Category: [Religion & esoterica]

How about that eclipse, then

Alas, the end times appear to have been a bit of a disappointment again, with no reports that I can see of people rising into the sky en masse or that mass human sacrifice someone was predicting, or the serial earthquakes the northeast US was supposed to get according to some others… I suppose we’ve still got a few days before the red heifer thing works out. Needless to say, though, the idiots have still been out in force online; on Youtube they’ve mostly manifested as astrologers, who I’m sure are harmless, but there was a ton of religious cranks (Muslim ones, not just Christians) who I’m a lot less sure of. And then there was this guy:

No reason not to use a common astronomical event to whip up a bit of Islamophobia, eh? Always the way with these far-right American pastors…

…Oh, he’s Australian? Fuck. Well, be honest, you would’ve expected him to be American too with the amount of bullshit his channel has about American politics. Though by that logic, you’d probably think I was American too or something… Anyway, Steve was born into “a family of Buddhists, Catholics, Methodists, and Muslims” and came away from it with the worst aspects of all of them, by the look of it. I’m sure him and Danny Nalliah would be great mates.

Still, this struck me as egregious even by comparison:

Um… no? I watched a bit of the video itself which is a lot more vague about things than this thumbnail for it might indicate, but I’m fairly sure that the fact that Crowley claimed to have started channelling Liber AL on April 8th 1904 and the fact that there was a solar eclipse on the same date 120 years years are entirely unrelated. I mean, Crowley himself attached so little importance to the book that he actually lost the manuscript for a few years, so I don’t think he would’ve attached any importance to the date coincidence either…

Anyway, the eclipse happened and people were excited, weather seems to have been good for most places, and I’ve seen a bunch of great photos of it online:

Ganked from the Graun, that was the view from Toronto. The Sun itself put on a good show before the Moon moved on; someone in the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm FB group posted this photo they got:

…And then noted that the solar prominence you can see at the bottom is the size of the Earth.

FUCK.

See, I find that sufficiently head-spinning without having to a bunch of religious bullshit about the end of the world and all that. (And what about the other countries that got to see the eclipse? Does God have a separate judgement for Mexico and Canada? What about all the other countries on Earth that saw nothing, are we off the hook?) The spectacle was more than enough, especially for some of the people I saw on YT having a moment together in news videos of it getting darker and darker. Celestial mechanics can be damned pretty to look at. And however cheesy it may be, I think the message of this song is basically correct and I fucking love it:

Now I think about it, though, I can imagine some dickhead might look at that and think “Apoptygma Berzerk… wait, Apop sounds like Apep, and APEP is the name of that rocket thing NASA was doing during the eclipse, and don’t they have an album called Rocket Science too? Apop… Apep… Stephan Groth is the Antichrist?!” If people can believe some of the shit I’ve seen lately, someone can believe that, I’m sure…

Anyway, so much for the apocalypse, I suppose. We’re due to get a total solar eclipse in 2028 that’ll actually be visible here in Sydney, so I suppose that’ll be something to get excited about, cos according to Wiki the last one we got here was in 1857 and the next one won’t be visible until 2858. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be around for that. Somehow I also suspect the weather on that day in 2028 will also be shit and no one will see anything…

We can but hope

There was an earthquake the other day centred in New Jersey. There’s going to be a total solar eclipse in the US on Monday (their time). OBVIOUSLY Americans are responding normally to these events.

In real countries, of course, the earthquake happened on 8/4… which gives THIS result from Exodus:

Which is a… slightly different message, though whether a better or worse one I don’t know. Mind you, these are reasonable compared to some interpretations of what could happen on Monday:

