Halloween in Midgard

fans of Michael Ventura's essay on links amongst Africa, voodoo, New Orleans, rock n roll and mucho mas will appreciate the Halloween "trick" below (or is it a treat? both? lol)

Ventura's "Hear That Long Snake Moan" was mentioned previously on this blog in our famus Ragnarok post! Our blog-o-meter now indicates that TWO (the "more than one" two) Gentle Readers have now consumed that most humble offering

and are no doubt indigested for it!

:O)



Voodoo Practitioners Scatter After Katrina

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer Mon Oct 31, 4:54 AM ET

NEW ORLEANS - The last time Don Glossop saw his customers they were ritually burning green candles, hoping voodoo would pierce the federal bureaucracy and hasten the arrival of desperately needed relief checks.

Glossop's shop, New Orleans Mistic, has been closed since Hurricane Katrina swamped the city two months ago, and most of his clients, who practice a local variant of voodoo, have scattered across the country.
He fears that Katrina, which laid waste to entire neighborhoods and claimed hundreds of lives here, may take another casualty: New Orleans' status as the country's voodoo capital.

"As of today I would say it's pretty dead," Glossop said. "Even the tourist shops are in jeopardy. There is a chance for a huge loss here."



but . . . i thought it was SUPPOSED to be dead?

;O)

"chance for a huge loss," eh Donnie? mebbe that was the point? perhaps the world is bigger than your store?



Voodoo has long been entrenched in New Orleans, quietly practiced in homes with altars, candles and incense to solve problems of the heart and wallet. Before the storm tore through, about 15 percent of the city's population actively practiced, according to Lisa Fannon, a tour guide, though estimates vary widely.

Voodoo is part of the vernacular here, showing up in jazz and conversation. Some residents still sprinkle red brick dust on their doorway steps to ward off evil spirits.

It's an economic draw as well, enticing curious tourists and their pocketbooks into stores such as Glossop's.

While plans are still on for an annual voodoo fest for Monday, organizer Brandi Kelley said the event will be much smaller this year because many drummers and dancers were forced to relocate.

The ceremony at her shop will focus mainly on healing the city.
"We have got to call on the ancestors for help and get real serious about it," Kelley said. "The spirit is in the city. It's the spirit of this city that is going to rise from the ashes."

If only she could find her snake for the closing ceremony. He was supposed to be in a bathtub of a friend's apartment.

"They say he's somewhere in this room full of debris," Kelley said, her voice trailing off.


yes i'm sure He's there in that debris somewhere, Brandi with an i

you get down on your knees and keep looking, hon




It wasn't supposed to be this way. The "go away" hurricane ritual was performed in July, just as it always is at the start of the hurricane season.


"go away hurricane ritual"?

LOL!!

wishin' aint magic (unless it's on a star)



"It didn't quite work out so well," acknowledged Giselle Moller, manager of Marie Laveau House of Voodoo. But, she said, it may have helped a bit.

"Imagine if the hurricane would have hit us straight on. There would have been no French Quarter," she said.



there's always next time

Natural World Hint #178: "get some religion"



Even before Katrina, some thought voodoo was fading in New Orleans because the younger generation was less interested in the complicated practice, which involves substantial memorization of rituals and songs, Glossop said.

But New Orleans is not giving up on voodoo, notwithstanding evangelist Franklin Graham's recent comments that the city's Mardi Gras revelry and ties to voodoo were adverse to Christian beliefs.

Defenders say voodoo is a legitimate African-based religion that has been unfairly maligned in movies and popular culture.

"Voodoo is not some kind of black magic cult," said Wade Davis, a Washington-based National Geographic explorer-in-residence who has studied the religion extensively in Haiti. "It's the distillation of very profound religious ideas that came over during the tragic era of slavery."
In New Orleans, much of what is practiced these days is a system of folk magic. Some also practice Haitian voodoo.

As the city revives, proponents hope voodoo will make a comeback, too, because it's part of the intrigue that draws visitors.

"I think it's going to be a very strong part of what will get people back here," said Jameson King, who works in one of the voodoo shops in the French Quarter. "We're here for more than drinking."


Happy Halloween, chillunz!

Gender Jihad and other Ma Tricks

here's an appropriate news item for this day of ghouls and monsters . . .



Islam feminists urge gender jihad

By Danny Wood BBC News, Madrid

Women from the Islamic world are attending the three-day conference Organisers of the first international congress on Islamic feminism are calling for a "gender jihad".

Organiser Abdennur Prado Pavon says the struggle for gender equality in Islamic countries involves refuting chauvinist interpretations of Muslim teachings.

The congress is being held in Spain, organisers say, because they want their message to reach the growing number of Muslim women in Europe.
Around 300 delegates are looking at women's rights in the Islamic world.
Mr Prado, of the Catalan Islamic board, believes a common misconception in the West is that women's liberation is not possible in Muslim societies.

Activists representing the Islamic feminist movement are in Barcelona to counter that view and discuss ways of achieving female equality in an Islamic context.


Collaboration

Among the delegates is the Pakistani feminist Riffat Hassan, regarded as one of the pioneers of Islamic feminist theology.

Also here are representatives from the international association, Islamic Feminism.

Islamic Feminism argues that the inferior legal and social status of women in Muslim countries is a result of misogynistic distortions of the teachings in the Koran.

Organisers say they want more collaboration with western feminists but say non-Muslim feminists need to challenge their anti-Islamic stereotypes.


a Gender Jihad, eh?


on one hand, we've got the American oligarchic right sending Laura and Condo around the world pushing "female empowerment" -- while males in America, and across the West, are "citizens of a lesser class"

America has sworn to hunt down all the Evildoers on the planet -- Evildoers being Muslim nations in general, and after that, any male anywhere that gets uppity, and after that, anybody not on the "side" of US GOOD GUYS

it would be fascinating to know whence came the funding and organization for this Gender Jihad International Conference . . . . U.S. and British taxpayers, perhaps?

the most powerful weapon available to fracture a nation, dis-spirit a citizenry, alienate female and male, and crush liberty is imposition of feminism/matriarchy

the insistence, principally by the U.S. and Great Britain, on taking over Muslim nations via a combination of military force and imposed Western culture (feminism) really leaves Islam with two options that are no option:

Option A. -- do nothing, and eventually their daughters, sisters, and mothers will be treating Islamic males like Western females and the merchant-elite treat Western boys and men; Islamic men can read newspapers and watch teevee -- just because America is in denial about treatment of its own males doesn't mean Islamic men (and women!) can't see what's going on in the West

Option B. -- resist, and give the matriarchy more excuses for extending the Fempire (see what them evil ragheads did this time, honey?! no wonder George has to invade them!)

the American matriarchy understands that even its vast military and propadandistic superiority can't conquer the Islamic world -- those guys are tough, and the "battle" between Christianity and Islam has been a very very long one

the only way to ensure victory is to turn the male and female citizenries of "target countries" into antagonists like they are in America and much of the West

after a few decades of "our way of life" -- complete with soaring male suicide, incarceration, and poverty rates; decreased life-expectancy for males; removal of fatherly/male influence from children; degradation and commercialization of sexuality; inferior access to public assistance for boys and men; inferior access to employment and education for boys and men; and on and on -- Islamic men will begin to internalize the mass depression, hopelessness, spiritual void, and subservience to the Mommystate that castrated Western men

bombing resistors will be moot -- our "leaders" need only stand back and watch other societies crumble from within and stampede to authoritarianism, as ours is now doing

by all means, American men should continue to rush into the warm arms of the right-wing for "protection" against their own country's anti-male culture -- the same right-wing that supports and/or arranges Gender Jihads against boys and men in other countrires, the same right-wing whose "patriarchal" Senate unanimously re-ups the unconstitutional and police-state-friendly Violence Against Women Act -- otherwise known as the Open Season on Men (Evildoers) Act

the thieves, merchantlings, and petty punks in the Western world prosecuting all these jihads are no more "Christian" than certain Crusader bands that preyed on pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem in the 12th Century -- they're looking to fill their pockets with money and their hands with power, and to do the same for their sycophantic cliques and corporate/military/bureaucratic enablers

not only do Islam and Christianity share the same god, they also share the same intermediaries, not only to the beginnings of each religion, but much further back

Islam, Christianity, and for that matter Judaism were ALL originally brotherhoods specifically organized and designed to lessen collective female power, to remove blood-sacrifice from tribal/kinship groups, to institute civilization, and to resist the "natural" regression of individuals and "tribes" to matriarchal conditions

in Ridley Scott's superb film Kingdom of Heaven, an Islamic Horde, led by Saladin, is poised to over-run and re-take the "Holy City," which is being held together under Christianity not only by many courageous warriors, but principally by its Leper King

it is the Leper King's horrific personal sacrifice, and his adherence to truly Christian values and behaviors -- not any force of arms -- which keeps the City impregnable

the Leper King is Jerusalem, and his authenticity -- and not mere stone and earth -- is the Holy City's foundation, keeping its walls upright and intact

as soon as the King dies, and a lesser, politicized, money-mad "lord" snatches the Crown, what happens?

there is no longer any "spiritual defense" for Christianity or Jerusalem, and -- exactly as in the ancient world -- god boots the Christians out and permits Islam, under Saladin, literally to walk in to the City, and raise the crescent-moon banner above it

Saladin and his army don't capture the City: it is vanquished from within automatically, by the absence of its righteous and rightful King -- all the fussin' and fightin', at that point, are moot

the tri-crescent, not coincidentally, is the modern pagan symbol for the triple goddess

historically, the dispute between Islam and Christianity has been between "two brothers" approaching the same divinity in different fashions -- as a character in Kingdom of Heaven observes: "Mohammed says 'Submit,' Jesus says 'Decide'."

