of Nürnberg and Bamberg which also have something special about them and then we’re back in Würzburg. Whether the area in question is a ring or a “disc” I can’t tell, but from my own experience (I have been to the south only recently) I can definitely one thing: Everything there is very alive. Most farms and houses are in an outstandingly good order but not just in a purely representative way with nothing behind, they’re also very functional and, well, alive, too. It clearly feels very different to the region where I live and to many others I have visited.
These are my few cent to this topic.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@temporaryreaality #361
She knows (and shares) my concerns and yet… for a school program she’s not burning with enthusiasm for, she seems to be willing to take the chance
Take the chance of never having children?
Honestly it’s weird for me to hear so many people report they, or those they know, had the jab and had no serious ill effects. So here’s a story from someone who was adversely affected…
My husband and I stayed at an inexpensive international hotel to cover a few days while moving homes in February 2020, & about a week later we were both hit with the same sickness: 3 days fever, in bed, followed by at least 2 weeks of a bad, wet cough. Officially, Covid didn’t hit till sometime in March.
I got my one and only dose of Pfizer at night early April, and the next morning went unconscious for – my husband reports – about 30 seconds while not breathing regularly. When I woke up I’d briefly lost all of my memories, which I take to mean that my brain was low on fuel (blood, oxygen) for a significant portion of time. Before passing out I had a deep, terrible pain where they gave the injection followed by overwhelming nausea. When I woke up my heart felt Not Okay in a way I had never felt before in my life. It had lost it’s beat and was merely flopping about. I prayed while crying out of fear, and over the next 10 minutes – while we waited for paramedics to arrive – I experienced something else I have never felt before: a shimmering, silvery sensation enveloped my heart and then travelled very slowly down my left arm, which is the one that was vaccinated. By the time the paramedics arrived I was frightened and shaken, but all my symptoms had passed. They took my heart rate and blood pressure. I told them I’d been vaccinated the previous night, and they said it was unrelated. They suggested I’d feinted from anxiety about the needle. They said they could take me to he hospital if I wanted, but that they did not see that there was any need that I go. I decided not to go.
I am an approximately 30 year old woman, vegetarian, not on any medication, with recently measured healthy iron levels, and have been an athlete my entire life. No one in my family on either side, that I know of, has died of a heart attack.
Over the next week I was very careful to avoid overexertion, which I considered a basic precaution. I came to notice that when I slept on my back I would be woken up by the unpleasant sensation that my heart had returned to doing the “flopping thing” I had noticed immediately after having woken up from being unconscious. I took to sleeping heart side up, with my should and head raised, and contacted multiple doctors. One doctor I spoke with over the phone repeated the “feinted from anxiety” diagnosis, but symptoms persisted so I took myself to a walk in clinic. The doctor there listened to my heart, said he perhaps heard a slight arrythmia, and said, “there is no medical way the vaccine could have harmed your heart.” This was in June.
Later that month my husband got his first dose of Moderna. 4 days later he collapsed. He has never feinted before in his life. He regained consciousness pretty much upon having reached the ground, so we monitored him throughout the day, and as he seemed to okay, in the evening decided to call our family doctor to ask for advice. Their advice, immediately, was to take him to the hospital. So we drove him to the hospital. He was kept there for 4 days straight while they perfomed every test imaginable: blood tests, ekg, constant heart rate monitoring, ultrasound of the heart, and CT scans of his chest, neck and brain. They could not find anything wrong with him so he was eventually released.
The glaring differences between how he and I were treated are obvious.
A few days ago I drove myself to emergency because I’d been having chest pains and heaviness throughout the day. Upon entry the intake nurse asked if I’d had Moderna in the past few days because, in her words, it’s “all the rage” right now to show up with heart complaints having reccently had Moderna. I was taken through all the tests, which were: ekg, blood work, and a chest x-ray, along with another woman who was much younger than me. The other woman was with her mother, and I overhead that she, too, had Pfizer a few months ago. She was also presenting with symptoms of chest pain. I was released much later in the night having been told that all my results were “reassuring” and that I’ d be hearing from a cardiologist. When talking with the doctors I was very clear in informing them that this had all started when I collapsed 8 hours after my vaccine, and in the discharge discussion they were very careful to discuss my symptoms but not mention the word “vaccine.”
My husbands step-father collapsed a month after his vaccine. The wife of one of his co-workers developed one of those rashes on her arm. Another co-worker was out for a few days due to brain fog after his first vaccine. These are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I’ve gotten in the habit of asking people what their experiences with the vaccine were, if I can bring it up naturally in conversation.
Some thoughts:
– From what I have heard, older folks seem less likely to expereince adverse reactions. It certainly could not account for everything, but consider that a large portion of people over 60 are already on some type of blood thinner.
– If adverse reactions are so rare, why did both I and my husband collapse? He had never feinted before in his life, and while I have feinted before, I have never woke up with no memories, or with a heart that felt damaged. It’s a bit like being struck by lighting twice. One hypothesis I have is that we both fell ill in Feb of 2020 with, if not covid, another in the family of coronaviruses, and this may have been the missing factor.
– From personal exerperince, I cannot understate people’s ability to not experience what they have not been told they are allowed to experience. It may be that many people had disturbing, even lasting, symptoms post vaccine, but would not realize unless and until brought around to the idea that the vaccine may have harmed them. There is great, great psychological resistence to this in the great majority of people. To be clear, I am not suggesting that upon suitable suggestion most people would invent adverse reactions, but that under an opposing suggestion they may have been ignoring them. It’s not clear either way.
My husband and I will be hearing back from our respective cardiologists over the following weeks. It’s difficult to interpret anything that is found, because we have no prior knowledge to compare it to.
Regarding the DarkHorse podcast – this is where I heard it discussed that in rat models (rest their souls) some part of the vaccine or it’s byproducts was found to concentrate in ovaries and bone marrow. The night I had my vaccine my menstruation stopped, mid-cycle, within the hour. I missed the following one as well. Had it been just the one, it might have been stress, but to miss the following one as well suggests it may not have an entirely emotional explination.
Hi Radha,
I’m with you. Cats have very flexible paws, they can easily hang on with claws retracted. Some can even extrapolate from no-sharp-games to no-prickly-lap-kneading, but not all; some just can’t seem to help themselves!
John
Finished reading ‘The Farfareres’ by Farley Mowat last week. Sure seems that there are a lot echos in WOH.
John – Coop Janitor
Ha! Yeah, I wouldn’t like to be a pile of beaten up pulp so shutting the F up it is. Silence, I keep coming to that point over and over.
On other things, I’ve written my thoughts about prayer, inspired by the current events, this Open Post and a song I like. If anybody is interested about it and why I consider it can be very helpful, here is a small bit of the song and a link to it:
“When all the hope fades around
Raise your soul
From dusty ground
Stuck in reverse
The record won’t play
The ending fades
On broken days
Pray don’t fall down”
https://open-space.dreamwidth.org/3906.html
Though folks might like to know that a druid order Ár nDraíocht Féin to a nice and pretty friendly write up on pocket.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/meet-the-modern-day-pagans-who-celebrate-the-ancient-gods?utm_source=pocket-newtab
@ teresa from hershey (and @ David Trammel),
Thanks very much for your reply. I’ve sent an email to David. 🙂
Darkest Yorkshire, 3 Wishes eh?
Bio-kinetic powers so as to allow bio shifting, heal any injury or disease death to a point (handled automatically on self) even aging in any person at will. I’ll rarely use this though. Its a high risk high reward power.
Probability control powers so as to allow me to sync and gain what i need in a fairly non disruptive manner. Need money? Play the lotto. I win part of it.
Portal Gun powers, Focus concentration, travel to whatever reality I like. Pick one I like, go there, maybe try and get a bit more enlightened since after such selfish wishes when I finally do die I’ll be lucky to come back as clam.
If the later is not possible, Shazam style powers . I have no desire to fight crime but creating political havoc sounds enjoyable and needful.
I know me I’ll probably turn into Injustice Superman in a few months so I’ll try and do the enlightenment thing first because I’ll be lucky to come back as snail after using these abilities.
Robert and Violet,
Your commentary about a generational/lineage wave breaking and receding has struck closer to home than I expected. In my family I am one of few descendants in both lines, and they have both come West across the country (ending in California and Washington respectively) over a number of generations. And now, more and more, I find myself tempted to move Eastward, perhaps only to Missouri from where my Grandmother and her parents moved to Seattle, but Eastward nonetheless. Now I wonder if this is a larger pattern and perhaps a tangible manifestation of the receding and death of Faustian culture on this continent. Of course without fossil fuels the West will have a tough time supporting its current populations, so there are more material justifications for those movements, but I wonder if there is more to it.
Commentariat and JMG – do you know of people moving Eastward in numbers, particularly people of European heritage who came to the Eastern seaboard many generations ago and migrated west over the decades/centuries? Curious readers want to know…
This is a n=1 anecdote, but someone close to me got two mRNA vaccines in the early stages of pregnancy and the fetus is healthy and normal based on ultrasounds. I’m hardly in the “inject the science communion in to my veins plz” or the “it has microchips in it” camp, but I am grateful that in at least one case, the nightmare scenario involving fertility didn’t happen.
That being said I’m nearly excommunicated from my family because I haven’t had the shot, not because I am particularly afraid of the vaccine or totally unafraid of the virus, but because I hoped that if enough people didn’t get it, the surveillance and control infrastructure associated with “vaccine passports” wouldn’t get built. Here’s your daily reminder that journalists who told you that voter ID is a racist Republican conspiracy (because, you know, PoC are too dumb to obtain ID) will, two years later, claim that having to present ID everywhere you go is okay and actually a good thing.
Hi JMG,
I’m not sure I’ve heard you discuss it before, but what do you think about the suggestion that Covid 19 was leaked from a lab? I have long suspected that it leaked (most likely accidentally) and that was why China moved so aggressively against it, which in turn seemed to set the tone for how countries all around the world responded to it. Basically that they knew some things about its seriousness/or perhaps its potential that are maybe not obvious.
Thanks,
Johnny
Nachtgurke, fascinating. I’d like to visit there someday.
Aliza, thanks for this.
Janitor, yep. I’ve read it several times, and wove in that and several other alternative bits of American history into the story.
Augusto, many thanks.
Simon, interesting.
Justin, well, that’s good to hear.
Johnny, since I wasn’t there at the time, I have no opinion on the matter. 😉
@temporaryreality #361, does your daughter want to go to college for the program, the social scene, or the social expectation that she go to college? The first two years of college, particularly the first year, are breadth requirements and basics.
The options for getting that first year remotely have greatly increased. In particular, most community colleges had online versions of math and English even before. She might be able to get at least the first semester or quarter without setting foot on a campus. Community college classes transfer to four year classes. Typically the coordination is tight in state and requires some documentation for out of state colleges.
There are so many working students, single mothers and others who find regular class meetings challenging, that the colleges are waking up to the ongoing market for remote learning.
Raphanus
Aliza what a well written post. I am so sorry for what you’ve been going through.
In my own life, I know one person who had brain fog for a few weeks after vaccination, one who had a 100+ degree fever the night of their second injection, and one who lost consciousness for most of a day after his first shot. That last one is a 20 year old who has already had covid, but he still decided he had to get a second shot because he’d be “taking chances with other people’s lives” if he didn’t. Luckily the second shot’s side-effects were much milder than the first.
I still haven’t gotten the shot. Things are fine as long as I don’t read the news or internet comments on the news. If I do, I end up worked-up about what people want to do to me to make me comply. I spend hours reading anything I can to defend my position and annoy my partner by trying it out on her. In my real life, people generally take the news that I’m unvaccinated pretty well. I even got a new job. I’ve wondered, when McCarthyism was a big thing, what percentage of people actually got on board with it? Was it a phenomenon of everyday people, or just in congress and the newspaper?
I had been taking Ivermectin as a prophylactic until talked to a doctor who is a family friend. He said that he’s treated lots of people with COVID, none with vaccine side-effects, and one recently with liver damage from Ivermectin. I decided to set it aside unless I actually feel sick.
@Aliza
Thanks for sharing your harrowing experience. I have posted this here before, but you will find many similar stories here, and also something of a building community of solidarity: https://www.c19vaxreactions.com/
The site is growing and evolving rapidly.
This is a very important insight: “From personal exerperince, I cannot understate people’s ability to not experience what they have not been told they are allowed to experience.”
We have somehow all been primed to believe that anything that happens following vaccination is in no way related to the vaccine. It is incredible to me that medical professionals insist on believing this despite being confronted with contrary evidence daily, but somehow the collective belief is that strong. If anyone doubts that modern “science” has become a religion, the current level of faith-creates-reality is almost on the level of speaking in tongues.
One factor to consider is that quality control in the manufacture of these vaccines in mass production is nowhere near the level achieved during the clinical trials. One contaminant is some level of “truncated” mRNA transcripts, which supposedly will not be transcribed or will have no effect but could potentially produce partial spike proteins with unknown implications. Production batches are quite large, and one vaccination site may use the same batch for weeks to months. So it is possible that variable purity/quality control accounts for some of the differences in reported adverse effects.
@Lunar Apprentice
No doubt that Deplorables have been the villains of choice for many a horror movie. They are probably in the top 10 with zombies, vampires and, ahem, Pagans (What are they doing out in the woods in those spooky hooded robes? Probably something evil)
As antidote you might enjoy “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” a (dark) comedy where the rednecks are the heroes, but the college kids mistake them for the backwoods murderers they’ve seen in so many movies.
Article: China building a Thorium reactor, planned completion date is this September.
The article mentions China having “some of the world’s largest reserves” of Thorium.
The Youtube video that pointed to the article claimed the Chinese are taking a stab at Thorium reactor based aircraft.
On the vax: I had two Pfizer jabs back in March/April: no ill effects. I’m in my 70s. The same can be said, as far as I know, for the rest of my family. My mom, now nearing her 100th birthday, had two Moderna jabs. She had a brief “paralysis” (as she describes it) that lasted a minute or two the day after her second jab. She was alone, and managed it. She still seems okay and still lives alone. I’m not enthusiastic about the shots, but I went ahead and got them.
On the “lab leak” theory. Like JMG, I wasn’t there either. Ron Unz’s theory that it was a deliberate false flag attempt at economic warfare, aimed at China and Iran seems plausible to me. If that’s true, clearly it backfired pretty badly, raspberry jam style. Unz’s website is a very mixed bag as far as I am concerned. He “prints” some really foul stuff sometimes. On the other hand, He also “prints” stuff by Michael Hudson and by Whitney Webb.
As a heads up to social media users, a friend of mine posted something a week ago on Twitter that Antifa didn’t like. They tracked her down and have been visiting her house every night and calling her employer, a Fortune 500 company. They’ve been non-stop calling the company for her firing. Antifa has been working their way up the management chain using mostly Facebook and Linked in to now go to this woman’s bosses and terrorize their homes.
There is nothing the police will do in this situation until there is property damage or worse, then they’ll write up a report. The Fortune 500 CEO’s response (since Antifa has been showing up to the company offices and protesting too) was to send out of a list of 5 books and podcasts for people and to repeat that Antifa doesn’t exist.
@jean, 191
Nobody I know (NSW, Australia, relatives in England and NZ too) has died either of covid or the sera. I have, however, heard a number of stories of painful and lingering aftereffects of the “vaccine”.
Hello John and fellow Ecosophians,
Unfortunately, I haven’t got my hands yet on any of your books but I’m familiar with your ideas in general. How many decades or centuries do we still have until the physical aspect of the industrial civilizations themselves will start to fall and disappear? I’m always worried about the good aspects and progress we’ve made so far in our civilization and “how” we will carry or fuse these positive traits into the next civilization. I’m noticing an alarming reaction by many young people especially to embrace extremely conservative and traditional worldviews nowadays, and that is causing some to lean more towards the Black Brothers’ ways of thinking (from an esoteric perspective); that is to shut themselves from evolution.
Also, what do you suggest for young people with no job at this point to cope with and prepare for the coming period?
Aziz
JMG can you share of another time in contemporary history where its leaders have flailed around so ineffectively on every issue – public health, military, finance, and basic government functions? Pravda on the Potomac can’t even seem to cover for them fast enough.
I never thought the Biden admin would make the Trump admin look competent, but here we are. I can’t believe we are only 6 months in to this mess.
Aliza #379:
Your experience and that of your husband are absolutely terrifying, thank you for sharing that. I will keep both of you in my prayers for sure.
We’ve decided not to get the shots. My husband already has an autoimmune disorder (CIDP for you medical people out there) and doesn’t like the reports of G-B, which one nurse at his infusion site told him is even worse than the CIDP. He’s just not willing to chance it. A neurologist told him that the shot was fine for the autoimmune, but on further reading we haven’t found any evidence people with these disorders were even included in the test groups so maybe the doctor is expected to recommend no matter what.
I’ve been hearing reports in the news, untrustworthy as it may be in general, that vaccinated people may be more efficient spreaders of virus than the unvaccinated, not a gift I want to give to my husband. Fortunately, we do not have jobs that require vaccination and don’t need to go shopping often so much of the drama surrounding Covid has passed us by.
Nachtgurke:
Glad to hear a mention of Nurnberg, my hometown! I haven’t been there in a number of years, but it is a special place with its own special atmosphere. And wonderful Bratwurst too. The last time I visited I bought an interesting book about the city’s legends and if they are accurately reported, the city has been home to plenty of magic during its almost thousand-year life.
I’m thinking about the evolving individualist-focused spirituality/sensibility of our times (promoted by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle). It fits in with american individualism, and global capitalism. It doesn’t fit in with Judaism or Christianity, who need a bigger vision than the individual (“without a vision, the people perish”). It fits in with both the nihilistic and mystical sensibilities characteristic of declining cultures. For these reasons I see it as a likely candidate for the new religion for the next civilization after this one. How does it fit in with the druid religion? I would think not so well, since part of the vision of druidry (as I understand it) is an emphasis on belonging to nature/the earth, or even nature/earth as primary (and this is in distinction with other ritual magic schools such as Eliphas Levy, who sees humanity as primary, or maybe God or the trinity as primary)?
Further to the discussion of empirical effects and results, I am struck by Aliza’s statement: “I cannot understate people’s ability to not experience what they have not been told they are allowed to experience. It may be that many people had disturbing, even lasting, symptoms post vaccine, but would not realize unless and until brought around to the idea that the vaccine may have harmed them.”
I am coming to think that this is part of the “spell” that seems to have been cast, one in which, we’ve already seen that doctors cannot see or mention (I mean literally, their eyes glaze over, and their tongues get stuck in their mouths, as if under some very strong post-hypnotic suggestion) any connection between those increasing “all the rage” occurrences of serious symptoms that so inexplicably follow closely on the heels of their patients’ injections.
But here now are some very weird occasions I personally know about where patients have also clearly ignored, or been amenable to being persuaded to ignore, their own body’s experiences, since they are simply not allowed to let themselves know that they have had them. A woman I overheard in the shop telling how her first injection left her “paralysed all up my left side for three days, couldn’t move a muscle…” yet apparently went back for a second dose, as she continued “nothing like that with my second dose, just tired!” A person I know well had an experience extremely close to the one you described, Aliza, centred on the chest, weirdness around their heart subsequently treated in ICU as a “heart attack” after a first dose. Then went back for a second. A woman who is known by someone I know, who suffered from three solid days of seizures following her first dose is under severe pressure to have a second, and it is mainly her husband’s fear from witnessing her reaction to her first that is holding her back. Another woman vomited blood, pee’d blood, and had bloody diarrhea for several days following her first dose is now just about recovered and actually considering that taking her second dose is less frightening than explaining to her colleagues at work why she doesn’t want to.
If I weigh up people I know, or who I know second-hand through other people that I know, and compare those who suffered illness or death within 14 days of a positive Covid test, and those who suffered illness or death within 14 days of a Covid injection, the second group is coming out much, much worse. (Incidentally, some of the second group have also tested positive post-injection). There were one or two long ICU visits for people I knew with Covid and serious co-morbidities. The local nursing home had a sterling record of protecting their residents, and did not lose a single one from Covid in all of 2020, until vaccinations of the elderly began last January. 2021. Then, they suddenly had a “Covid outbreak” but I consider this account to be murky.
In addition to the cases listed above, I know of two sudden deaths in previously healthy people, one of them behind the wheel of a car (fortunately their accident did not involve anyone else). I know of several extended stays in ICU (and also take note that donated blood supplies are running very short these days, world wide). I know of two second trimester miscarriages following injections given in pregnancy, and one death at one month old of a breastfed baby following its mother’s injection. These days, if I hear of a sudden, unexplained death or collapse in a previously healthy person, I try to find out if they were recently injected. I am beginning to assume they have been unless I can establish that they were not.
However I notice that many of these stories are avidly circulating locally (about deaths, illnesses, collapses, miscarriages, etc), but with complete blanking on anyone mentioning any recent injection. If I mention a connection – when it is publicly known – I get blank stares and changes of subject. Very spooky.
This marketing campaign does appear to be exerting some magical influences on people’s ability to see what they see, feel what they feel, without anyone’s permission. It does explain the large number of people who do not know anyone who had bad effects from their injection – even their own bad effects may be hypnotically invisible to them.
If anyone knows how to do a “Battle of Britain” style magical response, perhaps the positive intention at the centre of it could revolve around this – clarity and independence of vision. *who has eyes let them see* *who has ears let them hear*
For clarity, in the comment above, from this sentence on, I am describing events following a Covid injection:
“In addition to the cases listed above, I know of two sudden deaths in previously healthy people…”
@JMG
“there’s a lot to be learned by watching the way that feminism got coopted, and transformed from “women should be free to do what they want” to “women should only be free to do what corporate culture tells them to.” I’ve seen women who chose to become stay-at-home moms receive the most vicious abuse imaginable from other women — and it was all too clearly a matter of pressuring them into doing what would benefit their corporate masters.”
It teaches us to be wary and develop ways to counter subversion.
Likewise I think particularly masculinized women itching to take on more masculine roles are the Vanguard of the Feminist movement ironically:
“The feminist movement purports to improve conditions for women, and yet only a minority of women in modern societies self-identify as feminists. This is known as the feminist paradox. It has been suggested that feminists exhibit both physiological and psychological characteristics associated with heightened masculinization, which may predispose women for heightened competitiveness, sex-atypical behaviors, and belief in the interchangeability of sex roles. If feminist activists, i.e., those that manufacture the public image of feminism, are indeed masculinized relative to women in general, this might explain why the views and preferences of these two groups are at variance with each other. We measured the 2D:4D digit ratios (collected from both hands) and a personality trait known as dominance (measured with the Directiveness scale) in a sample of women attending a feminist conference. The sample exhibited significantly more masculine 2D:4D and higher dominance ratings than comparison samples representative of women in general, and these variables were furthermore positively correlated for both hands. The feminist paradox might thus to some extent be explained by biological differences between women in general and the activist women who formulate the feminist agenda.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01011/full
This causes the feminist movement to be steered towards goals that are atypical and at odds with the average woman’s interest. Because of their wish to compete and take on risk like Men. Resulting in a co-option into corporate jobs where said women get to compete for status.
The failure to recognize how they are at odds with the rest of womankind is the cause of so much dysfunction as a result.
@Aliza, thank you for sharing your and your husband’s experience. I tend to agree with your hypothesis that adverse reactions from the vaccine might be more common and stronger the younger one is. That is why I find it frightening to push the vaccine on minors. On the other hand, I am in my 40s, and I too think I had Covid before I was vaccinated, but had absolutely no reaction at all to the vaccine, not even the sore arm my wife had.
@JMH and Commentariate,
I am loathe to say that I am training Tarot divination with the little paper booklet… I wonder if anyone has a stronger resource they know of for this work?
@Robert
I was born in 82 and I know that feeling well. I think it definitely ties into some themes that are regularly explored on this blog. It has a lot to do with the turning of that decade. My father observed that North American culture turned hard towards conspicuous consumption in the ’80s. My history teacher, after illustrating the value of each decade before, simply told the class that the 80s were all about money and left it at that. JMG has previously described the 80s as a massively delusional decade.
I guess in short- folks born in the late ’70s and ’80s realized, perhaps intuitively, that the 100meter dash to get a hold of something before it all disappeared was on. And the evidence was all around you; I needed three jobs up until my mid 30s to make ends meet, the debt cliff was ever near, the boomers weren’t leaving their positions ect, ect. I think instead of running faster and faster the current generation is more kind of just staring in horror, or rebelling. We are still in a way living in the ruins of that decade.
JMG, first, thanks for your response to my previous inquiry. As for now, why do you consider peak oil a good thing? I understand why you’d consider the end of the American empire a good thing, but why would you consider the end of industrial civilization as a whole a good thing?
@Helix #295
You can include in the competition this statement by the FSMB (Federation of State Medical Boards):
“Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license. Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not. They also have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health. Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.”
https://www.fsmb.org/advocacy/news-releases/fsmb-spreading-covid-19-vaccine-misinformation-may-put-medical-license-at-risk/
As the Qixote said: “Con la Iglesia hemos topado, amigo Sancho” (now The Sacred Church = Pfizer)
Cheers
David
Thank you, Ian (#407)! That accounts so well for what I had observed! (And that change in the culture simply sailed right over my head unnoticed at the time. I had already quit watching TV by then, and we had always lived very frugally–at first by necessity, later by habit and choice.)
@JMG: I notice that “The Book of Lambspring” is included in Waite’s “Hermetic Museum,” which has been on my bookshelf (and even consulted or “attempted” on occasion) since the 1970s. Your opinion of Waite’s translation of Eliphas Levi is not very favorable. Actually Waite’s intro to “The Hermetic Museum” says that it is not Waite’s translation. Is it reliable?
@Darkest Yorkshire;@Waffles I’ve been thinking about your genie game and your answers.
I think together they point at the problem of the genie concept – people don’t usually actually know what they want, and, until they start wishing for it, what they’ll get when they do. But we created a genie society where the first wish was definitely not wisdom.
My struggle, as a politician, has been not to get angry and actually tell the truth- because man, the public is not gonna like what they hear. A friend of mine is on council in what may be the richest municipality in BC; if they aren’t the top, they’re close, the province got more foreign ownership taxes from them than anywhere else by a good margin. But at the town halls lately, she’s considered calling the police for an escort, because they’ve involved the good residents screaming at the staff and council until they cry, and then accusing them of “weaponising their tears”. They are trying to “change the community” in ways the most vocal residents don’t like – they say politicians and staff are “public servants” and we are supposed to do what the people want.
My friend is the nicest person in the world, and the staff have had a rough year, so I wanted to go down and start busting kneecaps, but I had to go to my own council meeting instead. There, we receive letters about how we hadn’t considered enough options to replace expensive marine infrastructure for the boating community, and more parking was needed, and also, it’s so hot now, another waterpark – the future economic needs of the town to attract tourists and shoppers needs to be considered, and the children will need more (chemically sterilized, fresh) water to play in in the future because of global warming (we are surrounded by ocean, but you can’t swim in that, clearly!).
What I wanted to say, at this particular juncture, was that the events of the day rather showed that what the children were going to need was enough food, water to drink, and places to live that weren’t going to burn down; and if all the (mostly retiree residents, here) could still think about was taking up more space with their cars and the continuing ability to walk on water without getting their feet wet they needed to grown up.
But I didn’t say all that (I am a lady), and it wouldn’t be productive at all- I still said more than I should have, probably – I said they just needed to accept they didn’t have infinite choices, people would have different needs in the future and I wasn’t comfortable binding the future residents to 50 years debt and maintenance for something that I didn’t think they would want.
