3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized & Made Freely Available Online, Thanks to Da Vinci Code Author Dan Brown

If there's one thing The Da Vinci Code's Dan Brown and "The Library of Babel"'s Jorge Luis Borges have in common it is a love for obscure religious and occult books and artifacts. But why do I compare Borges—one of the most highly-regarded, but difficult, of Latin American poets and writers—to a famous American writer of entertaining paperback thrillers? One reason only: despite the vast differences in their styles and registers, Borges would be deeply moved by Brown's recent act of philanthropy, a donation of €300,000 to Amsterdam's Ritman Library, also known as the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica House of Living Books.
The generous gift will enable the Ritman to digitize thousands of "pre-1900 texts on alchemy, astrology, magic, and theosophy," reports Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz, including the Corpus Hermeticum (1472), "the source work on Hermetic wisdom"; Giordano Bruno's Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (1584); and "the first printed version of the tree of life (1516): A graphic representation of the sefirot, the 10 virtues of God according to the Kabbalah."
Brown, the Ritman notes, "is a great admirer of the library and visited on several occasions while writing his novels The Lost Symbol and Inferno." Now he's giving back. Some of the revenue generated by his bestselling novels, along with a €15,000 contribution from the Dutch Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, will allow the library's core collection, "some 3,500 ancient books," to come online soon in an archive called "Hermetically Open."

For now, the curious can download the 44-page guide to the collection as a free ebook, and watch the animated video at the top, a breezy explainer of how the books will be transported, digitized, and uploaded. Just above, see a trailer for a documentary about the Ritman, founded by businessman Joost R. Ritman in 1984. The library holds over 20,000 volumes on mysticism, spirituality, religion, alchemy, Gnosticism, and more.

Many a writer, like Brown, has found inspiration among the Ritman's more accessible works (though, sadly, Borges, who was blind in 1984 and died two years later, could not have appreciated it). Now, thanks to the Da Vinci Code author's magnanimity, a new generation of scholars will be able to virtually access, for example, the first English translation of the works of 17-century German mystic Jakob Böhme, which librarian and director Esther Ritman describes as "travelling in an entire new world."

In an introductory essay, the Ritman notes that academic interest in occult and hermetic writing has increased lately among scholars like W.J. Hanegraaff, who tells "the 'neglected' story of how the intellectual community since the Renaissance has tried to come to terms with 'esoteric' and 'occult' currents present in Western culture." That those currents are as much a part of the culture as the scientific or industrial revolutions need not be in doubt. The Hermetically Open project opens up that history with "an invitation to anyone wishing to consult or study sources belonging to the field of Christian-Hermetic Gnosis for personal, academic or other purposes." Look for the digitization project to hit the web in the coming months.

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Why We’re Underestimating American Collapse – Eudaimonia and Co

For as long as we have been assessing America's condition we have been underestimating. We are not seeing America as a country but should be seeing and assessing its condition as one would react to a child who sees itself as privileged, bullying and petulant child. A child with great strength and doesn't know it nor do those around it. A child struggling with its own problems yet expected to lead the needs of all its friends. We don't like it but as a whole we sum the total to be Donald Trump.