Christianity focuses on individuation and the conscience, Islam on unity: even in prayer, these fundamental differences are obvious, with Islam's ritualistic, communal, and submissive prayer, and Christianity's less formal, and often wholly internal, offerings

i chose to be a Western man partly because it's my nature to defend with ferocity the individual mind, which i interpret as a sanctum of god, not to be trespassed lightly

building the egoic complexes and the partly individuated "me" that we now take for granted (and abuse) took many millennia, and a stupefying and heartbreaking amount of tears and blood -- nor was the cost limited to human beings

thus, although the ego is a necessary evil, and currently a bit too uppity, i won't see it relinqished except under very particular circumstances

my relationship to god, to the pitiful extent that exists, cannot be one of surrender -- i have no evidence that god desires my submission -- what an insecure god that would be

(Y, next thing you know, god would be wanting capitalization!)

:O)

instead, god seems to prefer that i undergo the crucible of choice every moment, taking nothing for granted and proceeding on the merits presented, in a constantly re-creative, and to some small extent co-creative, flux

that's a more dangerous way for an individual or civilization to live than Islam, but i don't think god made a mistake fashioning either the mind or the West

Islam has numerous strengths and benefits neither recognized nor understood by most Westerners, and rather than scapegoating or polarizing them, we'd be better off learning about their "wholeness" approach to spirituality, while they learn the better aspects of our "personal" approach

the rise of Western feminism and the functional matriarchies in the last century, and especially in the past four decades, changes the ancient strategies and stakes between the "two brothers"

as Islam is beginning to notice, they are soon to have their own "Gender Jihad," courtesy partly of America

feminism is also a necessary evil, and it exists in large part to allow the female both to "mirror" and to "catch up" with the masculine in the individuation process

that meant unleashing -- or at least loosening -- the beast, with females potentially transferring their individuation into collective empowerment and dragging civilization back into matriarchy

with Gender Jihad at Islam's thresh-hold, perhaps the "two brothers" will consider a lasting peace . . .

otherwise soon, instead of fighting over how to approach god, they may be fighting just to keep god alive

Tiwzday in Ottieland

let's embark on a little exercise called "gossamer wings" . . .


Thor is depicted as responsive to human distress which is not a quality widely associated with warfare. This is most clearly shown in the myth of his journey to Utgard with Loki when he stopped at a peasant's farm on the way. He killed his goats to provide a meal for them all but instructed them to be sure to save the bones and skin.

The next morning before dawn he passed Mjollnir, his magical hammer, over the bones on the skin and brought his goats back to life but noticed that one was lame (where the farmer's son had ignored instructions and broken a bone to get at the marrow). This kindled his wrath and his eyes took on his truly awesome stare. The terrified farmer and his family offered all they had to atone but when Thor saw their terror he calmed down and accepted the children as bondservants. Thor's temper can be regained as fast as it is lost - the cold implacability that sweeps all before it in war is not there.

In historical terms, Thor derives from a very early deity: the Indo-European weather god. This being was described as male with red hair and a beard, a tremendous appetite and as possessing thunderbolts. This weather god was also described as being the protector of mankind and slayer of serpent(s). Even the Hindu god Indra, whose roots are in the Indo- European tradition, shows these characteristics. This may be why Snorri Sturluson, in the early part of the Prose Edda where he talks of the gods and goddesses as historical humans, says Odin was a descendant of Thor and not the other way round as might be expected.

There is an etymological link to the Celtic deity Jupiter Tanarus as the Germanic forms of the thunder god's name are believed to have derived from this 'thundering' Jupiter. In Anglo-Saxon England he was Thunar, in continental Germany he was Donar (or Donner) and in Scandinavia and their Viking Settlements he was Thor.

The tales of rough roistering and heroic deeds ascribed to Thor have led scholars to identify him with the early Germanic god written of by the Roman historian Tacitus as the Latin demi-god Hercules. Tacitus wrote of three main gods in the German tribes in terms of their classical counterparts. Later analogies were made to the Sky Father, Jupiter.




. . . In the literary work of the Icelandic Eddas and middle high German Nibelunglied, Thor/Donar is one of the prominent Male deities with Odin/Wodan and Tyr/Teiwaz.

Adam of Bremen wrote that 'they say he rules the air which controls the thunder and the lightning, the winds and showers, the fair weather and the fruits of the earth'. Thor has the power to bestow fertility as he is the son of Mother Earth (his belt of strength is called Meginjard or 'Earth Power' ), the controller of the weather and the wielder of Mjollnir. The hammer is especially important to this power.

[emphasis added, thX to Ben-O]

association of Tyr with Jupiter/Zeus and "Men" recalls Rudyard Kipling's "Song of the Men's Side":


Once we feared The Beast - when he followed us we ran,
Ran very fast though we knew
It was not right that
The Beast should master Man;
But what could we Flint-workers do?
The Beast only grinned at our spears round his ears -
Grinned at the hammers that we made;
But now we will hunt him for the life with the Knife-
And this is the Buyer of the Blade!

Room for his shadow on the grass - let it pass!
To left and right - stand clear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade - be afraid!
This is the great God Tyr!

Tyr thought hard till he hammered out a plan,
For he knew it was not right (And it is not right)
that The Beast should master Man;
So he went to the Children of the Night.
He begged a Magic Knife of their make for our sake.
When he begged for the Knife they said:
'The price of the Knife you would buy is an eye!'
And that was the price he paid.

Tell it to the Barrows of the Dead - run ahead!
Shout it so the Women's Side can hear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade - be afraid!
This is the great God Tyr!

Our women and our little ones may walk on the Chalk,
As far as we can see them and beyond.
We shall not be anxious for our sheep when we keep
Tally at the shearing-pond.
We can eat with both our elbows on our knees, if we please,
We can sleep after meals in the sun;
For Shepherd-of-the-Twilight is dismayed at the Blade,
Feet-in-the-Night have run!
Dog-without-a-Master goes away (Hai, Tyr aie!),
Devil-in-the-Dusk has run!

Then:

Room for his shadow on the grass - let it pass!
To left and right - stand clear!
This is the Buyer of the Blade - be afraid!
This is the great God Tyr!




this from Wikipedia (which also provided the illustrations and caption):


Tyr/Tiw had become relatively unimportant compared to Odin/Woden in both North and West Germanic. Traces of the god remain, however, in Tuesday ("Tiw's day"), named after Tyr in both the North and the West Germanic languages (corresponding to Martis dies, dedicated to the Roman god of war, Mars) . . .







Týr is identified with Mars in this illustration from an 18th century Icelandic manuscript.








. . . which led to this from today's Yahoonews (though datelined Monday):


Eyes to the sky for the Mars spectacular

Mon Oct 24, 5:49 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - The last time Mars swung so close to Earth, Hindu seers foretold of war, European astrologers predicted love and Germany reported a rash in UFO sightings.

Thus is the spell cast by planetary alignment, so extreme predictions and odd events seem entirely possible this week as Mars and Earth edge together once more.


what'd be "odd" would be a bit o' normalcy!



On Sunday, October 30, the Red Planet will be 69.4 million kilometers (43.1 million miles) from Earth -- a distance that in galactic terms is less than wafer-thin and will not be equalled until 2018.

Skywatchers are rubbing their hands at the opportunity.

In the runup to Sunday, but also for much of November, Mars will appear as a big orangey-yellow "star" in the east, an object so bright that it should be visible in almost any conditions of light pollution, says the US publication Sky & Telescope.

Weather permitting -- on Earth and also on Mars, where there are some worrying signs of an impending dust storm -- anyone with a modest telescope should be able to pick out some of the features that make Mars so special.

According to the French magazine Ciel et Espace, anyone who invests in a small 60mm (two-inch) -diameter telescope, priced in many countries at around 150 euros (180 dollars), should be easily able to spot Syrtis Major, Mars' most recognisable characteristic.


an anagram of "Tyr Sis"



This vast region of cratered plateaux appears as a dark, roughly triangular-shaped tongue whose point heads towards Mars' North Pole.


hmm . . . more with the snakelike tongue . . .