I had a terrible crisis getting to the point where I could feel good about not doing what the people wanted, though, as I’d gotten some pretty yelly letters myself (IIRC “displays attitudes that are an example of precisely what is wrong with the world” was employed) and I worried that maybe when I took the job it really was just to give them what they wanted, even if it was completely insane to me (time of the populists, right?).
But then I got very grumpy about being a servant and decided it’d be better to think of myself as a server. I’d done that before – when you are a customer, you don’t get to ask your waitress for anything you want, you have to pick off the menu. Some substitutions are possible. If you tell me you need a top up, but I can see your glass is full, I’m not pouring wine or water on the table just because you told me to. If I see your glass is empty, I’ll ask if you want more (bad waitresses won’t ask, and then it’s a waste because it might not be drunk and needs to be dumped later. I’m always very anxious about the waste when people do that to me). I’ll fill your glass only as much as you want, or bring you the bill if you were done and want that instead.
Thanks for the meditation material!
@Lathechuck
Did you miss this passage in your rueters fact check “This is not due to the tests failing or confusing SARS-CoV-2 with influenza, however, but in order to transition toward using a test that can facilitate the diagnosis of both viruses.”
So the test can diagnose both, but we need a test that can diagnose both?
John,
At the exponential rate that the vaccine scam story seems to be unraveling, if they do try to have another lockdown there might be few other explanations that might be left standing. As you say, we will see. 🤔
Regarding the “lab leak” theory:
The genesis of the disease-causing agent(s) responsible for the current public health disaster is not ever going to be proven with any reasonable degree of certainty. I state this with a reasonable degree of certainty, subject to modification should conclusive evidence come to light.
This situation is a powerful magnet for the creation of seemingly plausible, and therefore believable, explanations, commonly known as “conspiracy theories.” While the amplification and embellishment of any particular theory does not make it more true, it certainly may increase the number of potential “true believers” who find it attractive. Such theories “go viral,” an especially apt metaphor in this case. The theories themselves become disease-causing agents. The disease is fear.
The truth is, we don’t know. We may never know. This is the terrifying thing no one wants to talk about.
To those interested in another viewpoint on the biology of the current situation:
https://gigaohmbiological.com/
The biologist makes some statements that perhaps @Mark L and others could comment on such as ADE is not (for practical purposes) distinguishable from escape variants and their is currently no correlate of immunity and thus have to rely on a concept called “immunobridging”. The speaker goes into detail on the inadequacies of focusing too much on antibody mechanisms and not on the complex system that is the immune system.
Here is an article on “immunobridging”.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2021/06/18/2003759394
Here’s CJ Hopkins with a shrill but possibly very prescient warning about where we’re heading with all this coronavirus-related “New Normal”.
And a question for everyone here: Technically we are still in the “trial” phase of the jab. Is it possible that everyone being jabbed is not getting the real deal? I’ve thought about this and can’t say, but an article yesterday that i read caused it to pop up in my mind again.
https://www.rt.com/uk/530020-zahawi-fully-vaccinated-placebo-nhs-app/
Thoughts?
@JMG and all
I’ve been meditating on this statement by Aliza: “I cannot understate people’s ability to not experience what they have not been told they are allowed to experience.”
The more I think about it, the more I feel that this is perhaps the single greatest problem with human consciousness on a mass scale that encompasses cults, religions, prophets, and now a globally coordinated messaging campaign supported by the leaders of multinational corporations, institutions, and foundations.
It also helps to understand the outcome of the centuries-long three-way battle between religion, occultism, and scientific materialism that JMG has discussed. Reportedly 1/3 of people have had direct spiritual experiences, and yet most of these people convince themselves that they are not real, and probably many more that we don’t hear about actually suppress such experiences subconsciously to the point that they have no memory of it.
I would vote for a future post or series on the construction and manipulation of narrative filters: the way each of us distills a nearly infinite amount of sensory, intellectual, and emotional input into a meaningful experience of life. I would also like to understand the distinction between physical-emotional-mental manipulation (propaganda, advertising, evangelism, gaslighting) and your working definition of magic, i.e. “change in consciousness in accordance with will.” Is the occult approach distinguished by employing only etheric influence, or are propagandists if effect operative mages – in which case it is easy to understand where the malevolent spell is coming from?
JMG, apologies if you’ve heard this quote: George Parkin Grant (Red Tory fame) once said in reply to a question as to why he was pessimistic, replied “I’m not a pessimist I’m an optimist – I think industrial civilization is doomed and will disappear”. Of course, during the rounds of CRT/PC that cranked up, he was one of the philosophers that was canceled. It dawned on me to today, listening to several co-workers talk about “losing their faith in human nature”, that what this equates to is, “losing my faith in other people’s faith in Progress”. Because the “human nature” on display is the normal human nature of being skeptical and thinking for yourself, wherever that ends up landing you. There’s a doctor here calling herself the “Vaccinator”. It’s great!
Ummmm this can’t be true:
Jim Smith, chairman of the Reuters Foundation and King of the Fact Checkers is also a senior director of Pfizer.
Fact-check that!
https://www.pfizer.com/people/leadership/board-of-directors/james_smith
TJandtheBear, yes but you’re forgetting that what’s also at stake is the hoped for ability to be able to feed oneself as well as one’s potential future children. This weighs heavily on her generation – the way is murky and livelihoods are like wisps of mist in the murk – hard to make out, uncertain, and tenuous for those who grew up in a no-longer world who are stepping into a not-yet world.
Raphanus, thanks for this. She’s already completed everything the community college can offer and is looking only at upper-division things at the state university. If she can drag her feet just a bit longer, perhaps everything will go back to online, or she may yet decide that the one in-person class she’d have this semester might not be worth it and push it back to gain some time. We’re walking a razors edge here and I’m praying every day that the situation be hastened in its unfolding so that she and others like her can be spared. She’s not interested in the “college experience.” That said, she’s found online classes to be unmotivating and less than fulfilling, and so she’d like to be able to take in-person classes.
Jeffrey, interesting. Now we’ll get to see if thorium follows the same rule as all other nuclear power projects: it’s safe, clean, and affordable until it gets built.
Denis, no surprises there. They’ve been doing that to people for a couple of years now with the covert backing of local governments, which is why I consider Antifa to be the paramilitary arm of the Democratic party.
Aziz, it depends on where you are. Here in the United States the physical aspects are already falling apart — a lot of people in inner cities and impoverished rural areas are having to get by in what amounts to 19th-century conditions. (There are urban neighborhoods in the US, for example, that no longer have running water; the water mains broke and rather than repair them, the city just shut off water to that street or block.) Keep in mind that evolution is not the same thing as progress, and many of those “traditional” viewpoints aren’t actually traditional at all — they’re new belief systems wearing the castoff clothing of older beliefs. Spengler points out that this sort of thing, which he calls the Second Religiosity, is a standard feature of civilizations in decline. As for young people with no jobs, they’re facing a very, very difficult future. Learning to handle austerity and do things for themselves might help.
Denis, good heavens, yes. It’s quite common in the years immediately before revolutions and the collapse of nations. You might look into France and Russia before their respective revolutions, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of the First World War.
Iuval, astrologically speaking, we’re making the transition from the Piscean to the Aquarian age, and so from a spirituality of collective consciousness in which the group is everything to a spirituality of personal consciousness where the individual is everything. Druidry focuses on nature, but it does so in terms of an individual orientation toward nature and the gods. The group, in a Druid setting, is a convenience for those who want it, not an essential part of Druid spirituality — the essence is your personal relationship and interaction with nature and the divine forces present in nature.
Scotlyn, thanks for this. It’s a standard part of occult teaching that the ordinary state of human consciousness is basically a shallow doze, in which the senses work but the thinking mind is still lost in dreams. Most of the time that’s more or less functional, but sometimes it becomes lethal. As for a magical response, have you done divination about that?
Info, interesting.
Ian, the book I used for my basic training in the tarot was Mastering the Tarot by Eden Gray. I believe it’s still available.
Bruno BL, perhaps you can point out where I said those were good things.
Phutatorius, Waite was the front man for a group of Anglican clergymen interested in the occult who liked to translate alchemical texts but couldn’t afford, for professional reasons, to have their names associated with anything that heretical. The translation in The Hermetic Museum is quite reliable — I’ve checked it against the Latin.
John, that’s certainly something to watch for. Keep in mind, though, that something like half the American people still believe the media narrative on all this.
CLR and Mister N., thanks for both of these.
Mr. House, hmm! That’s a fascinating question. If this is a large-scale trial, they’d need to keep careful track of who gets what shot and what health effects follow — do you have any evidence that they’re doing this?
Mark L., so noted and I’ll consider it.
Celadon, what exactly was making these people “lose their faith in human nature,” i.e., other people’s willingness to pretend that we’re still progressing? This is something I try to track closely, so the data points would be very helpful.
Mr. House, no surprises there. Meet the new keeper of the henhouse; his name is Mr. Fox…
A few Covid-related perspectives, in response to comments above:
Re: the PCR test being retired (@Mr. House @Lathechuck)
In my opinion this is a case of reading way too much into a simple procedural decision. They are *not* saying that the flu is being misdiagnosed as covid. They are simply saying that they plan to replace the covid-specific (and false-positive-prone) PCR test with a test that is able to detect both covid and influenza and accurately distinguish between them.
Re: the lab leak hypothesis
Although I haven’t researched this extensively, there is considerable evidence in favor of human engineering, most notably the presence of a “furin cleavage site” that allows it to readily infect human cells, and also the fact that it appeared to be fully adapted to humans when it first emerged, which is unlikely for evolving zoonotic diseases. Then there is the fact that there are only 2-3 labs on the planet that are conducting gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, and the first human outbreak occurred in the same city as one of them. Or in the words of Jon Stewart, “Oh my God, there’s been an outbreak of chocolaty goodness in Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened?”. Nicholas Wade also makes a persuasive and well-investigated case: https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Although we may never know for sure, there is some value in pursuing this question, most notably because if it *is* an engineered virus, the team that created it may know things that would be helpful with the global health response, and also because we might want to start treating viral gain-of-function research with the same attitude as nuclear weapons in space.
Re: ADE vs. immune escape (@CLR)
Although it may not always be possible to distinguish these outcomes, in general:
–If we observe indistinguishable outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated people, we are looking at immune escape.
–If we observe worse outcomes in vaccinated people compared with unvaccinated people, we are looking at antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).
It is important to note that the unvaccinated population skews strongly young and healthy at this point (i.e. logically those most at risk of the disease have chosen to be vaccinated), so any reasonable comparison will control for age and underlying conditions, and any comparison that fails to do that is unreasonable.
There’s also a ‘self knowledge by proxy’ strategy with the genie. The first wish is for the genie to read your mind. Not just surface thoughts. Full depth – all the way down. Then for the second you just say “I wish-” and the genie fills in the blanks, now they know you better than you know yourself. You get your deepest desires, and it’s a suprise. For those who like to live dangerously. 🙂
Several years ago, well before COVID was a thing, I started thinking that one of the ways the religion of progress and the legitimacy of the elites could get hammered in a major way was a major scandal involving a vaccine. I do not think this would have been the case before 2013 or so, before that I don’t think the fallout would have eclipsed that of DDT, Thalidomide, or Vioxx, all of which were significant events but didn’t shake things up enough to discredit Progress. Starting around 2013 though, vaccines started getting really pushed as not just another medical technology but one of the most important pillars of progress, and any questioning of the official line on any vaccine made you a heretic. Those of us who’d been following stories like William Thompson the CDC whistleblower could see the health agencies weren’t trustworthy, but the mainstream media just ignored such things and they weren’t on most people’s radar.
COVID just greatly intensified the narrative that had already been taking shape in the previous decade, bringing public health and vaccines to the forefront in a way I could have hardly imagined before 2020. From the time in spring 2020 where it became clear that COVID was here to stay, I was pretty sure that what happened with the eventual vaccine would end up playing a huge role in the collective consciousness of our time. If they got lucky and the vaccine was successful enough and had few enough nasty side effects that they could be swept under the rug, faith in Progress would be revitalized at least in the near term, but if the vaccine had enough issues that couldn’t be ignored, it could be a fatal blow to Progress and our institutions and authority figures.
Even a month ago, I thought it still possible that the vaccine as saviour narrative could be maintained and the unpleasant side effects swept under the rug. Now I don’t think so anymore, as the rapidly failing efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is showing. This changes the game considerably, as many who were willing to go through with the two doses of vaccine once are likely to change sides when it turns into boosters every few months. Since the second dose tends to cause worse side effects than the first, it’s likely to me that each additional dose will end up even worse than the one before it. Not to mention that the long term effects of even the first two doses aren’t known. Now I consider it pretty much a given that the narrative will collapse, albeit with major unknowns still regarding the timing and severity of said collapse. If the long term effects aren’t too awful, there’s still a chance that the narrative could fade away more as people get sick of it and the politicians and media realize they have to back away, but considering how they’re acting now I don’t think that’s all that likely. The other end of the spectrum would be if the vaccines end up actually worsening COVID considerably as some such as Geert Vanden Bossche and now Robert Malone are saying is a distinct possibility. That could lead to a hard crash scenario, I mean specifically a hard crash of faith in Progress and our institutions, not some apocalyptic crash of civilization.
Anyway, it’s crazy seeing something that I though of as a far-out possibility a few years ago now unfolding on a scale beyond what I thought was possible.
Hello JMG,
*On the topic of psychic vampires again (In the sense of people who are the living counterpart of revenants according to your book) where would you say most fatal encounters would occur today the most? Under what circumstances, situations and places? (Waking world included if it can happen there too somehow, not sure)
Is it often deliberate or unintentional and how hard would it be to catch culprits doing the fatal drainings or killings? I read the book about psychic attacks and the author seems to distinguish between ‘leeches’ and ‘vampires’.
*Would bullets and shotgun shells made of iron also ‘repel’ certain ethereal beings or is it only sharp steel/iron objects so far as goes? This seems to be a mystery some have pondered on.
*Alot of people nowadays seem to claim that the ‘hunts’ of the past were driven by a misunderstanding of body decomposition and tuberculosis killing people. Thoughts on this? I mean with the Egyptians it seemed to indicate a level of mummification being the bare minimum to allow Khus staying in our world to be a thing. So I guess you could counter argue that in some cases the process slowed decomposition in bodies.
*Will there be a new book out focused on the same topics as ‘Monsters’ did but with more beings added for examining like the Chinese ‘Jiang Shi’ and coverage of what stuff like the legend of Abternarch meant?
Thanks Again,
L
I agree with those who feel there was a shift somewhere in the 70’s-80’s. I was in high school in the late 70’s. Vietnam was over, the draft was over, and boys didn’t even have to sign up for Selective Service until Carter ruined things in 1980. We could leave the school grounds at lunch time, kids could smoke on school grounds(maybe not so good!), there were programs where you could be a three year grad, or have a shortened school day your senior year. They had half-day off campus classes students could attend. They did have a school resource officer (plain clothes police) for security reasons. I suspect, but am not sure, that this was started because of racial problems and fights that happened around 1970 at the school. Over all, I think we felt pretty free, though lot of us had become pretty cynical because of events of the previous decade.
In my senior year (1979-80) I felt a definite change in the way the wind was blowing. Some was because of a local situation where the principal resigned; rumor was he had an affair with the secretary, or was forced out for not complying with some changes wanted by the school system. Maybe both. The guy that replaced him clamped down on things hard. True, there had been a couple of fights, but what high school doesn’t have those? It was like they were watching us more, stopping us in the halls more, and such. I had one of those off campus classes for part of my junior year and all my senior year, and I was grateful to be out of that environment for half a day. I think it was at this time they stopped allowing students off campus at lunch time. I was gone part of the time anyway, so this didn’t affect me. There was talk of bringing in dogs to sniff lockers for drugs. I was against this, seeing problems right away as we had shared lockers. How are you going to know who is guilty? What if something was planted? It was around this time I realized things were shifting to a “you are guilty until proven innocent” viewpoint. A feeling of heavy handedness was in the air. I felt I was graduating at the right time, and was so glad to get out before things got worse.
As I grew older, I watched what went on with education. The drug sniffing dogs were brought in, students were restricted to the building and grounds except for special cases, random drug testing was started, and buildings were kept locked during school time so that you had to buzz an intercom for someone from the office to let you in. Some schools started using metal detectors. Security cameras everywhere. Oh, and the concept of “lockdown” was introduced. To me, schools looked like a minimum security prison.
I had wondered what would happen when we have people who have spent their whole educational experience under these conditions. Now we know. They think there is nothing wrong with someone demanding your pee, locking you in for whatever reason, watching your every movement, etc. You are guilty until proven innocent. Many of these rules have been introduced into the workplace. And I’m sure it all contributed to the COVID lockdown.
Some might say “We live in a more dangerous time. We need these restrictions for good reason”. Remember the Boston Marathon Bombings? Everyone understood that these dangerous people needed to be tracked down and caught. A lockdown of Boston was accepted as a necessary action. And it worked. But…I still remember watching this on the news, thinking “This will not end well, this will be used for other purposes”.
I don’t know how much of this is helpful, but it’s my observation that a tree has been planted, which grows little by little, and has now started bearing fruit. All we can hope for is that not all of those people, raised under restriction, will bend with it, but instead some will see through it for the control it really is.
If you have kids, homeschool if you can, or send them to a good private school even if you have to live very basic to do it. My way of dealing with the crazy is: seek inner control over self, rather than outer control over others. Stay low. Stay quiet. Keep it simple. Don’t expect much. Enjoy what you have. Be self-sufficient (as possible). Don’t get involved. Let the world go to H*** if it wants.
Joy Marie
DFC #359: That’s why I love the Bee!
Joy Marie
Hi Scotlyn, #403,
You’re not the first to compare this Covid injectate campaign with hypnosis. Below is a video link from a Scottish professional stage hypnotist who makes that explicit claim, and he presents/analyzes evidence to substantiate it. Here—
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/hypnotist-reveals-government-brainwashing-tactics-hugo-talks-lockdown_YQoz1qil6ASl6Cf.html
—Lunar Apprentice
weren’t there two people here who asked about tarot divination… and isn’t that what our study of “The Doctrine of High Magic” is all about??? bypassing that “little book” that comes with everything?
—
i’m so loving hearing about the reality of how feminism started because i did not know ANY of that about being against abortion. wow. now whatever can make the medical industry money is okay so they encourage women to “shout their abortions” proudly.
i fold on everything. every good idea gets twisted horribly into something barely recognizable.
THIS is why i’m clinging to “The Doctrine of High Magic” and our readings.
Violet you really inspired a lot from the Bloody Mary. i’m hardly done with chapter two. Random Acts of Karma and i are putting a hurtin’ on that chapter two.
and Random i’ll answer you back there later. i’m trying to live and make things come to be in Real Life and i need much time to THINK so i’m not just typing.
—-
and dearest Violet, i had no idea you were so young because you are soooo sooo old already. i have no idea how you made it as far as you have, as sensitive and open and interesting as you’ve always been.
i think the scariest thing for me NOW is how there is no underground anywhere. up until the 80s and 90s–and AIDS killed off the last of the truly daring interesting artists and beings and made the young afraid of sex.
and now there is no main street no local economy or community in real life. the corporate coups over society is over and everyone’s been trained from the innerwebs to go along to get along because being different will get you shunned, have your career taken from you, you will be exiled without a court of law.
so the fears are real.
i’m trying to re-localize ANYTHING and it is so difficult. whenever i suggest anything in real life, it always turns into something to stream or court strangers all over the world. there is no there there.
you’ve gotta watch HAROLD & MAUDE if you haven’t. Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort are like secret patron saints of the depressed freaky people in a bureaucratic world. even the movie’s own director didn’t make it out of here unscathed. and all this was before AIDS and the corporate takeover.
i don’t know what’s up next, i only know my reason for being alive now is to try and push the cleavage of Reality together so everyone’s too distracted by it to look at their magic phones. this is worse than the crack epidemic.
so good luck and godspeed. / i’m new here, too. (smile)
—
and Papa G- thanks for having this forum re the serums. when i heard KRS-One and George Clinton were doing free concerts in NYC only for the ones who can prove they got the shot, i folded on my last remaining moldy beliefs in art and revolution and holding out …then selling out. oy. the agony still hurts… i loved those cats. still do but they’re just good Muzak to me now. i believe nothing any of them ever said now.
they’re all whores.
thanks youse guys here who aren’t whores. for the rest of us. that’s why i stick around.
living suicide indeed…
x
It’s an interesting discussion about westward migration in America possibly reversing. In my family, one side mostly immigrated directly from Europe to the upper midwest in the 1800s and has mostly stayed there, the other side has generally been in America for longer and is mostly clustered in the mid-Atlantic and Ohio valley, my parents and later myself have been more of the outliers for moving around more, although a few others in my extended family have moved away from their home regions, mostly westward.
I’ve long expected the general westward (and to a certain extent southward) movement of people in America to reverse due to energy depletion and climate change. I hadn’t really considered the possibility that Robert brought up of significant amounts of Americans ending up migrating back to Europe. While I can imagine that elites might make that journey if America ends up in a nasty place, I’ve always assumed that considering the greater population density of Europe and the Old World in general, it would tend to be a worse place during the long descent and wouldn’t de attractive to or welcoming to significant numbers of Americans. Since America (and the New World in general) has more fertile land per population, I’ve always thought it would remain the better place to be.
One thing I’ve realized over a number of years is that I’ve tended to overemphasize the importance of purely physical considerations when considering how well a place will fare in the future. I’ve tended to base my predictions on things like climate, soil fertility, natural resources and population density rather than cultural considerations. Possibly it’s an overcompensation for the fact that the mainstream tends to dismiss the fact that we’re still dependent on our natural environment, possibly because I’m on the introverted side, but the years since 2013 especially have really taught me how cultural and psychological factors play such a role in the changing of the times. So now that makes me wonder if it is possible that historical migration trends may end up reversing enough to not only bring people back to the East from out West, but also bring significant numbers of people back to Europe. The question is, in what scenario would Europe welcome significant numbers of American immigrants? Well, one possibility is that if Europe is fighting the sort of war against the Islamic world that some here are predicting, the current European disdain for Americans and their guns could be quickly replaced by a need for more soldiers with experience with guns, and if America was in really bad shape, Americans might be lured into European military service in exchange for the promise of citizenship.
Mr. House-
Responding to: “Did you miss this passage in your rueters fact check “This is not due to the tests failing or confusing SARS-CoV-2 with influenza, however, but in order to transition toward using a test that can facilitate the diagnosis of both viruses.”
So the test can diagnose both, but we need a test that can diagnose both?”
I interpreted the Reuter’s text above as saying that we have a test for SARS-CoV-2 which does not confuse CoV-2 with influenza. It tests only for CoV-2. But we will have a test that can diagnose both CoV-2 and influenza. I assume that last year’s practice may have required two samples from the patient, to run a CoV-2 test and an influenza test, and that next year’s practice may get both results from a single sample.
JMG, thank you, I believe I’ve found the answer to my question – with you help. I’ll leave it at that since it sounds like its more valuable to treat that question as an “exercise for the reader”.
Also nice touch with the meditation comment at the end – I didn’t realize it at first but it turns out that was another cleverly disguised clue.
@ Scotlyn, two of the four people I know who died of COVID-19 took longer than two weeks following their positive tests to die. The acquaintance was put on a ventilator, taken off, put back on … it took her close to a month to die. My mother was diagnosed a year ago, on July 31, and died on August 20. My siblings and I refused to allow her to be put on a ventilator; despite that and her failing bone marrow, she still survived for three weeks. So at the very least you’ll need to stretch out the period of time you allow for those diagnosed with COVID-19 to die to get a fair comparison.
My mother died by herself in the hospital. All my siblings and I could do was talk to each other on the phone, and there was plenty of that for the three weeks it took her to die. For us the worst part of the situation is that we couldn’t be with her and each other during her dying process. On the other hand, by her dying of COVID she was spared having to go into assisted living, which would have happened if she hadn’t gotten COVID and which she had made very clear she was strongly opposed to. (She lived over 1000 miles away from me, the closest one of us, and she refused to move in with any of us.) For her COVID was like the pneumonia that is said to be the old man’s friend, except for us not being allowed to be with her in her last weeks. I think there are more stories like this about COVID, but we aren’t allowed to discuss them in public.
@Denis, sigh, shades of the McCarthy era. I remember what, was it the ACLU? protected the right of a neo-Nazi organization to march, back in the 1950s when the scars of the Holocaust were still vivid.
@Pixielated, the degree of rudeness and just plain meanness shown by these residents is appalling. To drive them to tears and then fault them for crying… my ex-husband pulled that one on me following hours of verbal abuse that drove me to the tears, and the scars remained for a long, long time.
That Fourth Turning book noted that my contemporaries would be anguished by the brutality of the Crisis Era, and that it would be up to what people are calling Generation Z to bring back the kindness and helpfulness so totally lacking. That is, my grandchildren and grand-nieces and nephew. But that we probably wouldn’t live to see the end of it. Their prescription? Be helpful, and mentor the young.
Disney and Walmart is making employees get the COVID shot.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/business/walmart-mask-policy-delta-covid/index.html
Joy Marie
I thought I’d throw this out here. A lot of the fear-mongering is based on long-haul COVID, which is a truly disabling condition, but may not be caused by COVID at all, or only in limited cases:
From https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/22/we-need-to-start-thinking-more-critically-speaking-cautiously-long-covid/ :
“More than 2/3 of long haulers tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 per RT-PCR test, and more than 2/3 also tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies per survey study of 3762 people around the world per Characterizing Long COVID in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact (medrxiv.org) Study after study has found that antibodies remain positive in a majority of people with confirmed infections for many months, so it’s highly probable that long-haulers who did NOT have a positive PCR test in the acute phase and who also have negative antibody tests are “true negatives,” i.e., they did not have COVID.”
In the panic over COVID, researchers are wondering if newly emerging illnesses caused to other factors and curable by different means may remain concealed. The researcher from whom I received the above also sent the following, and I note a few people in the comments above are reporting similar symptoms (and my mother who lives in one of the world’s most highly electropolluted cities, Denver, has just been diagnosed with fibromyalgia):
“From this Dec. 2020 survey study of 3762 people around the world Characterizing Long COVID in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact | medRxiv
% Symptoms reported by Long COVID patients that are also classic EHS/microwave sickness symptoms https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802v2.full:
From FIg. 2
45% + had skin sensations
70% had tachycardia
35% had extreme thirst
30% had skin rashes
15% had bladder control issues
From Fig. 3,
25% + experienced feeling “electrically zapped/shocked”
85% had cognitive functioning problems
85% had brain fog
70% had memory problems
60% had difficulty with executive functioning
40% had “slow thoughts”
80% had sleep problems
70% had insomnia
60% had anxiety
50% had irritability
50% had mood lability
75% had headaches
25% had headaches after mental exertion”
Sorry for multi-posting, but I read this after I posted the previous link.
Corporate America is largely requiring the vax. “It’s good business.”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/investing/companies-vaccine-requirement-delta-covid/index.html
I notice they admit if you don’t get vaccinated, requirements will be put on you not for safety reasons, but as punishment. “You must be vaccinated if you want to come to work,” he tells me. “There are some organizations that are trying one more step before that. They’re saying, if you choose not to be vaccinated, then you will have to be tested several times during the week on your own dime. And you will have to wear a mask in the workplace and not any mask, but that N95 surgical mask. I mean, we are going to, at the end of the day, make this a little uncomfortable for you because you’re making it uncomfortable and the workplace less comfortable for your colleagues.” At least they’re being honest for once.
