Open Post

[kimberlysteele]

 

 

 

Please feel free to comment on anything and everything. Thank you for not using profanity.

Comments

[tamanous2020]

Thanks for hosting an open mic Kim.

If theres one thing I've taken from the current insanity, is that hard and crazy times act as the thrustblock to real internal and spiritual development. Speaking only for myself, being surrounded by overt propaganda winnows my mind to have a clearer picture of where my beliefs stand. And seeing a crisis like peak oil gain momentum provides that ignition to actually accomplish the preparations for the future as opposed to procrastinating. In retrospect, I'm more thankful for these times than the 2000 oughts where looking back it feels like a period of inebriation.

Now if only "to know to will to dare to be silent" was a tad easier in practice :p

So thanks to you Kim, and others, who've been putting the pedal to the medal and providing us thoughts to digest, divinations to understand and a space to be among like minded folk.

Tamanous

[(Anonymous)]

That’s a pretty picture!

—Lady Cutekitten

[kimberlysteele]

I have known a great many upper 20% salary classers who think they're middle class who think we are living in times of persecution. They continually fail to understand that they are the ones with the most privilege keeping everyone else down. For instance, take my ex-friend who inherited his grandmother's three bedroom house as his stepfather pays for his continuing college/gradschool. He thinks of himself as poor. He felt persecuted by the Trump administration. Now that Biden is in, it is worse because there is no longer a convenient scapegoat.

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks!

[kimberlysteele]

Another woke ex-friend thinks the rich should be made to pay for COVID. He was depressed before all this happened and now? Well, I wouldn't know, because he's an ex-friend. I imagine he is falling apart like the rest of the salary class. He regularly travels between the US and Europe for personal reasons, plus he vacations in France, the Bahamas, Spain, etc. He thinks saying "the rich should pay for COVID" doesn't include HIM. He doesn't understand how the curse could backfire against his family, and his family happens to be the reason he is wealthy. Plus he didn't specify the terms of the payment when he hurled the "rich should pay for COVID" curse. I'm terrified of his karma even if he is not. That's why I maintain an extremely long distance between myself and him -- it's not the first unwitting curse he has thrown and I suppose it won't be the last. He's living in a glass house while hurling hand grenades.

[(Anonymous)]

Scapegoat for what? What is he upset about? (Decline in general? Or...?)

[houseofmirrors]

https://www.nytimespost.com/political-correctness-gone-mad-words-easter-egg-dropped-from-seasonal-chocolate-treats/

I wonder now how various neopagans are to think of the erasure of even the last remnants of their roots from Easter?

They have complained for so long about it being coopted by Christians. Will they have anything to say at all about "Galaxy Eggs?"

[kimberlysteele]

He hates his life -- he blames others for his misery and is especially vicious to his immediate family despite relying upon them as he is well into his 30s. Trump is just another blame-target for him -- a straw man to heap all of the ills of the world upon.

[kimberlysteele]

Galaxy eggs LOL. I used to be a member of the Temple of Set. The Temple of Set are atheists who occasionally and conveniently pretend to believe in Satan when they want him to give them material things (I think they confuse him with Santa). My local pagan movement has been co-opted by materialist atheists. This is especially true of the Theosophical Society in my area, the supposed headquarters in Wheaton, Illinois. The TS library has been closed for over a year. Very Professional Managerial Class, atheist reasons for doing so. Gotta keep that goodie train rolling out the free communist money, so ramp up the fear porn in the name of Virtue and close the library. Nevertheless, even Setians are smarter than the current Theosophical Society pagans -- not all Setians believe in forceful vaccination and forever masks whereas TS pagans are more solidly anti-freedom.

Christianity has suffered a possible death blow from decisions made last Easter and especially last Christmas (2020). Christians had their chance to save their religion by flooding their churches but they took the cowardly route and stayed home. What Would Jesus Not Do...?

[causticus]

I've noticed online too the massive materialist atheist invasion of pagan/polytheist spaces. IMHO, any self-respecting polytheist group needs to show them the door immediately....but no, that might hurt their feelings. I noticed on one particular pagan subreddit that any attempt to call out "atheopaganism" (barf) for the utter disingenuous rubbish it is elicits an immediate torrent of downvotes and scold-replies from cowardly apologists.

I've concluded that those of us who actually honor the gods (and without any sillystrings attached) should start keeping closed spaces and carefully vet anyone new who wants to join the group in question. Maybe go back to the "Scribe Z" way of doing things JMG has joked about every now and then.

[kimberlysteele]

That's why Manly P. Hall's "Path of the Lonely Ones" makes so much sense. There isn't a single group for a bunch of insecure materialist atheists to invade. As far as Christians and honoring their God, they're more talk than action. If they honored their God, they wouldn't be afraid of going to church maskless and catching a bug that kills less people than the seasonal flu.

[mollari]

Frankly I think this is because most in the pagan scene are atheists, in fact even if not in name: too much of the pagan scene strikes me as being best described as playing at being pagans....

[kimberlysteele]

Could not agree with you more on that one. I think a great deal of it is the absence of a daily banishing ritual or any structure (save seasonal solstice and equinox celebrations) in modern paganism. Without a daily invocation and banishing plus discursive meditation, they end up worshipping the same god of Progress every other thoughtless non-pagan atheist worships.

