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Kimberly Steele ([personal profile] kimberlysteele) wrote2021-12-22 11:21 am

The Apocalypse Meme

Cringeworthy, even back then.

 


I watched a video the other day in which a priest claimed a double meteor would hit the Earth this May, causing a nuclear winter that would last approximately one to two years.  The video made other random claims as well: nine out of ten vaxxed people are going to die within three years, worldwide lockdowns and martial law will be in effect by late January, and the failure of Catholics to preserve the Eucharist and the Latin Mass will enable Satan to reign on Earth. 

I don’t subscribe to apocalypse memes.  When my own Ogham predicted that a majority of people who took the MRNA injections would be dead in five years, I did not believe them.  I believe the majority of the people who took the MRNA injections will be fine and I have yet to be proven wrong in my disbelief.  From what I can see all around me, the vaccinated are suffering plenty of side effects from the vaccines, but for the most part, they are being saddled with chronic illness and not dying.  They may “never feel the same again” and will most likely have to deal with immune deficiency/fatigue the rest of their somewhat-shortened lives, but early death?  Nah.  There are fates far worse than death and it has been Big Pharma and Big Medicine’s goal for the last hundred years to replace any form of graceful death with them.  If there is a die-off, it will not be by design.  Dead people don’t spend money.  A long, protracted death of cancer that involves potential decades of surgical mutilations, toxic chemicals, and large arrays of pills is far more profitable than the alternative of an instantly-fatal heart attack or stroke.  My hypothesis is the MRNA shot and its accompanying boosters are expressly made to keep customers ahem I mean patients just sick enough to keep getting the shots.

The roads in my suburban area of Chicago are plagued with almost constant gridlock.  The problem this presents, of course, is local and state governments that use an apparent lack of consequences for their actions to enforce new fear porn, lockdowns, and violations of Constitutional rights.  But I digress.  The point is the apocalypse is not showing up on schedule.  Not much is changing for the better for the commoners.  Like usual, there is a slow and steady worsening creep of inflation, empty shelves, corporate and government overreach, and traffic.

Stairway to Heaven

The Apocalypse meme is a symptom of Faustian culture, and despite Faustian culture’s birthplace in the West, Asians are no less prone to its siren song.  The Faustian model is a human or a group of humans that strives ever upward towards the stars in a straight line.  Faustian culture needs an apocalypse to wipe the slate clean and cut the dead weight so the phallus may lift itself off the planet that drags it down via gravity.  The Achilles heel of the Faustian worldview is the binary it creates: the world cannot possibly go on in its current state, sloping ever-downward as once brilliant technological inventions crumble and once-young minds and bodies become senile, soft, and irrelevant.  There has to be an end, and it had better be an explosion.

About a decade ago, one of the childfree vegans in one of my Facebook groups made a bet with me that world civilization would be in utter collapse right about now.  I told her “Fine, but if it doesn’t happen you’ll owe me a hundred dollars.  If I’m wrong, I’ll give you a hundred.”  She has yet to pay me for being right.  Another vegan thought the entire state of Illinois would be flooded with lake water by now.  My mother-in-law, RIP, always thought Jesus was coming sometime in the next few weeks, a belief she maintained for most of her life.  She did not die young.

Games of Escape

The Apocalypse meme is appealing because it offers an escape from the humdrum realities of everyday life.  As fantasies go, it is similar to the Win the Lottery fantasy and the Go Back in Time fantasy.  The Win the Lottery fantasy is where you imagine what you would do if you won a staggeringly huge fortune.  In the old days, this used to be a few million dollars, but nowadays it is more like a hundred million.  In the Win the Lottery fantasy, you get to plan all of the wonderful things you would buy if money was plentiful and easy.  You imagine all of the people you would help.  You imagine all the people you would exclude as they envied you for your new wealth and status.  In the Go Back in Time fantasy, you imagine what it would be like if you time traveled back to childhood with all of your adult knowledge intact.  You would have all your skills and experience but would be gifted with a young body and mind as well as killer stock market knowledge.  All of the above fantasies – the Apocalypse Meme, Win the Lottery, Go Back in Time – are about getting something for nothing.  In the Apocalypse Meme, the “something” being gotten is vengeance and being proven right.  In the Win the Lottery fantasy, it is money, comfort, and status.  In the Go Back in Time fantasy, it is youth and energy.  All three fantasies are rooted in laziness and intellectual dishonesty. 

Scratch the surface of the Go Back in Time fantasy and you’ll most likely find a person who cannot bear the limits of physical mortality.  They will most likely be physically unwell due to a mixture of genetics and sedentary habits such as lack of exercise and unwillingness to prepare nourishing food for themselves.  The Go Back in Time fantasy is a game they play so they don’t have to live out the consequences of their actions. 