The Strange New Pathologies of the World's First Rich Failed State

You might say, having read some of my recent essays, "Umair! Don't worry! Everything will be fine! It's not that bad!" I would look at you politely, and then say gently, "To tell you the truth, I don't think we're taking collapse nearly seriously enough."
Why? When we take a hard look at US collapse, we see a number of social pathologies on the rise. Not just any kind. Not even troubling, worrying, and dangerous ones. But strange and bizarre ones. Unique ones. Singular and gruesomely weird ones I've never really seen before, and outside of a dystopia written by Dickens and Orwell, nor have you, and neither has history. They suggest that whatever "numbers" we use to represent decline — shrinking real incomes, inequality, and so on —we are in fact grossly underestimating what pundits call the "human toll", but which sensible human beings like you and I should simply think of as the overwhelming despair, rage, and anxiety of living in a collapsing society.
Let me give you just five examples of what I'll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don't usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.
America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days. That's one every other day, more or less. That statistic is alarming enough — but it is just a number. Perspective asks us for comparison. So let me put that another way. America has had 11 school shootings in the last 23 days, which is more than anywhere else in the world, even Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, the phenomenon of regular school shootings appears to be a unique feature of American collapse — it just doesn't happen in any other country — and that is what I mean by "social pathologies of collapse": a new, bizarre, terrible disease striking society.
Why are American kids killing each other? Why doesn't their society care enough to intervene? Well, probably because those kids have given up on life — and their elders have given up on them. Or maybe you're right — and it's not that simple. Still, what do the kids who aren't killing each other do? Well, a lot of them are busy killing themselves.
So there is of course also an "opioid epidemic". We use that phrase too casually, but it much more troubling than it appears on first glance. Here is what is really curious about it. In many countries in the world — most of Asia and Africa — one can buy all the opioids one wants from any local pharmacy, without a prescription. You might suppose then that opioid abuse as a mass epidemic would be a global phenomenon. Yet we don't see opioid epidemics anywhere but America — especially not ones so vicious and widespread they shrink life expectancy. So the "opioid epidemic" — mass self-medication with the hardest of hard drugs — is again a social pathology of collapse: unique to American life. It is not quite captured in the numbers, but only through comparison — and when we see it in global perspective, we get a sense of just how singularly troubled American life really is.
Why would people abuse opioids en masse unlike anywhere else in the world? They must be living genuinely traumatic and desperate lives, in which there is little healthcare, so they have to self-medicate the terror away. But what is so desperate about them? Well, consider another example: the "nomadic retirees". They live in their cars. They go from place to place, season after season, chasing whatever low-wage work they can find — spring, an Amazon warehouse, Christmas, Walmart.
Now, you might say — "well, poor people have always chased seasonal work!" But that is not really the point: absolute powerlessness and complete indignity is. In no other country I can see do retirees who should have been able to save up enough to live on now living in their cars in order to find work just to go on eating before they die — not even in desperately poor ones, where at least families live together, share resources, and care for one another. This is another pathology of collapse that is unique to America — utter powerlessness to live with dignity. Numbers don't capture it — but comparisons paint a bleak picture.
How did America's elderly end up cheated of dignity? After all, even desperately poor countries have "informal social support systems" — otherwise known as families and communities. But in America, there is the catastrophic collapse of social bonds. Extreme capitalism has blown apart American society so totally that people cannot even care for one another as much as they do in places like Pakistan and Nigeria. Social bonds, relationships themselves, have become unaffordable luxuries, more so than even in poor countries: this is yet another social pathology unique to American collapse.
Yet those once poor countries are making great strides. Costa Ricans now have higher life expectancy than Americans — because they have public healthcare. American life expectancy is falling, unlike nearly anywhere else in the world, save the UK — because it doesn't.
And that is my last pathology: it is one of the soul, not one of the limbs, like the others above. American appear to be quite happy simply watching one another die, in all the ways above. They just don't appear to be too disturbed, moved, or even affected by the four pathologies above: their kids killing each other, their social bonds collapsing, being powerless to live with dignity,or having to numb the pain of it all away.
If these pathologies happened in any other rich country — even in most poor ones — people would be aghast, shocked, and stunned, and certainly moved to make them not happen. But in America, they are, well, not even resigned. They are indifferent, mostly.
So my last pathology is a predatory society. A predatory society doesn't just mean oligarchs ripping people off financially. In a truer way, it means people nodding and smiling and going about their everyday business as their neighbours, friends, and colleagues die early deaths in shallow graves. The predator in American society isn't just its super-rich — but an invisible and insatiable force: the normalization of what in the rest of the world would be seen as shameful, historic, generational moral failures, if not crimes, becoming mere mundane everyday affairs not to be too worried by or troubled about.
Perhaps that sounds strong to you. Is it?
Now that I've given you a few examples — there are many more — of the social pathologies of collapse, let me share with you the three points that they raise for me.
These social pathologies are something like strange and gruesome new strains of disease infecting the body social. America has always been a pioneer — only today, it is host not just to problems not just rarely seen in healthy societies — it is pioneering novel social pathologies have never been seen in the modern world outside present-day America, period. What does that tell us?
American collapse is much more severe than we suppose it is. We are underestimating its magnitude, not overestimating it. American intellectuals, media, and thought doesn't put any of its problems in global or historical perspective — but when they are seen that way, America's problems are revealed to be not just the everyday nuisances of a declining nation, but something more like a body suddenly attacked by unimagined diseases.
Seen accurately. American collapse is a catastrophe of human possibility without modern parallel . And because the mess that America has made of itself, then, is so especially unique, so singular, so perversely special — the treatment will have to be novel, too. The uniqueness of these social pathologies tell us that American collapse is not like a reversion to any mean, or the downswing of a trend. It is something outside the norm. Something beyond the data. Past the statistics. It is like the meteor that hit the dinosaurs: an outlier beyond outliers, an event at the extreme of the extremes. That is why our narratives, frames, and theories cannot really capture it — much less explain it. We need a whole new language — and a new way of seeing — to even begin to make sense of it.
But that is America's task, not the world's. The world's task is this. Should the world follow the American model — extreme capitalism, no public investment, cruelty as a way of life, the perversion of everyday virtue — then these new social pathologies will follow, too. They are new diseases of the body social that have emerged from the diet of junk food — junk media, junk science, junk culture, junk punditry, junk economics, people treating one another and their society like junk — that America has fed upon for too long.
Umair
January 2018

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“I Prayed for God to Take Me”: South African Farmer Describes Family’s Torture, Father’s Last Moments

"I think it was adrenaline that lifted him up."