Joy Marie
Prague, CZ, and energy. Humm..Ok… There is definately a non Western Euro feeling there, the first named tribe in what became CZ were the Boii, a Celtic tribe getting away from Rome. From which the name Bohemia comes. Then the Slavs came in. Now 35% of native-born Czechs have Celtic DNA. Which gives an east-west composition. There is also a Czech Orthodox Church. Then there is the Charles bridge, which made Prague even more of a major trade center. And the Prague Orloj clock. One can think of CZ as being a Slavic tree, with Celtic roots, with some branches grafted from Mexico through Emperor Maximilian. Some of the best Mexican restaurants I’ve ever eaten in are in CZ, while the oldest brewer in Mexico is Bohemian. As fart as the energy, it’s the same as Ive felt in parts of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, along with Greek and Slavic harmonics. Or to put it another way non Roman.
JMG – So, the CDC-driven federal ban on evictions will expire (without Congressional action, which seems unlikely) in hours. Millions of American households are behind on their rent or mortgage payments, and eviction is the traditional remedy. However, if I were a landlord, why would I want to trade one deadbeat tenant that I know, for another that I don’t? An empty unit doesn’t pay rent, either. If I ran a bank, how many foreclosures could we process?
When the covid lockdowns forced many people out of work overnight, it made a certain amount of sense (in spirit) to provide federal funds to make up for the taking of their jobs. Ideally, the money would have passed from the tenants to the landlords to the banks. I worry that, just as the federal government re-wrote the landlord-tenant relationship overnight, it may also have re-written the bank regulations to suspend the solvency rules. Your take?
Dear John,
It’s truly sad to hear from you what’s happening to the US, and I’m noticing alarming signs in my country, as the gap between the classes is widening, with escalating corruption on many levels, though the situation here in KSA is a bit different. Some of my recently graduated friends actually got jobs, especially in engineering related fields, but the amount of nepotism is nauseating. So, I’m trying to look for jobs that are more culturally and artistically oriented, and move away as much as possible from anything prone to the decline. Thankfully, I’m a natural “fakir” and been disciplining myself since my mid-teen years, I just want to be ready for the next level in my self-sustainability.
About the traditionalist wave, I can definitely see some of its positive aspects, but the effect of these beliefs on their survival instincts is alarming and causing more ego, not enlightenment. Yet, I’m hoping it’s just a phase of their initiation and it will be “castoff”.
I really hope everyone to ride this wave safely.
Aziz
For those who may be interested in a different perspective on the virus-that-must-not-be-named, there have been some observations that the virus seems to ‘do its thing’ regardless of how much we try to control it via the use of masks, social distancing and lock-downs (comparing the ‘curves’ of Germany and Sweden is classic) and now vaccines. Without wading too much into the ‘everything is fated’ camp, there have been some astrologers who have been looking at the timing of virus waves in various countries and appear to perceive predictable patterns based on each country’s ‘chart’. My favourite so far is the vedic astrologer PVR Narasimha Rao. Rao’s predictions (sans the astrological details), made in April 2021, are briefly summarized in the following article: https://www.ibtimes.co.in/covid-third-wave-astrologer-predicts-timeline-next-virus-outbreak-it-near-837612
Rao’s ‘viral’ (in both senses) April video seems to have disappeared from Youtube… but… that kind of thing can’t possibly happen, can it? 😊
Hi A. Karhukainen,
I would think one problem with New Zealand is that it seems like many rich people have properties there with just that idea. Looking to continue being comfortable right through collapse.
That seems like a spot pirates would hit up.
Thanks,
Johnny
Aliza, that’s really nasty that happened to you. I haven’t heard of anything like that among the people I know.
The reaction I experienced and heard about from people I know well is more along the lines of first jab nothing to mildly offcolor with weird rash showing up about a week later for 3 days and vanishing without causing any actual problem, and second jab felt horrid for a day/bad flare of fibromyalgia symptoms plus thermostat possibly going slightly funny for a couple of hours. I can’t comment on rash/lack of it since I got the second less than a week ago and it could still show up.
One person I know well had 2 heart attack a few months after vaccination, but he’s had atherosclerosis for many years, as is common among men on that side of his family, and this wasn’t his first heart attack. I doubt that was related to the vaccine.
Mr Greer and Commenters,
Great discussion this week. Many thanks to all.
First, to Godozo, can you contact me about the A-Fib? (JMG please give my email address to Godozo if asked. Thanks.) I have been diagnosed with the same with no consideration for the remainder of my being and body. Why separate the A-Fib from lung scarring and extended Covid effects and so on? (Rhetorical question actually.) So I’m pretty much dealing with this stuff alone. Whatever you have done that has resulted in a relief of symptom is interesting as a possible way to get on top of the issues my entire body is experiencing. Thanks for being here and helping me to see that I am really not alone.
On to a couple of interesting books I have just finished reading: The Doubt Factory, by Paolo Bacigalupi. Written in 2014, it is the story of a group of youths (yes, Young Adult fiction) who expose a company that provides coverage for the harmful products of big corporations. Fun read and full of info about the disinformation industry. And also a book by the venerated old dead guy, H. L. Menchen. A Gang of Pecksnifs is a compilation of columns from the 1920s about his observations of the world of newspapers and the readers of those papers. Nothing new under the sun, as they say. This stuff could be written right now. Menchen, however, does excel in the use of a truly magnificent vocabulary and a penchant for invective sharp enough to slice roast beef very, very thin.
May you all be filled with the joy of being alive this fine summer day, Aged Spirit
@Alex, regarding your question about McCarthyism, a very large percentage of the public was on board, in particular the demographic group we now call the “Deplorables.” At least among my own relatives, a lot of the animosity and prejudices against that group date from the McCarthy years and Jim Crow. My aunt was turned over to the military police “for your own good” by a busybody lady friend, and the police had a look at what she’d said and shrugged and let her go. We are still in the precedented zone until and unless it goes beyond cancellation or imprisonment of prominent people and shooting actually begins.
@ Waffles #39
Ever Clean kitty litter. It’s the absolute best ever. Yes, it’s expensive. It’s also the best kitty litter I’ve ever used in over forty years of cat ownership. Have one litter box for each floor of your house. Scoop every day for best results.
A good quality dry food (I use IAMS) along with a daily supplement (a spoonful per cat) of some canned wet food. Dry cat food is dry and I wonder if it contains everything a cat actually needs, hence the canned cat food. Don’t waste $$ on cat soup, cat broth, cat appetizers, or cat mousse.
Fresh water at all times in a CERAMIC bowl. They seem to drink more from ceramic than metal. No plastic cat dishes. Every thrift shop has a lovely selection of china bowls and plates that can be repurposed for your cats.
If your cats are strictly indoors (which is healthier for them) AND you do not have a dog, they’ll need much less vet care. I don’t use flea treatments or the heavy vaccine schedule because they’re not outside being exposed to a host of parasites. If you have a dog, your cats will be exposed to everything the dog brings inside.
Cats get bored so play with them. They’re also better in pairs as they can keep each other company. I have had multiple cats and it seems to work best with one boy kitty and several girl kitties. Yes, they’re all neutered but gender still makes a difference.
You can train cats but it’s not easy. They refuse to work without pay (i.e. treats). Unlike dogs, a pat on the head and praise won’t work.
@Aliza,
My husband and I had the same sort of cold as you under the same sort of circumstances–cheap international hotel (with lots of Chinese in our case) in January 2020. My husband had bronchitis so severe, he thought it was pneumonia. I gave him raw garlic to chew, and that got him through it. He has not had the vaccine so far, and I won’t, and if he starts making noises about getting it due to media or social pressure, I’ll tell him what happened to you both.
Incidentally, have you filed a report on your injury? With the medical system in denial about this, it will be up to the victims to report it on their own. Children’s Health Defense has a page on how to do it: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/injured-by-vaccine-how-to-report-it/
RE: post #3
I would wish that I never came into contact with the genie. But if I had to provide wishes, it would be for the trivial like the the leaky oil seal in my car would fix itself. Let the river of events flow freely.
Lunar apprentice,
In the 70s the go to villians of choice were blackmen, in the 80s it was Arab terrorists, in the 90s it was Arabs, blacks, or some random foreigners. Now it’s the white working class. Welcome to the club, try not to take Hollywood so seriously!
Regards,
Varun
Kashtan, something was going to give fairly soon one way or another — the combination of increasing arrogance and corruption within the scientific community and increasing skepticism outside that community is an explosive blend. (That was why the toxic GMO corn featured as a backstory element in my novel Retrotopia.) At this point — yeah, if it turns out that the covid serum has really nasty side effects of any kind, away we go.
Lux, those are very good questions to which I don’t have answers. Remember that I wrote that discussion twenty years ago and haven’t really looked into the subject since then. No, I don’t expect to write another book on the subject.
Joy Marie, I felt it a little later — in the early 1980s — but yeah, I felt it.
Erika, you’re most welcome. Yeah, it hurts to watch ’em sell out.
Kashtan, I’m another data point. My family moved as far west as you can go in my great-great-grandfather’s time, ending up on Grays Harbor on the Pacific coast of Washington state. Me? I’m in Rhode Island these days, and very much appreciating it.
Char, glad to hear it. Yes, I try to leave a trail of clues.
Lathechuck, it seems to me that nobody anywhere thought this through, and the consequences — well, I can’t see any way they’ll be good.
Aziz, thanks for the data points! We’re moving into a very rough time and my guess is that each of us will need to find a unique personal way to get through it.
Ron, thanks for this. While I don’t practice Vedic astrology I’m impressed by it — it seems to make good predictions reliably — so I don’t dismiss Rao’s analysis at all.
@Ron M
“For those who may be interested in a different perspective on the virus-that-must-not-be-named, there have been some observations that the virus seems to ‘do its thing’ regardless of how much we try to control it via the use of masks, social distancing and lock-downs (comparing the ‘curves’ of Germany and Sweden is classic) and now vaccines.”
I agree with you on that perspective, and I have watched and compared state and national curves from day 1. There is no obvious impact of masks and lockdowns and social distancing, etc., with the probable exception of those countries that have maintained near-zero case counts (and have essentially declared martial law in the process – e.g. Australia).
I expect that process to continue, and there are definitely factors that drive the rise and fall of these infection curves that our current science cannot explain. I tend to think that the vaccines will have a detectable effect – for better or worse – but as for the fact that cases in the UK peaked two weeks ago and are now falling fast, and the US is in a steep rise, I don’t think anyone has a good answer for *why* that is the case. Epidemiological modeling has a terrible track record so far; it would certainly be interesting if astrological predictions proved more accurate.
One of my hypotheses, born of observation, is that our interventions may be more effective at controlling *who* is infected than at controlling *how many* people are infected overall. In which case it becomes ironic that staying home to “protect essential workers” actually just ensures that infection occurs disproportionately among essential workers, i.e. it is an altruistic lie to justify the selfish decision to reduce one’s personal risk.
@Joy Marie
“Corporate America is largely requiring the vax. “It’s good business.” ”
If that continues it certainly won’t help with the ongoing labor shortage, although it might help small businesses if it triggers a mass labor exodus from corporate America.
@Jade Dragon (#199)
I’ve been working on a first novel for just over a year now. It is basically complete
but has sections that still need working out and I am going to have to diagram it to
make sure the time line is consistent as I have a number of story arcs going. I can
only repeat what JMG has already said. Write first and edit later. Don’t worry about
the ‘gibberish’. Garbage can be deleted or even recycled. You never know where your
next story will be coming from.
I write first and edit afterwards. Never let the inner critic in you get in the
way of writing. That can totally kill any creativity. I find sections that come
with seemingly no effort on my part. I type it out without even knowing what’s
going to come until it’s there. Then it’s just a matter of fleshing it out.
Other sections I find myself struggling with. I think it’s mainly because the
creative process happens deep in the subconscious. You just can’t force it.
It will come when it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I think in some ways the writing process is akin to magic.
I’m minded of that line from Little Big Man by the character Old Lodge Skins:
“Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
If you get really stuck, just step away for a while and do something else. Then come back and resume.
Eventually the magic will work.
Dear JMG,
I was wondering if you had finished the Bureus’ Adul-Runa Rediviva translation, and if it is due to be printed?
Is anyone else finding it incredibly creepy how determined some people are to argue that none of what’s happening with the efforts to get people to take the vaccines counts as coercion?
Post #451 Varun
My memory of Hollywood and MSM villains (pretty much the same) are Mexican drug lords, Russians Arab terrorists and guys with thick eastern European accents of unspecified nationality. In the 70’s, due to the national disillusionment following the US defeat in Vietnam, many movies portrayed the US government as a villain IIRC. After Reagan, the US was rehabilitated with the likes of Tom Clancy leading the charge of a new, smart and slick US full of power and morality. Gag me with a spoon.
I may be wrong but I do not think many movies portrayed black villains. Prior to the 60’s Native Americans were the go-to bad guys for Western movies but evil railroad men made appearances.
The Chinese will certainly make Hollywood appearances once the movie industry gets tooled up for a new propaganda blitz.
Darkest Yorkshire, 186.
Thanks for your thoughts. Spirit below seems to resonate with the idea of telluric currents, especially if solar radiation gets involved.
Lathechuck @ #441
The real beneficiary of the expiration of the eviction moratorium will be corporations who will gain large amounts of real estate on the cheap. Hence, this may be why the moratorium was not extended by the democrats and their bed-mates, US corporations and financial elites.
https://www.rt.com/usa/530813-eviction-blackrock-great-reset/
It does make sense given the objective of the Great Reset with its notion that the average American will own nothing by 2030. Yup, right on schedule. This begs the question of who will own everything. Why, of course, your friendly mega corporation who only has your best interest will own everything. Modern day feudalism, I would say.
Waiting for the Crisis
One of the themes in this Open Post is that we feel a crisis simmering but we don’t know what form it will take, or when.
There may be a crisis this year. But the current level of tension and uncertainty could simmer along for quite a while, so we also need to find ways to live in an uncomfortable environment, to protect ourselves, learning ways to cope.
I’ve been rereading Orwell this week. He writes “I don’t quite know in what year I first knew for certain that the present war was coming. After 1936, of course, the thing was obvious to anyone except an idiot. For several years the coming war was a nightmare to me….”
In 1937 he travels to Spain, fights on the Aragon front supporting the government; he’s shot through the throat. September, 1939: Hitler invades Poland. Two days later, France and Britain declare war on Germany. June, 1940: French resistance collapses and more than 300,000 British troops are evacuated from Dunkirk to England in by naval vessels and civilian fishing boats.
Orwell tries to join the Army but he’s rejected due to poor health. For three years, he trains local volunteers in the Home Guard; he manages international radio programs for the BBC. German bombs fall on London, demolishing 70,000 buildings and damaging 1.7 million more. Children are evacuated from the city. The war ends in September, 1945.
That’s what one crisis looked like. That’s how long a crisis might take. We happen to know what Orwell did and how he felt since he wrote about it, but all the British people who lived then had to cope with those challenges and they did. We also can find ways to live through difficult times.
DutyBound,
I live on the West Coast, after moving here from some time overseas. I grew up in the Midwest and, for reasons that I think are implanted in every American’s brain, I thought I had to move west. The West was progress, the frontier, the snappy, mid-century modern home with a flying car pad on the roof. It was The Future.
All I found was a part of the country that may have been nice decades ago, but now was run by globalist money lords with billion dollar corporations selling out to China and importing cheap labor from overseas. At least, that is in the cities. But the cities run the rural areas so things aren’t much better there.
Now I want to move east, hopefully to New England, but the Midwest would be fine, too. Any place where one can live relatively cheaply and freely. There are a lot of small towns that are ready to thrive again if enough people want to make it work. New Hampshire has the Free State Project which seems to be the California of the early 21st Century. Never in my life had I expected a state in the east to be a model of the future. That’s how brainwashed I was about the west being the best.
Maybe this receding from west back to east is a microcosm of a larger wave of the Faustian civilization receding back to its original source.
@Denis (post#400)
I have really been enjoying the “Revolutions” Podcast by Mike Duncan. I listen to it on YouTube (it has no visuals). It may be available elsewhere. He does in depth descriptions of various revolutions. He has nine “seasons” so far: English Revolution (Cromwell), American revolution, French Revolution, Haitian revolution, Simon Bolivar, July Revolution, Revolutions of 1848, “The Paris Commune”, and the Mexican revolution. I am listening to the French revolution now.
What struck me about the revolutions so far is how deeply incompetent and out of touch the leadership was to the problems in society.
Playlists for those interested:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsPGbvAr_3ks2dr1PLKNZRQ/playlists
Dear Eldritch Piglet, I can relate to the difficulty of expressing these sorts of things in words! Thank you for the clarifications.
Dear Panda, that is all so fascinating, thank you!
Dear Dutybound, thank you for this!
Dear Erika, I’m delighted that you found my thoughts on “Myths Over Miami” inspiring! I can so relate to the sense of the end of the underground you write about. For about a decade I lived in various corridors of the underground, and now none of them really exist at all really. There goes my plan B! Actually, it’s more like there goes my plans A through F. The sense of there being no there there as you put it seems to me very right on. There’s such a pervasive hollowness and a sense of mirage; of an image that vanishes when approached. That said, it’s so good and beautiful to read of your reason for being alive! As painful and difficult as these times are they seem to me also extremely conducive and even supportive for the flowering of the souls of those individuals who work with the times constructively and consciously.
@Patricia, yeah, I hear ya.
The thing is, we all know there are people who weaponize tears.
But this instance should have been so clear; it immediately undermined her entire professional credibility – no matter that she was gamely trying to choke them back – and it was in a context that made it clear she was ashamed and believed she had failed in at least one way she found really serious and felt responsible for. Her accuser was also another white woman with considerably more money and social influence.
I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out how to explain the difference reliably, to push back on this ‘the only reason white women ever cry is to manipulate everyone else’ idea, but I can’t.
RE: anon #456
RE: Creepy coercion pro vax.
No, actually, I haven’t seen or heard anyone arguing that pro vax drives, mandates, etc are not coercion.
What I’ve seen and heard in the news and editorials is discussions of how to motivate or convince people to get the vaccine. The subtext here is that people have a choice and the various organs of society need to mobilize to get them to make the right choice, which is or course to get vaccinated. This subtext is always implied and never stated directly. I have yet to see* or hear a mainstream news source consider any argument against getting vaccinated or to humor in any way the notion that not getting the vaccine is a valid choice.
* there was one article in Wired that talked about the risk/benefit of covid vs the vaccine for young people. I don’t know if you consider Wired MSM or not.
The news stories seem to go out of their way to avoid considering that this might be considered coercive. I suspect that is because it is part of the narrative that the vaccine is an unambiguous victory for progress. Getting it is the one and only correct response in much the same way that math problem has only one correct solution.
If looked at that way then it is not coercion, it is explaining an error in one’s logic or premise. Imagine a teacher talking to a student about their vaccine hesitation. The teacher listens carefully to the students reasons and then responds “you made a sign error in the set up, skipped a step here, and only integrated the left hand side of the equation at the end. That’s why you got the wrong answer.” And you can see why the news doesn’t consider it coercion.
Of course the news doesn’t interview people who say something like “well, peer reviewed studies on ivermectin have been ignored by the FDA and censored from social media which makes me worry that I’m being sold on a narrative rather than getting the unvarnished truth. The virus isn’t particularly dangerous to someone my age and the large number of deaths in the VAERS database for a vaccine with only emergency approval makes me skeptical about its safety. Also, you know that a vaccine has never been approved before for any corona virus because of Antibody-dependent Enhancement problems.” Because that would be very difficult to shoehorn into box marked irrational resistance. Admitting that an individual might have legitimate reasons for deciding not to get vaxed would recast the drive toward vaccination as coercion and so those arguments are never heard.
As far as the MSM is concerned: The virus is dangerous. The vaccines are safe. People need to get the vaccine. Q.E.D. Anyone who says otherwise is peddling misinformation.
To have any kind of discussion about coercion would call into question the veracity of one of those claims so the MSM doesn’t go there.
@temporaryreality #422
yes but you’re forgetting that what’s also at stake is the hoped for ability to be able to feed oneself as well as one’s potential future children.
False dichotomy. There are plenty of options (including the online courses she doesn’t like) that don’t require sacrificing her future to the vax. It’s still a choice, and let’s hope she doesn’t regret hers.
Is anyone else noticing a lot more ambulances of late? I used to hear/see them maybe once every two weeks, and now there’s one going by essentially every day. This seems to suggest to me that something is going on, but I’m not sure if it’s local or not.
What I’m wondering about is if it’s a sign the Covid vax is causing a lot more issues than we’re being told……
Bei Dawei, #312: Most residential buildings around here in rural Finland are heated with some combination of electricity and fire wood. Which the latter is just prudent, because blackouts have been common in the winter time. And even the electricity is often generated by burning the wood chips obtained from the forest industry. It’s different in Helsinki, which mostly runs (electricity + district heating) with Polish coal.
Many of these models are still commonly used: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Fireplaces_in_Finland
Dear Archdruid, are there any magical techniques that with enough work, would mimic the effect of psychedelics, preferrably in a more controlled way? I have never really done ceremonial magic, but does doing it cause you to see and hear something from other realms?
Dear JMG,
Purely as a hypothetical, lets say there is a “cyber breach” significant enough to take down the internet. Should that happen, it seems likely to me that when the internet is brought back up, there will be “protections” put in place. And I would expect that as an unfortunate side effect of those protections, independent web sites such as this one will, sadly and unavoidably, no longer be allowed. Just a hypothetical, of course.
Should this happen, how do we find you?
Looking back on 2020 from August 2021, I heard that police were shooting black men down, and we weren’t going to take it any more. “Defund the police.” was one of the demands. People came streaming out of their pandemic lock-down bubbles.
Now, here we are a year later, the spring and summer protest seasons have come and gone, and I don’t recall any such protests. The lockdowns were lifted, so it should have been easier for people to get out in massive numbers, but I haven’t seen it. “Protect us from violent crime.” seems to be a bigger demand.
Did the protesters get the reforms that they wanted? Have the police ceased the (allegedly routine) shooting of unarmed black men? Or was it sufficient for Democrats to get elected at the national level?
Hi John Michael,
I dunno mate, but upon consideration it is probably normal to carry the dead around with us. Memory is almost perfectly made for that experience. There is a middle ground in there somewhere where we can recall those now departed from the living without being overwhelmed with grief at the loss. Entropy is after all, built into the universe, sorry to say. But yeah, time has a way of stacking up the memories and departures. Experience has taught me that time is short and fleeting, and there is always the today of things.
I suspect that loss is a far bigger background unspoken thing right now, than people would admit.
Cheers (and I better get writing),
Chris
Comment I’ve heard from a shill: “The COVID vaccine only has FDA Emergency Approval!!” My immediate thought: “Gee, darlin,’ does the corona virus know FDA terminology?”
The question I want answered: How many more Wuhan Labs does the CCP have?
@Erika @JMG
The book club may take us a thousand feet deep into each card with meditation as I understand. In reading Levi and doing the meditations described in the blog, and going through the comments, I guess that an avid student could glean the upwards and downwards divinatory meanings of each card through journaling. And perhaps that is really what I should be doing, though a solid reference book with a good glossary of card meanings, and instructions on different spreads will go along way before this four year long study of Levi is over! I have ordered ‘Mastering the Tarot’ through Indigo along with some other books for my kids.
Thanks for pointing it out JMG and will see you guys in the next book club post!
Some of y’all might be interested in this:
https://zeroanthropology.net/2021/07/30/the-false-pandemic-and-the-great-reset-day-1-of-an-online-interdisciplinary-symposium/
Jmg ( offlist if wish) . In one case was an anti trump anti deplorable anti rural tirade from a new jersey doctor triggered by those not taking vaccine. Lots of references to Science. How we here in arkansas i suppose are devolving and will double down (science already proves us wrong) when we die in droves. The other one i heard less of but infer was same issue which is non vaccination and susequent hospitalization. Our little hospital gets overwhelmed by 4 new patients…what with low staffing
I wanted to share this – I find it an optimistic meditation on the deadwood no one would miss in a long descent. https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/
JMG and Jeanne re Gibberish,
Thank you for your kind replies, there is much to think about.
I have saved my gibberish in shoeboxes, organized by season and year. It’s both entertaining and harrowing to read what I have stashed there. The idea of organizing it is overwhelming, but your replies suggest that the novel already knows what it is, and it’s my job to give it a form to express itself in, according to my own tastes. In a strange way, that takes some of the pressure off.
Maybe novelists are all trying to write the same novel, as perceived through our individual lenses. I’ll keep at it… and know that I’m in good company.
JD
@Joy Marie (#428):
Wow! I think you’re right; that must have been a major cause of the shift I observed among college students in the later 1990s. Our children were done with their high school in Providence (RI) by then, so I don’t know when that shift happened here — but the school-as-prison eventually became a thing here, too.
About the same time as I noticed those changes in undergraduates in my classes, our Dean of the College made what I still regard as a remarkable speech at a Faculty Meeting: “You must always keep in mind,” she said (IIRC), ” that our undergraduates are still just young children, and their safety must always be your very highest concern, above every other concern you may have–even any educational concern.”
Hoo boy!!!
When my wife and I were in college, we were definitely regarded as young adults, free to make our own mistakes (and, in the best case, to learn from the consequences of those mistakes).
At the time, I put the Dean’s remarks down to a well-known quirk of her own personality: unmarried and childless herself, she showed a noticeable inclination to “mother” her own favored students. But after the responses here to my question, I think it was more than a personal quirk of hers: she was a sign of the shifting times.
And I strongly “second” your recommendations for younger people trying to navigate the shoals of this future, especially those with young chidren. In our own day, I thought it enough to teach both our children to read before they went off to kindergarten, so that they could educate themselves at need. If schools then were liek schools now, I would have home-schooled them.
@kashtan (#432):
The case of our only grandchild, who grew up in France and is very much a young Frenchwoman, not a young American, may be atypical. Her mother is a French citizen, whom our son met and married here in the United States. Initially they tried to build a life here, but their economic prospects turned out to be far brighter in France than in the USA, so they moved there when our granddaughter was about 3 years old, and never looked back. If both her parents had been US citizens, their relocation to Europe would have been far more difficult. I don’t anticipate a lot of Americans managing to relocate to Europe, simply because they are generally monolingual, and pre-college instruction in “foreign” languages is quite often abysmal.
Over the years our son has become fluent in French (which is not one of the languages either I or my wife know), and it is our granddaughter’s native language. (Like most Europeans, she is multilingual, with fluency in at least three other languages besides her native French. She is 19 now, and will be starting college in France this Fall; COVID delayed her college by a year.)
To Philip (341) regarding living with ME: I summarized your thoughts to a dear friend who along with her husband lives with ME, and she asked that I share back to you the following: “You might want to pass back to him that we’ve been following a suggestion for long covid, which is doing operatic type breathing exercises on rising.” She reports that this exercise has helped her quite a bit.
“Celadon, what exactly was making these people “lose their faith in human nature,” i.e., other people’s willingness to pretend that we’re still progressing? This is something I try to track closely, so the data points would be very helpful.”
Not Celadon obviously, but I’ve been hearing similar “faith in humanity” language among the liberal PMC for a while now.
