Worshipping Fraud

[kimberlysteele]

Blah blah, Bible quote, OOH OCCULTISM BAD!, hypocrisy, blah blah. And green horned robots, just because they're cute!

To my own chagrin, I still have a Facebook account. Facebook disgusts me at this point and the only reason I return to it like a dog to his vomit is because it is occasionally essential or useful. I still run the group Speakeasy Illinois and to this day it helps Illinoisans to avoid places frequented by mask-wearing, MRNA vaccine pushing creeps. Nevertheless, Facebook is and has always been an astral cesspool of ridiculous censorship and toxic narcissism.

Speaking of narcissism, the latest trend among Protestant Christians is completely avoiding Halloween celebrations. This October 31 was peppered with self-righteous posts from various churchgoers who loudly and proudly advertised their avoidance of all Halloween costumes, parties, and candy collecting in the name of Christ. Though I’m a big fan of practicing what you preach, this new denouncement of Halloween reeks of hypocrisy and is yet another reason why I believe Christianity is well on its way to becoming one of many endangered fringe religions of the future. The next dominant religions are already beginning to emerge, and none of share the propensity cancelling fun in the way Christians and their communist-atheist imitators have adopted.

When Christianity was much younger, its proponents knew better than to cancel holidays. Instead, pagan celebrations of the winter solstice and Saturnalia became Christmas. The death of Christ was scheduled for the annual celebration of spring fertility called Easter, and that’s why bunnies and eggs get thrown into the great pastel soup of the celebration of the resurrection.

Now it seems regular Protestant Christians are seeking a divorce from Halloween. Funny how Seventh Day Adventists, some Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses cancelled holidays and birthdays long before it was cool. My husband grew up Seventh Day Adventist and he grew up without watching movies or listening to popular music other than a narrow list of church approved artists. I would argue that this damaged him in the long run and drove him in directions he never would have went had he not been subjected to such extremism. A woman I know who grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness was subjected to unspeakable horrors and bore witness to incest. Another child of the aforementioned religions got pregnant and dropped out of school at age 14 under very mysterious circumstances. Yet another caught herpes from her first sexual experience at age 16 and went on to marry and divorce more than a dozen times. Extremism perverts and twists.

I Too Love Jesus!

This is not to say I dislike the Christian God. I love Jesus — I really do. He’s great. From my limited experience, he is nowhere near as jealous, insecure, mean, or dogmatic as many of his followers imagine him to be. Actually, I think it is highly likely that many Christians are worshiping Lucifer and other devils without realizing it. They quote Bible phrases about fools and sinners without ever looking in the mirror. They have lost their own tradition of discursive meditation and it is much to their detriment. They are thoughtless puppets on the short leash of a dying egregore.

The Christian egregore is a pyramid that knows its better days are in the past. The spirit of Christianity was co-opted long ago by materialist forces: Martin Luther recognized that and breathed some new life into the massive structure for a time. With Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God in 1882, Christianity suffered its first of many death knells. Its greedy, angry egregore clutched at relevance through Marxists like Stalin and Mao, determined to drag to living hell all who went against the idea of a single God in the form of the State. Now the massive astral pyramid has become hideous in its last death throes. It still dominates the material world in many respects but it is rapidly crumbling in the subtler planes. Christians everywhere know it and sense it, and that’s why the average Christian church reeks of palpable desperation for new recruits. It is why crazy old men double and triple down on bitterly memorized Bible quotes instead of actually doing the mostly-silent work of Christ. It is why thirty-something women think that virtue signaling about forbidding their children from dressing up as zombie cheerleaders think they are getting somewhere.

And Mammon Held Sway Over All

Halloween is no more evil, pagan, or "occult" than Easter or Christmas. Granted, Halloween is not ostensibly about Jesus, but if you look at the ways Easter and Christmas are celebrated, it’s pretty self-evident that Mammon rules at least one of them. In fact, Mammon holds sway over quite a few Christian churches regardless of how they celebrate or do not celebrate holidays. The proof is in the pudding, or in the more Biblical sense, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

The average Christian church in my area of northern Illinois is a palace. Churches often have entire campuses with huge, expertly-designed soundstages and auditoriums, luxurious bathrooms, and spacious hotel style lobbies. They are landscaped to the nines, their asphalt parking lots are brand new, and their roofs never leak. Despite all their amenities, not one of the churches in my area of the far Western suburbs of Chicago doubles as a homeless shelter. Many of them preach some version of the Prosperity Gospel every weekend, and there is always the watered-down notion that indoctrinating others into the fold will somehow lead to a kind of material wealth that I believe Jesus would have found obscene.

In an odd moment of synchronicity, Youtube read my mind and a video of a dude that literally makes his living as a homeless shepherd popped up on my feed. The guy’s name is Aaron Fletcher of 123Homefree.com. He has a wagon and he trades sheep’s milk and labor for temporary lodging and food. He also happily gives away advice on being thrifty and crafty. His fingernails are dirty and his sheep are happy. They follow him around like dogs. One of his mottos is FreeDIYm > $lavery. Draw your own conclusions as to who I think is more like Jesus if we compare him to any smug church member who routinely yawns through the three chord jams of the generic Worship Band at Local Fellowship Community. God is in the details.

Comments

[nightwatchwaits]

Thank you Kimberly.

From own experience of attending a conservative evangelical church in the UK as a teenager, is that they only celebrate two days in the church year - Easter & Xmas. They do not like the dark side of Halloween - the trick in the trick and treat, but maybe they struggle to put forward a good alternative.