They should also be able to make out Helas, a vast impact crater that is often covered by whitish mist and is sometimes mistaken for Mars' southern polar icecap.


"Helas" is fairly close to "Helios" (see below)

"Helas" is also an anagram for "selah," a Psalmist term associated with musical "arrangement" and praise



Invest a couple of thousand euros (dollars) or more to get a telescope with a diametre of 200mm (eight inches) or more -- or go to your nearest observatory or visit an astronomy website -- and some really hunky stuff comes into view.

For size, nothing beats Mons Olympus, 26,000 metres (84,500 feet) high -- the biggest volcano in the Solar System. And Arizona's Grand Canyon would fit snugly inside Valles Marineris -- seven kms (four miles) deep and 200 kms (120 miles) across.


"biggest volcano in the solar system"



Mars' southern pole, seasonally shrunk by summer heat, will appear as a brilliant white dot. And with luck, one night you may bag Mars' tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, which once were asteroids until they were captured by the Martian gravity.


Mars' moons are mentioned in Kin Notes, a companion document for Qim Tunes


On August 27, 2003, Earth and Mars were a mere 55.76 million kms (34.65 million miles) apart, the closest in almost 60,000 years.
This time, the planets are slight farther apart, but the viewing prospects are better than in 2003, says the Institute of Celestial Mechanics at the Paris Observatory.

This is because, in 2003, Mars' course barely took it above the horizon for viewers in Earth's northern hemisphere, which meant the image was distorted by light passing through the atmosphere.

Earth, the third planet from the Sun, takes 365 and a quarter days to go around its star. Mars, the fourth planet, takes 687 Earth Days.

That means they come close every 26 months or so. But both planets take a slightly elliptical path around the Sun, and this factor determines precisely how close the flyby will be.

The next time the planets will be closer than in 2003 will be in 2287.



Mars figures prominently in the online autistic document, Qim Tunes, and autistic poet Jeffrey Powell, Jr., includes both Mars and Jupiter in his amazing "In Jupiter's Realm Waiting":

In light of hopeless voices changes can't be avoided,

I'm staying in the likeness of molten calm.

It's hot in the crater, but like stopped stone on the surfaces,

I'm hoping to master my knoll of Jupiter soon.

It is like the oldest godlike firths in the deepest recesses.

Great thunder rolling after the firestorm,

warning that the dragons still wait and watch.

But giving the dreamer hope that they will not find the opening

as long as the stony surface remains still.

The rain has gentled as have his tears.

The extra fair lady Ann is leaving on the seaworthy voyage

and will be in Poseidon's realm not Jupiter's.

Often the myths are the same, but it is always known

the Romans and Greeks were fortunes apart and destinies different

Fair to drink the wine of Vulcan, but can't feed on the ambrosia.

Three ways freedom could be won and that one remains closed.

Bitterness must be held back.

It is now understood to be the weapon of the enemy.

In the path of Mars I will search outward for Aphrodite.

And hopes and dreams of the muses will hold a tender candle for me

till the orbits carry the life of one into the path of Greek freedom and enlightenment.

And the fires of Vulcan are quenched with the fair Grecian urn of contentment and saving simplicity.

Dreams are like paintings,

still and yet rimmed with color and light,

expressions of the painter's passion.

Come forth Helios lover of Aurora.

finally -- well, sorta "finally" lol -- here's a Cat Stevens song from one of my favorite albums, 1971's Teaser and the Firecat, which I listened to incessently while at military tech school:

If I make a mark in time I can't say the mark is mine

I'm only the underline of the word

Yes, I'm like him, just like you

I can't tell you what to do

Like everybody else I'm searching through what I've heard

Whoa! -- where do you go

when you don't want no one to know?

Who told tomorrow -- Tuesday's dead?

Oh preacher won't you paint my dream

won't you show me where you've been,

show me what I haven't seen to ease my mind

'Cause I will learn to understand

If I have a helping hand

I wouldn't make another demand, all my life

Whoa! -- where do you go

when you don't want no one to know?

Who told tomorrow -- Tuesday's dead?

What's my sex, what's my name?

all in all it's all the same

everybody plays a different game -- that is all

Now man my live, man may die

searching for the question why,

but if he tries to rule the sky, he must fall

Whoa! -- where do you go

when you don't want no one to know?

who told tomorrow -- Tuesday's dead?

Now every second on the nose

The humdrum of the city grows

reaching out beyond the throes of our time.

We must try to shake it down

Do our best to break the ground

try to turn the world around one more time

Yes, we must try to shake it down

do our best to break the ground

try to turn the world around one more time

Whoa!-- where do you go

when you don't want no one to know?

Who told tomorrow -- Tuesday's dead?

Cat once commented:

I get the tune and then I just keep on singing the tune until the words come out from the tune. It's kind of a hypnotic state that you reach after a while when you keep on playing it where words just evolve from it.

In "Tuesday's Dead," he appears to be prophesying a number of things, including the death of the deity Tiwaz, Tas, Tyr, etc. -- or, perhaps, the narrator is questioning the "veracity" of the future ("tomorrow").

The reference to man trying to "rule the sky" is illustrative, as Tyr is a thunder/lightning/sky god, and the species has embarked on both flight and extraterrestrial travel/exploration/conquest. But its the element of "conquest" most at issue here, literal "rule" of the sky/heaven/the mind, a new Tower in a new Babylon.

The verse containing the "preacher painting the dream" along with the "helping hand" recalls Bob Dylan's "Lo and Behold" painting, discussed in a prior post. As here, the theme there is song, or great art in general, as the driving force or catalyst preceding manifest creation/destruction.

The half-ironic "Where do you go/when you don't want no one to know" refers to being under the "observation of heaven" and to the relative "sanctity" of the individual mind/consciousness.

As for the "mark" in time comment, it's also an ironic reference to "Tiwzday," which I'll leave to the Deer Reeder to decipher . . . .

Given Cat's conversion to Islam following a near-death experience, and his re-creation as "Yusuf Islam," we must look closely at the lines, "We must try to shake it [the city] down . . . do our best to break the ground."

On 21 September 2004, Cat/Yusuf was denied entry into the U.S. and deported to England, on grounds of "concerns of ties he may have to potential terrorist-related activities."

The prophecy of "Tuesday's Dead," then, could concern the removal, passing, or hiding of the Western-deity "Tyr's" protection over his nation(s), possibly in relation to man's attempt to "rule the sky " (i.e., heaven in physical terms). Whether in the pre-reality of Bob Dylan's "Lo and Behold" or the post-reality of New York's Ground Zero, what follows as consequence of an over-reaching desire to "rule" is the "ground breaking" and the "shaking down" of the City.

The song "Tuesday's Dead" is kin to another of Cat's songs, the hypno-chant "Longer Boats" from 1970's Tea for the Tillerman. In Irish myth/folktales are numerous references to aerial "ships" called loinger demnacda. One of the song's lines runs, "I don't want no god on my lawn!"

Rosa Parked the Bus is US

for every Medgar Evers and Malcolm X there were ten thousand whose names are only known in heaven

but known

all of them were black, in a manner of speaking . . . that is the color of experience

the struggle seems neverending, the Goat changes by generation, but the need for it does not

i'm not a big voodoo fan either -- one of my pet peeves -- but opening the serpent's mouth was a necessary evil . . . and let's remember that we are ALL necessary evils, hmm?

where flew that Kentucky bluebird?

noplace especially "good" methinks . . . even the Land has its sins, and if you look closely, under a shadowy son, you will see them, stark in relief, like stubbled fields of burnt corn

"from California to the New York Island"

now we'll have it out, all of it, even to each finger and each trigger, and even the dead will have no secrets

America wasn't an accident, and that serpent, like the devil's own tunes, was meant to be

in that there is comfort: works aren't wasted, like rock 'n roll, born from gospel, that is godspell, returning thence

Africa ensouled this House, remembered the mind with its first body -- regression not merely inevitable, but the very point

House of horrors, House of blood

let the corn take heart

from this a righteous kingdom will come


Today Medgar Evers was buried
from the bullet he caught.
They lowered him down as a king!
But when the shadowy sun
sets on the one
that fired the gun
he'll see by his grave
on the stone that remains
carved next to his name
his epitaph plain:
"Only a pawn in their game"

(Bob Dylan)

The Daily Rag: Cuba cubed

OK here's the "Cuba hit," from yesterday's post -- right on schedule

trippy . . .

even for an old hippy!

quite a difference in disaster preparedness -- not to mention leadership response and performance -- between the U.S. and Cuba

no wonder Cuba got the baleful stare and venom!


Cuba Rescues 250 Flood Victims From Wilma

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer

Mon Oct 24, 1:19 PM ET

HAVANA - Scuba diving teams in inflatable rafts pulled nearly 250 people from their flooded homes early Monday after massive waves churned by Hurricane Wilma flooded the capital's Malecon coastal highway and adjacent neighborhoods of old, crumbling buildings.