Electing Obama in 2008 and 2012 had led to lots of liberal PMC giddy comments about “restoring faith in human nature” (please note: none of Obama’s less-than-humanitarian actions/policies as president were relevant; the country elected a black guy, that was all that mattered, and faith was restored!). Then the narrative switched abruptly in 2016, when all of the liberal PMC were wailing about “losing faith in human nature” due to all the “racists” voting for Trump (please note: attempts to point out that there were significant voters who had voted for Obama and then for Trump, or that there were plenty of non-white Trump voters, or that Trump’s opponent had a horrid track record as a humanitarian, did nothing to alter the “racism” interpretation of 2016; faith in humanity was lost!). There seemed to be a brief restoration of liberal PCM faith in human nature when the Great Humanitarian Joe Biden defeated the Forces of Evil in the election, but it didn’t last long. We now seem to be in the midst of an uptick in liberal PMC members wailing about “anti-vaxxers”, who are, in their definition, various forms of selfish, childish, ignorant, uninformed, and/or deplorable people who won’t get jabbed for “the greater good”, and this apparent lack of concern by “anti-vaxxers” for the Welfare of the Human Race is leading to yet more “loss of faith in human nature” (please note: neither the possibility that the government might actually have been funding gain-of-function research with our tax dollars, nor the fact that so many people’s lives have been destroyed by lockdowns, nor obvious censorship, conflicts of interest, implementation of all-but-forced medical procedures, proposed medical passports, and/or segregation by jab status seem to have caused them to lose any faith in human nature; instead, lack of compliance with vaccination is what’s leading to their latest loss of faith). You really cannot make this stuff up.
Lots of interesting comments here, many of which I agree with and won’t bother re-stating.
But since my work requires forays out of my working-class neighborhood and into The Land of the Woke PMC, I figured I’d share my own data points on the question to Celadon, because I’ve been hearing a lot of that particular language for years..
Hi JMG,
I did a 3 card tarot spread for a location as you recommended.
Card 1: Character of the place
Card 2: Advantages
Card 3: Disadvantages
The three cards were:
5 Wands
3 Cups reversed
The Star
How does one interpret the Star as a disadvantage and a 3 of cups reversed as an advantage? I am totally perplexed. Perhaps I am still too much of a newbie to be interpreting tarot cards.
Thank you very, very much.
Jon
Mr. Nobody: If you really want ivermectin, you can order it from Tractor Supply.
ria23: I don’t doubt or distrust the vaccines. I and most people I know are fully vaccinated, and nobody is or was in a panic about the virus. (My friends and coworkers are of multiple economic class, race, and religion.) We consider the vaccines and masking as taking precautions, and not a big deal. We also understand that, like any type of precaution, neither is 100% effective; and that all vaccines can have side effects. But then, I’m a veterinarian so we are used to vaccines.
waffles: One thing to remember is that male cats can develop urinary blockages that can be fatal after just two days. If you have a male cat and it starts straining in the litterbox or crying, or if you see him passing only small amounts of urine, or if the urine has blood in it, this is a potential emergency. I also recommend unscented cat litter — when I was growing up we had a male cat who would develop signs of blockage if we used a scented litter. It took three visits to the emergency vet for my parents to figure this out.
Fran: I’m very sorry for your loss. I do believe that animals have souls/spirits, just (generally!) not as developed at the higher levels (astral and mental) as humans typically are. Our host’s “The Druidry Handbook” goes into reincarnation and the cycle of souls through the material and non-material realms.
@JMG
You know…when I think on it I find it fascinating what those Ukrainians had to say about the U.S. and USSR. I now think two of Dmitry Orlov’s books [Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects plus The Five Stages of Collapse] are more insightful than perhaps even I had thought and I was impressed with them both when I read them.
In particular the Ukrainians stressed that Americans are experiencing the same bizarre anger, distrust and polarization as in the USSR. Both populations had huge numbers who distrusted their elites. Both populations grew up being told that all animals are equal but in actual practice some animals are clearly more equal than others and benefited at the expense of the less-equal (Socialism there, Democracy and equality before the law in the U.S.]
Another thing they mentioned was how neighbor distrusting neighbor was a big deal. Sometimes the mistrust manifesting even within one’s own family. In both countries anything you said can and would (or in the US now – will) be used against you.
Both talked about how even though life was hard as a kid it got even harder once the USSR fell apart. You quickly found out who had useful skills and who didn’t.
On the upside they said obesity wasn’t nearly as rampant in the USSR as it is in the US. So who knows how that problem is going to play out if obese Americans start having to compete with slimmer, more fit, undocumented workers for manual labor jobs just to get that night’s meal. That thought frightened me – just working not for anything longer term than just being able to go to sleep that evening with a full stomach becomes common! Also, you might work but still not get the promised meal or if you do much less than you thought. That thought also frightened me. You quickly find out who is trustworthy in such situations but it takes time to sort out who you can trust and whom you can’t.
A lot of laws on the books, don’t get enforced and new ones are invented for the elites and elite-supporters to keep their more-equal status. Both populations worked for institutions (businesses in the U.S.) that are staffed by (in their opinion) highly incompetent people who end up making things worse.
At this point they went on a lengthy grouse about their own company and the general consensus was that the new owners were chickens running around with their head cut off not knowing what to do with their latest acquisition and pretending expertise to potential future customers that the company didn’t have and the IT guys were expected to somehow magically learn all this stuff and new systems (usually proprietary) overnight.
The biggest thing that impressed me was their discussing how distrust becomes a huge problem for the whole society as the circle of trust shrinks. Also apparently it’s a self-feeding cycle because as you see others getting away with ripping off the system without repercussions one eventually loses the will to refrain from it oneself because if you do it could and often would mean you’d find yourself and your family in a terrible situation later because of it.
Simply having a consistent supply of food – forget about variety – becomes a problem as grift and the some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others ethos metastasizes everywhere. And of course there are metastasizing problems throughout from the shrinking at the origin point to the supply chain too.
Anger ratchets up considerably, others fall into malaise and drug use skyrockets (alcohol primarily in their case but hard drugs were common too). Crime skyrockets also and nothing seems to stop it no matter what the elites try to do about it. Eventually the elites just give up and let the population deal with the skyrocketing crime on their own. Bizarre rationales are used to enforce laws on some while the populace clearly sees others get away with the same thing. Laws everywhere are unequally applied.
The media is used to feed officially sanctioned news and op eds but it slowly ratchets up into its other far more important role of cheerleader for the founding creeds because ever fewer really believe in it anymore. It doesn’t help that the populace keeps seeing how some keep magically benefiting from those creeds while others are left to die on the vine or simply taken out in the name of those creeds.
All of this and more is happening now in North America they said.
One of them looked around and said, “We all know how this plays out.” and the rest just nodded.
They emphasized Americans don’t realize how tough it can get once the slide down starts to pick up speed. It will eventually stop sliding but when it does it might not look like anything Americans will recognize. Because of that conversation I’m now going to pick up the book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More [ISBN: 0691121176] again. I had checked it out from the library but then had to turn it back in because it actually had a waitlist at my library and if there’s a waitlist you can’t renew the book. You have to get back in line for checking it out again.
That was not a fun convo. Sigh…
Small correction to the following sentence:
Both talked about how even though life was hard as a kid it got even harder once the USSR fell apart.
That makes it sound like there were only 2 Ukrainians. Actually there were 5 and they all agreed the U.S. is going down the same path as the USSR.
@BCV thank you for the podcast link on revolutions. I will definitely check it out.
Just finished a week long training that is held is summer for my field. Last year it was virtual and attendees were determined to me in person this summer. When the organizers announced virtual for 2021 last fall, the attendees complained that it should be in person. Between last fall and now a huge shift in opinion. Half the attendees demand it be virtual for 2022 or hybrid with people able to attend the in person event from home. The most frequent comment is that Covid is going to be with us all through 2022.
I’m hoping Covid is a cover excuse for the real reason (people saving money on hotel and travel expenses, not interested in the social aspect of in person events, etc), because the alternative – half the people in my field are already scared to leave their home a year from now – is mind-boggling to me.
@Ian Duncombe:
I recommend Oswald Wirth’s Tarot of the Magicians (first published in 1927) as a good companion resource for the Lévi book club. I have the 2012 Weiser edition with a helpful introduction by Mary K. Greer and full-color pull-out cards reproducing Wirth’s 1889 Major Arcana.
Wirth was a student of Lévi. His book gives an overview of the occult symbolism of the tarot from various perspectives including Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, Hermetic tradition, Rosicrucian and Masonic philosophy. He offers an approach to divination and interpretation, and discusses the symbolism of each of the Major Arcana in detail.
@temporaryreality College update news – for incoming freshman and their parents, there is a new orientation titled “Safety and Compliance.” Isn’t that dystopian sounding?
If the vast majority of college students in the past were attending college to party, and now there is no party option without severe punishment, I don’t see how colleges will have full enrollment for fall.
I saw there was an average 5% enrollment drop for fall 2020, and another 5% drop for spring 2021. I haven’t seen anything for fall 2021 or freshmen enrollment, but if the schools suddenly go back to full masks, weekly testing, and encouragement of tattling like last year (and it looks like it is rolling out to many campuses already), I could see at least 25% dropping out. They could have fun at home with friends, not be under surveillance, and do online classes.
They’ve been showing video of young people partying on the New Jersey beaches all night long. It’s pretty clear they are over Covid. At least they’ll all have natural immunity by the time fall starts.
Anonacea, it’s still in process. I’ve had to devote a lot of time to other projects, and so my favorite crossword puzzle-style recreation has had to take a back seat more often than I like. Once it’s done, I’ve promised it to the same publisher who brought out my Bruno translation and the Dolmen Arch; I’ll keep everyone posted as that comes closer.
Anonymous, not so much creepy as predictable. “Reality is whatever we say it is!” is the basic logic of the privileged classes these days, so “(this example of coercion) isn’t coercion!” is par for the course.
Ilona, excellent! You’ve grasped one of the essential points of events in the real world, which is that crises aren’t fast. For people in Britain, the crisis of the Second World War was visible on the horizon by the mid-1930s, blew up in 1939, and didn’t actually end until food rationing finally ended in the early 1950s.
Kevin, interesting. I haven’t heard that here in East Providence. Anyone else?
Sam, the core of the drug experience is that it’s passive — the drug does things to you, and you’re along for the ride. Ceremonial magic won’t do that. With sustained practice, you can have vivid inner experiences as intense as the hallucinations from an acid trip, but they’re always things you enter into actively; you make them happen.
Cyclone, send a letter to any of my publishers or to the Ancient Order of Druids in America. They can always forward those to me. I anticipate a slower unraveling of the internet, and will be getting alternative measures in place as things proceed.
Lathechuck, Black Lives Matter, but only in an election year. On off years? Crickets.
Chris, I suspect you’re right.
Jenxyz, depends on how many US tax dollars went to China for that purpose. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was doing gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses because that kind of research, being insanely risky, was banned in the US; the US medical industry wanted to keep on playing with its dangerous toys, and so arranged to have the research done in China, funded by US money via a pass-through entity to provide plausible deniability. That’s one of the reasons there’s been so much frantic rump-covering in the US government over this whole fiasco.
Ian, excellent!
JustMe, thanks for this.
Celadon, many thanks. About what I’d have expected, but it’s good to know.
Christopher, thanks for this — a very smart analysis.
Jade Dragon, there’s ultimately only one novel, but none of us can write more than a small part of it, filtered through our own psyches!
El, too funny. So “human nature” to them means willingness to believe whatever the media tells people to believe.
Jon, that makes perfect sense to me. What it’s saying is that the advantages of making that move would be temporary — “pleasure turns to pain” is one meaning of the 3 of cups reversed — and the disadvantage is that somewhere else would be a much better option.
Panda, I had the very good fortune of discussing all this with Dmitry back in the heyday of the peak oil movement, and I still think he’s spot on. The question is whether the collapse will unfold the same way. I don’t think so, since much less of the US economy is directly dependent on the government; fewer people will have to work for empty promises, though if inflation gets extreme a lot of people will be scrambling anyway. But we’re very close to a crisis of the same general type.
Denis, a lot of people are terrified of life right now, and that’s going to be spilling over into many other things.
@Denis (#490):
I don’t have easy access to the hard data for my own university, but just from the occasional daytime glimpse of campus, I’d estimate that for the last 20 years about half of each recent first-year class has been students from overseas, most often from the Middle and Far East–whose governments commonly cover their tuition for them in return for being able to dictate to them what they shall study here. These days I expect my university will be undergoing financial stress due to COVID restrictions on travel–not that they’d ever admit to such a thing in public.
Another possibility I’m wondering about is if when it becomes clear to those at the top that the COVID narrative is unraveling, they will try to divert people’s attention in a major way. A war would be a prime candidate for that, which could end up turning into a “twilight’s Last Gleaming” scenario. It could also be an internal threat, probably right wing extremists, and if the crackdown against the right gets too heavy could end up leading to civil war.
BCV: “I have really been enjoying the “Revolutions” Podcast by Mike Duncan”
The current season is about the Russian Revolution. He just reached the February Revolution.
The difference between Tsarist Russia and the US now is that a fair portion of the Russian elite knew that change was necessary.
The podcast is also available on apple podcasts and at
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/
I personally found the section on the Haitian Revolution the most revelatory.
Jenxyz (473): “The question I want answered: How many more Wuhan Labs does the CCP have?”
Not sure, but it is worth remembering that the Wuhan lab also received funds from the US government. As in many other arenas, work was outsourced to China in order to get around environmental and safety regulations.
Expanding on human migrations as a mirror of the past:
People of largely Indigenous American descent are pouring across our borders, and are also out-reproducing immigrants from other nations once they arrive. Although they are in one sense victims of US and global imperialism, they also have great skill and pride in the gritty realities of agriculture and hard work necessary to survive during tough times. Increasingly in my area they are moving up from being farm workers to being farm managers and farm owners.
Meanwhile European descendents used to a comfortable lifestyle in cities are moving eastward, or to Europe if it is an option for them, and there is even a movement afoot among African descendants to move back to Africa.
I certainly think that many folks of European, African, and Asian descent will succeed in becoming indigenous to this land over longer timescales, but it is interesting to see an Indigenous resurgence based in part around having a stronger connection to the land itself and a greater ease in simpler, less technological ways of living. They may not be the same Indigenous people who lived here 200 years ago, but the pre-settlement history of this continent is full of great migrations.
“El, too funny. So “human nature” to them means willingness to believe whatever the media tells people to believe.”
Yup, that about sums it up.
But there is a bit more too it, I think.
Something I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a steady increase in the need among the PMC for some sort of melodramatic interpretation of current events to give them extra significance and meaning. It’s not just that they think that one politician might be better than another; rather every election is a Battle for The Soul of the Nation and they are veritable Warriors for Truth, Justice, and the PMC Way when they Stand Against the Forces of Darkness by casting a vote for the Greater Good. Trump wasn’t just a blundering blowhard, he was Evil Incarnate. The coronavirus isn’t just a nastier-than-usual respiratory virus picking off extra numbers of the old and sick; it’s The Great Plague, we’re in a World Wide War against a virus, and getting jabbed is Doing Your part for the Good of All Mankind. Etc.
WHY they need to view things this way is what puzzles me. Are they just bored, and need to play Let’s Pretend We’re Doing Something Important with their virtue signalling to add a little drama to their lives? Is it a way to cope with some sort of cognitive dissonance (I can’t think about how the minerals in my phone may have been extracted with child labor – I’m too busy Keeping Children Safe by enforcing mask mandates!)? Or just plain old media brainwashing that’s figured out how to tap into childish impulses to want to feel important (voting against Trump and getting an experimental jab are JUST LIKE participating in the French Resistance, you’re so brave!)?
All joking aside, though – my experience over the last decade or so is that the liberal PMC are losing their minds. My coworkers didn’t used to be this batty, I swear. Something has changed.
(Poster Simon Sheridan has a theory that it has to do with the Devouring Mother archetype, and he may be on to something with that.)
@JMG & Imp,
I live in that area of Central Europe and to my inexperienced consciousness, the spirit of the land is up to something amazing. I say this for two reasons:
The first is, a good half-dozen times when I’ve meditated looking for a poem like how JMG used Johnny Appleseed for the US, instead I got a vivid experience of an old-growth forest. Deep, dark, huge, damp, lush, and local. At first I wondered whether I should be alarmed (where are the Europeans?!) but there’s nothing sinister about it. It just shows up, as if to tell me I should contemplate this instead.
The second is, I asked my local park if there was anything I could do for it, and in the days that followed I obtained what I hope is a mentor muse. I’ve written seven books in the last 18 months dedicated to the park, and I’ve got enough stories for several more.
One more thing: the cathedral bells still banish evil, from what I can tell. At noon the day after a terrorist attack last fall, all the cathedral bells rang at once for what felt like ten solid minutes. It was truly incredible.
@Bofur #357 – RE telling cancer patients their diagnosis. Only 20 years ago, my Italian father in law was dying of cancer, and we were not allowed to tell him. I knew, and I was in the miserable position of lying to him that no one told me anything. I thought only of Big Daddy: “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity…You can smell it. It smells like death.”
@ Aliza #379 and other reporting reactions: my wife ( 72 years old & generally in good health) got the single J&J dose in late March. About 10 days later she began having symptoms of pneumonia: pain in her chest and a spiking fever. We went to a clinic, where they X rayed her. She was diagnosed with a viral pneumonia. She got a negative test for Covid19, as did I. Over the next days she recovered. About 10 days ago, the symptoms returned. She went to a different clinic, where they wanted to immediately put her in hospital. She refused, and the symptoms once again ebbed after a few days. Related? Who knows, but she has never had these symptoms in her life until after the vaccination.
As I mentioned, I was in a brain fog for a while after the J&J shot.
Ebb & flow: I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. My father was born in Magelang, Java, Netherlands East Indies (today Indonesia). His father was born in Amboin, NEI. His father was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, and his father was born in Amsterdam. I’ve moved to Providence, so I’m the closest in 4 generations to my ancestral home.
Re: eviction moratorium expiration and “own nothing” Great Reset agenda
It seems to me that a better way to move the country in the direction of rental feudalism would have been for the government to implement a program of income-based rental assistance. Make it cheaper to rent than to own, ensure that there is no downward pressure on rental rates, and funnel a bunch of taxpayer (or simply newly-minted based on Modern Monetary Theory) dollars to the feudal overlords who will continue to buy up property.
The eviction moratorium has actually helped to keep rent high; without it we will see widespread evictions and vacancies, and since there are clearly not enough potential renters able to pay the going rate for the available housing options, rental prices should fall, and I would expect to see a similar effect on housing prices. So…this is going to cause a world of hurt for millions of people, but it’s not clear to me how exactly ending the eviction moratorium is moving us toward the Great Reset agenda.
Hey jmg and commentariat
Have you ever read the blog called “existential comics”?
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/403
It’s a comedy site that makes comics that make fun out of philosophy and philosophers.
JMG,
Thank you very much for your help.
Book recommendation from Smithsonian, on the parallels with the Roman Republic.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/lessons-in-the-decline-of-democracy-from-the-ruined-roman-republic?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Now, you can get the same information and a clear picture from a good book on Roman history, plus any of the three colorful series of novels set in the period (allowing for biases and howlers.) The three series are Steven Saylor’s series on Gordianus the Finder, which had some really screaming howlers*, but is excellent on the personalities involved, bias, what the left wing used to be; John Maddox Roberts’ S.P.Q.R. series, in which, alas, everything boils down to political scheming whether it was or not, bias, center-right; and Colleen McCullough’s “Rome” series, which wallows in the gutter interpretations of a lot of the personalities with the lip-licking relish of Mrs. Grundy writing for the tabloids. Bias: as madly in love with Big Julie as Mary Renault was with Megalomaniac Alex.
*The two biggest howlers I spotted was in having a Roman warship rowed by chained slaves under the whip, and in a story whose entire plot was a gladiatorial school “getting away with” what was actually normal practice (as Smithsonian seems to have recently discovered, with a nice big spread with lovely illustrations.)
Waffles #39 – My wife and I have had cats for 20+ years and also work with a foster group. I can try and answer your questions. My email is graham dot rossiter at yahoo dot com.
Perhaps too obvious to even mention, but the professional/managerial class in general have had a Covid jab and the “deplorables” have not. If there are serious side effects, much of the technical structure of the world will come crashing down. How do you see that playing out?
Robert Mathiesen (no. 480), if you are not already aware, your granddaughter is what is known as an “Accidental American.” Unfortunately, her US birthplace will mark her–even in France–for special restrictions and discrimination under the US-imposed FATCA and FBAR regimes, and citizen-based taxation generally. For example, opening bank accounts may be difficult for her, and few companies will allow her to become a financial officer with check-signing authority. If she renounces US citizenship, and is able to document this, this will bring some relief, although her US indicia (birthplace) will follow her forever. Here are some links to organizations that help such people and lobby on their behalf:
https://www.americains-accidentels.fr/page/222256-qui-sommes-nous
http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/
Kevin, I’ve been noticing a lot more ambulances lately, as well. At first I thought it was just I got different acoustics from the new station, and could just hear them leaving when I couldn’t before, but it’s become unmistakable. They opened that new hall just before covid; it has never been like this. Maybe for the past month?
And there were only 22 cases on the whole island on Tuesday (only 3 added that day, so we’re not in a “fourth wave” ) – only 1 in my health region the past two weeks. It seemed it started with the heat wave, and it has stayed warm, but only a couple degrees C higher than usual.
In ecological news, the local salmon stocks must have collapsed, as the resident orcas have left, except for a one day visit on Tuesday (appears to be to bring an old whale home to die). They had a healthy calf with them, though, so they might be able to adapt to a new range, quelling some fears about their endangerment (cue Jurassic Park quote “Life… finds a way”).
A sign of the times? At the grocery store this evening, they had a sign up that even fizzy brown sugar water is having supply issues. I’m not sure if they’re running out of fizz, brown, sugar, water, plastic bottles, transportation to get it from the plant to the store, or multiple of the above. If companies can’t keep something as straightforward as that in stock, though…
Kashtan, that’s possible. A great deal depends on whether the people in question are themselves dealing with, say, side effects from the serum.
Mark, no surprises there. I commented a decade ago that the American settlement of the West has turned out to be a failure, and the territory is being ceded to the nearest society with enough population and cultural vitality to absorb it.
El, that’s an important point. Keep in mind that people tend to embrace that kind of melodrama when their own behavior will not bear ethical examination — it’s people whose own actions are grubby, sordid, and selfish who are most likely to prance around insisting that they’re saving the world. The more obviously grubby, sordid, and selfish, the more extravagant the prancing, which might explain what we’re seeing right now. As for the Devouring Karen archetype, Simon may be on to something…
CS2, fascinating. Thanks for this!
J.L.Mc12, yes. Thanks for this.
Patricia M, thanks for this also.
RPC, in most contexts the professional and managerial classes don’t actually run the technical structures themselves — they’re supervisory personnel, part of the vast pyramid of management that profits off the work of those who actually run the machines. Compare physicians with nurses — the nurses actually do the patient care, and could do so in the vast majority of cases without having an MD tell them what to do, but the MDs get the big salaries. If what I’ve read is anything to go by, it’s the physicians (and equivalent) who are getting the shots and a significant fraction of the nurses (and equivalent) who are stepping back saying, “Um, no.” The consequences may be rather interesting if the serums turn out to have nasty side effects.
Florida Druid, okay, things are really getting drastic!
@ JMG and ALL…
Short sellers trying to ruin stock prices to buy in cheap…
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Short-Sellers-Are-Desperately-Trying-And-Failing-To-Sink-Recon-Africa.html
VERY interesting, and they only lay out the simplest use of shorting good stocks…
Robert Mathieson (492),
I live within walking distance of a university and was working on an MA when Covid hit, and my observations matched yours: a lot of the student body was overseas students. Given that they also get to dramatically overcharge them compared to domestic students, this loss of income is probably a major issue for universities.
Pixelated (507),
Interesting, because I’d say it’s been the last month and a half here as well that there’s been a lot of ambulance activity. There haven’t been a lot of reported Covid cases here either; but then again we’ve never had a very high case rate. I’m in Eastern Ontario, and your talk of heat wave and island leads me to think you’re probably off the west coast somewhere?
If so, interesting and a little concerning that we’re both noticing a lot more ambulances….
@Bei Dawei (#506):
Thank you so much for the heads-up! No, I was not aware of this.
I expect that our daughter-in-law, however, is quite aware of this, because she probably has had to deal with somewhat related issues all her own life in France, despite her having been born there. Both of her parents were born in colonial Algiers, and came the revolution there, they had to flee at very short notice to wherever they could. Also, IIRC, not even one of her grandparents or great-grandparents was born in France. At least one of them–probably several–were Romany, therefore virtually stateless persons in European eyes back then.
In any case, all three of them will be coming for a two-veeks vacation/visit in a few weeks, and I’ll ask her whether she is up on our granddaughter’s legal situation and the things you have mentioned.
Also, our granddaughter is pretty clearly headed in the direction of a poverty-stricken artist or writer or occasional musician. She seems to have zero interest in any career more stable, much less in one that is even remotely corporate or officially recognized. Our daughter-in-law is a true expert at getting by in life, in despite of any official strictures, and so I expect that our granddaughter has picked up the same skills from her mother. At any rate, I hope that she has. These skills are well worth cultivating as civilization declines.
@Bei Dawei re “FBAR regimes” – did anybody but me immediately think “FUBAR regimes?”
(G-rated translation: Fouled up beyond all recognition.)
@Cyclone, JMG
RE no more independent websites,
Set up a telnet board, ideally utilizing ssh.
It’s something I want to do myself just as a tech project anyway.
Happy Panda, I don’t know about statistics, but I am seeing noticeably fewer obese persons than I did as recently as 2-3 years ago. Most of those I still do see appear to be PMC females, the kind of ladies who complain about “fat shaming” and who can afford, car, nice apt with elevator and someone to come in and clean for them. Why, I don’t know. Rising cost of food may be part of the reason. The fast food joints were open for take out all throughout the shutdown but maybe fewer people could afford them.
I suspect that public tolerance for undocumented migrants has about ended. Parts of the left are, of course, willing to lose election after election over their cherished ideology of cosmopolitan multiculturalism, not least because they can always find perches with the foundations that are pushing for open borders. I think folks might be beginning to realize that the “cheap” labor is often more trouble than it is worth.
A federal court just struck down the Obama compromise over DACA (“dreamers”), and I haven’t seen more than a few pro-forma squawks of protest. Biden might be senile, but I think he knows a losing battle when he sees one. I suspect the “dreamers” are going to have to settle for what they should have settled for in the first place, some sort of residency permit, but no, you don’t get to sponsor umpteen relatives from back home which you claim is not your home.
JMG, I don’t think you said peak oil was a good thing; I just concluded that from your response to Tidilösa. If that’s not the case, I apologize for the misunderstanding.
re: shortages.
I had trouble getting diet soda and some other things here in So Cal but it appears to be based on how the stores supply chains work. Vertical integration and big warehouses have kept say the local Costco pretty well stocked. You can also see surges as orders come in. I don’t know if this me paying attention or some kind of shift.
Now as to the settlement of the West. No one is doing well. Fertility rates in all groups are low including Latinos who are plummeting. California is turning onto a retirement state even with large scale immigration.
Only huge amounts of migration keeps the population up. How much longer this in migration will go on I don’t know. However water is in severe crisis anywhere farther West than Eastern Colorado. Other than mother nature there is no fix and the only place that got much rain of late is New Mexico, still in drought and has been hemorrhaging people for a decade or more
I visited Lake Mead in Nevada some time back, this being the primary water supply for Nevada and a major source of electricity Its scary being about 1/3 its normal capacity and going lower.