In my own journey, I still do not like most of what I see going on at Halloween, much like I do not like what I see at Xmas (Kitschmas?). At my old church, we used to have Bold & Bright parties where we would pray and sing out the forces of darkness - I was not able to explain it at the time, but I remember how jarring it felt. However, now I follow a much more developed church year of festivals, I have All Souls and All Saints. A time to look at the leaves falling from the trees and remember... and reflect... with some good soulful hymns, rather than 'Jesus my boyfriend' & 'Jesus the conqueror' choruses. And something to chime with my Samhain celebrating druid friends.

Your discussion of the Xtian egregore and pyramid resonates with me. I will ponder such things.

Jesus was a techton and had some shepherd friends!

Sometimes turns in culture start small... sometimes they take the seeds of an old culture, preserve them through the forest fire and allow them to grow in the new... The Society of St Francis and especially Hilfield Friary have been a big help on my journey. https://www.hilfieldfriary.org.uk/ Maybe the many short videos on Youtube capture the spirit of them better than their website.

[methylethyl]

The protestant church whose school I attended as a kid would put on a pretty great after-dark "Harvest Festival" every year on Halloween-- set up a bunch of booths made of brown kraft paper, with little games to win prizes at. I think for at least some of the organizers, it was meant as a safe, non-religiously-offensive alternative to all the halloween stuff. We all, of course, would go trick-or-treating around our neighborhoods beforehand, and then come to the party at the school ;)

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks NWW! Hilfield Friary looks like a wonderful place. The first thing I notice is its lack of ostentation. I wish sane representations of Christianity like Hilfield were more common.

[methylethyl]

oi. We don't do halloween. Not as a matter of conscience or anything-- we're just lazy. Our last three neighborhoods have been too rural, and I suspect our current neighborhood is deemed too dangerous by most parents. I did pick up some candy but disappointingly, we only got one group of five trick-or-treaters. That was such a huge deal when my husband and I were kids. It's a little sad to see it fall by the wayside. I think I was fifteen the last time I went trick-or-treating, which is really too old, but one loves an excuse to dress up and go visiting-- that last year I only knocked on doors of people I'd known all my life because it's fun to just run around and say hi. Everybody's doing the trunk-or-treat thing because "safety" or something. I can't work up any enthusiasm for it, TBH. It seems so... I dunno. It's a depressing reflection of the loss of neighborhood and community.

My kids are only vaguely familiar with the custom. If they really wanted to do it, we'd make it happen, but since they're not clamoring for costumes and candy... we're content to leave it be, and not have to figure out what the heck to do with five pounds of candy after ;)

The fundies can be as self-righteous as they want, now, because the tradition is dying anyway. And they'd probably like to pat themselves on the back for it, but it ain't because of them. I'd say air conditioning, smartphones, and workforce mobility are the real culprits.

[kimberlysteele]

Zero trick or treaters came to my house and I bought two bags... oops! One was Skittles, which I'm not a fan of, and the other bag was some white chocolate Kit Kats which I won't eat because they're not vegan. Looks like my students get some Skittles and white chocolate Kit Kats! Fundies aren't all that different from wokesters in their approach. They're always tearing down/fighting what they hate instead of doing good works.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I mean from a church perspective, the sensible thing to do would be to turn the Halloween period into a festival of light and celebration to drive away the darkness, much like Diwali. In fact, I find it very interesting how many religions have what is essentially a banishing festival this time of year, almost like they realise it's a relatively dangerous time and the forces of darkness are at their strongest...? (I have been meaning to look up whether the southern hemisphere has their Halloween-equivalent in March though)

As ever, the opposite of a bad idea (worshipping the devil at Halloween) is also just another bad idea (banning even the mention of Halloween), instead of using its energies constructively, or at least trying to mitigate their worst effects.

It's always been a weird, ethereal time of year, and normally I really like autumn but this year feels just extra gloomy and, I don't know, gloopy is the only work I can use? Also interestingly, you probably know that we in the UK have a big, loud, bright celebration of our own very close to Halloween on the 5th November, which is technically to celebrate the foiling of the Catholic plot to destroy the houses of Parliament, but it's really just cause for lots of fireworks, which pets hate, but presumably may have a banishing effect. Many cities also used to have a non-denominational festival of light in October/November as well, with illuminated parades through the streets, etc. It was fun. However, due to cutbacks, lots of cities have cancelled all their celebrations for this year, so I expect the relative proportion of evil to increase this year. Some might say that would seem deliberate...

I know that I am the resident conspiracy theorist on your blog, but I've also read some stuff about some of the nominally Christian denominations you mention above and... it's not been pleasant. As you say, I'm pretty certain that they are not worshipping Jesus Christ, whether the rank-and-file worshippers realise it or not.

Jesus would indeed be a modern-day itinerant hobo, much like the Buddha. And I think both of them would approve of a Halloween-time festival of light and celebration, zombie masks or not.

Also, what do you see as the new religions which are on the rise?

Mr. Crow

[kimberlysteele]

I think Mammon is in charge of the Osteen crowd. Those who wallow in material excess and eat up the Prosperity Gospel are worshipping a demon of greed or an arch-Wendigo if you please. The more it consumes, the hungrier it becomes. As far as the fundies who want to cancel anything construed as fun from other religions, they're partly commanded by Paimon (demon who rules certain stripes of sexual perversion, incest, and cancel culture as far as I can tell) and whatever that thing is that causes WASPS and their wannabes to remove every tree on their lawns and blitzkrieg it with chemicals. So that is why they "turn inward" and so reliably sexually cannibalize their own children or resort to burning s**t down. Their inner dialogue is commandeered by one or more demons. They are also highly prone to suicide because Paimon delights in human suicide.