"I think he heard the gunshot, heard his grandkids screaming, and everything that was left of him rallied for one last push. He went to the kitchen, he must have tried to grab a blanket or a towel to stop the blood, then he came to the garage to untie me and my wife.
"I felt his blood dripping on my palms as I lay face-down on the garage floor, my hands and feet tied with wire. I could feel his blood running into my palms like a tap and it felt cold, refrigerator-cold, and I knew it wasn't good."

Bernard's dad untied his son, his daughter-in-law and his own wife – all bound hand and foot in the garage. Then he went to sit on the stoop outside the house.
It was the last thing he ever did.
"I told him to hold on. I told him we had new projects on the farm. I told him to hold on because we still had a lot to do."
Ten minutes later Bernard's father was dead.
Bernard and his father had come home from church earlier that Sunday to start the braai (fire pit) for a family meal together later that day. His wife, mother and three children were following along behind in a separate car.
They arrived home as normal, past the wires fencing off their farm, through the electric gates protecting their home, past the cameras that watch his house at night.

He dropped his dad at the door to prepare and light the fire for the braai, and went to fix the sprinklers in the field running beside the little house he still calls home.
It was his grandfather's house, then his father's house. Bernard was born there, as were his three children. They had farmed alongside the same generations of black farm workers for over 75 years.
When he made the short walk back from the field, he couldn't find his father.
He knew something was wrong. His father was a commando, a military man of efficiency and precision. And a tough one still, at 75. If he said he was lighting the fire, the fire would be lit.
Three days earlier, his father had had surgery to place stents for his heart. He'd only come out of the hospital on Wednesday. Perhaps, Bernard thought, he wasn't feeling so well. He headed for the garage door – partly open just as it always was to give the dogs shelter from the sun – to look for his dad.
He reached down to pull open the door.
That was the last thing Bernard did before life, as he knew it, would end. Before a gang of men desecrated everything he loved the most.
Eight men were waiting for him inside the garage. They threw him to the floor face-down into his father's blood and a scattering of empty cartridges. Bernard thought his father must be dead. They bound his wrists with thick steel wire, tied his feet together and up behind him. They closed the garage door back to the usual level so no one outside would ever suspect what was going on inside the garage.

Then the men went to work.
They battered Bernard with a metal pole. They beat him with their guns, leaving holes across his torso, until his brain was unable to even understand what was happening to him – he assumed he was being stabbed with a knife.
He prayed to God to take him.

"I cried like a baby on that floor. I cried for God to take me, for them to shoot me, for me not to have to watch what was coming next."

Bernard had read all the gruesome details. He had seen the pattern over and over: 82 murders in 2017, 423 gruesome attacks.
He knew the torture the men would inflict; knew about the wife whose kneecaps were drilled with a Black & Decker; the daughter raped by three men, the husband made to watch. The baby dropped into a boiling bath to drown.
He knew his own wife, his mother and his three babies were headed straight into this place of pain, and that the eight men waiting for them were capable of unspeakable things and would not flinch from executing his sons and making him watch.
"I knew I could not survive something like that," Bernard says.
In the distance, he heard his wife's car crunch the gravel on his driveway. He begged the men to shoot him, so that his wife might hear the shot ring out and turn away.
But still she came, onto the drive, straight into the madness that was unfolding in her home.
She stopped the car and the boys, eleven and eight, ran to the house as they always did, playing their game of who could get to the door first. The tiny baby was still in her car seat.
As the eleven-year-old reached the door, a shot rang out. (The bullet is still lodged in the wall today). The men had not expected this second car and were panicked into firing at the small running boy. The child fell down, unhurt. They dragged him across the yard, through the garage, and put him inside the door of the house along with his screaming baby sister.

The younger boy, aged eight, sat in the doorway and was forced to watch everything that happened in the garage.
He saw it all. Saw every time they kicked his father. Saw them string up his mother and tighten the ropes around his grandma – normal women who had been in church only an hour before.
Bernard takes me through the metal gate – the attackers cut their way through the bars, but they have been welded back in place – and into his house. He walks me through the room with the safe, the door still missing where they ripped it away, and into the bathroom.

It's a room from a time gone by, decorated in orange and brown. Bernard points to the floor that had been covered in his father's blood.
That day, his father had managed to untie himself and in a final fight for his family, had come to free them from their own ties.
Then his father had sat down on the stoop. His wife tried to stop his bleeding. She brought an umbrella to protect him from the sun. He laid down and within ten minutes he was dead.
"They weren't here for anything," says Bernard.
"They didn't touch anything or take anything. Just a TV, which they threw away. They wanted weapons, a vehicle, and me and my dad dead."
I ask him what happens in the bit just after. When your father is dead, your bathroom is covered in blood, your child has been shot at, and your wife and mother have been assaulted on the floor.

"For that first three weeks I can't tell you where I was. I was here at home, but I know I wasn't really here. The farm suffered because I didn't even water the crops like I should have. I shut down."

We sit on the step where his father died, and I struggle to ask him about the future. What future does he see, after everything he has lost and suffered?