.
In re: Jon Goddard’s tarot spread:
How would you interpret the Five of Wands?
Thanx, Antoinetta III
#319 Bei Dawei
Thank you very much. Your definition of Faith helped to unravel some thoughts.
I was taught in the Catholic belief, but I don’t trust any of what was taught. Even taken as metaphores, many of their values are severely unadapted to the modern world.
Now I am being taught of some practices that have weird effects, tried it and saw some clogs moving. In this I can have Faith, since the teaching is that no matter what the content is, or what you do think it is the truth (TM), the practices will work. What I feel with my senses does not contradict the teachings nor defies logic.
Now I have to put some work giving form to what I think are the truly forces in Cosmos, and find a proper speech to honor them.
I just tried to post a question regarding the interpretation of the Five of Wands in Jon Goddard’s post. I tried twice, but for some reason, it didn’t seem to go thru.
Technical problems?
Antoinetta III
I’m not anti-vax, I’m anti THIS vax for ME. Although I’m in the danger zone for Covid at 73 years old, I’m in good health, watch my diet, exercise a bit, take vitamin D3, and are seldom troubled by colds and flu, so I reckon getting Covid is safer than getting a vaccine that is looking less effective as the days go by and still has unknown long-term effects. Plus I have a couple of medical issues like autoimmune disease and a family history of Bell’s Palsy which the vaccine might possibly trigger.
In any case, I’m pretty sure I already had the Delta variant. Bunged-up sinuses and a very runny nose for three days which I treated with aspirin, drank lots of water, and took it easy. No sore throat or loss of taste or smell though. But the runny nose persisted for a couple of weeks as if the body was clearing itself of an infection, and there was a 10-15% loss of energy which persisted for a couple more weeks. I’m fine now, and hopefully immune for the rest of my life without a jab.
You can NOT make this stuff up and be believed! David Kaiser reports on the original Haitian revolution and its aftermath – and somebody advocating it today as a model …
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/
Behind paywall but the part they show says it all. Even the link does.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-the-rise-of-u-s-solar-power-a-mountain-of-chinese-coal-11627734770
@Nachtgurke,
Thank you for your fascinating comment regarding southern Germany and the neighboring region. If you have time, could you elaborate on your impression of Vienna? I was pleasantly surprised by your comment and am eager to meditate on this.
Hello JMG
I was at the potluck, from one of the states that will become part of the Lakeland Republic! 🙂
I remember overhearing a conversation at the potluck, the exact nature of which escapes me, but it related to a subject that made me think of this book, by the Mindbody Prescription, by Dr. John Sarno. His argument is that there are many people with imaging results indicating they should have back pain problems (slipped discs, etc.), but don’t. So the pain must have another cause, not just a disc out of alignment. In many cases the pain is from an unresolved emotional issue. It could be as a simple as not acknowledging raising children is stressful, even though you don’t regret having them. Point is, it doesn’t have to be horrible trauma, just unacknowledged run-of-the-mill stresses. According to him, sometimes just acknowledging some of the issues can make the pain dissappear. Just curious if you had heard of him. I think the nature of what I overheard was along similar lines.
In my personal book club, I was surprised recently the talk of, ‘returning to the land’, for lack of a better term. Partly in jest, but many seem concerned with how things are going. This is a group of conservative evangelicals (which I no longer am), so maybe that specific demographic. There was talk of buying property, with enough land to grow food. There were even jokes about sharecropping. While something that has a negative stigma in the US, I’ve wondered if it might make a comeback. It doesn’t have to be terrible.
As far as the virus, I had an anti-body test recently that came back positive, so, I had been exposed at some point. I wanted the test, before getting a vaccine, though I have no serious plans to do so, especially now. (Am kind of waiting for Novavax, but wanted an antibody test before alleged fading of antibodies). Like many, I felt not so great early on in March/April 2020. My ‘symptoms’ were feeling kinda cold and kinda tired. Not quite chills, but couldn’t seem to get warm for a few days. I also had a quick stomach illness earlier this year, but other than that, I have no idea when I might have had it, or been exposed. I was reminded of this by reviewing some journal entries around the time. ‘Journaling’ can be useful, 😉 I recall at the time I felt ‘off’, looking into getting a test, but to qualify for a test, the symptoms had to be fever and cough, but I had neither.
Was at a small BBQ recently, and talk of vaccination came up. I have kept my status on the ‘down low’, though had been asked before about it at a BBQ earlier in the summer, so the hosts and some guests knew (same group for both BBQs). Anyway, I was surprised by the harsh tone against those that may not want to be vaxxed, sort of a ‘they deserve if they die without being vaxxed’ attitude, calling out Fox/Facebook propoganda keeping people from being vaxxed, not wondering if they’re just being manipulated by NYT/CNN propaganda. This is a highly-credentialed engineering/medical PMC-group (or aspire to PMC) that would self-ID as progressive, Trump haters. I found it jarring. Not the disagreement, but the anger about it.
Darkest Yorkshire, I’ll play.
Wish #1: To know what the best use of the other two wishes would be ;P
That answer reminds me of a joke: The University’s heads of faculties are all sitting down for lunch when suddenly the skies open and the angel of the LORD appears! It points it’s many-handed finger at Dr Wittenschmacker and proclaims, “Doctor Wittenschmacker, your tenure as head of the philosophy department has been sublime in every way! You have earned a BOON from the highest throne! Choose now – do you want wisdom, your youth returned to you, or ten million dollars?”
“What kind of a choice is that supposed to be?” cries Dr. Wittenschmacker, “Of course I want the wisdom!”
“So be it!” cries the angel, and disappears in a flash of light.
The faculty heads stare at Dr. Wittenschmacker who stares at his plate, a man transformed. The silence stretches until one of the others can’t bear it any longer and whispers, “Say something”.
Dr Wittenschmacker shakes his head and mutters, “I should have taken the money”.
Also wanted to share some anecdata on the vaccine from Eastern Canada: My neighbour recently ended up in the hospital with a vaccine reaction, and the paramedics spoke to her quite freely about what they were seeing. The doctors know the vaccines are doing something, but they don’t have a clear idea what it is or what to do about it (they gave her antibiotics for swelling and an IV for the flulike symptoms). Also, apparently the vaccine has the most side effects in the 35-50 age range (though I suspect fewer people under 35 have gotten two). I fall into that range, and one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of my peers have compressed the schedule of their booster shot from the original ‘wait three months’ interval. Given that the serious complications of both the illness and the vaccine seem to come from an overreaction by the immune system, I suspect hitting it with a one-two shock in rapid succession can’t be a good idea. Based on divination I elected to get the shot and am now getting nagging emails from Health Canada asking me to kindly get my second vaccination earlier than initially scheduled. I’d like to write them an undruidly-worded response to the effect that I’ve graciously volunteered for their risky medical experiment despite my doubts, and changing the protocol midway through is doing nothing to assuage them! But the email is unmonitored.
I’ve noticed that there is something strange and fear-adjacent about all this covid discussion – it’s as if fear is the primary thing, and people fear either the virus or the vaccine. Very few seem to fear both or neither. I’m certainly no exception – I’m fairly sure I had Covid, and it was no fun – certainly much worse than the first jab. But if TPTB decide that the vaccines are too risky before my second appointment I’ll feel a strong sense of relief, despite knowing rationally that the general health I trust to protect me from viruses is the same health that will protect me from the vaccine. Strange spells not cast by humans indeed…
Two Covid vaccine data points for you –
1) My state, PA, posts the number of shots first dose and second dose by county. Despite 6 weeks of constant propaganda, bribes, insults, and threats over Delta, it remains in July essentially flat. This is clearly just people like my daughters required to get it. The masses who wanted it got it March-May when it opened up to under 65, and it then it the number of doses bottomed out. No wonder the elite are raging mad and floundering around trying to force something into place.
2) I’d been wondering for the past week or so as the propaganda for booster shots started up again, how many people would just go and get a third vaccine dose on their own. After all, no one is tracking in a central database who is getting these shots. When my kids got them, they didn’t show up on our insurance as being processed (despite being told to bring an insurance card to the appointment). So I started asking around, and apparently it is a thing in the Silicon Valley community (which is now everywhere really) to go and get a third dose just to be safe. So our “smartest” people are completely ignoring the science these vaccines.
Your comment back about people being too scared about doing anything in person in 2022 really shocked me. I didn’t realize it was quite that bad. I assumed it was just drama or a cover and now I’ve got to reassess how I’m interpreting what I see.
@JMG – thank you for taking it seriously enough to ask if I’ve done divination for a possible magical response. I have never been able to develop enough confidence in my own understanding of any divination system, but it may well be a question worth asking someone with better divination skills to help me with.
As to a possible magical response, I am hoping mostly to interest those better qualified and more knowledgeable than myself in the prospect of giving the suggestion some consideration.
For myself, I am mostly spending time praying to be lifted into better attunement with the most clearsighted way to approach the times ahead, with a view to being of the best possible assistance to anyone placed alongside me in my path. I do not think I have the skills to do anything else.
I am very much open to advice. I dislike watching people sleep-walking to their destruction.
JMG, you mentioned the powerful refrain of your thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits become character, and character becomes your destiny. Thinking of that as I read the FDA is considering magic potion approval as early as this Fall and walking away from a career when work mandates it as I’m sure all hospitals will. Watching a feeling of fear while thinking of the brave souls we’ve read and mentioned on the internet and this website (Bret Weinstein, Lunar Apprentice as just an example of each)). The people who have risked and lost careers, status, and income for stating and fighting for honest open dialog and seeking truth. Who have stood up and paid for what they, I, and many others value.
What I think of the issues we discuss here I am not allowed to express at my work or with many people I know. As likely FDA approval approaches I hope for an awakening or intervention of some kind but the pessimist inside me is doubtful. If something like that happens I will be relieved but realize there is so much more we face in our futures. Choices, karma, character, destiny. I will be keeping those words in mind along with the types of people I respect and value.
Outside with my old blind dog in a field at the tree line I see it all alive with spirit. I see a bird in a tree and think of the parable about 2 birds on a branch where one bird sings while the other bird watches. The bird flew away and immediately another that I didn’t see followed and I laugh as I think, “son of a gun there were 2 birds in the tree!”
We can see and communicate with that in any way we choose.
Thank you JMG and all.
@Robert Mathiesen It looks like Biden via presidential proclamation back in May lifted the restrictions on student visas https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/presidential-proclamation-on-the-suspension-of-entry-as-nonimmigrants-of-certain-additional-persons-who-pose-a-risk-of-transmitting-coronavirus-disease-2019.html
Colleges must be thrilled to have access to their cash cows for fall. My daughter’s college is holding a special vaccine clinic for the students who don’t have access to our vaccines here.
I’m wondering how many actually come given the chaos. It might be better here though vs where they are.
Late in the comment cycle, but I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how a government of any size can proactively remain in touch with the sentiments of the populace generally. As one can observe readily today (and in many examples in history), leaders tend to get buffered from the commoners by ever-thickening layers of advisors and bureaucracy. As such, we have “experts”–who may actually have some expertise to offer–as the primary source of data for key decision-makers, who often lack any real context for the experiences of the general populace. Everything get funneled and filtered and showcased. Then, as pressures mount, some form of crisis or revolution or political realignment results in the establishment of a new/reformed system better reflecting the popular will. And then the cycle repeats itself as that new system begins acquiring its own bureaucracy and professional classes.
To some extent, it is one of the key functions of a staff to take a vast amount of raw data and to separate the more relevant from the less relevant, to summarize, and to generally reduce the data flow to something manageable and meaningful. But like most everything, that which is useful (even necessary) in one application can be harmful in another.
So how can a government stay in touch with the people? As the US amply demonstrates, representative democracy is not immune to the issues outlined above. Or, is this cycle simply built into human society?
@ Lunar Apprentice – thanks a million for the link.
@ erikalopez – I second your shout out on “Harold and Maude” – what a little gem it is, and exactly right just now.
@ all discussing west/east migration started by Robert Mathiesen – I suppose I myself am that case. My ancestors left England in 1640 in one wave that washed up in Massachusetts/Rhode Island, and 1760 in a second wave that washed up in Virginia, and sloshed its way west as far as California, also south as far as Costa Rica, and now I myself have sloshed back east, ending up in Ireland. Who knows where the wave ends or where the next one starts… I do not think any of us made our respective decisions in response to any “big picture”… instead, our personal reasons and movements aggregated together are what make the big picture “appear” as a larger pattern than all of those separate journeyings and life changes.
@SL Claire – your point is well taken, and long term consequences of both Covid disease and Covid injection are yet to be reckoned. Also, I am truly sorry to hear about your mother’s lonely hospital death, which has been one of the truly terrible forms of suffering that way too many people have had to bear throughout this period. May your lost loved ones find peace and guidance as they transition into their next adventure, and may you find comfort in their memories.
I picked two weeks mainly because that was the cut off point in many of the stats gathered in Ireland and the UK, during the past year and a half, for calling a death a “Covid death” – although that has now lengthened to 28 days. Comparable stats for deaths within 2 weeks (or 28 days) of a Covid injection are theoretically possible for them to also gather and publish, since governments are busy creating medical passports and other such data tracking services… but they are not being published (are they being gathered?). For whatever reason.
Covid itself has imposed various kinds of suffering, and Covid injections are not mitigating that, but adding to it. IMHO Covid disease is a real disease, needing a real and effective treatment response (plus people being allowed the support of their families when they most need it). But also, IMHO, Covid injections are a false treatment, in that they do not treat, they do not prevent, they do not interrupt disease spread or do anything remotely useful as part of a disease response. They also introduce new risks, which that there appear to be no non-theoretical benefits to weigh them against, make them IMHO an unacceptable risk for any health person to be asked, pressured or made to take. Finally, IMHO, what is happening “Big Picture” is that the capacities and resources held in trust by every health service, public or private, for treating clinical disease in the sick, are being swiftly eroded and diminished as they get co-opted into a vain, but exceedingly costly, effort to wage a fruitless and unwinnable war against a virus. (Virus =/= clinical disease).
The exact same kind of fruitless and unwinnable war that industrial agriculture is waging against pests and weeds. The exact same kind of fruitless and unwinnable war that medicine already tried to wage, and lost, against bacteria with antibiotics. These wars are conceptually flawed, but seem to be the cherished philosophical children of industries descended in an almost unbroken line from the re-purposed weapons industries of WWI and WWII.
Be well
JMG,
Late, I know, but I just finished listening Greg Moffitt’s latest interview with David Elkington about Elkington’s book, The Ancient Language of Sacred Sound: The Acoustic Science of the Divine and I was certainly reminded of your book Secrets of the Temple.
Seems to me that what Elkington was talking about dovetails nicely what what you wrote about in your book. Elkington takes things back much farther in “history”. Sound vibrations played a very important part in the use of all built sacred places it seems. I haven’t read the book, but I will be putting it onto my get to list.
Dear Ian Duncombe:
that’s what this “Doctrine of High Magic” study IS all about! there are no ultimate interpretations, there is no glossary, only YOU… us. ya, dig? there’s no short cut, no “little pamphlet” to truly rely on. there is query discussion confusion interpretations possibilities trials errors.
we’re being awkward wrong right and confused TOGETHER. these discussions in the Doctrine of High Magic online here are the closest thing in decades that i’ve had to having loooong philosophical arty discussions with friends while drinking endless cheap pitchers of Yeung Ling porter at smoky smelly sticky McGlinchey’s in ’90s arty Philadelphia.
there’s no booklet that can tell you want to know–Absolute Truth–without you getting messy and performing messy surgery on yourself. anything else is just more safe cute parlor tricks.. .and how we GOT here, i might remind you. (wink)
hell, i had to re-read Papa G’s interpretation of the 3 cups a few times even to under his ANSWER. no little pamphlet that come with ANYTHING can bring you to that kinda complexity nuance and EXPERIENCE.
i’m here because it’s no longer enough for me to navigate this world as it is with my own natural or earned intuition. four years of study for years of floundering will go by swiftly the same and i’m about to be 54 on 10 August so i’ve got only so much time to plait all my leonine and artistic and mixed complicated superpowers into something RELEVANT.
for i truly am megalomaniacal about bring into being SOME sort of new underground reaction against all this mind melding borg group think.
it won’t happen how I WANT it to, but i’m aiming to show up fully aware and ready to play game and NOT choke. because NOT CHOKING and facing failure and devastation or exile is all about re-committing a LIVING SUICIDE all the time.
i keep forgetting.
but my despair at most everyone i admired selling out and selling out us people, has NECESSARILY turned me inward, not giving a damn…
but that was the small act of suicide i needed to get my ENERGY back because i remembered Papa G saying: they count on our despair.
so just when i’ve had it with humanity and turn inward to handle my own apartment major cleaning and opening for the LOCAL ONLY business idea i have, i see parties and freedom.
my 74 year old friend, Basul Parik, he was a child refugee out of CZ and said a lot of artists did rather well in communism because they had special things others wanted that no one could do.
so i’m going to do custom casual clothing for men at the gym because they can’t find anything to fit and they’ll pay for solid classics that last, and they NEED to feel loved and cared for and as tailors know– the clothes do make the man. so i’ll hopefully give some alpha dogs swagger and joy. and touch. whenever i fit men they melt under simply being TOUCHED.
men were never the malicious dogs women always insisted they were.
The Doctrine of High Magic is getting me back in touch with my dreams and how i’ve gotta die to live and love ’em. there’s no booklet for that because ..well, you’re supposed to SWEAT cry rage think move test and figure these answers and truths out for yourself.
anyhow, i’m sharing because i’m IN the middle of it. no matter how long i’ve been at this artist in play game, i’m always a beginner anew because i’m full of crap anew.
i’m lazy. i live like this and i’d LOVE for there to have been a little pamphlet for this all along.
(well… not REALLY. i lie. all the adventure is in testing this all out for yourself.)
x
My Dearest Violet!–
i went into despair and it actually focused be to re-believe this new underground IS possible… simply because it’s NEEDED. desperately needed. i see shades of it appearing here and people are already meeting up in real life here and later apologizing about drinking too much.
we’re all gonna socially mess up because we’re out of practice and more needy for it than we could EVER imagine. so we’ll have to expect some leakiness and over emoting or running away and hiding because it… WAS TOO GOOD and gave us ice cream headaches of love.
i believe there are more of us as i’ve formerly attracted readers from here somehow before when i had a mailing list that i didn’t even pitch or promote so we FIND each other somehow.
i don’t WANT to be “star” again. it’s exhausting. and how do you be Star in this world where EVERYONE is a movie star now, fussing with their bodies in front of mirrors and magic phones?
the answer was i had to do in real life what no one else will or would do anymore.
i’m still working it, revising, re-tooling, and figuring out how to be me and attract others in this tribe and it may not work, but ..(shrug)… someone will notice and learn from my mistakes or successes and be able to do better. / i believe that because i am here in San Francisco because of that kind of magic.
i learned from my own late mentor, Kris Kovick, how to trick even the shyest people into getting involved enough that they themselves become accidental ARTISTS or writers or performers. same thing.
this was long but i’m trying to start other fires in people.
at some point people like us are even way beyond our well-meaning therapists who’ve tried to keep us “sane.” /
as you well know in your bones, eventually you remember or realize that anyone who’s successful in this system as it is, has to live and think within their own given boundaries or whatever’s in the DSM manual so insurance can cover the malady. that’s their little pamphlet. if they deviate or question, then they are considered insane as well.
so i believe in you or whatever you’re to become because you’re just waaaaay too big for this chronological age you’re supposed to be.
i’ll try and remember to post my pitfalls or successes on this new underground thing here in case you wanna take cues or avoid what i try out.
i don’t know whether it’s a 5X Leo thing or whether i’m just my revolutionary parents’ daughter, but i don’t wanna leave this world feeling like i lost this opportunity.
but i know i have to DIE to pull this all off. i’m terrified. but …kinda NOT.
the suicide keeps netting its own delightful energy and freedom. i forgot that i only ever truly lived when i was at my most suicidal. it’s the Story that trips me up. their story. the pamphlet story. it’s too little. uninteresting.
you’re huuuuge, Violet. you feel necessary.
x
Thinking of everything that has gone on since 2016, does it not strike anyone here that we’re handling the jabbs like a loyalty test? And no John i do not have any evidence that fake shot are being given out. But at this point i don’t think i believe anything that the PTB say. They’ve lied for 12 years with regards to equity prices and housing. Punishing those who do not want to speculate. How is this any different other then i think the path they’re going down and actually trying to get to is violence.
I had a conversation with my husband this morning that, without going into irrelevant details, went into the territory of religion; different religions and what they do and don’t have in common,etc. As we were talking it came to me that “science” may gradually evolve into a real religion. We already see the beginnings of this, but it could continue and evolve long after Covid is forgotten. It will have it’s own church buildings, perhaps with church services, it’s own rituals and articles of faith. People might bring their babies to have a vaccination jab as a baptism-like ritual, and there might be communion-like rituals to reinforce beliefs and loyalty to science.. I could see it even replacing certain current religions, yet keeping the structure of those religions. This is not something I would want to see happen, but I can imagine it that could go that way.
A question for David by the lake:
As a utility specialist, what are your thoughts on the potential impacts of a 100-year or 200-year solar flare on our modern electrical grid, and potential knock-on effects on industrial civilization? IMO Bret Weinstein revealed himself to be an apocalyptic thinker in this piece: https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-the-sun-could-wipe-us-out/
My intuitive sense is that we could probably shed loads to reduce the number of transformers required and get essential services like drinking water/wastewater treatment etc. up and running, even if we were to lose 30% of transformer capacity, and also that we could probably build new ones (in unaffected parts of the globe, considering that the impact will be somewhat regional) in far less than two years if that were suddenly our #1 priority. But I’m not an expert in this area.
Lunar Apprentice:
Just wanted to mention how important your contributions to this site really are. At a time when, frankly, propaganda is being disseminated as medical fact and average GPs can’t spend adequate time with patients, your knowledge and ability to explain medical information clearly is really valuable to all of us here who are not doctors.
@ Jade Dragon #199 and becoming a novelist.
Novel writing is as variable as human beings. We all do it a little different.
I started writing in my early 50’s when my sister gave me a second-hand laptop. Like Humpty Dumpty, I begin at the beginning, tell everything in the order in which it happened, and when I reach the end, I stop. I revise as I go along and then revise again afterwards as needed.
My husband (who’s been writing since his teens) writes scenes, plots, outlines, goes back and forth and has a trunkful of unfinished novels. His insecurities get in the way of finishing and then publishing.
Other people write on index cards and arrange the index cards until the narrative suits them.
You learn to write by writing.
As to how long it takes to write a novel, it varies immensely. For 235,000 words (The White Elephant of Panschin https://peschelpress.com/the-white-elephant-of-panschin/ ) I took about ten months plus more time for revision. Other people write a 40,000 word category cozy in about a month, followed by a few weeks of revisions.
Every book is different.
I will leave you with some immortal words from Nora Roberts:
“I can fix a bad page but I can’t fix a blank page.”
Dear William (#76) – I might be able to help or point you in the right direction. However, I am a bit uncertain from your comment what you are actually searching for. Is there a particular tradition, practice or path you are interested in and wanting to explore, or are you on a mission to discover the Truth (wherever that may lead)? What are you ultimately hoping to discover or accomplish? If you don’t feel comfortable elaborating on a public forum, feel free to email me at dev.ekam@yahoo.com. What I have discovered and what I offer for assistance to people may or may not be what you have in mind. Warmly, Dev
JMG
Got an email from Barns & Nobel this morning.
Seems you have a new book coming out ‘The Druid Path: A Modern Tradition of Nature Spirituality’. It is available for pre-order and due out in January, 2022.
In hardback no less.
John – Coop Janitor
TJandtheBear – yes, I suppose you’re right, it is a false dichotomy. It’s also still a difficult position to be in.
BCV, Mike Duncan’s revolutions podcast series is awesome. One of my favorite podcast series of all time, possibly THE favorite. He’s currently working on the Russian revolution – Nicholas just abdicated today, 63 episodes into the russian revolution. The series is very, very detailed, and I really like his sense of humor.
One thing I was struck by was the giant set-piece revolutions we all think of tend to happen against situations where both the ruler and the regime supporting them are incompetent. Malice not required, unlike in so many fictional stories. Just incompetence on the part of both ruler and regime. A good ruler can often make a bad system functional enough to continue a little longer even if they can’t fix it, a good system can generally survive a bad ruler… but both together tends to lead to disaster.
A lot of the infamously incompetent/nasty roman emperors ended up assassinated. I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that bloodthirsty tyrants are actually more likely to get removed by assassination or palace coup than to be removed by revolution in the streets, unless they are so incompetent that they lose the support of the military etc as well as being bloodthirsty.
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/
He also has an earlier podcast, The History of Rome, which spans from Rome’s earliest beginnings and related legends to the fall of the western roman empire. Also well worth a listen, though be aware that the earliest episodes aren’t as good as the later ones.
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/
Highly recommended, both of them.
@Christopher Henningsen
Re: your post #477 Thank you. Very interesting.
@ Blue Sun #220
I’m 61. My parents insulated the attic of house #1 in the 1960’s, then insulated (blown-in) house #2 (mid-1970’s with the first of the oil shocks) along with aluminum siding and storm windows.
After that, I insulated my house in Norfolk (1990). Then the house in South Carolina (attic and crawl space (1995) and now the house in Hershey. Three houses without so much as a shred of insulation AFTER the oil shocks of the 1970’s.
Most people don’t care to spend the money and effort needed upfront to insulate. They just whine and write the check to the energy company.
Two points: ensuring proper ventilation is an absolute must or you’ll get mold.
Second: you’ll save major bucks and the payback on your spending can be really fast. Since we insulated our house in Hershey, I have NEVER burned as much fuel oil as we did during winter #1 and that was a very mild winter.
I’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars because Bill put on the boiler suit and crawled around in the attic laying down batts.
To Michelle #481
Thanks for the tip on the operatic breathing exercises, I will give them a try.
Thank you. Philip
All–
Very late in the week, but I saw this and had to share. A sales brochure if ever I saw one:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/investors-plugged-heliogen-smart-solar-154025687.html
All the buzzwords and boxes you might want to check. Merger. AI. Green hydrogen. Stacy Abrams. SPAC.
Closing argument of the “article”:
It’s important to remember that a mission-driven company like Heliogen is able to attract engineering talent, giving it an advantage similar to Tesla. The company is also likely to get noticed by more smart investors.
Gotta love the grifting!
@Darkest Yorkshire #3,
It occurs to me that despite the prevalence of what TVTropes calls ” Genies” in morality tales—you know, the ones who if you wish to remain young and beautiful forever will turn you into a statue, or if you wish for a million dollars will cause you to be paralyzed an a traffic accident and receive a million-dollar settlement—a truly well-meaning wish-granting genie might be even more dangerous and frightening to deal with in the long run. Or, alternatively, might be unable to grant any wishes at all, due to realizing that no fulfillment of a wish can ever really match the wisher’s intent.
Disney’s genie in Aladdin might be the sort you describe (except for the freeing thing). The story’s been criticized for nullifying Aladdin’s wish “I wish for you to make me a prince” by treating it as if the genie had just given Aladdin a parade and some clothing, to fit with a “be yourself” Aesop when Aladdin at first refuses to admit he’s not really a prince and bad consequences ensue. But had the wish really made him an actual prince, he’d presumably receive the background and attitudes of a prince as well, and Jasmine (the only reason Aladdin wants to be a prince, as the genie knows) would have been no more attracted to him than to all the other suitor princes. Well-meaning genies granting wishes could still end up with binds of that nature. What would be the fate of the (clearly vain to begin with) person who wished to stay young and beautiful forever, and had that wish fully granted?