In the case of the Win the Lottery fantasy, there is a fundamental lack of recognition that wealth has to come from somewhere.  For instance, every article of clothing I am wearing at the moment was created by slave labor.  If you look at the tags on my turtleneck sweater, my skirt, and my bra and underwear, they will all say Made in China, Thailand, Bangladesh, etc.  I have tried to mitigate the problem by mostly purchasing used (the turtleneck was a 2018 Christmas gift, but the rest of the items were thrift and Goodwill except the socks and underpants) but the fact remains that Asian slaves made my wardrobe.  That said, I don’t wish to win the lottery because I don’t want money I didn’t earn.  Quite a few people are plagued by the desire to get their hands on “easy” money, and that urge is what drives the current insanity that is the salary class.  Salary class providers do an excellent job of spoiling their spouses and children.  They also have an uncanny talent for avoiding any and all thought about where their wealth actually comes from, which is why they don’t usually live in modest households with tiny, mostly thrifted wardrobes and a sixteen year old car.  All that wealth comes from somewhere and if the lottery winner in his overly large McMansion or the salary class executive in her shiny new Tesla has it, someone else suffered for them to get it.  That suffering becomes their karma. 

Cleaning the Slate

In the case of the Apocalypse meme, there is an urge to wipe the slate clean so one does not have to deal with a mounting set of problems in one’s own life.  Though the Apocalypse meme appeals especially to people with unhealthy, unfit bodies, its main allure is that it allows for a lazy mind.  It is a dream, and the dream of the Apocalypse is not realistic.  Many who dream it imagine themselves as part of a band of intrepid survivors – the stultifyingly dull Walking Dead TV series and its spinoff, Fear of the Walking Dead, spring readily to mind.  Personally, I would not survive a zombie apocalypse, nor would I want to survive it.  The zombie apocalypse, however, would put a permanent end to having to work to make money.  It would prioritize survival, open opportunities to become a leader among other survivors, and it would likely kill off anyone I found annoying, including corrupt politicians and smug ex-friends.  It would also be a hell of a lot more interesting than life as a downwardly-mobile independent music teacher who is not getting younger anytime soon. 

You and Me Versus the World

Much of the Apocalypse Meme’s appeal is in its allowance of hatred.  Hatred hasn’t been “allowed” in polite society for a long time.  When Millerites built up their expectations only to be spectacularly let down in 1844 when God failed to attend their party, they were forced to face all of the people they hated and condemned as wicked, unsaved sinners with egg on their face.  We don’t wish to escape a place for which we are grateful and we don’t deliberately want to leave behind people we appreciate and love. 

Maybe I lack imagination but I cannot imagine what it was like to live through the Black Death as a European in the late Middle Ages.  I tried to imagine it in my first novel Forever Fifteen and found that section the most difficult part to write though I have been fascinated by the Black Death since I first found out about it around the age of eight.  I suppose I should fear a similar event could happen, especially in this day and age of eugenicist-fascist Dr. Mengeles like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates.  Though it may mean I am a fool, I refuse to marinate in fear because fearing (or gleefully anticipating) such an event doesn’t help.



(Anonymous) 2021-12-25 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
You and JMG have used magic and divination to come to a particular conclusion about the covid vaccines and the long term effects of it. However, there are other occultists who have received very different answers, whether they are using tarot cards or guides or whatever.

What do you think is the cause of this?

(Anonymous) 2021-12-26 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
They all seem to be animists! Siv of Microanimism is, well, an animist. She also has a PhD in microbiology and is quite excited by the science behind the mRNA vaccines.
Ancestral Medicine, ran by Daniel Foor, just had a pandemic grief ritual. Ancestral Medicine is an animist organization that offers courses in "ancestral lineage healing" and ritual arts. Totally fine with the vaccines. Sarah Anne Lawless, a witch and herbalist, got vaccinated. She is also an animist.

None of them have etheric alarm bells going off about all this. But why??

(Anonymous) 2021-12-27 04:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Why would people who got vaccinated have bad karma? Everyone I know got it for their health, just like they get a flu shot. Yeah, some people really get a flu shot every year. Not everyone is "online" enough to know anything other than what the TV says. :/

(Anonymous) 2021-12-28 06:19 am (UTC)(link)
I don't know the first two you mentioned but I followed Sarah Ann Lawless on Instagram for a while until I got bored of her constant whining about her bothersome ex-husband, bum of a boyfriend, and her inability to cope with having her two children around whenever the daycare closed. She strikes me as a very mainstream leftist wokester who happened to be interested in some very mainstream, and wokester tinted, pagan ideologies, as opposed to someone who could be taken seriously as an occultist. Also, if you look at some of her products and artwork, she doesn't appear to have much of a problem with incorporating demon worship into her work. That may explain why she had no problem with taking the vaccines.