Posting on Reddit four months ago, u/wefellinloveinnyc wrote in detail about why they “believe they are planning a massive human sacrifice event” for when the total eclipse occurs.
The post is quite a read, with it saying: “I’m pretty concerned about this Great American Eclipse on April 8th. The line from the solar eclipse of 2017 and the line from the one upcoming on April 8th creates an X, very close to the New Madrid Fault Line.
“If something were to trigger that fault line, something man-made they could make look completely natural, it could mean a serious loss of life disaster for the US. An earthquake on the New Madrid Fault Line could be up to 20 times larger than an earthquake with a SoCal epicenter.”
The user continues: “Taking the line for the Annular Eclipse or “Ring Of Fire” from October of this year and the upcoming Solar eclipse, creates another X over Texas, not far from Tesla’s gigafactory.”
They go on to mention Tesla boss Elon Musk, who changed Twitter’s name to X, and also refer to his baby’s mother Grimes, and something she apparently posted on Instagram before Covid.
Referring to the alleged post, the user wrote: “In that same image, a few rows beneath the covid “prediction” is a solar eclipse. Under it, a flower between two dragons. 2024 is the year of the dragon. The lotus flower begins blooming in China on April 8th. The eclipse is happening on April 8th.”
The conspiracist wrote it was “way too many coincidences for [them] to feel comfortable”, adding that it “would appear some massive sacrifice could possibly be in the works” and they are “quite certain” that “they all have some bunker or safe spot away from the damage”.

This sort of eclipse-induced nutbaggery has also encompassed the return of a rarely-seen (once every 70-odd years) comet called “the devil’s comet“—because religious buffoons are OBVIOUSLY going to be excited by that—and the putative sacrifice of a red heifer in Israel. This is a much stranger story, involving a supposed “prophecy” by Maimonides, according to whom the messiah would oversee the sacrifice of a beast I call Supercow, a Biblically-specified red heifer without any non-red hair and other things; this is related to the third temple, though I remain unsure about whether Supercow has to be killed to build the temple or the temple has to exist already for Supercow to be sacrificed.

At any rate, certain dickheads on the Internet think Supercow is due to be sacrificed around Passover, which comes just after the eclipse and is OBVIOUSLY just what the Middle East needed in the midst of Israel’s current bullshit, but I think we can safely dismiss it as being as ludicrous as all the other eclipse-related stuff. Of course, if any of these people are right, I shall look rather foolish for a moment before the world ends and this blog goes down with it (at least the evidence will be erased)… but not as foolish as these clowns will if they’re wrong and the frogs don’t come on us after all.

We’re praying for England (Eng-er-land!)

This was a slightly disconcerting find tonight:

Attributed to Raphael, here’s Jesus coming out of his cage and he’s been feeling ju… er, you know what I mean. I’m not surprised by the depiction of the Son of Man and his fellows as medieval white Europeans, but that thing Jesus is holding is a St George’s Cross. Is Raphael trying to imply that Jesus was English? But at least he woke up the people loitering around his tomb…

…unlike Piero della Francesca’s pack of layabouts. Jesus doesn’t look entirely bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to me either, mind you. And he’s packing the England flag again. I jest somewhat when I call it that, but I do see it occurring in quite a few paintings of him getting out bed that fateful Sunday (I’m only researching it now cos I was looking for something else entirely and somehow happened on the first painting), I see similar things by Botticelli, Bellini, a few others, and I’m just wondering what it’s about… I did find one article suggesting it’s about symbolising Christ’s overcoming of death, but that article also posts some pictures where he’s not carrying a banner at all…

…or, in El Greco’s version, a strategically flapping all-white one (with, apparently, a red cape and a weird square halo)…

…or, in Rubens’ version, an all-red one.

Then there’s this, by Juan Bautista Maino/Mayno, in which Jesus appears to be collecting for the Red Cross or something. I’m particularly fascinated by this because of the bloke who’s about to draw his sword on Jesus: “Didn’t you die last Friday? All right, you pasty undead weirdo, let’s get you back in there permanently…”

To end this post, my own favourite resurrection image:

Is he even technically walking on water?

So, someone posted this on Bluesky because, well, clearly they’d decided that if they had to see it then so should everyone else, and in the same spirit I post it here. When I first looked at this… thing, I literally said “what the…?” out loud, cos what else was there to say about it? Jesus dragging some young Asian girl through apparently ankle-deep rainwater while a bus being driven by an apparently disproportionately small driver bears down upon them (while someone just stands there capturing the action on their phone)? That fucking thing’s uncomfortably close even for the Son of Man… and it’s got Jesus as its destination, too, so how determined is it to hit him? Meanwhile Jesus is apparently carrying his own lower body in his other hand while still running with it…?

I looked at it again and said “what the…?” again, cos I didn’t know what else to say.

