kimberlysteele: (Default)
[personal profile] kimberlysteele

In my final essay of this series, I will be discussing why curses do not work and why blessings, though not as easy to formulate, are the best strategy for overcoming demons.  Next week I am planning to write about the symbolism of masks and why they have precious little to do with the actual preservation of human health.
 

The class of people who bought into and perpetuated the COVID-19 phenomenon were and are largely salaried professionals who grew up in environments of extreme privilege yet see themselves as the middle class because they don't have as much as the successful Hollywood director or tech startup guru. We will call them the PMC or the Professional Managerial Class. PMCs grew up under the umbrella of wealth.


Shielded by luxury, the PMC finds no comfort in excesses of basics that people of lower classes cannot take for granted. Food strewn about their personal landscape is only an opportunity to be tempted and to become fat. Shelter or the lack of shelter isn't a concern either: there's almost always a house and/or its proceeds donated by a doting, deceased family member to fall back on and if all else fails, stocks and bonds can be sold off to provide a safety net. As far as jobs are concerned, their class works hard, but the work isn't a quarter as challenging as the benefit free, do-it-all-and-get-yelled-at-anyway convenience store job or the debasement of the retail sales floor. They are drowning in perks they did nothing to earn, and they believe they hit a home run when they were born on third base.

Poor Little Rich Kids

Despite the freedom material wealth affords, PMCs are miserable. Their lives suck. They battle severe depression that is always teetering on the knife edge of a three month-long descent into a black hole that ends with a bottle of Azipam chased with a quart of Grey Goose. They are perpetually anxious, tormented by a nearly unbroken fight or flight response gone haywire. They are angry. Some retreat into social justice activism, which helps to allay the suicidal despair I mentioned above and also provides an outlet for the energy generated by constant anxiety. Others go the sleazy Ahrimanic evil route, like Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly needed orgasms with three young teenage girls per day in order to function.

Others still turn to curses. Michael Hughes is the most obvious example with his trash compactor hexes of Trump that combine mismatched planets, inauspicious moons, whatever ancient god or goddess that seemed cool that day, and high school poetry magazine submissions disguised as spells. His female counterparts stage their Satan-lite altars for Instagram, inflaming paranoid Christians while hoping to make enough money as witchy influencers despite not believing in the forces they invoke. Hughes and his pals engage in the formalized version of what regular media socialites do without the quasi-magical pomp and circumstance: they throw around bad intentions in public while sustaining the background belief that god does not exist and that karma does not apply to them. My theory is they have now done this enough times to attract and become infested by demons, a.k.a. large incorporeal beings who hate humanity and become invisible parasites upon those stupid or unfortunate enough to extend the invitation to feed.

Dissecting the Curse

The word "curse" has a murky etymology. In the University of Michigan Press's Middle English Compendium, the etymology of the word curse is attributed to the Latin "cursus" or "course" as in the Christian liturgy, implying a formula of readings performed four times a year.

My definition of a curse is an imposed cycle upon someone or something (places and objects can also be cursed) intended to punish the subject of the curse whenever they try to repeat the behavior the curser intends to prevent them from doing. If you've ever seen the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange, Alex, a gleeful murderer and rapist, ends up being ineffectively punished via cruel attempts at aversion where he is trained to associate the his own violent behaviors with the physical pain delivered by his torturers. After a few close calls and a suicide attempt, a newly released "rehabilitated" Alex goes back to his old ways with renewed vigor.

In A Clockwork Orange, Alex is put through a curse. His torturers who try to reprogram his mind via cycles of punishment only serve to create a better and more shady criminal. Prison sentences are curses laid upon transgressors by the State. Though they are meant to trap the prisoner in a place where he is ostensibly prevented from committing crimes, we can all agree the worst types of crimes, such as pedophilia, have high recidivism rates. Prison doesn't help anyone except those who get off on punishing others.

When we look at the anatomy of a curse, is the point of it to prevent the offender from reoffending, or is it to provide a dopamine rush of self-righteousness in the curse-thrower who believes they are doing good?

But Kimberly, you ask, if cursing is like heroin for the self-righteous and prison doesn't work, how should we handle murderers? Well, personally, I'm all for Hammurabi's Code type punishments for murder. Hang a murderer and in five minutes or less, we can let God sort it out. Some crimes are worse than others and it is my belief that the western approach is hard where it should be soft and soft where it should be hard. The bottom line is that most of us are not about to go to prison for our crimes, so we need to identify other examples of what cursing entails and other patterns where intention is aimed as an imposed cycle of hurt.