The communist-government's Revolutionary Armed Forces were also using amphibious vehicles to rescue people whose homes were flooded by more than 3 feet of water when the ocean penetrated more than four large city blocks into Havana's coast.

"We're amazed," resident Laura Gonzalez-Cueto said as she watched divers transporting small groups of people in the black inflatable rafts with outboard motors.

"Since early today, the water has come all the way up to Linea and Paseo," said Gonzalez-Cueto, referring to a major thoroughfare four blocks from the coast.

The outer bands of Wilma also drenched western Cuba and flooded evacuated communities along the island's southern coast after the hurricane clobbered Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The extent of damage in Cuba's north was not immediately known.

Late Sunday, Cuban President Fidel Castro appeared on a television program to calm Cubans anticipating increased winds and flooding as Wilma passed overhead en route to southwestern Florida. He also offered Cuban doctors to Mexico to help the neighboring nation recover from the natural disaster.

Castro praised the island's efficiency in hurricane preparation, saying that despite scarce resources, Cuba has become internationally recognized as "a model country that protects the lives of its citizens."
Cuba prides itself on saving lives during hurricanes, and its civil defense plans have been held up by the United Nations' as a model for other nations. Mandatory, widespread evacuations are common and face little resistance.

The government in recent days evacuated more than 625,000 people, particularly in the island's west.

Guanimar, a small fishing village of brightly painted wooden houses due south of Havana, was under water Sunday, with floodwaters as high as 3 feet in some places. The community frequently floods during hurricanes and its several hundred residents were evacuated as a precaution.


[today is Tuesday, October 25, and partly because of the last paragraph in the story below, I've appended this Reuters wire to the post above]

Mormon missions leave Venezuela over safety worries

By Patrick Markey

Tue Oct 25, 7:41 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - More than 200 Mormon missionaries have left Venezuela due to security worries two weeks after President Hugo Chavez ordered a U.S. evangelist group expelled for spying, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.


U.S. Ambassador to Caracas William Brownfield said the Mormons left Venezuela at the weekend, a fortnight after Chavez ordered out the New Tribes Mission evangelists on charges they were linked to the
CIA and had abused indigenous groups.

"Most of them, almost 100 percent, are young between 18 and 19 years old and they decided that the security issue was a little complicated," Brownfield told reporters.

"Hopefully this doesn't produce an image or perception that there is a lack of tolerance in Venezuela because that would be the wrong image," he said.

A U.S. Embassy official confirmed 219 missionaries had left Venezuela.
Chavez, a self-styled socialist who often attacks the U.S. government and its foreign policies, briefly suspended foreign missionary permits in August after conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Robertson called on Washington to assassinate him.

His government ordered the New Tribes Mission to leave Venezuela a few days after Robertson again attacked Chavez, accusing him of funding Osama Bin Laden and seeking atomic material from
Iran.

Venezuela dismissed the charges as absurd.

U.S. officials have rejected the New Tribes Mission spying charges and urged dialogue with the group. Authorities have not said when its members would have to leave Venezuela.

The Florida-based Christian evangelists have worked in Venezuela for 59 years preaching to Indian groups and translating scriptures into their native languages.

The mission incidents are the latest to test fraying relations between United States and Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter and a key supplier of petroleum and fuel to the huge U.S. market.

A former army officer elected in 1998, Chavez has promised to bring revolution to Venezuela with reforms for the poor. He says his policies are an alternative to failed U.S. capitalism and accuses Washington of plotting his overthrow.

U.S. officials have repeatedly denied those accusations as propaganda aimed at his power base among the poor. They charge Chavez and his ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro are trying to undermine democratic governments in the region.

Let the Hot Rivers Roll!!!

how refreshing!!

how Simply Loverly!!!

the BBC, that stronghold of politically correct propaganda (redundancy noted), recently got A Load of Joan Rivers

thirty years too late, but better late than never . . .

here, on BBC Radio, you can read the transcript and hear the (brief) audio exchange between the plucky Joan and some self-righteous fake named Darcus Howe

Darcus, revelling in his Morally Superior Blackness, made three mistakes:

1) implying that Joan was a racist;

2) assuming that, like everyone else he has demonized over race in the past, Joan would just shut up and not object to his little game; and

3) forgetting that he was dealing with a white FEMALE, not a white MALE, who could easily be intimidated and silenced by his racism


OOOOhhh Baybeeee! was Darcus in for a surprise! picked the Rong Victim, eh Darcus?

:O)


man, it's been a long fall from Medgar Evers to Darcus Howe!

I've seen Joan go off once or twice before on panels when PC weaklings tried to play the race/gender card . . . three cheers for Joan!

fuck off Hilary and Condo, lying sacks of shit

Joan Rivers for President!! maybe she'll knock a few more chips off a few more privileged shoulders

we'd all be better for it

[link pinched from www.angryharry.com]

Same Old Same Old Rag

OK well, looks like the whole Ragnarok Business (see post of 10/5 though revisions are ongoing) ain't Going Away, big surprise there, eh?

Apologies to my Reader (and yes, my blogtracker confirms there is only uno!) for Even More Boring Links to Various Shit concerning that post

So here ya go Dear Reader, wherever and whoever you are, thanks alot Mom!!


This one's from today:

Girl May Lose Arm After School Snake Bite

Sun Oct 23,12:52 PM ET

POTTSTOWN, Pa. - A 14-year-old girl may lose her arm after being bitten by a poisonous copperhead snake at school, authorities said.

The snake was caught in Valley Forge by a 17-year-old male student, who took it in a shoebox to a drama club gathering at St. Pius X High School on Friday, Lower Pottsgrove Police Chief Ray Bechtel said. No regular classes were held that day, which was designated for staff development.
The boy was showing the reptile to other students when it bit the girl's finger, Bechtel said.


Yup, that'd be THE Valley Forge of Revolutionary War fame etc. -- the name also carries infernal/vulcanic connotations, doubly so given this incident occurred at a Catholic H.S.

"Bechtel," of course, is the name of one of the most powerful international corporations on the planet, with mucho military/industrial/intelligence involvement


The girl, whose name was not released by police, apparently threw the snake across the room and the boy threw it outside. The snake was not found, but authorities were able to identify it because the boy photographed it with his camera cellphone, said Bechtel.

The victim was treated at Pottstown Memorial Medical Center about 45 minutes after being bitten, he said.

"The doctors said if it had been a half-hour longer she would likely have been dead," said Bechtel.

However, police said she could still lose her arm.

Police did not have an update on the girl's condition Sunday. She had been in very serious condition at Hershey Medical Center.

No charges were filed but police said they were investigating.

Copperhead snake bites are typically not fatal but are extremely painful and may cause extensive scarring and loss of limb use, according to the North Carolina Cooperative Extension of North Carolina State University.

____________

This one is included mainly for location -- Martinez, CA is just across the Carquinez Straits from Vallejo, a town figuring prominently in the Zodiac's activities, and along with sister-city Napa, in other occult events


Vitale Suspect Discussed Satan at School

by Michelle Locke, Associated Press Writer


MARTINEZ, Calif. Oct 21, 2005 — The teenager arrested in the slaying of a prominent defense attorney's wife once drew a pentagram on the ground at school and told other students he was reading from the book of Satan, according to former classmates.

Authorities would not identify the 16-year-old, but the boy's name was widely publicized after his arrest late Wednesday. Police were still working to determine a motive for the beating death of Pamela Vitale, the wife of lawyer and TV legal pundit Daniel Horowitz.

"Although we have a suspect, the investigation is still going on," sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee said.

Vitale, 52, was slain over the weekend at the hilltop estate where the couple were building their dream home in the wealthy San Francisco suburb of Lafayette. The teenager lived down the hill on a remote canyon road.

Ivan Golde, a friend of Horowitz and his co-counsel, said Horowitz didn't know the teen well.

"Dan knew the family somewhat but he didn't really know this kid. He had no connection to this kid," Golde told NBC's "Today" show Friday.

The suspect was described as a quiet student at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, where he stood out because of his attire.

"He was really gothic, always wore a long, dark jacket," said Kevin Etheridge, 16. "He'd hang out with a few kids, but he was pretty quiet, pretty much to himself."

Another student remembered him drawing a pentagram on the ground with chalk in junior high school and dancing around it with other students.

"He told people the book that he was carrying and reading from was the book of Satan," Keith Kingon said.


Kingon (?!) is an erk-y name, as is "Vitale" in the context of a killing with potential occult overtones -- the object of necromantic sorcery being the "capture" of a being's "vital essence" (or, as Zodiac puts it, a "paradice slave").


A man at the house where the suspect lived declined to comment Thursday as goats and chickens wandered around the property. A potbelly stove, a bathtub and dozens of baseballs littered the yard.


A strange ensemble, like a Raymond Carver short-story setting. The goat is pretty obvious from an occult p.o.v., and the chickens suggest the cockatrice.