[lincoln_lynx]

He probably hates his family because he relies on them. That arrangement can breed resentment. Especially for a guy in his mid-30s or over.

[causticus]

My take on this is that there are very few 'true believers' remaining among Christians in the Western world. For most it's a social club + rulebook (very selectively applied) for helping out with various areas in life. The reality is that it's Materialist Secularism (and its many flavors) that's the true religion for most Westerners today, including most nominal Christians.

[causticus]

I agree too. The way I see it, is that for most self-identified 'pagans' their 'paganism' is nothing more than a lifestyle cult, and a very shallow one at that. Lifestyle cults, or fandoms, is a phenomenon that's peculiar to our affluent consumer society. Think of other modern-day lifestyle cults like video gamers, furries, pick-up artists, Game of Thrones fans, goth kids, ect. In other words Neopaganism is not a true religion, rather it's the same I mentioned above for most Christians: Materialist Secularism, and most likely the 'Church of Progress' sect of that.

[mollari]

I think there's something deeper here, since discussing the need for banishing tends to get weird reactions from a lot of them. I'm reminded of something where someone insisted that banishing implies any space which has not been banished is somehow impure, and that this was enough to dismiss the entire thing.

Um... The entire point of banishing is that not everything on the subtle planes is good. So I think there's something weird going on in that insistence that banishing is evil and dangerous, but I haven't figured out what it is yet.

[kimberlysteele]

I don't hang out with him anymore, but when he was in his early 30s, his mom still made him lunch every day. He trash talks his mother right in front of her face, talks about how he wishes he was never born, calls her stupid, ugly, etc. He's a real mess; verbally abusive to her. I wouldn't be surprised if he was physically abusive to her as well. She still shows up every day to make him lunch at his deceased grandmother's house.

[mollari]

I grew up Catholic, and by the time I was old enough to notice these things, I saw that no one in the church took the teachings seriously. They were wondering why everyone drifted away, and by the time I was 6 or 7 I saw it clearly: why would we believe in this if the adults don't? If our parents used it as a social club, why should we bother with it?

Also, the fact that most "Christians" I know who hear of it are okay with my paganism but not my interests in breaking away from the technosphere tells me what it really is that they worship.

[mollari]

I'm nowhere near where I want to be in terms of honouring the gods, but I'm working on it, and the thing I find wryly amusing is how many of the pagans I know are getting tied up in knots over the things I am doing which strike me as basic common sense if you believe the gods are real: even things as basic as making offerings are enough to upset some people....

[kimberlysteele]

My husband's relatives are Seventh Day Adventists, and they're probably the most damaged breed of Christian aside from Jehovah's Witnesses. I have only met one Christian who actually seemed holy -- and the pool of Christians I have to choose from includes the thousands of Catholics and various flavors of Protestant I have encountered in nearly 50 years on the planet. Catholics are generally more laid back than Protestants, but as I have often mentioned, Christianity has a desperation problem. It is palpable: they are plum out of holy people. They're desperate to recruit new blood but never desperate enough to actually fight for their religion by going to church against government mandates.

The Millerite religions such as SDAs, Mormons, and JWs are host to some of the sleaziest, most materialistic creatures humanity has to offer despite stiff competition. I know some Ecosophians admire Joseph Smith, but in my opinion, he was a delusional, perverted creep (plus he was dumb, de dumb dumb dumb to quote South Park) whose racism was far more insidious than his contemporaries. If he had anything to say of value, it's only because a broken clock is right twice a day. The SDAs produce dysfunctional adults who are routinely severely sexually deviant and the same is true of Mormons and JWs. JWs are horrific: every single one of them I have known was horrifically abused as a child.

The Catholics I know are more salary class. What is refreshing is that a small faction of them is starting to break away, keeping their Catholicism and giving the salary class pretentiousness the old heave ho.

[kimberlysteele]

Well, it could be that some force that is more intelligent than the smartest human is worried that an army of banishers might get in the way of its plans, thus causing the comfortable, quasi-religious human to dismiss the idea of banishing outright. This could be the sort of force that used to get trapped in lamps and geometric ciphers by mages who actually knew what they were doing back in the day. But we don't dare mention the D word in civilized society, because that suddenly means we're superstitious crackpots.

[kimberlysteele]

Yes! Exactly. The Witches of Instagram. They spend more time posing in black Spandex corsetry than they do working actual spells. And when they do work a spell, it is some amateur hour mass working against Trump with the wrong colors, the wrong planets, the wrong place, and the wrong freaking century. (I do wonder who they are hexing now that Trump is no longer president). They don't believe for once second that karma will ricochet back in their direction. They don't think for one second that it could mean the death of the person they love most in the world or of a beloved pet. They just fling bad energy all the time and say banishing is for people not as naturally talented at magic as they are...

[mollari]

That is uncomfortably plausible. As for not saying the D word, I suspect that that is the crowning accomplishment of some demon or other: persuading the masses that they don't exist, and therefore no actions are needed to protect against them makes falling for their traps so much easier....

[mollari]

Oh dear gods: it's just occurred to me there is a phenomena which has the hallmarks of demonic activity, is wildly popular right now, and which everyone who banishes seems to reject: Progress.....