Most cunning serpent, you shall no more dare to deceive the human race, persecute the Church, torment God's elect and sift them as wheat.

The Most High God commands you, + He with whom, in your great insolence, you still claim to be equal.

"God who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." [1 Tim. 2:4)

-Excerpt from the Catholic Exorcism Prayer

Mad As Hell

Before I go all love and light on you, I would like to share how angry I am at my leftist friends and acquaintances. Well, clearly I wouldn't write five articles on accusing leftists of being possessed and obsessed by demons if I didn't have a modicum of anger to stew. Leftists caused and elongated the shutdown that nearly took my livelihood. They succeeded in ruining and damaging millions of small businesses via exacerbated panic and then rioting, they killed people of every color under the banners of BLM and Antifa, and they had the gall to lie about it, calling the rioters "peaceful protestors" and mask wearing "scientific". Though I do blame their behavior on the demons who I believe are infesting them, they still bear the burden of ultimate responsibility for the way they have carried on in the last four years.

I'm done with them. I would much rather be alone than have friends of such low, down-with-the-demons character. My strategy for dealing with leftists, though I don't necessarily recommend it to anyone, is this:

-If the person is someone I do not know, for instance, a random social justice type on Facebook who I wouldn't recognize by name, I look for signs of Trump derangement, pro-BLM signaling, or mask wearing. If they have any of the above, I immediately block them.

-If the person is an acquaintance and I see the above signs, I consider blocking them and I refuse any form of conversation about the above topics with threats that I will cut them out of my life. If I felt they could have a rational conversation, I wouldn't come down like a hammer. You cannot argue with the possessed -- it's an exorcism basic!

-If the person is my friend, I resolve to keep them at a careful distance until the election. If they confront me about any of the above topics, I flat out refuse to discuss it (um hello, they can read my blog) and put them on a top priority discursive meditation list to consider what to do about them after a few months have passed. I am considering cut and clear spells if it comes to that.

Gratitude: Easier Said Than Done

Curses are easy. Blessings are hard. Think of how readily an embarrassing or painful memory surfaces, or guilt. Now try to come up with a random, overwhelmingly positive memory. Not so quick, is it? As humans, we are hard-wired to recall pain, suffering, and misery. Happiness and bliss aren't remembered so much as chased.

If you want to be blessed, try gratitude. Gratitude is the first blessing. To give heartfelt thanks is to humble yourself before the gods, even if you don't technically believe in gods. The sheer ingratitude of our era explains a great deal of our cultural misery. A PMC friend once gratitude-shamed me when I thanked the owner of a now defunct hole in the wall restaurant for offering great vegan options. My friend snarkily commented, "You know you have to pay for the meal, right?" To him, every act of kindness is a transaction. Every gesture of grace boils down to a dollar sign, a tit for tat. This is the sort of person who becomes obsessed with getting something for nothing. Gratitude is a quaint bit of woo that comes from nothing and disappears into the gaping void.

As you can imagine, the inhabitant of such a gray and materialist world is a woeful being. They curse because they are angry and depressed (with a deep terror of being left completely alone) but it couldn't possibly be their own fault, so the answer is to foist the blame on someone else. The first "someone" they blame is their parents. The second is their society. They begin hexing and cursing their enemies, calling for various justices but actually just wanting to lash out and trap Trump or Bolsinaro or Johnson in a cycle of repeating physical and mental anguish. Of course by throwing that trash out there, they end up with blowback. Trash also stinks, and it attracts demons. Cursing does not work, and trying to bring someone down only results in your own downfall. If your enemy truly bothers you that much, ignore them and go around them if they stand in the way. If you truly hate the hatred, however, you will genuinely and honestly bless them.

It's pretty tough to bless a person or group you are mad at, so instead of that, I suggest starting with number one. I'm not suggesting you always bless yourself, though it would be kind of hilarious for all members of the public to shout "Bless me!" the next time they sneezed, however, I am suggesting the supplanting of the urge to curse with the immediate blessing of someone you love.

For instance, I stopped using curse words because I don't want to be like the people who seem to be the most predisposed towards foul language at the moment. For every urge to use a curse word, instead of putting a dollar in a jar, I try to say a kind or loving thing to the cherished people around me.