A story in an all-wishes-stories anthology I read decades ago suggested an ultimate altruistic wish, which went something like, “without any change whatsoever to myself, make me the dumbest, meanest, and least happy person on Earth.” You couldn’t try that with a traditional meanie genie (unless you wouldn’t mind the genie snapping half the population away, Thanos style, or worse), but it might work with a well-meaning genie. And if so, what might become of the world? And by the way, wouldn’t all the ethical issues of performing magic on others without their consent be fully in play (and horribly violated) in that scenario?
There’s always wishing for money (which is a lot like wishing for more wishes, really) but if the money’s for something, like I need it to be happy, why not avoid the pitfalls and wish for happiness instead? Of course that’s a bit too open-ended as well. More like: “I wish to be happy but not uncaring, confident but not reckless, appreciated but not adulated, comfortable but not complacent, aware but not cynical, knowledgeable but not dogmatic, imaginative but not delusional…” And if the genie says “So be it!” and then nothing at all changes, well, I think that might be the only way to win at the wishing game.
@CS2 #524 – Hmm. I think there’s not too much more that I can elaborate on, unfortunately. I’ve been to Vienna when I was a child and hated it since my mother drag me to all kinds of museums, churches and anything else you can visit there which is countless (at least to a five year old, but for many adults, too, I guess). I came back roughly 25 years later. I didn’t stay very long, just a few nights, and skipped most of the museums this time 😉 Instead, we took extended walks through the city, visited some markets and some restaurants and bars.
So it’s more like a general feeling. Behind a lot of very strange habits (to a foreigner) like the obsession with titles and no-parking-signs (we saw quite a few parking lots along the street that had 3 or more signs for who may and may not park there at which time of the day for a single lot), well, behind it – that would be the interesting part I guess, but I can’t really put my finger on it. I think you have to live there for some time to really find out. What remains is the feeling that this city has a very different vibe than other large European cities I have visited. I could imagine that Vienna is more conducive for dabbling in occultism and getting contact to other like-minded people than, for example, Berlin or Paris. But that’s just a guess. Yet for the smaller cities in southern Germany I mentioned, that’s definitely my experience.
Do you have any connection to Vienna? If so, what are your experiences?
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@ dennis G – Yes, I will probably be joining you, although Arkansas is pretty sedate, I imagine when FDA approves, the floodgates will open, and I will not be an RN any longer, or a working one anyway. My conscience won’t let me bow the knee: what’s next? Mandatory for kids? We have to take some career casualties and join in conflict on this front, early on, before mission creep leads to really bad stuff.
Papa G, please forgive me for riffing like i’m on my regular haunt, Wolfstreet, but i went to the gym again SO SOON because i have all this energy from another one of my new, now-common little suicides — and i have thoughts i wanna share instead of writing to myself or for no one in particular.
the reason i advocate those of you interested in NEW STORIES and NEW IDEAS to catch up and read along with this “Doctrine of High Magic” study, is because it’s for the ones who’re going to be making these new undergrounds and speakeasies that will be a host to a whole lot of new ideas that will be put in play and experimented with.
a lot of “messed up” people are here, and i know because some had contacted me on my own mailing list when i had it. i don’t fear messed up people because that is what we freaks on the low have in common: most of us have been ostracized and found out from jump street.
and that does something to you. they molest us they take their miseries and failures out on us and we cannot any longer afford to follow in their collective “poor me/screw you” paradigm.
i cite Doctrine of High Magic because it’s the STUDY, the STRUGGLE that will change how you think. the process of pointing to the moon becomes the moon. you don’t “get” there, there is no answer. that expectation that embarrassment for standing out and thinking for yourself is what has us here at this totalitarianism.
and i know we were already like that as humans, BUT now it’s global because of the mass trainings of the magic phones. i fear these magic phones and surveillance and our acceptance of it more than the serums. they LEAD to serum and kool aid suicides.
so we wanna learn to divine but we want answers in the little booklet but WHO wrote that little booklet? what are they selling?
that’s why i am digging this study of the Doctrine of High Magic– because as i claw at the closest i can get to (my?) truth, i don’t have time to be distracted by what They Choose for Me to Rebel Against.
i was the Loyal Opposition for so long and now i get that phrase in my bones and it stiffens my joints with shame regret disgust… and it’s the atonement that makes me understand the XIII card with the flayed/skeleton being.
it’s how you understand the cards and go beyond what you THINK you see which teaches you to see beyond what you’re expected to. it’s why i dig how Papa G won’t answer you. that’s mad hard to not coddle your ego and preach to the desperate here.
anyhow, the act of looking beyond what you’re led to see is a defiant alpha act that is dangerous and a part of why so many are in lock step regarding The Collective Mass Corporate Illusion. no one wants to LOOK BAD or embarrass themselves by over reacting.
but traditionally “bad kids” are used to being accused of over-reacting to having the crap beat out of them or sucking up things that Regular People cannot even imagine taking and going to school pretending absolutely EVERYONE IS OKEY DOKE.
look how easily Regular People snap and come apart at the fear of being annihilated…
it is our DUTY to study beyond Their Collective Mass Corporate Illusion and understand the myriad of ways they can mess with your MIND and throw you off balance.
that off balance moment is ALL. it is the split second moment one has to act and get away with a play.
a play is a move an aggressive overt or first move beyond the expected response. my shtick whenever testing ANYONE is to either overtly or quietly throw the other off balance to see how they roll with it. if they get itchy, i know they can be hella DANGEROUS.
but as much as i know how to mess with Regular People, i’m clueless as to how we got here. i had no idea it was this bad.
so that’s why i’m in the Doctrine of High Magic class. because i need to get further grounded and learn to deflect their new stories as well as my own reliance upon always reacting AGAINST their stories.
that’s not freeing because it’s the same thing. like Democrats/Republicans.
this book this study these conversations are our struggles to go beyond the collective assumptions the air we ALL have been breathing.
i say this i write this here because chances are there is an army of alphas just itching about what to DO instead of just being at the mercy of their story.
i have no answers. that’s why i’m HERE.
but i’m writing because Unamused over on Wolfstreet, before he disappeared in a puff of magic smoke, he said something about us having to start asking the RIGHT QUESTIONS.
and that’s why a lot of our heads are oozing as we struggle to grab back our minds and open them to different ways of thinking.
it’s making me grateful people have been keeping these threads alive through the ages. that everything hasn’t gotten cut up and corrupted in this short term post modern short attention span world.
i myself am trapped in the collective “i’m old and irrelevant now” narrative as a woman. i listen no i READ Patricia Mattews and Denis and i CRAVE women like that in my Real Life… but alas, no dice. i must BE that woman. fighting to the end. hell yeah it’s mad beautiful! i am vain enough to wanna look good like that.
so those of you who think it’s too abstract or archaic a study, i beg to differ. our reading The Doctrine of High Magic is the most cutting edge thing i’ve seen or done since i saw that video of Marina Abramović staring in people’s eyes one at a time. i didn’t care about the fact that her old partner showed up. that’s a given with people like us. we never die or really leave. we always come back because there’s no one like us later in life anymore.
you’re part of an already existing secret underground right in the open. some people are here for the liquor and the sex and some are here for the thrill of learning how to fly these powerful things around that we are now that we’ve made it this far.
because you have to imagine a story that doesn’t yet exist. a story they don’t even want you to be able to IMAGINE, much less pull off.
so that’s why learning tarot card divination is too small a goal because your job is to tell new stories but if you are corrupted with OLD stories and cannot detect another snow job when what is up is down and could be constant confusion like an inverted 3 of cups…
how can you interpret that into something RELEVANT? new stories new concepts new imagination.
no little booklet that comes with anything will be able to GIVE you that tell you that.
this is off-road stuff. and no answers. that’s also exciting.
because contrary to what the innerwebs has everyone thinking now, you cannot be WRONG. that’s scary scary.
but the only way to deflect the soft totalitarianism of “tell me what it MEANS.” that’s how we end up with masks on our face and pretending to small pathetic ingrown hair festering magics.
you fight back by learning how to THINK. not learning how to argue better. because the argument always changes.
whew. i’m tired. i just had to say that because Papa G’s starting jazz riffs here. don’t waste it. that’s also a test. don’t go for the okey doke. the little pamphlet.
catch up. this is a training ground for the former pariahs abused and broken down to transcend their story, make up new ones, and most importantly: IMPLEMENT them.
i had a good day in play. i practically did a stand up routine in the produce section at trader joe’s when i went off about the new mask ALL THE TIME mandate in san francisco. and all these cowering white guys in masks cheered me on and promised they were smiling UNDER their masks. i laughed.
my work is cut out for me. i have my new audience of pariahs.
more later. i’ll share my plans and progress as i go but i wrote plenty now and that was just ONE thing of three big connecting beautiful moments today. because whenever i stop giving a damn (suicide), i am more myself and accidentally find OTHERS like me.
i told the guys in the produce aisle that before i put my fist in the air and yelled, “i wanna also say to equal things out– WHITE POWER!” in the produce section and made the men laugh secretly under their masks, but all the other women of all colors were mortified and looked away like i’d combust in demonic flames.
i didn’t.
x
Re. the Sars, I’m done with all the officiating ‘Pert’ klaxon$ wailing.. I know CONdicension when I hear/see/read it. So, no matter the athoritative preenings, pleadings, or commands .. I’ll do as I think best, for the better of me and mine. The mendacious hypocritess can go as dark as they please. They shall die trying.
P.S. why i do i pull aside The Pariahs as Prophets? aren’t i just adding to the grandiose fantasies we’d lull ourselves to sleep with, covered in blood or sugary tears? i say sugary to cut to the chase and teach you how i “talk,” for i get these complexities.
i get that after seeing how fragile and insane Regular Ordinary People are, they who i thought my entire life i wanted to be like i wanted the approval of… oh my how i envied them! i went to acting class with the late character actor, Cliff Osmond, because i –i SAID as a novelist, that i wanted to learn how to write screenplays for actors. see through their eyes, learn how to communicate with Regular People because i knew i thought and saw things differently.
people always loved it at first then they hated me for it and wanted to kill me as the only witness to their inner humanity… be it sweet or bitter.
ah… bitterness and why i’m finding peace with how and why we’re here where we are as a WORLD… because now that i see how insane these so-called perfect people i admired and envied… i was in acting class and blurted out when he asked why i was there, i blurted out to my mortal embarrassment: “I WANT TO LEARN HOW TO THINK LIKE REGULAR PEOPLE!”
and he laughed and laughed like it was the end of the proverbial tv show because i’d gotten it all wrong. when he was done bellowing doubled over at my expense, he said, “i know actors who’d give their soul to have the amount of emotion YOU have in one pinkie!”
i sobbed. because i went there to learn how to understand Regular People and thus, i expected, i would eradicate my pain of not fitting in.
i was ashamed that i’d blurted out the truth i’d never even admitted to myself. i acted confident. i was a lie even to myself. my swagger was fake. i was weak. i wanted to be like others.
anyhow, skid into today and now i’m for hella SURE that i want nothing to do with the inner world of Regular People for as it has manifest today, it is gross a hell and no one’s having any fun. no one! and for what? no one even gets the girl and the girl doesn’t wanna be gotten but she does but she’s too distracted with her skin hair and acting without embarrassment shame or ridicule.
i said today to my other artist, former gay go go dancer friend, my age, i said: “these magic phones make everyone a constant movie star obsessed with their image at all times and just saying hello for them has become like the worst stagefright and nausea we’d have going on stage. but the stage is their ENTIRE LIFE and no wonder they are reclining swooning divas making fish faces even in the dark alone…just in case the live stream’s got night vision.”
i couldn’t stand even being a 3-rd rate self-indulgent so-called alternative artist and writer because i didn’t trust anyone. it’s a curse.
so that’s my point: when what was up is down now and if you think you had a crappy childhood, think again. it might be the thing that has saved you, prepared you for what is necessary NOW. when you’ve been ostracized a pariah from jump, you’ve GOT this.
you won’t cave like George Clinton and KRS One et al. they got soft. i dance in public to keep the trickle of nausea and terror FAMILIAR. pain channeled well and with purpose and thought can be a good thing. but you’ve gotta wean yourself of even looking for anyone’s small booklet pamphlet.
you have to know yourself. it’s all in The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic. it’s THERE. that’s why i recognize this is worthy, very hella worthy an offering from Papa G. that’s why i call him Papa G! i’m not nor have i ever been casual and i make alpha men. whether i shtup them, befriend them, or just SEE them for who and what they are.
and they make ME.
all this in Levi, too. all this about the power of LOVE. but love has to have its cheapness beat and tested out of it. this is TESTED VALOR and why in one of those biblical stories i get confused, where he trusts the son who was a jerk then returned.
you, when you are in a homeless shelter and your life depends on quickly testing someone in power to see where their loyalties lie, “who their god is,” is how i said it as a kid. i was wild and a runaway and in a lot of situations that’d make your hair stand on end but it was all a test and i am okay because even then i was in charge. i TESTED and even when people had ill intentions with me as an open girl, i knew that being REAL and looking into eyes daringly, would get me respect and men with bad intentions would suddenly TAKE CARE OF ME.
this is all in Levi’s book and in the Marseilles deck. the complexity of being good and what IS good in this complicated world?
it’s why i dig this book. because no one GETS this. your therapist cannot tell you, “yes, i see you learned a lot from sex with older men. things that are like secrets of love and a prior time and a fantasy of IDEAL romantic love… when you’re young you get it all because when you’re with someone your age, they punch you in the arm.”
and i’ve had more trauma opening my legs to the san francisco health system–both orifices–and many times, have been more traumatic than nearly being raped by one or many or plain running for my life or getting beat bloody by my folks or some stranger.
i’m GRATEFUL. i have died and i have clawed my way back and see LOVE finally. i lived when so many suicided and there is beauty and heaven on the other side of the rot the compost.
so then i am GRATEFUL for the life many therapists have told me was so tragic. i didn’t buy it. i was happier than my therapists. i always wanted to shake them and their dependence on ME as a client. no lie. they weren’t selling me what they wanted by their dour dispositions.
so i never bought into the victim upside. it just made people wanna wipe their good deeds on me like a slave who no one would believe later when things got creepy and needy.
and now i’m grateful as hell for my so-called horrid childhood. i know how amazing life can be. and we have to transcend the victim thing to start asking the right QUESTIONS.
heck… just thinking of HOW to ask the right questions is gonna take AT LEAST the four years of studying The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic.”
this is starting a whole renaissance or could or likely WILL… so you have to question everything and throw out and try and mess up. that’s why we messed up and pariahs are The Prophets now.
they are cracking. this is why some of us are already trying to find trade and communication routes in the real (and on the low?).
you cannot surveille the 5D. / and with the magic phone distracted world you can do things in plain sight magic phone people cannot even see because they cannot even comprehend that such a world would EXIST in The Real.
we who’ve been prey have had to smell the 5D super fast. we who’ve died already. we’re Leaders now. there is no pamphlet no brochure no book that comes with this because we’re dangerous. we’re actually mad powerful.
look at how FRAGILE things are. when i was a “bad kid,” all it took was that one more question too far to upend dinner at mine or anyone’s house. one question is a match when people are holding their stomachs in and whistling past not only graveyards but all of LIFE.
they rule too much now. that is the real reason it sucks now. it’s global. no underground. no cracks to hide.
but i beg to differ.
so that’s why this all may be bad but necessary and okay and even GOOD. because as that other cartoonist lady wrote as a title, “the good times WERE killing us.”
so that’s in Levi’s book. what is GOOD? there is no pamphlet for how to turn the inevitable taste for sadomasochism into lessons on how to tolerate and even enjoy the transcendent terror of standing against Everyone and being willing to die.
you cannot feign such swagger. it can break you or you can transcend it by the STORY.
they act like life has three acts or two reels. there are so many MORE.
this is why i have all this new energy to go to the gym. and this is why we must LIVE our stories so i can tell you what i know for real. writing is now all IDEAS. no one lives anything they say to do.
that’s the real reason i hated my life as an author. i did all that i wrote about and called it fiction because you cannot fact check a life like mine. easier to say you faked the whole thing and call it good.
but no writers around me DID anything if they ever really did. they were precursers of twitter blather but in novel length b.s. / no wonder the mid-list died out. it wasn’t just business. we sucked. we were all all talk already by then.
this is in Levi’s book. all of it. nothing new i’m saying. i recognized. game recognizes game as they say. you’ve gotta dream up and execute a lot of sins to have any advice worth giving or taking.
so i’m not shilling for Papa G’s book, or maybe i am, i won’t lie. but it’s because it’s GOOD and he’s humble. maybe that’s an autistic thing to not go: WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME WHAT CRAPPY OTHER BOOKS TO READ ON TAROT WHEN WE BROUGHT THIS MAGIC TO YOU TO YOUR FEET! WE’LL FEED IT TO YOU WITH FOOTNOTE DISCUSSIONS EACH MONTH.
the innerwebs have made us all self absorbed “give me” little white girls on recliners. like Daisy in The Great Gatsby. i love art again. i love that people write us ourselves.
so you don’t want that little booklet. you wanna go different and go beyond their binary EVERYTHING narratives and find the missing reel, the secret other acts to be expected…
who wants tiny book divinations and rules when you can rip out the carpeting and be a part of figuring out something NEW. another way. that third way we’re all looking for. you don’t get it without going mad.
and we Pariahs know that have done that. know how to come back. that’s why we’re Prophets now.
whew. now i’m really done. i’m tired. this was writing i needed to do for myself, but it will do some others good here i hope.
i’m not humble. i assume some here just needed PERMISSION.
all bad things have a baby kitten at the base of them. i use that metaphor when i need to remember to see the soft side of harsh reality. but you’ve all been talking baby kittens here. good. EVERYTHING has baby kitten potential even when old and lost. it’s the other side of life and it is love and fighting to find your way back to it after being horrid and kicking dogs like i’ve done. i’ve done things i wince at. but i was hateful. thought i was being GOOD.
i’m always the evil one the moment i assume i’m good. they go hand in hand. i embrace my evil now and am happily surprised when i attract so much good back at me. that’s my real … test.
thanks for putting up with my length. no time to edit. barely time to WRITE but i figured it’d be good for enough to go ahead. maybe the length will weed out the distracted. i know if i admit my own horrid or nasty self, i can keep most of you with me.
(smile)
it’s payback. we’ve gotta GIVE. us writers and artists forgot. now we take and say GIVE ME! LOVE ME!
gotta go/arm cramping thankfully!
xxxx..etc.
@Nachtgurke #550: Is Zum Rothen Igel still there at Wildpretmakt & Tuchlauben (Mattonihof)? Could you consult with the memory of Herr Doktor Brahms and tip a few beers in his memory? That would be worth the trip.
JMG,
re covid vaccination rates in different groups within countries, the situation outside the USA is not the same and if the vaccines turn out to have major long-term impacts, the effects between classes are likely to be very different.
In BC, first vaccine rate is over 81% of the population, and second vaccine over 65% and rising rapidly. To a large extent, I think we may all be in this together, whatever the outcome turns out to be.
A lot of less-wealthy countries have only a small portion of the population vaccinated so far. They usually try to vaccinate health care workers really early on.
So if the vaccines do turn out to, say, produce antibody-dependent enhancement down the line, the effects politically and socially would be dramatically different in different parts of the world.
My landlady was saying there was a lot more ambulances, but that was sometime in april or earlier, and she blamed it on the tent encampment that had sprung up near the grocery store and the opiate epidemic. The drug supply has gone really toxic since the pandemic started, and that has killed a lot of people.
@ kashtan & JMG RE: war cover
I’ll put these for you guys to review as to why I think a major war unlikely. Not to say we won’t try it with another 3rd tier country (Grenada anyone? LOL Clint Eastwood was the hero there, eh?)
https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/ignore-the-hysteria-its-time-to-move-past-covid-america/
more than one thread unraveling, just in this article from a normal propaganda rag
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/08/hypersonic-missiles-are-they-a-gamechanger-by-gordog.html#more
this one details why Russia is unlikely to remain the evil empire for America; in fact, you can see Biden admin is making overtures to them. This article doesn’t even go into the fact that their missile interception systems are working against American designed missile launched by Israel against Syria – and Syria has the previous version…
Several articles circulated recently about USA wargaming things and losing badly; I doubt they even input the hypersonic missiles into those games, tbh…
@Goldenhawk
Fascinating! Thank you for this! A guide from a student of Levi is most appropriate. I am looking forward to studying this and have placed it on order as well. The copy I am looking at also has a introduction by Greer. Apparently comes with a wirth deck which really pays for the book itself comparing deck prices in online shops.
Your profile picture is beautiful by the way, perhaps I should find a suitable picture as well.
I came across this interesting (and concerning) the analysis of the snowballing marginalization of the unvaxxed today:
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/mob-morality-and-the-unvaxxed
@erikalopez
“for i truly am megalomaniacal about bring into being SOME sort of new underground reaction against all this mind melding borg group think.
it won’t happen how I WANT it to, but i’m aiming to show up fully aware and ready to play game and NOT choke. because NOT CHOKING and facing failure and devastation or exile is all about re-committing a LIVING SUICIDE all the time.”
That is a mind blowing piece of writing right there.
I started on this blog while I was working one to one with a dude downtown who was living in squalor in a cockroach infested apartment. We spent most of our time sweeping out stables and working out at the local gym. I started noticing the spaces in between everything, the world in between all the actors. First came a kind of hopelessness, then came a kind of recognition that what everyone was doing was a silly kind of game, then I found this place and started taking up a strict practise, started writing a novel, shed habits I didn’t want anymore ect… It is more then amazing the places just stepping a little more outside the corporate influence takes someone. I am going into the strangest places I have ever seen in my 40 years of life and it isn’t enough just to turn off the radio anymore, or psycho analyze the politicians and the elite; trying to stay two steps ahead, repelling their game. It isn’t enough to pull weights so heavy my eyes pop out. This will be my second time through Levi’s High Doctrine, I tried reading in French this time but I am not quite there. I think Goldenhawk’s suggestion to look at Wirth’s commentary, a student of Levi, can only be helpful personally but you have a kind of boundless creativity as evidenced in your writing, and inspire me to see my own original commentary as valuable as well. Thanks for that!
It was only a matter of time. A Canadian, Swiss Iranian, I think I have that right, journalist thinks she should be able to vote in US elections without citizenship on account of she lives in NYC and is such a high achiever and all. Part of the cosmopolitan, international elite; she seems to have published a book about how her class is best of the best.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/opinion/noncitizen-voting-us-elections.html?referringSource=articleShare
What I want to know is why the NYT even printed this? I mostly have little use for the self styled movement Conservatives–grow up, OK, guys and gals, and I might decide to listen to you–but Holy Smoke, can you not imagine the abuses here? Like, oh, maybe, Trump could fly in planeloads of his illegal Polish construction workers to vote for him, or the Dems could mass distribute “absentee ballots” anywhere that strikes their fancy.
@ericalopez, woman, you’re a national treasure – you keep dancing like that, and you’re gonna be yuge!
@Kevin, West as it gets. That is definitely not encouraging. I see on the MM forum a lot of people are seeing “phantom” rain, so another odd data point is that I heard from some people in the tsunami zones that they’d heard the sirens go off.
There was an 8.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska on Wednesday, but it was shallow, so there was no actual tsunami warning issued for BC. The next day, a Biggs killer whale got stranded, and did something I’ve never heard of a whale doing before :
“I don’t speak a lot of whale, but it didn’t seem real stoked,” he said. “There were tears coming out of its eyes. It was pretty sad.”
Christopher Henningsen (526)
I believe that the three-month interval in Canada was a strategy to get one dose into as many people as possible before giving out the second dose.
In Washington state, the interval was 3 weeks for Pfizer and 4 weeks for Moderna. I think that is what the medical recommendation was.
Pygmycory, about Mike Duncan’s podcasts.
While they are well done technically, they are horrible in content.
I know that many Americans cannot imagine other cultures but Mike goes to ridiculous extreme to ignore and caricature all differences.
Of course, if all you want is to feel superior, he certainly delivers.
Why not instead read contemporary documents to test your hypothesis?
Celadon #551 – Hello, we share common ground:) – I work with an RN who has 2 young girls and a mortgage. He works in a medical ICU and took the shot before he even know what a PCR test was and believed he was seeing everything they told him he was seeing. He says knowing what he knows now that he would still take the chance with the shot because he has to be able to continue to pay the bills for his family. He absolutely will not allow the shot for his girls and is going to home school them with a group of friends if their schools decide to require shots.
My choice is easier, I will retire 4 – 8 years earlier than planned and pony up for insurance for me and my wife. We have no children and we do have some other income. I’m willing to labor for a little extra as available and commit more time to healthier living physically, mentally, and spiritually. I’ve felt quilt about the way we practice medicine for some time now.
Your choice has to be right for you and those who count on you at this time. That’s why I include the examples above. Peoples differing situations may require other choices that aren’t necessarily wrong. If I was younger with debt and children, even knowing what I know now, I suspect that my choice would be the same as my friend above.
Do what you think is right for you and those you love Celadon and Best Wishes to you all.
@ Yorkshire – re genies. It strikes me that wishing is not the same as willing. Willing leads to doing and accomplishment. Wishing leads to inaction, which can produce dissatisfaction, powerlessness and despair.
I wonder if the giving of too much mind-space to wishing is tantamount to robbing oneself of mindspace for willing…
I also wonder if this is one of the key dynamics of our “genie-style” instantly responsive tech, which cultivates our “wishing” while undermining our willing.
It was an interesting reflection exercise. Thank you.
The link below brings you to a most amazing screen shot of Biden Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients demanding all federal contractors require employees to get shot or wear mask and be tested. The message here has no meaning to this post. I post this for the awesome symbolism so easily recognizable to to all the students of alchemy here. They are laying it on thick. The only thing missing is the golden halo around his head! So without further comment – Enjoy!
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Screen-Shot-2021-08-03-at-12.54.59-pm.png?itok=3pxeQheR
teresa from hershey #540,
I’m glad I asked…
Starting at the beginning and going on until the end is the method I most admire, but I think I will try the shuffling of the index cards method. I’m going to have to coax the editor side of my personality out of hiding and put on my reading glasses.
I love that quote by Nora Roberts. She also said: “*** in chair.” Yes, Nora, I know.
Cat people,
I must admit, I love all this cat conversation. I am a cat person, but I can’t have cats now where I live. They would need to have been brought up by their mothers to understand the local conditions, which are sometimes treacherous. Essentially this means being born outside, and staying outside, with some hesitant looking in on the humans from a safe distance. I do appreciate being included on their mouse patrol though.
JD
@ Scotlyn – thank you for understanding.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that some states in Scotland chose to impose a time limit to counting a death as due to COVID. Even 28 days may not be long enough as some people die of complications from COVID weeks or months later; this may have been the case with my ex brother-in-law. But I realize that you have to work with what data you have.
Also, I agree with everything else you said as well. I’m just as appalled with the focus on the jabs as opposed to other possible responses, just as appalled that everyone who has had a bad reaction to the jabs can be anecdotalized into irrelevance because the companies aren’t required to do anything about the data collected on the voluntary reporting sites and can’t be held legally liable for any injuries the jabs cause, just as appalled at making the jabs mandatory for jobs and schooling and who knows what else as others who have commented, and just as appalled at the larger issues you mentioned as well.