The San Francisco Chronicle, citing an unidentified law enforcement source, reported that investigators believe the killing was related to a scheme that involved using stolen credit card numbers to fund a marijuana-growing operation.

The source said the boy had ordered equipment for the pot operation and mistakenly thought the supplies were delivered to Horowitz and Vitale's home, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

The teen went there Saturday looking for the equipment and got in a fight with Vitale, striking her dozens of times in the head with a piece of molding that was left behind at the scene, according to the source.

The boy apparently had scratches on his arms and legs from the fight, the newspaper reported.

If the boy is convicted of murder as an adult, he would face up to life in prison. If convicted as a juvenile, he would be freed on his 25th birthday. He is too young to face the death penalty.

Horowitz said he discovered his wife's body when he returned home after working on the case of Susan Polk, a woman accused of stabbing to death her therapist husband.

"She fought back very hard. That was very obvious from the scene," he said Wednesday, adding that his wife had a head wound.

Vitale, 52, worked part-time for her husband's law firm and had been in the front row of the courtroom during opening statements.

Horowitz rose to national prominence as a cable news commentator during the Scott Peterson murder trial. He was in seclusion Thursday as Vitale's memorial service was held in a private graveyard ceremony.

___________

Finally, here's a photo of Hurricane Wilma (yes, yes, like Fred Flintstone screaming Wiiiiii-llllmaaa! as his CaveCat tosses him out his own front door).

Wilma also suggests the "Will of Ma" . . . just a coincidence, I'm shore. . . .



Compare Wilma's image (left) with Charles Manson's "Christmas Day 2000" artwork, presented again below. (It helps to copy these images into word-processing/imaging software to enhance detail.)




















Wilma appears as a coiled serpent, and is especially ouroboric in that the dragon's "tail" (the hurricane center/eye) resembles a mini-snake's head, photographed precisely at Cuba's latitude. As of this writing, the "tail" or hurricane center is forecast to strike the Florida Keys/Southern Florida -- that is, the "head" of itself. In this sense, precisely in accord with its "mythic features," the ouroboric Serpent is poised to "swallow its own tail" -- to devour itself.

Rather rarely for an Invertebrate, lol -- the entity appears to have a backbone, in fairly distinguishable disc-like segments (one might even say Bone-Ring segments!) becoming more distinct as they near the "head."

. . . and what a Head it is! the southern half of the State of Florida, no less! . . . with Lake Okeechohee (Seminole for "big water") as the Serpent's Eye, and the Florida Keys its extended tongue and/or spitted venom!

Will-Ma seems to stare directly at Havana, Cuba -- not good news for Fidel, perhaps . . . and the coiled posture infers immediacy and potential threat (obviously, not necessarily in a merely meteorological sense).

The hurricane appears to realize a potential theretofore embodied only partially: Wilma is a real-time, transient, "profane" alliance of air and water activating or reviving the long-standing, "sacred" head or brain of the serpent -- the much more permanent, and therefore potent, landmass.

The temporary event of the hurricane reveals not only the short-term geopolitical conflict (U.S. vs Cuba), but also suggests an extremely long-term antagonism between the two landmass segments. The "head" of Will-Ma the Snake has both an ideo-political connection to American matriarchy, and a geo-political connection to Western oligarchic interests (i.e., the military-industrial complex has a male superstructure or facade, but female/matriarchal underpinnings).

In the pre-Columbian/shamanic p.o.v., of course, all facets of the natural world are assumed alive and conscious, with "places" and especially "landmarks" possessing and exhibiting distinct and ancient personalities. This feels alien, impossible, antithetical, and real skeery to the modern, rationalistic mind -- which is predictable and proper, given that the modern egoic mind/individual personality WAS and IS a "distancing" and differentiation FROM collective, shamanic, or -- dare we say? -- uroboric consciousness.

However, there is nothing intrinsically antithetical about the individual and collective states, and nothing irresolvable about Science and magic. Paradox is not equivalent to irreconcilable difference, and it is the destiny of the human mind to return to its collective roots without relinquishing egoic functioning.

Think not?

Then have another look at Will-Ma . . . 'cause methinks she's been looking at you!

:O)

Alma Mater Modor

LOOK! LOOK! The American Matriarchy has discovered males!!



College gender gap widens: 57% are women

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
Thu Oct 20, 7:11 AM ET

In May, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education posted the inevitable culmination of a trend: Last year for the first time, women earned more than half the degrees granted statewide in every category, be it associate, bachelor, master, doctoral or professional.

Cause for celebration - or for concern?

Before you answer, consider the perspective of Jim McCorkell, founder of Admission Possible, a St. Paul program to help low-income high school kids prepare for college. Last year, 30% of the students were boys. This fall, that has inched up to 34%, but only because "we actually did a little affirmative action," McCorkell says. "If we had a tie (between a male and a female applicant), we gave it to a boy."

As women march forward, more boys seem to be falling by the wayside, McCorkell says.


gee, Jim . . . ya think?

guess who Women have been "marching forward" ON, Mary Beth?


Not only do national statistics forecast a continued decline in the percentage of males on college campuses, but the drops are seen in all races, income groups and fields of study, says policy analyst Thomas Mortenson, publisher of the influential Postsecondary Education Opportunity newsletter in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Since 1995, he has been tracking - and sounding the alarm about - the dwindling presence of men in colleges.


I've attended a number programs at various U.S. universitites, and no man in his right mind, with his gonads still intact, would want anything to do with these bastions of anti-male policies, curricula, standards, values, and atmosphere

American colleges, and schools in general, have been totally feminized for decades, and American culture -- especially feminists and their well-paid supporters -- have GLORIED AND GLOATED decade after decade as they crushed the spirit and masculinity out of the culture

. . . and don't tell me it didn't happen: I lived it and witnessed it

and NOW you think you've got a Little Problem, eh Mary Beth?

unsurprisingly, the Western gyneocracies are beginning to get a wee bit nervous about the permanent male underclass they've created

yet notice the extraordinary DETERMINATION with which our experts and administrators and journalists and lawmakers etc. etc. CLING to female-favored Everything

College administrators shy away from the term "affirmative action," a murky concept rooted in redressing historic inequities and loaded with legal implications. Yet the imbalances do trouble some admissions officials. (Related: Colleges remain cautious)

So just as they might consider race or geographical diversity in building freshman classes, they similarly look for gender parity.

There are more men than women ages 18-24 in the USA - 15 million vs. 14.2 million, according to an estimate last year. But nationally, the male/female ratio on campus today is 43/57, a reversal from the late 1960s and well beyond the nearly even splits of the mid-1970s.
The trends have developed in plain view - not ignored exactly, but typically accompanied by some version of the question: Isn't this a sign of women's progress?

Today, though, the blue-collar jobs that once attracted male high school graduates are drying up. More boys are dropping out of high school and out of college. And as the gender gap widens, concern about the educational aspirations of young men appears to be gaining traction, albeit cautiously.

But even as evidence of a problem - a crisis, some say - mounts, "there's a complacency about this topic," McCorkell says.

There has been no outcry, for example, on the scale of a highly publicized 1992 report by the American Association of University Women, How Schools Short-Change Girls, which compiled reams of research on gender inequities.

That study "really ... got people to focus on girls ... (but) there is no big network that protects the needs of boys," says family therapist Michael Gurian, author of the just-published The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons from Falling Behind in School and Life, which argues that elementary and secondary schools aren't meeting the developmental needs of boys.

The minefields ahead

And the needs of boys and girls are different, says Kimberly Tsaousis, a college-prep adviser who works mostly with low-income minorities at Cleveland High School in Seattle. "Girls are way more likely to just pay attention" during advising sessions, she says. "It's almost less cool" for boys to show interest in college.

Talk of gender is fraught with social, legal and political minefields.

Witness the outcry after Harvard President Lawrence Summers remarked in January that women might be underrepresented in sciences because of innate differences in abilities. For one thing, female inequities persist. There's still a pay gap. According to the Census Bureau, women on average earned 77 cents to each dollar paid to male counterparts in 2004.

So it's perhaps no surprise that most educators exploring the issue have an eye toward equilibrium.

Maine's Department of Education' for example, created a task force to look closely at boys' poor academic performance and found a ratio of 154 women for every 100 men in the state's colleges and universities in 2000, the greatest gap of any state. But the final report, to be released this fall, will recommend strategies to promote gender-equitable education.

"We very quickly decided ... we wanted to make sure we did not neglect" girls even while exploring obstacles facing boys, says deputy commissioner Patrick Phillips.

The University of Washington recently started a college-prep program for boys, but administrator Thomas J. Calhoun Jr. notes the university also supports girls-only programs, including one aimed at increasing women in engineering.

And though President Bush' in his State of the Union address singled out boys when he unveiled a$150 million initiative, led by
Laura Bush' , to dissuade kids from joining gangs, a conference hosted by the first lady Oct. 27 is called "Helping America's Youth."