"The world can say what it wants, but this is a racial thing. The blacks hate the whites. They don't want us here.
"Our farm workers are black, and I support them and they work well with me and we work close together, really close together, and they are angry as well. And THEY say it's a race thing.
"Some of the workers on my farm have been here for twenty years. We are battling to pay their wage. But they have stayed. Their grandfathers worked with my grandfather, and their sons work with me now. That's how it worked."

He looks away across his fields and seems resigned to a new way of things:
"They are taking all of us. All the Afrikaners are going to be gone. Everything is going."
His mother has already gone. She couldn't bear to be in the house any more. This October would have marked her 42nd year on her farm but she couldn't stand to go back inside the place, couldn't use the bathroom where her husband bled out.
I ask Bernard about his children. His eleven-year-old has talked of committing suicide so he can be back with his grandfather. He feels guilty because he thinks he was supposed to die. He says the shot, now lodged in the wall of the home, was meant for him. He is struggling with life.
But it is Bernard's middle child who is not well. He cannot sleep. He can't function. He is on antidepressants – strong antidepressants – and he is aggressive towards anyone trying to control him.
"He is really aggressive towards his teachers. He doesn't have any friends at school anymore. He doesn't want to fit in anymore. My son doesn't want to go outside. You could say we lost my son that day, too."
We are talking about his eight-year-old.
I ask who cares for Bernard while he tries to hold his family together, while they fall apart. Who is there for him to hold on to?
He looks out over the land his grandfather made fertile a time long before, clearing the bush with just hard work, an ox, a little plough and a mattress to his name.
"I have the dogs, the cattle and the land. They never let you down."

"When I am struggling, my wife knows I will be with the fields. They can kill me – they will have to if they want me off this farm – but even when I am gone, the land will remain. My land will endure."
And suddenly the rain comes, and all at once the whole of this terrible, majestic country is crying.

PS: The mainstream media won't tell you these stories. Please help me continue this important investigation and work in South Africa. To contribute to my crowdfund, please CLICK HERE. Thank you.

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Opinion | The Quiet Radicalism of Melania Trump

Photo

Melania Trump on the South Lawn of the White House in November. Credit Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

On the first anniversary of his inauguration, President Trump spent the day blasting Democrats for the government shutdown, suggesting that women marching in protest of his presidency were somehow celebrating it, and embroiled in allegations that he paid off a porn star to keep her quiet about their relationship. Melania Trump, meanwhile, commemorated the anniversary by tweeting a single photo of herself on Inauguration Day on the arm of a Marine. Her husband was nowhere in sight, and she did not mention his name. A few days later — on what happened to be the Trumps' 13th wedding anniversary — she canceled her plans to accompany Mr. Trump to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
She may not be progressive. She may not be political. And yet Mrs. Trump may end up doing more than any of her predecessors to upend our expectations of the slavish devotion a first lady must display toward her husband.
Her reasons for doing so, of course, are almost certainly personal. With the exception of the Clintons, there has not been a more complicated first couple in modern history: Mrs. Trump is the third wife of a man who once told the radio host Howard Stern he would "give her a week" to lose the baby weight after their son, Barron, was born. During the 2016 campaign she was put in the position of defending him after a 2005 "Access Hollywood" video showed him bragging about groping women.
Since then, however, she has been anything but a public defender, and, in fact, has been defiant in her silence.

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First ladies are expected to accept their husband's infidelities and cruelty and to remain their strongest champions, no matter what the circumstances (and Mrs. Trump's are, undoubtedly, extreme). Lyndon Johnson could be downright mean to his wife, Lady Bird, upbraiding her in public and comparing her with women he found more beautiful. But when he was upset about negative press coverage ahead of the Democratic National Convention in 1964, it was his wife who cheered him on. In a fawning letter, Mrs. Johnson wrote: "Beloved — You are as brave a man as Harry Truman — or FDR — or Lincoln. You can go on to find some peace, some achievement amidst all the pain. You have been strong, patient, determined beyond any words of mine to express." It is hard to imagine Mrs. Trump writing anything of the sort to her husband.
They are expected to be adoring. Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan's biggest fan, wrote in her memoir, "My Turn": "I'd like to come back as Ronald Reagan. If he worries, you'd never know it. If he's anxious, he keeps it to himself. Depressed? He doesn't know the meaning of the word. He's really as relaxed and hopeful as he appears."