Is there *anything* that TPTB have done right in the whole sorry COVID mess? If there is, I cannot think of it.
I realise what has been done to people over the last year and a half. Cacamagia on a grand scale. Luckily I weened myself off TV years prior and in particular avoided the news. I also had found kindred spirits on the internet who had my anti-authoritarian, pro-discensus and contrarian viewpoint and instinctively distrusted mainstream narratives. Kudos, of course to JMG, who I was excited to discover and who opened my eyes even wider to the fantasies we tell ourselves, pretending they are true.
Whenever I saw the propaganda on the streets I would mess with it in my head. Everyone wearing a mask had an imaginary “mug” written on it. I would blow raspberries at the ads if they came on the radio when I was driving my card. Sometimes I would watch the news but always with my middle finger at the ready. It was my own private rebellion but I also went on a few protest marches too. I, like a lot of people, are now worried about family members who drank the Kool Aid and took the jab. Maybe an antidote will be discovered but it might be suppressed just like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.
Anyway, I think this period shows how individuals and their actions still count and have power – but only if they are prepared to use it. If everyone had been like me, there would be no New Normal. I never wore a mask, downloaded Track and Trace, clapped for the NHS or took the jab. I never played along and if everyone had done this – the Davos set and WEF “Great Resetters” controlling this narrative would have realised the game was up. I am grateful to all the other stubborn folk out there, who can think outside the lines, as we have all helped each other to get through this.
Also, thank you Aliza for sharing your story. “I cannot understate people’s ability to not experience what they have not been told they are allowed to experience.” EXACTLY. Incidentally, Carol P Christ, Goddess scholar, died on 14 July. Officially, it was cancer. However on 21 May she posted this – “15th day after second Covid vax. Yeah!!! I downloaded my vax passport from the Greek vax site. Home free!!!” and her last post on 18 June was about gardening. Not about her cancer reemerging, which she had blogged about previously, appearing to have beaten it. I can’t help but question the official story, as is my wont.
You know, I come back here in the morning and see erica and Ian Duncombe at it again, and I start think you make one bad joke and the world turns into the freakin’ video for George Michael’s Fast love .
(Don’t click that link if you’re at work – I cannot possibly stress enough how superlatively unsafe for work that video is. Or children. Or people, generally. 1996 was a wrong sort of time).
Aloysius #197 asks “Can anyone recommend some good cleanses to go along with the latest dreamwidth post? There are plenty of supplements on sale for hundreds or even thousands of dollars…” He’s referring to “Obesity and Industrial Pollution” https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/139366.html
Bonnie Nedrow, ND, a board-certified naturopathic physician with 20 years of practice, has written three useful books:
Metabolic Flexibility
The Cleanse Companion Cookbook
The Seasonal Cleanse Workbook
See her website, drbonnienedrow.com, for more details about them.
I’m familiar with this since I’ve been eating a keto diet off and on for several years, based on advice from Nedrow plus a local ND. Nedrow recommends a four-day fat flush each time you lose four or five pounds. Her fact sheet says, “Think of this cleanse as a shortcut. Start with clean fat, keep it from being fully absorbed. Then while the fat sits in your intestines fat-soluble chemicals move from higher concentration in body fat to this new pool of clean fat. Finally purge the colon so the toxic fats get washed out in your stool.”
I’ve done this several times. There’s a learning curve, so the first time it seems unfamiliar and strange. Now it has become a familiar, easy process.
I started out with an 18-page booklet about the fat flush that gave me all the information I needed. However, I don’t find that booklet on her website now so you probably want to start with the Seasonal Cleanse Workbook and adapt it to your needs.
About costs: the four-day fat flush I’m using is not an expensive process. You buy bottles of lipase inhibitor tincture and warming digestive tincture, plus some herbal teas. However, I don’t know exactly what her current recommendations are.
About Natropathic Physicians:
ND s attend four years of medical school after they graduate from college. The curriculum covers diet, herbal medicine and many natural healing methods, as well as standard medical subjects. They are currently licensed in 22 states and five Canadian provinces. See map here: https://aanmc.org/licensure/
Exactly what a naturopathic physician is licensed to do varies from state to state. In some states they can prescribe medications and lab tests, and act as your primary care physician. In other states their scope of practice is more limited. If naturopathic physicians are not licensed in your state, and someone is calling themselves a naturopathic physician, then they may have idiosyncratic training or no training at all.
For more info see https://naturopathic.org/page/FAQ
@ Mark L
re solar flares and the grid
The issue of geomagnetic disturbances is one that is very much on the radar screen for the industry. NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), who develops enforceable transmission reliability standards for the US and the Canadian provinces, has an active standard on the topic. One of the main issues, as I understand it, is the long lead-time required for the construction of the larger transformers that would be potentially damaged by a severe event of that nature. (My utility is too small to be directly involved with these standards, but we are aware of them.)
The NERC website:
http://www.nerc.com
The reliability standards for the various jurisdictions:
https://www.nerc.com/pa/Stand/Pages/ReliabilityStandards.aspx
TPL-007-4 – Transmission System Planned Performance for Geomagnetic Disturbance Events
https://www.nerc.com/_layouts/15/PrintStandard.aspx?standardnumber=TPL-007-4&title=Transmission%20System%20Planned%20Performance%20for%20Geomagnetic%20Disturbance%20Events&Jurisdiction=United%20States
#525: I suspect their vehemence against antivaxxers is because they see them as a threat to the vulnerable — the elderly, kids too young to be vaccinated or too young to put up a good immune response, and those who have preexisting conditions that make them more likely to have severe complications from the virus. To them, those refusing the vaccine look selfish.
@ David BTL
Thanks for the links. Sounds like “they’re working on it” though I’m not sure what I see gives me a great deal of confidence. I see a lot of requirements to meet particular standards and have particular assessments on file to satisfy the bureaucracy, and relatively little boots in the ground in terms of “if this transformer blows, here’s how we will get a replacement online or how we will route around it.”
@Jade Dragon #199 @ Jeanne @ teresa from hershey
You might appreciate a book: Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, by Carolyn See. This is a book that starts when you’re thinking you might like to be a writer, how to begin? and ends with preparations for your first published book.
Carolyn See is a novel writer, so she has a few chapters on character, plot, point of view, building a scene, etc. Those chapters are especially helpful for people who expect to write fiction. BUT, this book is actually for everyone who’d like to make changes in their life. There are chapters like “Keep It to Yourself” and “Hang out with People Who Support Your Work” – good advice for anyone with dreams simmering.
One chapter is called “Do Some Magic” and includes affirmations, treasure maps, and similar tools. (After you read it, I’d be curious to hear your reactions, because I’m sure this chapter has interesting overlaps with some of the methods JMG describes.)
The best chapter is “Make Rejection a Process.” How to cope with rejection, how to let it just slide right off you. Rejection is part of life when you’re trying to accomplish something new. See advises people to send out a thank you note, on your best notepaper, whenever you get a rejection letter. “This simple thank you for the rejection is one of the highest forms of spiritual aikido I can think of,” she writes. “The main thing is that your ions will fall back into place….The real message your note sends is, I’m not dead yet, thank you very much.”
This is also a hysterically funny book.
I know it is late in the cycle to present an article of this depth and meaning, but having just read it I can’t not share it here and now:
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/mob-morality-and-the-unvaxxed
For those who are not familiar with Charles Eisenstein, he is a remarkable individual who is part philosopher, part social analyst, part deep, deep, thinker. The article I linked is quite recent and addresses the current phenomenon of the demonizing of the unvaccinated. I can’t possibly summarize it in a few sentences. It is long, wide-ranging and very apropo of what is discussed here. (JMG, he even mentions the slow demise of the “mythology of progress”). I can’t recommend reading this highly enough.
Oilman2, fascinating. I hope the apes and autists are reading this, because they love short squeezes…
DT, er, I have no idea what a telnet board is, much less ssh. Remember that I have somebody running this website for me! If you’re interested in setting up a backup, drop me a comment marked “not for posting” with your email address and we can talk.
Bruno, I consider the peaking and decline of population a good thing, precisely because it’s not happening via mass dieoff!
Simon, many thanks for the data points.
Antoinetta, the 5 of Wands is a card of conflict. It shows that he won’t get along with his neighbors or the culture of the location. (Both of your comments went through, btw.)
Patricia M and Jessica, thanks for both of these.
Lakeland, no, I hadn’t heard of him, but that knowledge was once very common in alternative health circles — I’m glad it’s getting some exposure again. I’m glad to hear that evangelicals are thinking in those terms! As for the vaccine zealots, no surprises there; remember that it’s essential to the identity of the PMC that they’re the people who get to tell everyone else to do — because they’re right, that’s why! — and they’re increasingly furious that so many people recognize that listening to them has become a really, really bad idea.
Denis, thanks for this. The people who are getting a third shot “just to be safe” had better hope that ADE — or any other negative side effect that comes out of this — isn’t dose-dependent…
Scotlyn, I get that. The difficulty faced by initiates down through the ages is that most people are sleepwalking to their destruction in one way or another, and all you can ever do is help those who are willing to wake up — which is never the majority.
Dennis, it’s a harsh situation. I’m sorry to say I don’t think there will be any kind of awakening until it’s too late for a lot of people. Stand firm!
David BTL, that’s a fascinating question. To some extent representative democracy has flourished as it has because it’s better at listening than most other systems — but better does not necessarily equal good. There may well be ways to make the flow of information a little more steady, and to force politicians to listen — that’s always the crucial detail! — and work in that direction could be helpful on a very large scale.
Kay, thanks for this. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Mr. House, many people are treating it that way, certainly — and disbelieving in the official line being shoveled out by politicians and the corporate media is at this point a basic survival skill.
Lydia, excellent! Scientism already has many of the characteristics of a religion and I think you’re quite correct that it could go the rest of the way; the Atheist Assemblies in my novel Retrotopia are among other things an image of how that could work.
Janitor, yep. I’ll be posting about that around the beginning of September, when the publicity machine starts rolling. It was a fun project to write — an introduction to Druidry for the complete beginner. (There are a few more details here.
David BTL, that settles it — we’re in for an energy crisis fairly soon. That kind of utterly meretricious sales pitch for an energy boondoggle always shows up right before prices begin to spike.
Erika, don’t worry about it! My readers and I appreciate what you have to say, and an open post like this one is a good place to say it. What’s more, you’re understanding what Lévi is saying, and that’s crucial.
Polecat, that’s the spirit!
Pygmycory, oh, I know. As usual, I’ m mostly talking about the one country I know fairly well.
Oilman2, I assume that if a war is ginned up it’ll be with some small and ostensibly vulnerable country. Which might not be as vulnerable as our government thinks — thus Twilight’s Last Gleaming.
Mark, thanks for this.
Mary, but of course. The sense of entitlement of our, ahem, transnational privileged classes makes that kind of thinking obligatory.
Dennis, good. My first thought looking at it was that it resembled an Orthodox icon!
Bridge, exactly. Exactly.
Ilona, you and Mark are clearly reading the same things! Thanks for this.
Very late in the game for posting, but I just want to express my deep gratitude for this Ecosophian community, and to our host and founder. I’m so glad I kept reading because I would not have wanted to miss erikalopez’ extraordinary contributions…thank you Erika. I’ve said it before but must say again, this place helps me stay centered and sane. Blessings to you all!
Dear JMG
I have been rereading ‘The retro Future’ the last few days and thinking about your concept of negative progress as a brand, the negative in it is a bit well negative. How about retro-progress? Retro fashions can be quite popular. A retro-progressive being some one who favours progressive features of past ages, everything was new once, and therefore within the meme of progress. A retro-progressive gets to label themselves progressive (a protective talisman in many places) and to pick the best bits of the past while ignoring the present crap pushed by the progressive class. Its FUN to mind twist the humourless.
Best regards Philip
I shouldn’t crap all over 1996.
It was a very good year for music, personally, since that was when I was introduced to my favourite band (2 guesses only 😉) – The Tragically Hip.
They were headlining the Another Roadside Attraction tour at Thunderbird Stadium at UBC – Ashley MacIsaac was there, and Sheryl Crow – great Canadian acts – and my aunt, who is only 7 years older than me, took me there with her then-boyfriend-later-husband, and another friend.
I was 14, and getting to hang out with real adults and dance in the sun all day was basically a dream come true for a young girl.
James, my now-uncle, was a huge Hip fan. He was a legit autistic genius, who, when he decided to become an engineer, simply read all the textbooks and then challenged the exams. He also turned his obsessional brain to Hip music and trivia, which is why I now know so much, as he basically downloaded it into my brain. He was possibly their biggest fan, and spent their whole set pressed against the stage screaming “I love you, Gord!”. By the time the concert was over he stank worse than I’ve ever smelled a human being stink, and he was covered in blood that wasn’t his own (from someone else’s busted eyebrow), so clearly also a dream come true for a young man.
I didn’t know the Hip yet, being younger, but as they built into the set, and I could feel them whipping up the energy, I started to pay attention. By the time they got to Gift Shop, there were 3000 people on their feet dancing and singing along, and I’d never felt anything like it.
That song still gives me that first time rush, every time.
I’ve been on my magical journey actively for two years now, and honestly I’m surprised there is not as many conservative minded, rather truly liberal minded individuals like you Mr. Greer. If there are, correct me if I’m wrong, then perhaps its because they don’t care to share their knowledge and experience to those who don’t have an ear? It’s not necessarily that they are self censoring, but because they’re discriminating (in the good way) of who is worthy of the knowledge they possess. They’ll share some of what they know, but when they open their mouths too much everyone essentially depends on them for everything. Its a boundary issue. They also don’t have to affirm what they are for all the world to know what they are and what power they possess, they limit themselves to a degree. Is it also perhaps that they realized that the concepts of classical liberalism and of a capitalist society free of government interference and international corporate tinkering much align with the quiet observations of man and nature and the energies and concepts that rule over all? just how well even the Constitution accentuates nature as its built like a tree and recognizes things that we generally like to apply to only animals today (unfortunately)?
In this Open Post several people have suggested we may see long-term negative effects from the vaccines, perhaps over several years, or perhaps as early as this fall. Potentially, a disaster for the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, when I search online I find higher vaccination rates in blue states compared to red states. At the present time in the U.S. we see deaths due to Covid trending upward, and those deaths are almost entirely in people who have not been vaccinated. Potentially, a disaster for the Republican Party.
Maybe both things will turn out to be true.
Do you remember how it felt when the election results came out in 2020? Lots of people, on both sides, were confidently expecting victory, and it didn’t happen.
I think it’s useful for us to remember that we’re dealing with a living organism, a virus, and none of us know exactly what’s going to happen a year from now or five years from now. If you have a strong emotional feeling that you know what comes next, notice those emotions and maybe dial it back a notch, or at least remember the uncertainty that surrounds this process we’re living through.
A QUESTION:
Advocates for increased vaccinations say we need them to prevent the emergence of more, and worse, variant strains of the virus. Could someone with a science background comment on this – how likely are more deadly variant strains to emerge? Can anyone recommend a book about the natural history of pandemics? Wikipedia says the 2018 flu epidemic had four major waves, 2018 to 2020, and then it was over. What factors determine when a pandemic ends… or doesn’t end?
Lydia:
Thank you for linking the Charles Eisenstein article. Wow.
Late comment, but interesting – for those have access:
Why Everyone Has the Worst Summer Cold Ever
Interesting because the question is – are the explanations in the article accurate about why there are such strong summer colds this year – coming out of isolation after restrictions are lifted, etc., etc. Or could another possibility be that the serums (I’ll use JMG’s term) do overwrite your immune response to coronaviruses and replace with a limited response to a particular spike protein as some studies have suggested? (Bill Gates should be proud.)
Mark L,
I found your article very interesting.
I was thinking about what happened to the Jewish community in Northern Europe after the Black Death. Many of them fled the scapegoating and murderous mobs and basically settled in a bunch in an area which came to be known as the Russian Pale, under the protection of a friendly despot.
Over time, they formed an extremely cohesive society with functioning Jewish institutions to an extent which had not been seen since the Fall of Jerusalem to the Roman legions in 70 AD. These cohesive structures enabled the growth of a nationalistic impulse and, as a result, often whole communities emigrated together either en masse to the Land of Israel, or to the USA, from the 1800s onwards.
You could argue, in fact, that the State of Israel indirectly had it’s roots in the post Black Death persecutions (amongst others). Up until that time, Jewish communities tended to be far more fragmented and without the type of community life, which appeared afterwards, as depicted in the film “Fiddler on the Roof”.
Unintended consequences.. We certainly live in interesting times.
@Mark L (#538)
If you do you protective relaying properly, you can trip off the transformer before it becomes damaged. Unfortunately, the current imbalance due to Geomagnetic Induced Currents looks a lot like phase saturation on transformer startup, so some settigns changes might need to happen. If we get a big event, grid operators should have 12-24 hours warning, and can take corrective action (disconnecting transformers and transmission lines).
The nation might lose some transformers, but I think the fears are overblown. That said, transformers take a long time to replace. They are huge and difficult to wind, have immense magnetic and electrical fields inside of them, and you don’t want to rush them. To my knowledge, the really big ones are all made overseas these days.
I hope I’m not too late to offer my condolences to Fran. I’m terribly sorry for your loss; it’s so very hard to have to let them go, even when you know they’re suffering and that you’re setting them free.
I once saw a human soul leave a body in a leap of unspeakable joy, so I know souls exist. I have perfect confidence that every living thing possesses a soul–how could it be otherwise, when every one of us evolved from the same microscopic life forms? Therefore your sweet Sunny is on his way to the Otherworld or there already, greeting his ancestors or curled up in the lap of Bast or Freya. Blessings of peace, healing, and happiness on Sunny, on you, and on the rest of his family.
Preparing for Wildfires, Earthquakes, and Other Emergencies
*** First, do you have a “To Go” bag ready? Last year during fire season some people got five minutes notice before they had to leave their homes.
Here’s a checklist that will help you think about what you might need if that happens to you.
https://www.ready.gov/kit
Adapt the checklist to your own needs. If you are evacuating from a local wildfire to a prepared shelter at the high school, you don’t need to bring your own water. Think about the unique items from your home you’d want to have with you. Medications and prescriptions. ID. Insurance papers. Perhaps something to study, or a book of poetry?
*** Do you have a way to meet up? How do you communicate with family members if you’re separated when an emergency strikes? Talk about it now. You might try to meet each other at a certain store downtown. You might call a relative in another city who could transmit messages.
Useful information: in an emergency situation a text message from a flip phone is more likely to get through, compared to a modern message from a sophisticated phone.
*** Scan essential papers. How about family photos? Essential ID, insurance papers, etc. Can you scan them now and store them on a hard drive with a relative in another city?
WILDFIRE PREPARATIONS
Oregon State University has prepared a series of educational programs about reviewing
our built environment and our personal skills to prepare for possible wildfires. See here:
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/fire-program/online-webinar-guide
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PDF RESOURCE KIT:
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/documents/8341/fafp-resource-packet-2021.pdf
Personal disclosure: my own “To Go Bag” is 25% ready. I swear I will get it done within the next two weeks.
In all the difficult situations we may face in the next few years there’s a quality of uncertainty, of good luck, of making quick decisions on inadequate information, of chance. These are exactly the kind of situations where the many skills JMG teaches are most likely to be useful. Not necessarily useful in a formal obvious way, more useful in that things just work out okay. When you do your morning practice, you are learning habits that will click on in an emergency.
@Nachtgurke,
That is fascinating; thank you so much! I live here so it is very dear to me. Though I don’t have much room for comparison, I think it is a magical place.
I miss Bill Pulliam. He had druid cred AND real biology and systems knowledge. I don’t, especially not the druid cred. I am no doubt one of the senile elite here in the USA: I live in a 1830s Greek revival home with 6 hollow wooden Doric columns on the front porch. But I do think there is a problem with the confrontation between the overly concerned and the overly unconcerned.
To a certain extent humanity has brought this on ourselves. In the same way that dumping pollutants into our surroundings or suppressing brush fires is coming back to bite us. So is this virus. Bill was very accurate and knowledgeable about why Ebola (for all of its operatic deaths with blood everywhere) would not make it out of Africa. I would like to postulate that this miserable little misnamed “cold’ virus is a bit like a forest fire and that 7 + billion people on the face of the world are a bit like a fire suppressed forest. Ebola burnt its trees from the inside out so that they might catch fire with near neighbors but didn’t usually spread very far. COVID-19 is more like the conflagrations we see out west or down in Australia. Little sparks and the right wind spread it far and wide, and on top of that most of us haven’t cleared around our homes. Furthermore with 7 billion people there is not much selection pressure for the virus to become a mere cold like its cousins. Though the Delta version might not be fatal, yet.
As a once upon a time molecular biologist, the idea of fearing mRNA makes me raise an eyebrow. In the lab any kind of RNA was hard to work with because just about anything “ate” it, sometimes even itself. The fact that they’ve managed to package it in a way to get it productively into cells strikes me as award worthy. I don’t expect it to stick around. Yeah I got mine (I’m 66 so I may be more vulnerable and I will admit to the above biases) and had almost no side effects. But then so far in my life I’ve had not bad reaction to vaccinations/ immunizations. [It’s not cowpox any more ;^)]. But I’m a lucky senile since I don’t have many allergies. I also wear a mask indoors or in crowds. YMMV.
Y’all take care from a long time lurker in an Upper Corner of Lower Alabama
@BCV
Thanks for the insights on transformer protection from geomagnetic storms. Sounds like the critical step will be operators willing to take them offline in response to a prediction, which will be a difficult decision given that the effects of an intentional grid shutdown are known (and may well cause some deaths) vs. the unknown risks of waiting to see if the storm materializes. Kind of like the virus vs. vaccine conundrum…
@Ilona
The evolutionary pressures on a virus depend on the manner in which it is transmitted. A virus like rabies that depends on hijacking the brain to cause infected organisms to bite others will tend to evolve to be more destructive and deadly, to the point that it has the highest known mortality rate of any virus.
Viruses that spread through body fluids of infected people to their caregivers, like Ebola, spread more effectively from sicker folks and so are selected in a more dangerous direction.
Viruses that spread through airborne droplets face evolutionary pressures to become more infectious (more viral particles produced, or easier infection of cells) and also less dangerous (because sicker people get out less and so spread less virus).
However the pressure for greater infectivity is stronger (note that covid variant infectivity has increased substantially over the past year) and the pressure for reduced severity applies only to the phase of active viral shedding. So it would not be an evolutionary disadvantage, for example, for a virus to trigger a severe autoimmune syndrome after a relatively mild acute phase.
That said, the long-standing pattern for influenza pandemics is to become less severe over time due to a combination of herd immunity and viral evolution. The wild card for covid-19, at least from my perspective, is whether the spike proteins are significantly biotoxic or auto-immunogenic, in which case more infectious variants that replicate more effectively might also tend to be more dangerous. So there is plenty of uncertainty…
Then there is the question if what effects the vaccines will have on this equation, and it could go either direction.
If vaccines reduce the total amount of virus in circulation, they will tend to slow its mutation rate.
However, if vaccinated people are still able to be infected and to transmit the virus, as is clearly the case in the present moment, this will drive strong evolutionary pressure for the development of vaccine-resistant variants, in which case we end up on a perpetual vaccination treadmill that has the potential to leave us worse off overall than if we had never developed a vaccine, a situation akin to antibiotic resistance. In this case it would potentially be wiser to use the vaccines sparingly to protect the most vulnerable populations.
Then there is the question of short-term side effects (which seem to be underreported and largely unrecognized in the medical community) and longer term effects which are still unknown and could include both direct effects due to spike protein and immunological effects like antibody dependent enhancement which would leave vaccinated people *more* susceptible to severe disease.
So… anyone who claims to know for sure what is going to happen is shoveling smoke.
And if I seem angry or fearful about this topic at times, it is because instead of engaging our best minds in an effort to identify the best way forward, we seem to have devolved into a binary authoritarian groupthink in which politics and moralizing loom large, all dissent is disinformation, and coercion dominates over trust building and open conversation.
Confronted with this mess, I personally choose the natural option (risk of infection) over the technological option (rushed, novel vaccines), based largely perhaps on my own rejection and growing distrust of the religion of Progress. But I fully accept that this may not be the best choice, and I hold no judgment of those who chose differently, so long as they refrain from casting judgment upon me.
@Lydia
Interesting that we found the same article, and I appreciate your synopsis of it. I will definitely be reading more of Eisenstein’s essays.
Oh, and see, now I have to share what’s so cool about Gift Shop, because this one is one of Gord’s better crossword puzzles, if not the best.
On the Day for Night album again, there is a song called Daredevil. And I don’t much like it, and, neither did Gord, eventually. Apparently, an English professor had his students analyze the lyrics, and send Gord what they wrote. Now, he never said what they wrote, but apparently it made him go yiiiikes, that’s not what I wanted to say about the experience of Niagara Falls at all. So he wrote Gift Shop instead.
In Daredevil, he is talking about a man going over the falls in a barrel; “he”, he says over and over again – but that didn’t happen – Houdini never actually went over the falls, and while he planned it, he wasn’t going to use a barrel. Annie Edson Taylor was the first to go over, and it’s her barrel he’s describing.
But here’s where Hip lyrics are fun – Gord had such a beautiful mind – Gord would have known that. Remember, Gord loved black and white movies, so he would have known all about The Man from Beyond , a silent film starring Houdini, who rescues his lover from going over the Falls in a boat.
And I didn’t know Houdini hadn’t done the escape trick he’d planned to, until I was trying to figure out who or what the Man like A Horse in Gift Shop is.
And the link, between the Falls, Houdini, and men like horses, is of course – once you know the movie – Arthur Conan Doyle .
Satisfying. There is a link between Doyle’s Old Horse; what Gord was trying to say it feels like with Daredevil, but messed up; and what he actually said about going over Niagara Falls in Gift Shop.
And Gord would have meant all that, because, he would have also known this about Houdini’s plan, quoted in full :
“The idea is to be nailed in a packing case, thrown over Niagara Falls, and eventually make an escape!
So that the crowd can see that I am being nailed into the packing case, the nailing is done on a platform, into which I can slide after the box is nailed up.
The best way would be to have the platform on a large wagon, which is drawn down to the landing place, where I get into the water according to opportunity.
Or else get back into the box when placed on wagon, and be found there, having failed to escape (being “knocked out” coming over the falls).
This can be worked into an extra good idea and needs doing some time.”
For whatever reason, Houdini thought that the appearance of failure would have been just as good a show.
Philosophy and cosmology, “our pointless universe…” and feelings about it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/learning-to-live-in-steven-weinbergs-pointless-universe/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I performed a full Shinto ceremony for Anna just now, very long with candles and sake. In the Great Prayer of Purification, my attention was drawn to the line: Yasukuni to tairakeku shirushi mese to, which translates roughly as “the Divine spirits peacefully declared it a land of peace.” Anna left behind a very torn country for something better. I hope the line proves auspicious, though, and America will see the sense in getting along and try harder to bridge the divide.
We’ve been having frequent earthquakes here for the past sixteen hours–seven that I could feel. That could indicate a volcanic eruption, but I have not been observing the TV to see if they make anything of it. In the middle of a long prayer for overcoming the Corona Crisis, one struck again, and I stopped–the candles were a big concern–but it was small and short. One went out right as I finished that prayer, and I wondered if that was a sign to stop the ceremony then, but I persisted with my plan and the other stayed lit until I performed my final bow, then it went out and the smoke from the wick rose. Very very auspicious I think.