And then I saw just how many legs Jesus was carrying. I think that may have broken me just a little. Maybe Islam has a point about prohibiting depictions of Muhammad…

Jesus: cool for cats, apparently

This… thing turned up in the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm group:

This is clearly the work of someone tooling about with AI, presumably using the prompt “Jesus walking on water surrounded by orange and black kittens” or something of the sort… the question it begs, of course, is why the FUCK they did so, cos it’s not like it’s illustrating a particular Bible scene that I’m aware of; fairly sure the good book has nothing to say about the messiah’s relations with our feline friends. Someone in the PIAT group suggested he was selecting the two kittens that would go on Noah’s Ark, which is… dark but the sort of thing I’d be disappointed if someone in that group didn’t come up with it.

Parenthetically, I tried entering that prompt into mage.space and, well, here’s one of the things I got from it:

…so you can perhaps see why I thought that was all the “creator” of the first image did, cos it almost certainly was.

Matt doesn’t get “getting us”

Malsh Walsh wasn’t happy with that Superbowl ad either:

Now, though I said yesterday I’ve read the NT in full, I admittedly couldn’t have told you exactly where in the Bible the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet happened, but I knew that it did, and a very quick search soon pointed me to the gospel of John, chapter 13 thereof:

When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

I even took that translation specifically from the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, so a good Catholic like Matt should find it theologically acceptable. Of course, a good Catholic like Matt wouldn’t be calling the foot washing thing “heretical bullshit” cos he would not only know it’s in the Bible, but it’s a particularly Catholic thing:

The point Jesus was trying to make is already spelled out in the Scriptures, and needs little interpretation. We are to serve our neighbors, even if it means we must do things we might not like to do. Even if the work is dirty or hard, or even if we think it beneath us, we must still do our work. After all, Jesus Himself, the Son of God, washed the feet of His disciples. And we are no greater than Jesus, so surely we too should do the same.
In church, the foot washing ceremony is an important call for all people that they too should be willing to serve others. In the Catholic Church, this is called the Holy Thursday Mandatum, and the rite takes place after the homily. Members of the congregation are chosen to sit and have their feet washed by the priest, who plays the role of Christ. One by one, the priest will wash the participant’s feet with a basin and a towel.
Allow us to be explicit in stating the significance of this ceremony. It is a reminder that we are of the Body of Christ and as such, and His followers, we too are called to serve others in a spirit of humility. And we are to do so, even if we do not feel the desire to do so. As Christians, this is our duty.

And, obviously, this is what the self-described (ironically or not) “theocratic fascist” Walsh actually considers heretical bullshit. Fundamentally, Walsh is incapable of living up to that spirit of humility, cos it would require him to accept others, and there’s an awful lot of people out there that Malsh Walsh hates, particularly if you’re gay and even more so if you’re transgender, and he’s had issues with people that are female, non-white, etc. And all the other people who are OK with those people, obviously. I mean… you really don’t have to love or even like everyone on Earth, which I certainly don’t (you may have noticed) and I’m fairly sure no one actually does.

But at its core I think the whole foot-washing story is basically about acknowledging common humanity even with people you don’t necessarily like as such, which I don’t think is a bad thing… insofar as I have a philosophy, it’s that you shouldn’t be an arsehole unnecessarily; you don’t have to like everyone but if they haven’t done anything to warrant you being a prick to them, then don’t do it. Malsh Walsh, obviously, has warranted it several times over, and that makes him fair game, so as long as he insists on doing it, I similarly insist on doing this sort of thing…

You Get Fucked

This… whatever the fuck this thing is supposed to be has been causing rather a stir since it premiered at some sporting event… Superbowel? Is that the name? Something like that. Anyway, the real attraction of Superbowl is the musical interlude and the ads that debut at the event cos who gives a shit about the actual game, and this was… well, this certainly was. This is not the first time He Gets Us has played at Superbowl, but I think the grotesqueness of this year’s video has made it stand out; I actually watched the thing in an incognito window cos my Youtube recommendations are bad enough without this thing polluting them further.

So what’s the deal?