If you have no person or pet to bless, you can bless your place. Even if that place is a tent on the (rhymes with city) streets of the Castro district, you can bless it. You can get formal with frankincense and sage or you can informally steal a moment to focus your mind, asking the gods, Jesus, or whomever you acknowledge is smarter and better than you to bless your space. I am currently in the process of writing a book called Sacred Homemaking about the spirit of place and the ways we can go about amplifying the power of blessings via every trick in my arsenal and then some.

We all have something to be grateful for. When I was at my lowest point of depression in high school, I missed many opportunities to be grateful for my wonderful parents, my decent health, and the beautiful food that seemed to overflow from every cupboard. I am not saying that we should create snares of positivity for ourself that act like horse blinders -- being grateful should be accompanied by an assessment of that which does not elicit gratitude (does it spark joy? Yeah I had to go there). As a teen, I had a boyfriend I settled for, and I was lazy. My emotional storms and inability to look at my real blessings clouded my vision. I should have broken up with the boyfriend and dealt with my laziness and weakness instead of feeling guilty for wanting to be grateful for my devoted boyfriend and the wallowing in the luxury of being a lout.

To defeat the demons infesting the Left, we should become what demons cannot stand. If demons have turned leftists into babbling automatons of hate and authoritarianism, we can defeat them by becoming more thoughtful and analytical, employing discursive meditation every day. We can resolve to take a "you do you and I'll just go around if necessary" attitude no matter how disgusted we are by their behavior. Instead of cursing and throwing around ill will, we can bless. Give someone an authentic compliment. Share what you have. Pay it forward. Light a candle in the memory of someone you loved and take the time to remember why you loved them and how they brought you joy. Light a candle to a great philosopher or a hero. Kiss your dog or cat if they'll let you. Memorize a beautiful poem or a prayer. Recite it aloud. Take cursing out of your language. Learn an instrument so you can fill your home with music. Decorate a corner or a whole room with Aphrodite in mind. Pick up trash in the forest preserve. It's a small, blessed act of informal consecration that will encourage others to do the same. Look to ways to work the soil, even if it's only in the form of houseplants. Every little bit counts said the witch as she peed into the ocean. Be blessed!

Date: 2020-07-29 09:18 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Interesting. Recently I've decided that the key thing for me to remember is magnanimity in the face of those I'd rather excoriate, in my mind, at any rate, because magnanimity comes from a deeper place, and is harder to achieve, and benefits me (more). "Charity" is an older word to use in this context, as in Paul the apostle's faith, hope, and charity (these days often translated as "love", but love can mean so many things, even as "charity" is a bit antiquated except in a very specific sense). It's interesting therefore to see you use bless vs. curse in this same context. Bless you! :-)

That describes the Core Shamans I know

Date: 2020-07-30 02:30 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Neptune Dolphin's here.

The AWFLs I know have become Core Shamans when it first arrived. They talk about the Gods as real but as archetypes. In other words, both. They are patrician women who moan about the evil of men and the patriarchy. I call them heroic victims. Rather than doing things, they moan away and do little spells. They rather stay where they are than to move into the unknown and actually deal with the patriarchy. I believe it is window dressing of why am I unhappy and miserable.

You have to bless them and let go of them. I have increased my Roman devotions and it helps greatly. Also, for me doing embroidery is very calming and blesses others.

Date: 2020-08-02 07:54 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] houseofmirrors
If you want to be blessed, try gratitude. Gratitude is the first blessing. To give heartfelt thanks is to humble yourself before the gods, even if you don't technically believe in gods. The sheer ingratitude of our era explains a great deal of our cultural misery.

This reminds me a great deal of one of the core points that Jordan Peterson hammers on a lot. He draws a line from ingratitude to resentment and from resentment to authoritarianism. Then he'll talk for an hour about Nietzsche's angst about what people do to fill the void after having killed God, then leap to quoting Jung.

When I was at my lowest point of depression in high school, I missed many opportunities to be grateful for my wonderful parents, my decent health, and the beautiful food that seemed to overflow from every cupboard.

Me too. This really is what demonic forces would prey upon, as I think about it. Did I have a lot of money? Not at all, but I had every opportunity to learn and grown and make a life for myself. What I lacked for a long time was the belief in myself, and during those long stretches of poor self talk, I would have welcomed a smiling socialist promising a better, fairer life where those other people were made to give me what's been stolen.