Federal laws pose additional challenges. Under No Child Left Behind, for example, schools must track data by race and gender, which helps educators pinpoint vulnerable populations.

Yet because of potential conflicts with federal laws created to ensure gender and racial equity, educators "can't target resources to where they see the need," says Deborah Wilds of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which finances college scholarships for underrepresented kids. "You know that the kids least likely to graduate are a particular gender or ethnic background, but then you have to walk a fine line in how you serve them."

'Value in. .. equal numbers'

Most of those tracking the issue agree that getting males into the college pipeline is best addressed in elementary and secondary schools.
Even so, the disparities on campuses worry some admissions officials, particularly at liberal arts colleges where gaps are widest.

"We think there's value in having equal numbers," says Jim Bock, admissions dean at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College. Last year, the school admitted more women than men, but it admitted a greater percentage of the male applicants than female. The student body's male/female breakdown is about 48/52.

In interviews, several college administrators, including Bock, said they would not admit a male over a better qualified female. But they do try to build a diverse class - an idea that echoes the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling on race-based affirmative action. That ruling struck down a University of Michigan formula that gave extra points to minorities because of their race. But the justices also ruled that schools could consider race as one of many factors because achieving diversity on college campuses is an important goal. In 2000, a federal judge told the University of Georgia to stop awarding bonus points to males (and minorities) in admissions.

A study this year of admissions processes at 13 liberal arts schools, most with a predominantly female applicant pool, found that gender was "not a significant determinant" in admissions decisions. When a gender preference for men emerged, it occurred at historically female campuses where the share of female applicants had reached 55% or more, authors Sandy Baum and Eban Goodstein say.

The authors neither advocate nor oppose affirmative action, but as men grow shorter in supply, "we should be talking about whether it's reasonable to give preferences to men," says Baum, a Skidmore College professor.

UCLA higher education professor Linda Sax says such a discussion should address what effect, if any, the gender composition of a college has on men and women. To find out, she examined data from more than 17,000 students at 204 four-year colleges.

Preliminary results show that on campuses that were predominantly female, both men and women got higher grades. Predominantly female campuses also led to a "significant increase" in men's commitment to promoting racial understanding and led males to more liberal views on abortion, homosexuality and other social issues, her research found.

"What we're talking about here is the impact of women's attitudes and values," Sax says.

For his part, author Gurian says one reason colleges may fail to attract more men is precisely because they are more geared to female learning styles and interests. Colleges that want to compete for the dwindling pool of men should emphasize male interests, such as sports, he says, and offer more male role models.

But meaningful change must take place well before the college years, says Gurian, who acknowledges a personal interest in the subject: He has two daughters. "We all know a boy that's struggling," he says. "If we create a generation of men who aren't getting an education, that's bad for women."


ah -- it's comforting to know that every story's Bottom Line never changes -- never mind the effects of forty years of second-class citizenship on boys and men, they're only males after all . . .

the REAL concern, of course, is What's Good or Bad for Women!!

Rok E II: The Aftermath

In wake of the overwhelming (LOL!) accolades for my post on Ragnarok and Manson -- and by popular nondemand! -- here are a few assorted "hits" since I published the most current version (about 10/16).

Yahoonews has carried quite a few sea-monster type pop-science stories in the past year; here's one from today

Again, the "otter" mention is interesting -- as mentioned in the Ragnarok post, I call autistic people "otties" and have compared them in essays to otters


Investigators Search for Canadian Lake Monster

Joe Nickellfrom the Skeptical InquirerLiveScience.com

Mon Oct 17,12:00 PM ET

Canada's Lake Simcoe, some forty miles north of Toronto, supposedly holds a monster known as Igopogo (after its more famous relative Ogopogo, in Lake Okanagan, British Columbia) as well as other appellations. Residents of Beaverton, on the eastern shore, call it Beaverton Bessie, while others refer to it as Kempenfelt Kelly, after Kempenfelt Bay, which has the lake's deepest water and claims the most sightings.

Sources refer vaguely to early "Indian legends" of the monster and sporadic reports of a "sea serpent" in the lake during the nineteenth century. Important sightings occurred in 1952 and 1963, and a "sonar sounding of a large animal" in 1983 was followed by a videotape in 1991 of "a large, seal-like animal."

Significantly, according to John Robert Colombo in his book "Mysterious Canada," "No two descriptions of Kempenfelt Kelly coincide."

Nevertheless , writer George M. Eberhart, in his book "Mysterious Creatures," attempted a portrait:

Physical Description: Seal-like animal. Length, 12–70 feet. Charcoal-gray color. Dog- or horse-like face. Prominent eyes. Gaping mouth. Neck is like a stovepipe. Several dorsal fins. Fishlike tail. Behavior: Basks in the sun.

In August 2005, supported by Discovery Canada television's science program "Daily Planet," and by the tourism department of the city of Barrie, investigator Benjamin Radford and I went in search of the elusive creature. We conducted interviews and searched Kempenfelt Bay using a boat equipped with sonar and an underwater camera.

We first visited the home of local retired businessman Arch Brown, who told us he coined the name "Kempenfelt Kelly" and himself had had four sightings of the legendary monster. He acknowledged that he was predisposed to believe in the existence of the creature. His Scottish father had told him of the Loch Ness Monster, and, since he himself formerly resided in British Columbia, he well knew of Ogopogo there. When he moved to Barrie many years ago, he said, he was prompted by local reports to be "on the lookout" for the monster, spending many hours at the task.

Over the years he had no fewer than four sightings—all from a distance, unfortunately. Once he saw the creature from an estimated quarter of a mile away, but nevertheless described it as being ten feet long and having a dark-gray, serpentlike body and a dog-shaped head. It swam, he told us, with an undulating, up-and-down motion. Less seriously, he added that it had "an impish look" and a kind disposition that kept it from frightening children.

Like many of the other sightings, his could be reasonably explained as otters swimming in a line, diving and resurfacing. Our boat captain, Jerry Clayton, specifically mentioned otters as a likelihood for some sightings. Brown himself acknowledged that there are otters—as well as beavers, mink, and other animals—in the vicinity, although he did not believe any of these were responsible for his sightings.

As to the 1983 sonar report, Clayton showed us on his sonar screen what were clearly individual fish, as well as occasional larger forms that he attributed to schools of small fish being "read" by the sonar as a single unit. The underwater camera showed only non-monstrous fish. Clayton told us he had been on Lake Simcoe for eighteen years
.
"I've dragged a lot of lines for a lot of miles here on this lake, and—nothing," he said.

Our search for Igopogo ended without finding good evidence for the monster, but the sightings will surely continue as long as people believe it exists in the cold waters of Lake Simcoe.


here's a story from last Sunday, related to the "race-war" aspects of my Ragnarok post

Toledo, Ohio, might be considered a quintessential American town/small city, a location no doubt considered stategically by US Nazi Party leaders -- whose point, unfortunately, was proven by their "opponents," some of whom consider themselves Victims and extended that excuse into justification for assault

strange: for the past few decades, much of white culture has been despertely trying to Be Cool -- to be black, essentially, Easternizing and Africanizing itself, trading WASP elements for tribal elements

an alchemist would call the West's cultural fold-back -- which is by no means strictly "racial" -- a collective regression, a nigredo, while an artist or shaman might call it descent to the underworld or matrix

Larry Charles and Bob Dylan's "masked and anonymous" visualizes on film some of the negative fallout from the Identity Revolution and the scapegoating of the white males (and maleness in general) -- how the Sixties "revolution" ended up betraying its own principles (and principals too!)



Neighbors: Neo-Nazis Had No Right to March

By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press Writer

Sun Oct 16, 6:01 PM ET

TOLEDO, Ohio - In the days leading up to a white supremacist march, ministers pleaded with residents to stay calm and community leaders organized peace rallies. Authorities even delayed releasing the route so protesters wouldn't know where the group planned to march.


It wasn't enough to stop an angry mob that included gang members from looting and burning a neighborhood bar, smashing the windows of a gas station and hurling rocks and bottles at police on Saturday. Twelve officers were injured, one suffering a concussion when a brick flew through her cruiser window.

In all, 114 people were arrested on charges including assault, vandalism, failure to disperse and overnight curfew violations.

"We knew during the preparation that it was going to be a tremendous challenge," Police Chief Mike Navarre said Sunday. "Anyone who would accuse us of being underprepared I would take exception with that."
Much of the anger boiled over because people were upset that city leaders were willing to allow the supremacists to walk through the neighborhood and shout insults, residents and authorities said.

"You can't allow people to come challenge a whole city and not think they weren't going to strike back," said Kenneth Allen, 47, who watched the violence begin near his home.

Authorities said there was little they could do to stop the group, because they did not apply for a parade permit and instead planned to walk along sidewalks.

"They do have a right to walk on the Toledo sidewalks," said Mayor Jack Ford, who at one point confronted leaders of the mob and tried to settle them down.