Hillary Clinton was the first first lady to run for office, but as progressive and groundbreaking as she was, she nonetheless made the decision to stand by her husband after he admitted his affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, regardless of her own hurt and humiliation. The day after President Clinton testified before a grand jury and came clean to the country, Mrs. Clinton marched across the South Lawn together with Bill, their daughter, Chelsea, standing between them, holding both of her parents' hands, as they headed for Marine One to embark on their annual summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard. It was the photo-op the president needed.
Maybe Mrs. Trump is more like Michelle Obama than people think. Though the mutual affection of the Obamas was obvious, Mrs. Obama was also the first first lady to challenge people to accept a woman who refused to play the role of the saccharine, adoring spouse. "I can't do that," she said in 2007 Vanity Fair interview. "That's not me. I love my husband. I think he's one of the most brilliant men I've ever met, and he knows that. But he's not perfect, and I don't want the world to want him to be perfect."
Mrs. Trump is the most reluctant first lady since Bess Truman (who left Washington to return to her home in Independence, Mo., at every opportunity). Her apparent antipathy toward the job has made her more willing to ignore the rules and traditions that govern it. This quiet rebellion started with her decision not to move into the White House until five months after her husband took office. It gathered force when she swatted her husband's hand away on an airport tarmac in Israel last year. By the time the Trumps leave the White House, Mrs. Trump may have done more to change our notions about this archaic position, which has no job description and no pay, and comes with impossible expectations, than most of her predecessors.
Would it have been beneficial to Donald Trump for his wife to stand beside him in Davos and show a united front, as we have come to expect from first ladies? Absolutely. Does she care? Probably not.

Kate Andersen Brower is a CNN contributor and the author, most recently, of "First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies."

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How Some of the World’s Elite Use Black Magic Rituals To Conjure Up Entities For More Power

November 1, 2017

"The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols." – Carl Jung

What is ceremonial magic? The works of multiple scholars, from Plato to Manly P. Hall and further down the line, suggest it is essentially the use of rituals and techniques to invoke and control "spirits" or lifeforms that could be existing within other dimensions or worlds. For example, according to Hall, "a magician, enveloped in sanctified vestments and carrying a wand inscribed with hieroglyphic figures, could by the power vested in certain words and symbols control the invisible inhabitants of the elements and of the astral world. While the elaborate ceremonial magic of antiquity was not necessarily evil, there arose from its perversion several false schools of sorcery, or black magic." (1)
Yet if we examine the works of Plato, we see he specifically condemns, both in the Laws and in the Republic, the idea that "gods" can be influenced by the performance of certain rituals — called "necromancy" or "magical attack." He believed those who try to control the spirit world should be penalized. (2)
Socrates, about whom Plato wrote much, also spoke of an entity that guided him. It was never given a name, but references to it ranged from daemon to daimon. Socrates believed this entity was a gift, and manifested itself in the form of the voice within, something we all possess. His communication with this entity was actually used as one of the charges against him when he was put to death. Socrates believed it to be a link between mortal man and God. (3)
Socrates seems to be an exception when it comes to using these concepts for perverse reasons, and, as Hall points out, he provided evidence that "the intellectual and moral status of the magician has much to do with the type of elemental he is capable of invoking. But even the daemon of Socrates deserted the philosopher when the sentence of death was passed." (1)
He was put to death for "corrupting the youth" and spreading "false" information amongst the people, but looking back, he seems to be a figure more like our modern day revolutionaries than a malevolent influence, put to death for exposing the aristocracy's secrets and encouraging people to question the true nature of reality, to question the doctrine that had been provided to the masses by those in power.

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There are also native records containing abundant evidence that the civilizations of Central and South America were heavily involved in these types of arts, both black and white magics. This is well documented in the Popuol Vuh.
If such information is true, it's hardly surprising. Human beings have always been subject to the lure of power, driven by their ego, greed, and shortsightedness. It's disconcerting to imagine this power of working with the spirit world in the hands of those who would use it for their own reasons, taken by the power of black magic.
Fast forward to our modern day, and you have stories like that of Dr. Johannes Faust. Through his study of magic, he was able to conjure up an extra-dimensional who served him for many years is several different ways. There is even an excerpt from The Book of Dr. Faust, Wittenberg, 1524 describing his experience. (1)
Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military and political leader, is another example. He used to tell of a "Little Red Man of Destiny," a 'spirit' that appeared at a Royal Palace. Apparently when something important was happening, he would appear. This man, and what others now consider to be silly superstitions and folklore beliefs, genuinely influenced Napoleon and his actions and guided his campaigns. (1)(4)
According to Hall, The Little Red Man of Destiny is an example "of the disastrous results of permitting elemental beings to dictate the course of human procedure." (1)

Phenomena like these appear in various cultures during different time periods all throughout human history, so what makes us think these practices have stopped today?
There is even a modus operandi for the invocation of spirits in various texts, one being The Complete Book of Magic Science that, according to Hall, was first published in the original British Museum. This is also mentioned by other studies of occult philosophy, like Francis Barret in his Magus, where he describes the use of symbols and more things relating to the occult.
Living creatures existing in a world we cannot perceive have been the subject of lore dating back countless years. It's embedded in the stories and passed down orally, and written about in multiple religious texts like the Bible and the Quran. I am not referring to extraterrestrial beings in this case, but rather to beings existing in realms indistinguishable to our senses.