Pardon me while I bless my little cats.

More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-03 06:00 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] houseofmirrors
The longer this goes on the more I feel you're right about the diagnosis.

Antifa obtained and slaughtered a pig, so as to put a Portland PD hat on its severed head, and light it on fire, atop an American flag (photo in link, if you wish to avoid it, but details as well, including other rescued pigs that survived the events)

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/31/straight-up-terrorism-antifa-burns-severed-pigs-head-with-a-police-hat-on-top-n738333

And of course, burning Bibles. Not the Quran, of course. Just Bibles.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/01/portland-rioters-care-so-much-about-george-floyd-theyre-burning-bibles-n739149

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-03 06:37 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
Yeah, somehow it's always Bibles... Seems to be an uptick in attacks and vandalism on churches and synagogues as well. One does wonder about that. These kids couldn't possibly have all come from suffocating Evangelical-cults or guilt-ridden abusive Catholic backgrounds, could they? I don't think there are enough Gothardites to produce so many, even at their phenomenal fertility rates!

But they do seem to have a personal bone to pick with the God of Israel. Is it the people, or the beasts riding them?

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-03 07:15 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
This is funny to me, as I know of more than one person who joined my church after dabbling a bit in that sort of "make-believe" and meeting things that were real, malevolent, and terrifying... and that they needed protection.

I wonder if we'll see an influx of those in the next few years.

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-03 08:42 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
Well, I'd like to say they're in good hands, because Orthodoxy is still liturgical, sacramental, etc. and *change* and *modernization* are generally regarded as dirty words. But realistically, it's the luck of the draw-- you could walk into a great church with a priest who can help you, or you could walk into a dying ethnic enclave with no discernible spiritual practice at all, or (I've heard horror stories) a monastery that's come completely unhinged and is more demon-haunted than you are. The church, after all, is people, and subject to all their weaknesses. Occasionally, maybe sometimes bumblingly, incompetently, or accidentally, God smiles on us, and we make contact with glory.

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-03 08:52 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
...but at the very least, my church still believes in the reality of the unseen world and all the beings that live there, and takes them seriously. I grew up in a church where they might've tried to have you committed if you'd mentioned having experiences of those things.

Glad you found something to help deal with your night terrors. I had similar issues with sleep paralysis in my teens and twenties, and wouldn't wish it on anyone! And having experienced similar, you now cannot talk to me about rational, scientific explanations of that phenomenon. It was a real thing, it was malevolent, and it meant me harm. And having seen it, there is no argument or reason that would convince me otherwise. It is shameful that so many churches have lost the capacity to deal with even this relatively common experience! Becoming Orthodox seems to work for me: I haven't had a visit from it in many years now.

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-04 12:41 am (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
I wonder if the knife helped?

My last one was several years ago. After I converted. While it was happening, I remembered something my priest's wife had said casually: that if you need to cross yourself, and you can't use your hands (because they're full of stuff, or it's not appropriate, or whatever), you can always *look* the four directions with your eyes and *think* the "In the Name of the Father, and... " part clearly in your mind. It had seemed a bit silly at the time. And there, inside the paralysis when I couldn't move my hands, I tried it out. And the thing released me. Just like that! Hasn't bothered me since.

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-04 02:44 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
Yes! I expect we'd all be better off if adults, instead of telling little kids "it was only a dream, go back to sleep" we acknowledged the reality of the experience, and practiced what to do next time it happens, the same way we would teach them how to deal with mean kids, or what do do when random people offer them gifts ("I'll go ask my parents").

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-04 09:48 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
Indeed. I may prefer that people ultimately become Christians, but... people come to God (or not) in their own good time, and for each his own reasons. Can't be rushed. That doesn't mean they should be left naked and vulnerable to every hostile intention or ill-willed entity that comes along. Rationalist atheism... sigh. It's like refusing to have an umbrella because you think rain is a myth.

It is obvious that some things *work* even if they don't slot neatly into my Christian cosmology (which also works). Back in my parents' hippie agnostic days, some friends of theirs acquired a poltergeist: Stuff falling off walls, pots of hot food clattering off the stove against the opposite kitchen wall, the works. My parents consulted a psychic they knew, who instructed them what to do. Mom drove to the friends' house, opened the passenger door of the car, walked up to the house, and, out loud, did a fairly elaborate "inviting out" routine, telling the thing that she'd take it where it wanted to go. Then waiting a minute, closed the car door and drove to that place (I think it may have been the family's old house), opened the passenger door, explained where they were, waited a minute, and then left. That seemed to solve the problem. IMO, if it works, don't knock it.