(Anonymous) 2021-12-29 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
I think it would be really interesting for some podcaster out there to interview Sarah and JMG. JMG did make a post about her once, so perhaps she knows who he is in return. I wouldn't exactly consider working with poisonous plants mainstream, who do you hang out with?

(Anonymous) 2021-12-29 11:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, it was on DreamWidth a few years ago. He doesn't mention her name but links to her blog. However, Sarah deleted a lot of her writing a while back so the link doesn't lead to her post. I can't find it on the WayBack Machine.

https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/39410.html

(Anonymous) 2021-12-29 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Ok, I tool another look on the WayBack Machine and found Sarah's post:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190322104728/http://sarahannelawless.com/2018/11/12/for-sale-neopaganism-as-is/

(Anonymous) 2021-12-30 06:50 am (UTC)(link)
I work with poisonous plants, so I guess I hang out with myself?? I also know how to grow a variety of mushrooms, but so what? I don't consider that, in itself, to be a hallmark of one's ideology. Anyone can study herbal medicine, even poisonous plants; some college-level chemistry and biology is likely helpful, but probably not absolutely necessary. My assessment of her stems more from some of her off-hand comments about things, such as the idea that anti-depressants are just needed by some people, and the assumption that putting one's young children in daycare is.. not just reasonable but almost an entitlement. (Yes, I have children, five actually.) Her writings, especially those on sex abuse in pagan groups, had a strong undercurrent of "me-too", fourth-wave feminist rhetoric - mainly the idea that everything is abuse if I say it is, and if you question me on that it's because you're a misogynist bigot etc. I also recall her making a big deal out of announcing that she was withdrawing from some spirituality trade show (something like that) because another guest met her definition of racist/white supremacist and the organizers wouldn't kick the "racist" whoever out of the show - to me this reeks of demonstrative leftist righteousness and also looks a whole lot like cancel culture. I also found it pretty amusing that she made this piece https://society6.com/product/medicine-for-the-people_t-shirt?sku=s6-11283536p15a4v75a5v18a11v49 yet also posted an injection selfie on Twitter. I think the word for this is "ironic". I was really disappointed because I like her artwork and had bought a few shirts with her prints, but I boycott Covidians so I won't be doing that again. At this point I mostly think she's an attention-seeking poseur.

you can't stack your occultists for the answers you WANT...

(Anonymous) 2021-12-25 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
just like Kimberly Miss Lady was saying we've gotta comb through our own symbols, i think a lot of people can't even FATHOM what they see or feel. i'm pretty good at reading the street and underground, BUT everything i got wrong in the WHY or what it meant.

still, my rules have always been: "in case i'm wrong (which happens a lot), would i do this anyway and think it's a good idea? what are the consequences either way?"

and i try to do what i'd do with the VOICES intuition AND of my own "free will," whatever that is anymore. if it's fun and i'll have energy and if i could get off on a positive outcome, then i go with the adventure.

this is why i listen to Miss Lady here and Papa G. divination shminivation... what has the diviner BEEN THROUGH? have they died already and before? can they face the ugly and the answers to questions we're not sure we should even ASK???

so i look at the mental social fitness of the diviner. anyone who's had a hard life and is different? i know what they went through to hold their own and they don't care about telling me things that make me feel GOOD.

that's who i want to listen to, ya dig?

(wink)

erika

(Anonymous) 2021-12-26 05:05 am (UTC)(link)
Well, what are these other occultists' track records? I take any divination done by Kimberly, and anything said by JMG, quite seriously because they've been right much too often to ignore.

(Anonymous) 2021-12-26 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
Not Kimberly. I'd say the cause is that everyone is human and all humans are prone to the same errors of reasoning when interpreting esoteric symbols and must learn to disentangle their internal inclinations from their readings.

It may also be that individuals influence the outcomes of their own readings, but I cannot say this with certainty. Your own energy might influence the material tools if any, or the spirits that are attracted to you, if any.

(Anonymous) 2021-12-26 10:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I find in my own divination that timing is a thing. Generally the answer to a question is final until a very different situation has occurred to make clear that the original reading has played its course.

Near the beginning of the pandemic, I divined whether to buy property here. The general gist is that I was seeing a false opportunity and a false hope. At first I thought that this was wrong once property values began to skyrocket, but then shortly after the vax mandates and threats of coof camps... if I'd bought that property I'd well and truly have been trapped. False hope indeed.