A gang member in a mask threatened to shoot him, and others cursed him for allowing the march, the mayor said. He said he didn't know if the man who threatened him was actually armed, but he blamed gangs for much of the violence. The march had been called off because of the crowds, and the white supremacists had left.

If the Nazi group tries to come back, Ford said he would seek a court order to stop them.

Navarre said the riots escalated because members of the National Socialist Movement took their protest to the neighborhood, which is predominantly black, instead of a neutral place. "If this march had occurred in downtown Toledo, we wouldn't have had the unrest," he said.

The neo-Nazi group, known as "America's Nazi Party," said they came to the city because of a dispute between neighbors, one white and the other black.

Police began receiving word midweek from officers on the street that gangs were going to descend on the neighborhood in protest, the police chief said. The disturbances were confined to a 1-square-mile area, but the crowd swelled to about 600 people, overwhelming police.

The crowds were eventually dispersed by police in riot gear after about four hours, and the mayor declared a state of emergency that remained in effect through the weekend.

About 200 officers patrolled the neighborhood overnight after the riot, Navarre said. Police reported no problems Sunday, but an 8 p.m. curfew was in effect for a second night.

Neighbors were divided about the city allowing the march.

"They don't have the right to bring hate to my front yard," said Terrance Anderson, who lives near a bar that was destroyed.

Other neighbors said the group had a right to have their say. "Too bad the people couldn't ignore them," said Dee Huntley.

Ragna Rok and Man Son Role

Speaking of bon apetit and Boss Predators, a la Da Black Whole's intro...
















Python Bursts After Trying to Eat Gator

By DENISE KALETTE

Associated Press Writer

Wed Oct 5, 4:04 PM ET

MIAMI - The alligator has some foreign competition at the top of the Everglades food chain, and the results of the struggle are horror-movie messy.

A 13-foot Burmese python recently burst after it apparently tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole, authorities said.

The incident has heightened biologists' fears that the nonnative snakes could threaten a host of other animal species in the Everglades.

"It means nothing in the Everglades is safe from pythons, a top-down predator," said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor.
Over the years, many pythons have been abandoned in the Everglades by pet owners.

The gory evidence of the latest gator-python encounter — the fourth documented in the past three years — was discovered and photographed last week by a helicopter pilot and wildlife researcher.

The snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Mazzotti said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it.

In previous incidents, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

"There had been some hope that alligators can control Burmese pythons," Mazzotti said. "This indicates to me it's going to be an even draw. Sometimes alligators are going to win and sometimes the python will win."

It is unknown how many pythons are competing with the thousands of alligators in the Everglades, but at least 150 have been captured in the past two years, said Joe Wasilewski, a wildlife biologist and crocodile tracker.

Pythons could threaten many smaller species that conservationists are trying to protect, including other reptiles, otters, squirrels, woodstorks and sparrows, Mazzotti said.


Otters?

Hmm ... my "pet name" for autistic folks is "otties," and in Qim Tunes, the word "otter" is used likewise ... a nonverbal autistic man, "Adrian," opens Qim Tunes by writing:

"Dear Joy, I’m excited about coming home. Since our last meeting It has occurred to me that home is where the heart is. Joy is the sweetest otter in the world."


Wasilewski said a 10- or 20-foot python also could pose a risk to an unwary human, especially a child. He added, however, "I don't think this is an imminent threat. This is not a `Be afraid, be very afraid' situation.'"


I don't share Biologist Joe's "risk assessment."

The python, particularly given its size, is reminiscent of Jörmungandr, the sea-snake of Norse mythology, aka the World Serpent or Midgard Serpent, who rises from the bottom of the ocean at Ragnarok, the Norse Armageddon, and is slain by (and in turn slays) Thor in the last battle of "the gods."

The ouroboric Jörmungandr, whose principal weapon is venom (poison, pollution, drugs) completely encircles the Earth -- thus, is equivalent to J.R.R. Tolkien's "One Ring of Power" wielded by Sauron, the "enemy of the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth." Tolkien drew significantly from Norse mythology, and included a dwarf named "Dis" in his works.

Alfta Svanni Lothursdotir has an excellent article on the Norse disir here, noting:

"The word dís (plural dísir) can mean sister, female guardian angel or maid in Old Norse. Grimm links the Old Norse dís with the Old High German 'itis', and the Old Saxon 'ides'. The dísablót or 'sacrifice to the dísir would normally take place during the beginning of winter, perhaps during the Winter Nights blót. Other sources give the time of year as in Autumn ... [P]erhaps one of the best descriptions of the dísablót comes from the Rafn Version of Hevrarar Saga the dísir sacrifice was done out of doors at night and consisted of a ceremony in which a hörgr was reddened with blood by the kings daughter."


The disir were supernatural, ancestral entities which "attached" to living humans, a variant of the succubi/incubi. A hörgr is an "altar" constructed of loose stones or, alternately, a type of "temple" or "sanctuary." Thus, the context is ritual blood-sacrifice, carried out by the feminine (king's daughter) upon the masculine, typically under cover of warfare.

In the modern world, ideo-politics usually substitutes for literal warfare, and is often more effective at accomplishing mass-sacrificial aims, cutting a "wider swath" -- progressive bloodletting!

In the Old English epic Beowulf (composed between 700-1000 C.E.), the Geatish king Beowulf -- a kenning for "Bear" -- fights three "supernatural" battles against the primal trinity of Grendel, Grendles Modor (Grendel's Mother), and an ouroboric Great Serpent/Dragon.

(Another Tolkien synchro -- Sauron's Shadowland is named "Mordor," very close to Modor, and although Sauron was "male," as was Grendel, "Mordor" suggests what depth-psychologist Erich Neumann called the "Devouring Mother," or negative/shadow of the feminine.)

The battle-theme of hero vs. dragon/monster is ubiquitous in world mythology. In Beowulf the lair of Grendel's Mother, as with the Midgard Serpent, is the bottom of a body of water, a cave in a mere (lake) -- and Beowulf must make a "shamanic descent" back through the primordial Chaos/Unconscious/Underworld in order to confront and overcome her.

Grendel's Mother, the Hag, is killed by "Goth King" Beowulf's sword-stroke between the "vertebra" of her neck. In consistent translations, her "backbone" is composed of a series of "bone-rings."

On Christmas Day of the year 2000, probably as a sort of millennial "inauguration," Charles Manson created a piece of "art" related to these themes. [To see a larger version, click on the link above or the graphic below.]
















The area in yellow corresponds, roughly, to the North American continent, with the "southern portion" of Mexico excised or ignored (probably because Mexico isn't part of North America "proper" in shared-culture, and Manson's "race war" armageddon is specific to the U.S.)

The green area is surrounding sea. Thus, the large indentation in the upper-right area of yellow approximates Hudson's Bay.

The red, purple, and brown areas depict aspects, or segments, of the Midgard Serpent, Primal Dragon, Leviathan, Jormungandr, etc., encircling on three sides -- but not quite fully enclosing, at least not YET -- the continent. In some regions, the Serpent is "attached" to the land (e.g., along the "southern border"), while off the Eastern Seaboard, the Serpent's "body" remains slightly offshore.
The large pink/red area off the West Coast and upwards in latitude is perhaps an extrusion, extension, or discharge of the "main body" of the Serpent. At any rate, it's color clearly identifies it as part of Leviathan. More on this section later.

Exactly as described in Beowulf, the main or central portion of the Serpent's "body" is composed of interlocking "bone-rings," consisting of circles-within-circles, interspersed with triangular "scales" or thorns. Like the scales, the inner-circles are reddish, and each contains a "cross" symbol very similar to the signature-mark of the Zodiac killer -- with the cross often extending beyond the margins of the circle. See here for more information about possible Manson-Zodiac connections.

Blossoming up from a region roughly corresponding to the North Carolina/South Carolina border -- and for starters, American Masonry was born in Charleston, S.C. -- is another incarnation of the Serpent, growing in ever-larger brown scales or segments until it leaves land, at which point it takes on a purplish hue. (An alternate, though much less likely interpretation, is that the Carolinas represent the "tail" of the Dragon.)

Named originally for Charles II of England, Charles Town was one of the first European settlements on the continent, granted in 1663 by the King to eight of his pals, set up as "Lords Proprietor."

It's oldest church is St. Michael's Episcopal (1752), and in colonial times its sister city was Boston, MA, with wealthy Bostonians often snowbirding in Charles Town. The town was a flash-point for the Revolutionary War. British warships targeted the steeples of St. Michael's so often, the citizenry eventually painted them black. Likewise, the first shots of the Civil War were fired by cadets from The Citadel on Union ships entering Charleston harbor.

Most tellingly for purposes of this essay, Charleston was -- and to this day still is -- often called The Holy City or Chucktown. Long before I learned this, I often referred to Manson as "Chuckles." Ragnaro(c)k also accords with the "stone" of "Charleston." A "practitioner" would read the city's name as Charles' s-tone, -- that is, occulted within the place-name is a serpentine "sonogram," or S-tone.