There's a lot of stuff discussed here and on JMG's sites that is off-limits to me in practice, because of the path I've chosen. I happily accept those limits, but see no reason to apply them to anyone who is not on the same path.

I could also view it selfishly: people who don't believe in the supernatural at all are not very receptive to Christianity. The worst are people who've been raised in the church, but are convinced it's all about "being good" and don't really buy the whole Divine Incarnation/angels/saints/miracles stuff-- they often seen armored against God!

Pagans, on the other hand... they're halfway there already ;)

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-05 02:24 am (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
I grew up in a similarly dead boring church. It is hard to imagine how Christians could have let go of that heritage, and settled for... Calvinism.

The exorcising demons thing was apparently a HUGE part of Christianity's spread, in the early years. It still happens, but isn't so public these days. Orthodoxy's still delightfully weird: full of wonderworking ascetics, visionary mystics, myrrh-streaming icons, miraculous relics... one can still go visit the entire corpse of St. John Maximovitch in San Francisco.

Taken back to its roots, to "inspire" is to breathe upon, or breathe into, as God breathed life into clay Adam. One suspects the modern world is drab because... by rejecting such a large part of reality, we cut ourselves off from the gods, and we cannot be breathed into. As though, on a civilization-wide level, we've chosen to revert to mere clay, rather than living flesh.

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-05 04:29 pm (UTC)
methylethyl: (Default)
From: [personal profile] methylethyl
Yeah, there are few things more depressing than walking into a church, and feeling like I have walked into a convention center, or a cheap hotel lobby. Most Orthodox churches are not like that-- you know your building is finally done, when every interior surface is painted with icons ;) And we are having a small resurgence of decent architecture, thanks to people like Andrew Gould. But there are some nauseating exceptions. Our archdiocese keeps haranguing us for donations to build the new St. Nicholas church in NYC (the old one was destroyed in 9/11) and the proposed building plan is hideous. All the models look like some kind of radiator. They're not getting any of my money for that monstrosity!

Re: More demonic activity

Date: 2020-08-05 07:43 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
You have to wonder to what degree the population was infested by demons around the post-Roman era when Christianity was getting its sea legs.

If the Bible is to be believed, even the years immediately pre-Christ were filled with demon possessed individuals. Jesus spends a fair amount of time in the synoptic gospels exorcising demons, and grants his apostles the power to do this as well. Interestingly enough, there was also a section in which the apostles tell him that there are other people out there rumored to be exorcising demons and healing the sick, and they ask him what should be done about them. He doesn't deny they exist, and he says to leave them be as he would rather them do good works not in his name than to do nothing.

One interesting thing I recall from the gospels was that they also apparently drew a line between psychosis / insanity and possession. I can't quite recall the chapter and verse, unfortunately.

Blessings

Date: 2020-08-04 11:09 pm (UTC)
ecosophian: (Default)
From: [personal profile] ecosophian
The good thing about saying "Thank you" is that you can give something to another person without losing anything yourself. Even from a purely transactional point of view its a net benefit. Surely if all people did that the world could only end up a better place.
But your friend, bless them, didn't think that way.

"Learn an instrument so you can fill your home with music."

While I haven't played an instrument in years I do like listening to music (I love your renditions of Orphic Hymns). Some music puts me in a state of mind that is conducive to doing blessings. I'm specifically thinking about songs from The Sound of Music movie, every song is like a blessing there, but especially the "Edelweiss". It even has words "Bless my homeland forever". Though I wonder if it can only bless Austria, or any other place?

Re: Blessings

Date: 2020-08-05 07:48 pm (UTC)
ecosophian: (Default)
From: [personal profile] ecosophian
Sorry to hear about your friends being that way. I'm glad I don't have anyone with TDS in my immediate surroundings, in fact many of my friends are rooting for Trump. I guess, partly its because I'm living in South Carolina, a poor state.

No I didn't mention nasty music on Magic Monday, though I did ask once if music can be used for spiritual development and JMG's answer was "yes, sure", he didn't go into details.

Most modern music just seems bland to me, as if lacking something. Its like the worst kind of fast food, it doesn't nourish. Is it Beauty that's missing from the music?

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Kimberly Steele

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