Black vs. White Magic

A distinction is made early in the article about black magic and white magic. Basically, black magic is the process of using entities to accomplish a goal through ceremonial magic.
Hall writes:

By means of the secret processes of ceremonial magic it is possible to contact these invisible creatures and gain their help in some human undertaking. Good spirits willingly lend their assistance to any worthy enterprise, but evil spirits serve only those who live to pervert and destroy. . . . The most dangerous form of black magic is the scientific perversion of occult power for the gratification of personal desire.  (1)

According to scholars of various philosophies, there occurred, long ago, a systematic destruction of all keys to wisdom, so that no one else could have access to the knowledge. Whoever did it completely inverted the rituals of the ancient mysteries while claiming to preserve them, believing what they did was the right thing to do.
Magic also uses symbols and sacred geometry. Black magic, on the other hand, uses inverted symbolism, taking pure symbols with noble meanings and perverting them. Inverted symbolism seems to be the way to invoke spirits for malevolent purposes.
"They mutilated the rituals of the Mysteries while professing to preserve them, so that even though the neophyte passed through the degrees (Free-Masonry) he could not secure the knowledge to which he was entitled. Idolatry was introduced by encouraging the worship of the images which in the beginning the wise had erected solely as symbols for study and meditation. False interpretations were given to the emblems and figures of the Mysteries, and elaborate theologies were created to confuse the minds of their devotees. " (1)
It appears there were many black magicians throughout history who strayed from the noble concepts that underly the core of spirituality and working with the spirit world.
White magic, on the other hand, deals with the noble, the morally pure, and cannot be used to accomplish selfish ends. Ego, greed, and personal desire have no place in white magic.
I agree with Socrates that the concepts of white magic exist within all of us and can be used as powerful tools of manifestation, provided one is pure in their heart and intention. It's simple, and cannot be used as a means to an end, or to fulfil a specific personal desire.

Today?

This revelation brought to light something that could still be happening among some of today's One Percent, who completely control almost every single aspect of our lives, from health and finance to politics and education.
I do believe politicians and other public figures are involved in these types of things, for various reasons, but I also believe they rank  low in the hierarchy, and that perhaps these ceremonies and rituals at the upper levels go far beyond what anyone can imagine.
I also believe the pure teachings of the ages to be preserved by those with good intentions rather than evil. If you are scoffing at the idea of duality, I also believe that dark and light can exist within one space. So I do see the merits to the duality argument, but I also see the merits to the opposite. They are one and the same.
It was only a couple of months ago when the Wikileaks dump on John Podesta, the head of Clinton's presidential campaign and former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, revealed that Podesta was invited to a "Spirit Cooking dinner" by artists Marina Abramovic.
Apparently, "the origins of Spirit Cooking can be found in Cake of Light, a sacrament in the religion of Thelema which was founded by Aleister Crowley. The ingredients of the Cake of Light include honey, oil, menstrual blood and sperm. The sacrament is meant to symbolize the union between the microcosm, Man, and the macrocosm, the Divine, which is a representation of one of the prime maxims in Hermeticism 'As Above, So Below.' The consumption of the Cake of Light is a fulfillment of the sacred circle of the connection between Man and the Divine. "
Revelations like these, and the ceremonies that have been caught on tape, have people asking questions. If we follow traditions throughout the ages, we see accounts of this type of activity in literature and personal accounts. The global elite have always existed, whether it be the aristocracy in ancient Greece and Rome, the church in the middle ages and beyond, or politics today. Perhaps these families have indeed continued to preserve their stranglehold over the human race, flooding us with misinformation, controlling our perception of the world, and dictating what type of life we should desire. We are like robots, encouraged to fit the mould and do the same things. There is a complete control over the human race, and to think that Black Magic could be used to control the masses, as Hall points out, is disturbing.

If history is any indication, this is still going on today. And whenever those who are believed to participate in this type of thing are asked, this and this are usually the result.
Why is it so hard to believe? Perhaps because our understanding of the limits of reality is controlled by the very same people accused of these practises.
"The masses, deprived of their birthright of understanding and groveling in ignorance, eventually became the abject slaves of the spiritual impostors. Superstition universally prevailed and the black magicians completely dominated national affairs, with the result that humanity still suffers from the sophistries of the priestcrafts of Atlantis and Egypt." 
Looking into various subjects, from MK ultra and other forms of mind control, to the information coming from whistleblowers/insiders, the use of ceremonial magic for perverse reasons by the elite is really not that far-fetched. Although scary to contemplate, it does happen. Those who we consider our leaders, those in positions of great power, those behind the global corporatocracy we see today and the propaganda we're all subject to, could all be guided by 'spirits' from places we have yet to learn about. And as a result, the massive manipulation of humanity could be guided by these 'demonic' entities.
As Edward Bernays writes, "the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Ted Gunderson, former FBI special agent and head of their L.A. office, worked to uncover and expose these horrors before he died. He was one of many who did a lot of work in this area that also corroborates with some of the information above.
Who are these people today?
Well,  John C. Calhoun, who was the 7th Vice President of the United States, from 1825-1832, was one of dozens upon dozens who tried to tell the world that "a power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." (source)
You can see more quotes like the one above here.