Green has elaborated on the message behind the commercials in the past, telling “The Lifestyle Podcast” in 2023 that he want to change the perception that Christians are “beginning to be known as haters”
“We are people that have the very, very best love story ever written, and we need to tell that love story,” Green explained.
“He Gets Us” ads are intended to appeal to viewers who don’t consider themselves religious or at least aren’t heavily interested in religion. The commercials intend to modernize Jesus and his message by connecting him to current world events such as racial injustice and immigration.
“We hope to remind everyone, including ourselves, that Jesus’ teachings are a warm embrace, not a cold shoulder,” the ad campaign’s website says.

This Green fellow is David Green, co-founder of Hobby Lobby, an arts & crafts company run by super-conservative Christians who run the business on “Biblical” lines, including refusing to let one of their own employees, a transgender woman, use the women’s bathroom at her place of work (leading to a legal battle that lasted over a decade which they eventually lost), denying their employees contraception, and more. If Green is concerned about Christians being perceived as haters, maybe he could, you know, not contribute to that perception.

Now, He Gets Us is a separate entity from Hobby Lobby, but not completely unconnected; it was operated by something called the Servant Foundation, which in turn is/was part of the far-right Christian legal org Alliance Defending Freedom, which is/was itself at least part-funded by something called the National Christian Foundation, which is/was in turn partly funded by something called the Illuminations Foundation that just so happened to have David Green’s son on its board. And, somewhat more directly, Green junior is also part of Come Near, the organisation that is now operating He Gets Us.

It is, accordingly, rather strange, n’est-ce pas, that such dreadful individuals should be putting so much money into this campaign that’s all about improving Jesus’ public image; and they need to have plenty of money too cos Superbowl ad slots don’t come cheap, something like seven million dollars for 30 seconds… which is why it’s odd that the video looks like it cost about seven cents to make, with these visual gibberish AI pictures strung together in a probably free video editor and synced up to a fairly bad cover of “Never Tear Us Apart” (hope INXS are satisfied with the paycheque). It’s… as dreadful as the people funding it, if aesthetically rather than politically. Mind you, the real objection to the whole thing is the fact that the campaign has a hundred million dollars behind it and this is what they’re spending it on… as opposed to, you know, actually doing good things for the poor, the have-nots, the homeless, etc. Things that could actually REALLY improve Christianity’s image.

Of course, there had to be someone attacking it from the opposite direction (via the Puzzle in a Thunderstorm FB group):

Now, though I haven’t read the entire Bible, I have read all of the New Testament more than once, and if there’s one thing I don’t recall it ever specifically mentioning, it’s abortion clinics. Consequently, I would not use the Bible as evidence for any position I might take regarding what Jesus would or would not do outside of one.

Oh, and for those interested in the actual game, Tay Tay’s team won. Which means the MAGAtrons going off about Swift being a Democrat psyop or something will be going into hyperdrive as a result.

This’ll hurt you more than it’ll hurt me

The American right are gagging for a civil war right now. Just consider this guy:

Whatever it takes to return Trump back to 1600 Pennsylvania — even if it meant a civil war — would be “worth it,” according to one religious leader.
“I’ve actually had people say that if Trump was to be elected if we got a conservative Congress, that they fear that we would have another civil war,” Andrew Wommack, a TV evangelical preacher, said during an episode of his “Truth & Liberty” show earlier this week, and first reported by Newsweek. “And you know what? I don’t want a civil war, I don’t know anybody that does, but would it be worth it? To turn this nation back? I believe it would.”

So you don’t want a civil war but you do think the outcome of one would be worth it. Which means you DO want a civil war, which probably won’t affect you in the slightest (as long as it goes your way) but might fuck up millions of other lives. Mind you, he also says this:

Wommack’s embrace of a bloody clash between Americans was prompted by a viewer dialing in and asking if there could be a “grace revolution that could get the U.S. to switch out the Constitution for the Bible.”
The pastor said that the founders’ document is fine as-is. It’s those in positions of power that are asleep at the switch.
“There’s nothing wrong with our Constitution, the problem is we’re not following it,” he said.
He then went on: “If they were still writing the Bible today, I believe that the American Constitution and the founding of this nation would be in scripture as one of the great things that God has done.”

So the Constitution is fine but apparently the Bible could do with more work?