I was trying to formulate a question for everyone here, and now it is very late, and I haven’t read the most recent comments to see if anyone has brought up this aspect, but I am wondering if anyone knows what role, if any, the media played prior to massacres in the past such as Germany’s pogroms. Did the fated victims have a voice in the mainstream media or in other media with a wide reach, such as the uncensored parts of the Internet do now? Oh, what a macabre topic! I should go back to praying that America will somehow avoid that.
LakelandRepotluck (#525),JMG, all: Regarding people who should have pain but don’t.
I’ve made a note to get the book “The Mindbody Prescription” by Dr. John Sarno that Lakeland suggested. Not long ago I bought “You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter” by Dr. Joe Dispenza but have not started reading it yet (so little time, so many books…). Oddly enough*, I read an article today on the same subject “How to Unlearn a Disease; Medicine’s latest cure is forgetting you’re sick.”
https://nautil.us/issue/103/healthy-communication/how-to-unlearn-a-disease-rp
Of course modern medicine wants to develop technical solutions such as implants rather than help the patient develop their own innate abilities to achieve relief and/or healing.
With industrial high-tech medicine collapsing with the rest of present day society, I can see the importance of learning and implementing these techniques with your own abilities. Medicine and health will become more personal and magical. Best to learn it yourself, as that ability will stay with you as things fall apart.
*”Synchronicity” by The Police is running through my head.
Joy Marie
It’s very late in the comment cycle but I wanted to share a thought I’ve been having in line with my Jungian researches of the last several months. I think corona represents the time when (anglo) Western civilisation is finally going to have to face its shadow. What is that shadow? We can call it many names that are familiar to people here: the myth of progress, materialist philosophy, our obsession with machines and automation, “science”. We were invited to face the shadow many times during the 20th century. The trenches of WW1, the tanks and planes of WW2, the bombing of Dresden, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and systems thinking just to name the main ones. But all these were either too academic or we were able to project our shadow onto our enemies (hence the obsession in Anglo culture with the Nazis).
With corona, we are going to finally have to face ourselves. Viral disease is a relationship between the “invisible enemy” and us. People have tried projecting the shadow onto the virus calling it “beast” and “satan” but that doesn’t work. Viruses are invisible and projection requires an object. We can project our shadow onto the unvaccinated too and that might work for a little while. Ultimately, though, everybody is eventually going to test positive to sars-cov-2 and it won’t matter how many booster shots you’ve had. Everything done will have been for nothing and there will not be no enemy left to project onto. You can’t project onto a positive test result and you can’t project onto sickness. All that is left is you and your shadow.
@pixelated
’90s music was okay I guess. Everything got so heavily colored by Nirvana and the grunge Rock thing. I’m kind of a downer on all of it. My older sister was really into Collective Soul for some reason.
I forgot about MacIsaac that’s an interesting tag, I just remember the sleepie Maggie song I’ll have to search him again. I’m starting to appreciate The Tragically Hip now a little more but.. Yeah I clicked the link, def not appropriate lol.
Hey, i really want to thank you all for making me feel so welcome. it means more to me than you can imagine, having more than just James (“Thor” on here awhile back) understand me and be able to hash and thrash this out with me.
i was overwhelmed that i wasn’t asked by Papa G to leave and never return. and while i still act like i don’t care what anyone thinks, that’s also a lie at the same time— so i seriously wanna thank you for saying i get what Levi’s saying because i had NO idea if it were so, but the fraction i get, i liked what it was reinforcing in me and making me not feel trapped and claustrophobic in this world. that i wasn’t asking too much by expecting us to learn how to blow our own minds out of this rut.
—
Dear Ian Duncombe,
you wrote a huge clue that i missed til a little while ago:
“I started on this blog while I was working one to one with a dude downtown who was living in squalor in a cockroach infested apartment. We spent most of our time sweeping out stables and working out at the local gym. I started noticing the spaces in between everything, the world in between all the actors. First came a kind of hopelessness, then came a kind of recognition that what everyone was doing was a silly kind of game, then I found this place and started taking up a strict practise, started writing a novel, shed habits I didn’t want anymore ect… It is more then amazing the places just stepping a little more outside the corporate influence takes someone. I am going into the strangest places I have ever seen in my 40 years of life and it isn’t enough just to turn off the radio anymore, or psycho analyze the politicians and the elite; trying to stay two steps ahead, repelling their game. It isn’t enough to pull weights so heavy my eyes pop out….”
my dear, dear Ian!
at first after i read all that i thought, “well that is really nice to know you don’t have to defend your hymen and your life at the end of a dark alley to get transcendently FERAL again.”
but then later in the day as i was thinking, i’d forgotten that as a total afterthought you mentioned lifting til your eyes popped out and i’ve gotta say that i think you got it all upside down again BECAUSE when you pull weights so heavy your eyes pop out, i think that IS a basic important step… the regular routine but never mindless practice, the church and a form of prayer and being in your body, courting terror pain danger and focusing on not blowing your knees out or snapping your back. that IS the sadomasochism and focus and religiosity i’m talking about.
so THEN maybe you can relax stop just BE so you can “work with a dude …who was living in squalor…sweeping stables… working out” and NOTICE the spaces in between everything and MORE because the focus and terror and transcending the pain of lifting til your eyes pop out.
i say this because at the gym, and the reason i want to make clothing FOR these men, is because they read minds and eyes for real. there is something mystical about heavy lifters who work out scary hard, focus and take it seriously or else something will crack.
i’m not talking about the narcissistic designer bodies who nervously check their magic phones between sets or pay obsequious trainers to act like hourly on-the-clock friends and tell them the latest fads to do on place mats or machines while listening to them prattle on mindlessly out of their bodies and criticizing themselves for comedy relief.
lifting heavy or dancing hard is transcendent and i’m a different person when i go into that zone. i fly!
anyhow, i think the lifting til your eyes pop out is somehow part of being so hard in reality that you transcend it, and i have no idea WHY. i just keep turning out right, and thanks for reminding me that you can control this and don’t have to necessarily have to let others do horrible things to you to get there. we can do wonderfully “horrible” things to ourselves! hurrah!
x
—
thanks again for making me feel welcome here youse guys. i mean it.
xxxxx
@Dylan #129
Dylan asked, “JMG, what do you invest in, financially? I’m in my early thirties and have never seriously considered that retirement might still be a real thing by the time I’ve travelled that far into the Long Descent….”
I’d like to offer a stab at answers, on two levels.
First, learn things. Take a course in first aid. Learn about 10 useful herbal remedies, and five of them should be things you can grow yourself. Or, are you interested in carpentry, and maintaining tools? Learn how to carve and fit a wooden handle, so you could find a hammerhead or broken hoe or hatchet at a yard sale, and create a new tool. Also learn how to sharpen those tools, and assemble a set of files for sharpening them.
Nowadays a new washing machine or dryer has a computerized instrument panel. One of the local secondhand shops knows how to keep those machines working even after the computer dies, how to refit them with older controls. I visited Adaptive Seeds a few years ago, and was so impressed by the old seed cleaning equipment they found are using.
No one person can learn everything, but ask yourself what skills appeal to you, skills that will be useful over the Long Descent. If you have the space to store things (that’s a big if) buy old equipment that will be handy when modern stuff stops working. Old-fashioned manual typewriters (and the parts and manuals needed to keep them running.) Old-fashioned treadle sewing machines.
Learn gardening skills, food preserving skills. If possible invest in a house with a large sunny backyard where you can grow food. If that isn’t possible you may be able to garden in a community garden. Buy bulk food in season. A chest freezer is generally the most economical way to freeze food because the cold air stays in it when you open the lid.
Those things are the easy part. Knowing first aid, knowing how to grow and preserve food, will come in handy no matter what the next 50 years look like.
Part two. Now we come to stuff like mutual funds and ETF’s and stocks and precious metals. This is much more difficult, because each person’s situation and priorities will be different. I am very much trying to figure this out myself! Here are a few thoughts that might be useful:
Just keeping your resources in cash isn’t really a solution because the value of the US dollar fluctuates. Historically, the value of the US dollar declines over time. Currently the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. I wouldn’t be surprised if that changes over the next 10 to 20 years, and that would mean a dramatic decrease in the value of the US dollar. This is one of those things that’s very important – something that could happen but you can’t predict exactly when.
Have you seen the movie The Big Short? If not, go look for it. It is very funny. It explains what happened in 2008 (and lots more). There’s a scene where people are placing side bets. I think there’s a lot of those “paper bets” going on in the financial system right now.
You could find a financial advisor at your local Schwab office, or at many other places, but I don’t know where you could find a financial advisor who is thinking about/planning for the Long Descent.
I am not enthusiastic about mutual funds or bonds. Mutual funds generally have an annual management fee, I think it’s about 1%. You’re paying that for the expertise of the guy who manages the fund. Or you can look for a low-cost fund. Vanguard specializes in funds with low fees that match particular slices of the market. Traditionally, people are advised to keep some of their assets in stocks and some in bonds, with the idea that bonds are likely to retain value when stocks go down. However the value of bonds depends on the interest rate. When interest rates go up the value of bonds goes down. Interest rates are now at historic lows, so should we buy bonds now??
After mulling it over, I find myself thinking that if you buy five shares of stock in a company, at least you do end up with ownership of a small piece of a real company. If you buy some shares of SPY, an exchange-traded-fund that invests in a mixture of large-cap stocks, you get a paper asset that represents many different companies. The advantage is that since it’s a mixture, they won’t all fail at the same time. The disadvantage is that you only have a paper asset.
I end up thinking I ought to buy some shares of stock in real companies. But there are so many companies! Any one of them could have a dramatic rise or fall due to its individual circumstances. In theory, I’d like to figure out which companies are most likely to continue functioning for the next 20 years, in good times and bad, and buy shares of those companies. In real life I haven’t done this yet because it’s intimidating! It would take a lot of research! I’d probably make mistakes! (If I wait a few more months, since the stock market is due for a fall, I could probably buy them later at a lower price.)
I realize this second set of comments is not so very useful, but here I am. I plan to try several different things and hope some of them will work out. I do think you should try to store and preserve assets for the future, but I don’t know the best way to do that. When you figure out how to invest for the next 20 years, or the next 50 years, please let me know.
@patriciaormsby # 596
You wrote: I am wondering if anyone knows what role, if any, the media played prior to massacres in the past such as Germany’s pogroms. Did the fated victims have a voice in the mainstream media or in other media with a wide reach
Well, the depression. The 1930s. There were newspapers in Germany, but probably read only by the upper levels of society. We are inundated by radio and TV and Internet and our cell phones all day long. In the 1930s, that didn’t exist.
Hitler was appointed as Germany’s Chancellor in January, 1933. According to Wikipedia, he “began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France.”
Again from Wikipedia: “In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews lived in Germany. After the Nazis took power … the Jewish community was increasingly persecuted. About 60% emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship…. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from participating in education, politics, higher education and industry. In November, 1938….storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire. Only roughly 214,000 Jews were left in Germany proper on the eve of World War II.”
While browsing for information I came across the website of the Holocaust Museum, an immense storehouse of information. Here is their response to a question about leaving Germany:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/search?perPage=10&query=leaving+germany
Enter any search term here:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/search
You wrote:
“Oh, what a macabre topic! I should go back to praying that America will somehow avoid that.”
There are lots and lots of ways we can pull ourselves together. Please continue praying, your prayers have a real effect. Yes, we can imagine lots of ways things could go very wrong. On the other hand, problems are impermanent and can dissolve like clouds. If possible please pray for the folks on both sides, on all sides. May all minds be blessed with wisdom. (Just my two cents.)
@ria23 #73
You say
doubt of (if not hostility towards) the Covid vaccines seems so prevalent on this forum. any dissenters who don’t feel that way, other than me?
I got the Moderna vaccination this spring. I’m in one of the at-risk groups that almost everyone thinks should be vaccinated, so I didn’t spend a long time weighing the pros and cons. I had no reaction to the first shot, and maybe two days of feeling “under the weather” after the second shot.
I’ve belonged to a women’s group for several years. All of us are interested in gardening and we meet once a month for potluck and conversation. During Covid we started meeting via Zoom. When vaccinations became available, we emailed each other tips about recently opened opportunities and how to sign up for a slot. When we were all fully vaccinated we had a face-to-face meeting, many hugs, it was a memorable time. In all of my local circle I only know one person who choses not to be vaccinated, and we’ve never talked about her reasons.
So when I read the comments in this Open Post, it’s very different from the daily social environment I inhabit! I see people have experiences that are very different from my own, and I suspect many of us tend to assume that what we ourselves experience is the norm.
No one has died from Covid in my personal local circle of friends, but people have died or been severely ill in the larger circle of friends my son and I have known over the years. My granddaughter’s daycare provider – her husband died early in the epidemic, a man in his 40s in good health. A college friend who’s gone to concerts with us, her younger brother died of Covid. A good friend of my son recovered from Covid but lost about a sixth of his body weight. The wife of another of my son’s friends, a woman who’s in her 50s, got Covid and her heart stopped. EMT workers were able to restart her heart and she has survived. Those stories are enough to give me the gut feeling that Covid is real, and I’m lucky that none of the people in my face-to-face circles have experienced Covid.
One of the people I’ve known for years through my son is now a nurse working in a Covid ward. She says when people have Covid and need to be intubated, it’s very common for them to say “this can’t be true; Covid is a hoax.” Again, because it’s someone I know, and I’ve stayed at her house, her report has an extra reality for me.
Can we just wish for more genies?
I realize this is very late in the comment cycle, and may not get a response until later if at all, but I’m curious if anyone has any leads on spaces for heathens that aren’t eaten up with one or more of the major purity games (political, racial, reconstructionist) that seem to be such a huge feature of the scene these days.
Or is sane heathenry pretty much a single-player game these days?
Hope its not too late but I just had to repost this meme. It might give a little relief to all of us living through such crazy times
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E74X6JgXIAMHjFk?format=jpg&name=small
For those who don’t know the reference, its a play on the quote from the 2003 Film ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black pearl’ “You’d best start believing in ghost stories Miss Turner, You’re in one!”
Beekeeper @ 539: Thank you.
“We can project our shadow onto the unvaccinated too and that might work for a little while.”
Interesting, though, to note what sort of shadow is being projected.
What are the qualities of these deplorable “anti-vaxxers”, according to the liberal PMC?
The words I’ve been hearing are selfish, inconsiderate, ignorant, uninformed, uneducated, irrational, scared (of a little prick), childish, lacking in concern for mankind, unwilling to do their part, taking advantage/free-riders, anti-science, and again, just selfish-selfish-selfish.
Which of course are the opposite of things like unselfish, generous, considerate, knowledgeable, informed, educated, rational, brave, mature, concerned, responsible, pro-science, humanitarian, caring for all mankind, and again, just so very unselfish.
Really tells you something about the people doing the projecting and how they see themselves and what they suppress, doesn’t it?
Dear JMG,
I would absolutely love your opinion on this article, below. Do you think the climate crisis may be becoming as seriously threatening as it appears to be, and are things indeed looking a bit more bangish than whimperish? I would be grateful for your take (I know it’s published in the Guardian, but that doesn’t automatically disqualify it IMHO). Thank you for everything.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/04/climate-change-crisis-environment-politics
@Mark L #593
Thank you for this clear summary of a very complicated situation. Please continue to post more information as things develop.
Bad timing given the new issue is coming out but…
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8161/htm
An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’
Abstract
Human civilisation has undergone a continuous trajectory of rising sociopolitical complexity since its inception; a trend which has undergone a dramatic recent acceleration. This phenomenon has resulted in increasingly severe perturbation of the Earth System, manifesting recently as global-scale effects such as climate change. These effects create an increased risk of a global ‘de-complexification’ (collapse) event in which complexity could undergo widespread reversal. ‘Nodes of persisting complexity’ are geographical locations which may experience lesser effects from ‘de-complexification’ due to having ‘favourable starting conditions’ that may allow the retention of a degree of complexity. A shortlist of nations (New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland) were identified and qualitatively analysed in detail to ascertain their potential to form ‘nodes of persisting complexity’ (New Zealand is identified as having the greatest potential). The analysis outputs are applied to identify insights for enhancing resilience to ‘de-complexification’.
@Fran – when I had to put Shadow down, my friend Paldon, a fellow cat person and devotee of Bast, swears up and down that cat said “Thank You” as he went.
@Ann Busch – as everybody here knows, I am a card-carrying member of the senile elite, and quite unable to fend for myself in any but a sheltered environment. I do mask and follow the rules, acknowledge that I resent being shoved back into 2020 like that, and can only acknowledge the resentment and try not to either pass it on, or let it eat at me. And I totally agree with Bill Pulliam, who really knew his stuff. And will let myself be jabbed again if need be.
Blessings on you all from this rain-soaked stretch of North Florida, where the rainfall is an arc running all along the Gulf Coast, cutting across Florida right here, and moving on up the Atlantic Coast as it has with every storm and rainfall system in I-don’t-know how long.
@ Simon S.
That’s a rather interesting way of looking at it. I’ve been studying mostly the economic, psychological, and political side of collectivist ideologies (that includes Nazism), the trend remains the same. I would disagree that its only happening in the Western countries. Be it East or West, this pandemic and some other things is seriously opening the eyes of many a man and getting them to understand and be on the same relative page for the first time in a long long time, as for the extent, that remains a mystery.
the world seems to be falling apart because we have simply forgotten and the individual and nature has been buried away, but nature has a funny way of waking us up with things that are detrimental to us and our cozy environments. Lets see those towers fall and death make his presence known.
In my opinion, situations and the future change like a game of Bug House on various drugs. What I mean by that is that the future is infinite but our actions are restricted to a few moves and puzzles at a time depending on various factors both within our control and not. The situation many are seeing and I’m assuming you’re describing is like dealing with the sore losers of chess who whine about the game but does little to improve or learn the ways of the more successful players and are finally being told by someone or something to stop it (or else), slowly realize that “or else”, and see they’re not the only ones who have been issued the warnings multiple times. Side note: For those who are reading this who have not heard of bughouse, it’s Tandem Chess or Exchange Chess.
@ Slithey Toves
I run a private group on fb that despite advertising as “conservative wiccans, witches and pagans” hardly anyone in the group touches on politics and all that stuff because no one wants the safe space getting the ban hammer for superficial stuff, in fact we just like to post funny magic memes, pictures, inspirational quotes, few useful things, questions, respectful dialogue/debate etc. there are a few other groups out there but you’d really really really have to look hard for the ones that don’t go back on their word, especially the groups that clearly state NO POLITICS or whatever. Honestly magic groups are now overrated, and I can relate to your predicament. If you do end up joining, just answer the questions completely and honestly.
Michalle S.
Thank you for responding! Unfortunately, I no longer have a Facebook and am not in a hurry to get another one, but I appreciate the info.
Hopefully as the alternative spirituality scene empties out of the next couple of decades, those of us who were actually interested in the spirituality part of it will be able to pick up the pieces and make something better out of them.
iona #603 – I work in a large city hospital medical and cardiac ICU with covid and ECMO patients. I was also around for H1N1 when we stopped sending samples to the state lab because they were coming back negative for H1N1 and we still classified them as H1N1. I watched this practice repeat with PCR test run 40-45 cycles to generate known false positive test. I personally had patients that had multiple negative test and CXRs still labeled covid. After a career specializing in minimizing injurious positive pressure ventilators inflick on the lungs I was shocked when we began intubating patients for ventilators directly from 6 liter per minute oxygen providing nasal cannulas. I was told this was from national and international guidelines. I thought this was wrong and said as much but it wasn’t my call. We now know this likely increased mortalty. I see how billing influences treatment choices and especially covid diagnosis. I could go on but won’t.
I have cared for hundreds of covid patients for thousands of hours. What motivates this post is that I believed everything up to the last paragraph. The statement you attribute to your friend is not only untrue, it is also a well known trope not uncommon to left wing media. I have never heard anything remotely like this with any of these patients who I happen to specialize taking care of. It didn’t ring true when I saw post and videos of that very statement before. It’s been written about as being false in other places.
That doesn’t mean you don’t believe what you’ve been told. The people telling that story believe they are doing the right thing. They also think people questioning the mainstream narrative are dangerous luddites.
Nothing personal ilona. Its just that particular antcedote is very familiar to me word for word.
JMG I recently picked up two of your druidry books and very excited to learn about the new one. It looks beautiful 🙂
@Dennis G #616
I found a story in Wired magazine reporting that a similar story from a South Dakota nurse named Jodi Doering has gotten lots of attention, while other hospitals say they are not having a similar experience with their patients. Wired says reporters should check and report on the broad context when they repeat stories like this one.
https://www.wired.com/story/are-covid-patients-gasping-it-isnt-real-as-they-die/
I heard the story from my son, and I don’t think he was lying to me. I don’t think our friend the Covid nurse was lying to him. I’ll check with my son about this the next time I talk with him.
You haven’t had any similar experiences, and I’m sure you’re telling the truth.
I am listening to what you’re saying and I will keep it in mind. At this moment, I’m confused.
These are strange and difficult times we’re living through.
Many thanks for all your hard work caring for your patients!!!
ilona #618 – Rereading my post I see I included your son by saying “The people telling you that story…”. That is a huge error on my part. I believe you and your son believe the story. I apologize sincerely for that.
Most people are doing what they think is best or right. Unfortunately most people are unable to look honestly at their own motivations, or the true results of their actions and end up doing harm.
Thank you for your thanks. Everyone works hard for what they believe in and those that they care about.
Hi all – longtime reader, first time posting.
very insightful commentary — anecdotal or source-based — Re: these covid injections. There’s much I can type on this, having dedicated much of my spare time reading/researching this virus over the past ~18+ months. One point I’d like to clarify, which I imagine a fair amount of the readers here already know, is that these so-called covid “vaccines” are like no prior vaccines in history. In simple terms, historical vaccines essentially involve injecting a human with a small dosage of the virus (to minimize viral load/harm) which allows the body’s immune system to develop a defense relatively safely, and in turn, contribute to herd immunity.
These covid shots, however, do NOT have a portion of the virus. To this point the virus has yet to be successfully isolated (a noteworthy fact by itself), which would not qualify as a vaccine, but rather a ‘gene therapy’ (given the usage of experimental mRNA technology), or ‘serum’ as JMG aptly calls it.
Here’s some more info, from a piece worth reading in full:
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/corona
Excerpt:
To date, there are two kinds of Corona vaccine:
1) Adenovirus vector vaccines, which infect you with a modified adenovirus. This virus brings instructions for the spike protein to your cells, your cells produce spike in response, and your immune system attacks, lending you some immunity to Corona. For most people, the vector vaccines are probably the safer option, though they have been associated with blood clots primarily in women.
2) The mRNA vaccines, which consist of instructions for the assembly of spike – in messenger RNA – encased in special lipids that help these instructions circulate and enter your cells. The protein factories of your cells receive these instructions and express spike and your immune system attacks, lending you some immunity to Corona. The mRNA vaccines have become known for causing myocarditis in young men. The published occurrences are low, but almost certainly under-reported, and enough to tip the risk-reward scales against vaccination in healthy members of this cohort.
Beyond these specific side effects, the vaccines are obviously more dangerous than traditional vaccines. It seems likely that spike is not a neutral antigen but a bioactive protein that interacts with your body in unexpected ways. But it is also possible some of the adverse effects are down to the gene therapy technology itself, or perhaps the unhappy combination of spike and your cells producing it.
The vaccines are certainly more dangerous than Corona to healthy children, and the cumulative risk of continued boosters is likely to be so high, that they will make sense only for the old and vulnerable. The vaccines were not designed to prevent infection, and universal vaccination won’t prevent future waves. In fact, evidence increases every day that vaccinated people have lower incidences of infection for a few months after vaccination only. Many people will therefore face Corona infection whether they are vaccinated or not. At most, they can hope that the vaccines will protect them nevertheless from serious illness and, in the process, renew and update their immunity. Otherwise, the vaccines have at least a shot of keeping elderly and vulnerable people out of the hospital, though it’s still far from certain they’ll work. ”
————————————————
Also, see additional noteworthy excerpts from an Israel-based source:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/lessons-cautionary-tale-from-israel-on-the-pandemics-next-stage-675465
Excerpt:
Despite major American media claiming that the rise in cases is primarily in states with low vaccination levels, in fact there are large numbers of cases in many states across the political and vaccination spectrum. This is because the US doesn’t want to have a healthy media discussion, with actual experts, about what is going on.
Some media in the US prefer a simple conclusion, blaming unvaccinated areas for why the pandemic isn’t over, and concluding that “in the United States, this pandemic could be almost over.” There’s no evidence it could be over, because with the exception of China, where there are almost no cases, most of the world is seeing the pandemic continue. Countries with the highest vaccination rates, including the UK, Israel and the US, continue to have rising cases. High profile cases of vaccinated people getting COVID are beginning to break through into media, with cases like the UK’s health secretary. This has led to discussion about what these “breakthrough” cases are.
The US has made another odd decision as well, which is worth quoting in full from the NBC report: “Just how widespread infections among the vaccinated are in the US is unknown. The CDC said in May it would stop monitoring the number of infections in vaccinated people aside from cases where a fully vaccinated person was hospitalized or died. Walensky said on Monday the agency has been tracking specific groups for breakthrough infections and would be reporting that data soon.
“The limited data so far has left doctors saying they feel they are flying blind in trying to assess the risk the new variant poses to their patients and relying on data out of other countries like Israel, where researchers released data last week showing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was just 39% effective against preventing infection from the delta variant and 91% effective at preventing severe disease.”
America, which has the resources to track big data such as infections and spread among vaccinated people, appears to have dropped the ball when it comes to gathering important information early on during the vaccination effort. In essence, this dovetailed with the rise of the Delta variant, such that when people needed this information about how it was spreading among all sectors of the population, some information was not forthcoming.
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I leave you all, for now, with a 3rd piece — very well-written, in my view — by an Oakland, CA public school teacher. The excerpt below will provide better perspective on ACTUAL RISK vs perceived risk if falling ill with COVID.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-war-on-reality-gutentag
Excerpt (embedded links at source):
In December 2020, 35% of Americans believed that half of the people with COVID-19 required hospitalization. The correct figure was 1%-5%. Americans also estimated that the share of COVID-19 deaths for people between 18 and 24 was 8%. It was actually 0.1%. These incorrect assumptions were influenced by anecdotes, shocking media coverage, and early projections like the influential Imperial College model, which threatened that without lockdowns there would be 40 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide. The model assumed an infection fatality rate (IFR) of 0.9%, but the actual IFR of COVID-19 is 0.15% and the median IFR for people under 70 is 0.05%.
As a result of mistaken prognostications like this, the media compared COVID-19 to the 1918 influenza pandemic, for which the average age of death was 28. For COVID-19 the average age of death is 73, and about half of all deaths are in people 80 or older. While the CDC projected a one-year decrease in life expectancy for the U.S. population, the overall decrease in life expectancy was only five days, and the U.S.’s excess mortality in 2017 was greater than its excess mortality in 2020.
Hello JMG ,A little late to the show but do you have any ceremony or ritual on the anniversary of Mr. Lovecraft’s birthday (August 20th) ?
A visit to his gravesite or a walk amongst Olde Providence perhaps.I have been to Providence 4 times and quite enjoy the place and once the pandemic pandemonium wears down am looking forward to another visit.
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