So What? And What Can We Do About It? 

If these people are really involved in using ceremonial magic and sorcery to influence their decisions and the direction the human race takes, then obviously this needs to be exposed and these people need to be removed.
That being said, just observing what's happened this year in Western politics alone was enough to see how much of a joke this whole system is. We cannot continually look to others to solve our problems; we must solve them ourselves.
Politics seems to be a tool for distraction, and powerful decisions within politics are always made by an individual who clearly does not posses the qualities of leadership. That goes for Trump and Clinton.
The main takeaway from this article should be that our connection to spirit is strong, and there are those that dwell in other worlds that can assist us, but not for our own material desires that stem from human greed, ego, and ignorance. If your heart is pure and intentions are good, if you would like to use manifestation for the goodwill of the whole, then you need not fear talking to and acknowledging this realm.
Sources:
(1) Manly P. Halls, The Secret Teachings of All Ages 
(2) The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief
(3) citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/7/6/3/3/p276331_index.html?phpsessid=8317684f9518c456117d48fef826677a
(4) Bradshaw's Journal

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Ghost Dance Wounded Knee

R.I.P. Horror Author Jack Ketchum Has Died - Bloody Disgusting

If you've read a Jack Ketchum book, there's a good chance you'll never forget it. Ketchum, who was mentored by Psycho author Robert Bloch early in his career, is a household name to fans the world over for his disturbing work in the horror space, his horror novels adapted into a handful of films that are equally unforgettable.
Today we're very sad to report that Jack Ketchum, whose real name was Dallas Mayr, has passed away at the age of 71. The sad news comes to us courtesy of actress Pollyanna McIntosh, who has starred in three films based on Ketchum's characters.
Ketchum had been battling cancer.
Jack Ketchum's first novel, Off Season, was published in 1980, and he further established himself as a master of horror with The Lost, The Woman, The Girl Next Door, Offspring and Red. Remarkably, all five of the aforementioned novels were turned into films, and we were ecstatic to release The Woman through our BD Selects label.
Ketchum's "The Box" also became a segment of horror anthology XX, released last year.
"Rest In Peace Dallas," The Woman star Pollyanna McIntosh wrote over on Instagram today. "Known to many as Jack Ketchum, Dallas loved to experience his best selling books through filmmakers' eyes. I've been in 3 films based on his characters and I've enjoyed the hell out of them. Thank you Dallas for your work, your collaboration and your support of me and so many other writers and artists out there. You lived it your way. Your smile will be missed. Love to his family, friends and fans."

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HEAD OF THE SNAKE: How Obama Made Sure Hillary Was Not Indicted In Email Scandal

The corruption of the Obama administration continues to unravel . . .

Pete Marovich-Pool/Getty Images

Ryan Saavedra

January 25, 2018

A new analysis from former assistant U.S. attorney Andy McCarthy thoroughly explains how former President Barack Obama made sure that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not indicted in the criminal investigation into her use of a private email server.
In his most recent column, National Review's McCarthy argues that the decision not to indict Clinton was Obama's call — not the FBI's and not the Department of Justice's — as Obama used a pseudonymous email account to communicate with Clinton on her non-secure email account.
Before getting into detail, key points to keep in mind include:

• The email exchanges between Obama and Clinton most certainly contained classified information due to the nature of the relationship between a president and a secretary of state, and because the Obama administration refused to disclose the emails.
• If classified information was criminally mishandled by Clinton, it would have been mishandled on the other end by Obama.
• If Clinton was charged, Obama's involvement in the scandal would be glaringly obvious.
• Text messages from anti-Trump and pro-Clinton FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reinforce McCarthy's argument.

Two days after The New York Times broke the scandal about Clinton in March 2015, John Podesta — who was an advisor to the president and head of Clinton's campaign — emailed Clinton confidant and top State Department aide Cheryl Mills to tell her that the email exchanges between Obama and Clinton should not be disclosed, but "held" because of executive privilege.
Three days after Podesta's email, Obama lied on national television during an interview with CBS about the email scandal, saying that he learned about it "the same time everybody else learned it through news reports."
Obama's lie, unbeknownst to the public at the time, set off a series of panic-based reactions among his and Clinton's aides:

• Clinton campaign secretary Josh Scherwin emailed former White House Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri: "Jen you probably have more on this but it looks like POTUS just said he found out HRC was using her personal email when he saw it on the news."
• Scherwin's email was forwarded to Mills.
• Mills emailed Podesta: "We need to clean this up — he has emails from her — they do not say state.gov."

As McCarthy explains, Obama, through a stroke of malevolence, was able to assist in the clean-up:

Obama had his email communications with Clinton sealed. He did this by invoking a dubious presidential-records privilege. The White House insisted that the matter had nothing to do with the contents of the emails, of course; rather, it was intended to vindicate the principle of confidentiality in presidential communications with close advisers. With the media content to play along, this had a twofold benefit: Obama was able (1) to sidestep disclosure without acknowledging that the emails contained classified information, and (2) to avoid using the term "executive privilege" — with all its dark Watergate connotations — even though that was precisely what he was invoking.
Note that claims of executive privilege must yield to demands for disclosure of relevant evidence in criminal prosecutions. But of course, that's not a problem if there will be no prosecution.

The following April, Obama again appeared in an interview, this time with Fox News' Chris Wallace, where he made it clear that he did not want Clinton to be criminally indicted. As McCarthy explains:

His rationale was a legally frivolous straw man: Clinton had not intended to harm national security.
No matter: Obama's analysis was the stated view of the chief executive. If, as was sure to happen, his subordinates in the executive law-enforcement agencies conformed their decisions to his stated view, there would be no prosecution.

Only a few weeks later, with the investigation far from being over and with key interviews yet to be conducted, Comey began drafting an exoneration of Clinton. In August 2017, a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), also a member of the committee,said the following:

According to the unredacted portions of the transcripts, it appears that in April or early May of 2016, Mr. Comey had already decided he would issue a statement exonerating Secretary Clinton. That was long before FBI agents finished their work. Mr. Comey even circulated an early draft statement to select members of senior FBI leadership. The outcome of an investigation should not be prejudged while FBI agents are still hard at work trying to gather the facts.

During this time, Lynch had instructed Comey to use the word "matter" rather than "investigation" when characterizing the criminal investigation into Clinton in order to downplay its seriousness. As McCarthy again notes, this ensured that the messaging from the White House matched Clinton's campaign rhetoric: there would be no prosecution because there was no investigation.
A few weeks later on June 27, former President Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on a tarmac in Phoenix, Arizona, for a private meeting. McCarthy adds:

On July 1, amid intense public criticism of her meeting with Bill Clinton, Attorney General Lynch piously announced that she would accept whatever recommendation the FBI director and career prosecutors made about charging Clinton.

Page texted Strzok that day: "This is a purposeful leak following the airplane snafu," since Lynch already "knows no charges will be brought."
The next day, on July 2, Clinton sat through an FBI interview with Strzok.
Three days later on July 5, 2016, Comey held a press conference that he started by saying, "I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say." McCarthy notes that line from Comey was added after Lynch and Clinton met on the Tarmac. Strzok acknowledged this in a text to Page on July 1: "Lynch. Timing not great, but whatever. Wonder if that's why the coordination language added."
During Comey's press conference, he described criminal conduct committed by Clinton but said that he did not recommend prosecution because she did not intend to break the law — matching what Obama said in his nationally televised interview just a couple months before.
McCarthy further notes that a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) from this last weekend regarding the missing text FBI text messages between Strzok and Page addressed revisions made in Comey's draft on Clinton, which contained a passage that referred to an email exchange between Obama and Clinton. The draft, dated June 30, stated:

We also assess that Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including from the territory of sophisticated adversaries. That use included an email exchange with the President while Secretary Clinton was on the territory of such an adversary. [Emphasis added.] Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account.

McCarthy adds:

On the same day, according to a Strzok–Page text, a revised draft of Comey's remarks was circulated by his chief of staff, Jim Rybicki. It replaced "the President" with "another senior government official."
This effort to obscure Obama's involvement had an obvious flaw: It would practically have begged congressional investigators and enterprising journalists to press for the identification of the "senior government official" with whom Clinton had exchanged emails. That was not going to work.

However, by the time Comey gave his statement on Clinton, all references to Obama had been removed:

We also assess that Secretary Clinton's use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. [Emphasis added.] Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal e-mail account.

McCarthy notes that the corrupt scheme concocted by the Obama administration "worked like a charm" since there was "no indictment, meaning no prosecution, meaning no disclosure of Clinton–Obama emails," and they would have gotten away with it, except . . .
November 8, 2016, did not go as planned.

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Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri speaks at the Davos World Economic Forum

Lebanese PM: US saying Jerusalem is capital of Israel does not make it so

Ariane Mandell

January 24, 2018 17:33

"I believe Trump wants peace, but he's trying a different way, maybe. That I don't understand."

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri speaks at the Davos World Economic Forum

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri speaks at the Davos World Economic Forum

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had strong words about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday.

"Just look at the Palestinians," he remarked. "If you want peace, you have to accept the other, talk to the other, and accept that he has rights and those rights are not negotiable."
"If the United States is saying Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, it does not mean that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel," he continued. "The only way that this can work is if Israel makes peace with the Palestinians. How long do we have to hear about the Palestinian conflict?"

He stated that he believes the Israeli administration does not want to make peace with the Palestinians. "Full stop," he said.

"I believe Trump wants peace, but he's trying a different way, maybe. That I don't understand." The audience laughed at his last quip.

Hariri has had an interesting few months. After putting his country, and the region, on edge by
resigning from his post, living in exile for a short while and then returning to Beirut.

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5 Stories by Ralph Pitre