(Hey -- as Hunter Thompson often counseled: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!)

Let's return to Chuckles' "artwork."
















Beginning at Charlestown, S.C., and tracing the "brown scales" up across the landmass of North America, the segments resolve into a large purplish blob, thence into an interlocked series of red and brown circles-within-circles, along with red "scales" or "thorns." The large purple patch delineates land vs. sea, a kind of metaphysical "transference zone." To a sorcerer like Charles Manson, this is a method of manifestation, not a static depiction. He is attempting to transmute something from the imaginal/spiritual/occult realms into physical reality.

Once "at sea," the red-hued Dragon's Body appears again to exhibit the characteristic "bone-ring" pattern of the "encircling serpent" wrapped around the western, eastern, and southern portions of the continent (again, sans Mexico). For whatever reason, however, the "triangular scales" on this aspect of the Serpent lack the "Zodiac crosses" within the reddish inner-circles.

On the left of this manifestation, just above the large purple patch, one can make out a "rooster's head," with two red triangular thorns/scales forming its beak. Just below this, three more prominent, red "thorns" form the "hackle feathers" of the rooster's neck.

Such feathers are often used in modern fly-fishing. Our pal Thor went on a "fishing trip" in an attempt to defeat the sea-serpent Jormungandr. Looks like he's enjoying himself! Not sure whether he's gonna bonk the Snake or his companion! LOL!!

















Note that Thor seizes the tongue of the Midgard Serpent. Apparently, propaganda was popular in the old days, too.

Returning to Manson's drawing, the entire image, beginning at the origin or "seed" in Charleston, and terminating in the Arctic Ocean, forms a dread "mythological" entity usually called a cockatrice.

The cockatrice is mortal enemy of the "Archangel Tas" (Michael), as the Midgard Serpent is Thor's bane. Compare the Manson drawing with the Wikipedia cockatrice illustration via the link above. They face in the same direction.

Below is an illustration from Chapter 22 of L.A. Waddell's The Phoenician Origin of Britons, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons. In his caption, Waddell explicitly notes the equivalence of the cockatrice, or Dragon of Death, with the Norse god, Loki.














As captioned, the Hittites used this seal circa 2.500 B.C.E.

So whatever Charles Manson is illustrating, whatever he is conjuring by hand and mind, it's not new, at least in its core manifestation. These are old players in an old confrontation.

Waddell appends the following "prayer," with alternate translations, to the illustration:

The Son Tas has regarded him [the supplicant].
To his Father Ia, into the house he descends and says
'O my Father, the Evil Curse like a demon has fallen on the man!'
Ia to his son made answer . . .
'Go my son, Son Tas!
Take the man to the House of Pure Sprinkling,
And remove his ban, and expel his ban.'"

Or Ia or Indara replies:-
"O Son Tas, substance of mine,
Go, my Son!
Before the [Cross of the ?] Sun-god take his [the afflicted's] hand,
Repeat the spell of the pure hymn!
Pour the (cleansing) Waters upon his head!"

Or:-
"Go, my Son Tas!
Let the Fire [-Cross ?] of the Cedar tree,
The tree that destroys the wickedness of the incubus,
On whose core the name of Ia is recorded,
With the spell supreme . . . to foundation and roof let ascend And to the sick man never may those seven demons approach!"

The "incubus" and "ban" are equivalent to the Norse disir mentioned above. Removal of the "ban" in this formula refers not to a forbiddance, but to a class of female parasitic beings and, more broadly, to pre-monotheistic, matriarchal, serpent-worshipping tribal cultures, adept in sorcery and manipulation individual and collective states, especially unconscious/ecstatic states.

Thor is a "thundergod" whose chief weapon is lightning (the thunderbolt) and by extension, electricity. His base of operations is the sky, in opposition to the sea/underworld, and he's elsewhere known as Zeus (Greek), Illapa (Incan), Hadad (various Semitic cultures) and cognate Adad (Assyrian), Min (Egypt), Parjanya (Indian), Ngai (Masai), and so forth exhaustively. The fact that he is sky-based doesn't preclude incarnation on Earth.

Both North and South America have long traditions, mostly oral, of the Thunderbird. Neil Young's song "Danger Bird" addresses this figure, who suffers from the Ban/Medusa/cockatrice's weapon of petrification. This tune, with its soaring guitar, begins:
Danger Bird flies alone
and he rides the wind back to his home
although his wings have turned to stone


The Maverick Science website relates:

This association of the thundergod with the slaying of a giant serpent threatening to destroy the world forms a recurring and apparently universal motif. The Norse Thor was known as orms einbani, "sole slayer of the serpent." The Iroquois thundergod is described as "having slain the great Serpent of the waters, which was devouring mankind." The same idea is attested in South America: "Among the Arawak, Uitoto, and some other tribes in various parts of South America, it is said that a host of birds successfully killed the great water snake."

Above, we discover the syllable ban and disyllable bani within the Norse word einbani, yet again related to the Devouring Serpent. The "host of birds" is "bird-language" for, roughly, "angels," with the word "host" a helpful clue to the phrase.

Thor/Tas (and cross-cultural equivalents) would have primary responsibility for "removing the Ban." In the ancient world, many disputes were resolved through single-combat. But the South American tribes suggest that such an undertaking, with major terrestrial and cosmological repercussions, would be a "group effort" spanning millennia, not the weekend -- or even lifetime -- project of a Han Solo.


Here is an article discussing the Ban -- who were recently discovered by Science!

LOL!

Contrary to Godling Science, Homo floresiensis has NOT disappeared from the scene. A variety of evidence, which I'll spare you here, strongly suggests that the Ban are still spread amongst the populations of Earth, probably in "dwarf-form" in terms of physical stature. Some, if not all of them, have retained the peculiar abilities and powers they manifested in the ancient world.
Heidi Strengell, in "The Monster Never Dies: An Analysis of the Gothic Double in Stephen King's Oeuvre," reports:

Nearing the end of his usefulness, [serial killer] Burny is at Mr. Munshun's request forced to take Ty Marshall, a promising breaker to an appointed meeting place. The term breaker is used for those slaves of Crimson King who break the beams leading to the Tower, thus aiming at the total annihilation of the universe.
Driven by contradictory urges, this odd serial killer is afraid of the consequences of his actions (Black House 541), but, despite a deadly wound, still lusts for Ty Marshall's "juicy buttocks."
Like the witch of "Hansel and Gretel," he is reluctant to hand over his prey: "A good agent's entitled to ten percent" (Black House 550). Only seldom can a parallel be drawn between a serial killer and a wicked witch from a fairy tale, which perhaps bears further witness to King's genre blending.


The Gothic double of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shares some traits with characters in King's work. First, flawed humanity moves between the two poles of good and evil, causing contradiction and anguish to the subject. Second, the Gothic gnome, that is, the "dwarfish" and "ape-like" half of the personality is hidden at the cost of hypocrisy and oft hideous crimes. Therefore, a disguise is needed, which causes further tension and the fear of getting caught. Tension also intensifies from the constant threat of transformation.
Monsters of the nineteenth century scare us from a distance while at the same time, as Halberstam notes, "We wear modern monsters like skin, they are us, they are on us and in us."


Of course, we don't call them "ban" nowdays. That would hardly be Correct, and no doubt is prosecutable as a Hate Crime!
The Hellenic uber-witch Hecate, similarly, was known to the Celts as Banba, a triple-goddess of war and fertility -- both of which suggest rituals of mass blood-sacrifice. (See, e.g., Frazer's The Golden Bough.)
Sumero-Egypto-Chaldean necromancy, the "Dragon of Death" blood-magick also apparent in the activities and communications of Manson and Zodiac, is gyneocentric and tribal, earth-magick based in Great Goddess Mother/Son ritual and worship.
Although usually "administered" by "priests," and executed by male operatives, males involved in sorcery, wicca, necromantic cults etc., are always subject to the feminine principle. Sometimes they revel in this; sometimes they're unconscious of it.
Charles Manson, for example, has significant "charismatic control" over the Family, particularly its female members -- but this personal dominance masks the reality that Charles, like Zodiac, are sickles, tools, of the old fertility Goddess. As price of his magnetism and occult understanding, he is dominated by the collective feminine. Manchurian Candidates can serve Mistresses as well as Masters.
Also known as the basilisk or wyvern, or as the female chickatrice, the word cockatrice is related etymologically to "crocodile." Like snake-haired Medusa, another sorceress, the cockatrice's power is petrification, primarily infering the ability to freeze the inner life, the mind, emotions and spirit of victims. Physical symptoms follow. The phrase "the personal is political" applies.

The cockatrice is usually depicted with a barbed or forked tail and/or tongue, and with barbed/forked wings connoting its ailities and potency in the spiritual/occult realms, and in the more mundane areas of spoken deception and propaganda. The basilisk/wyvern is consistently associated in "myth" with pestilence and warfare (both spiritual and material).

Manson's triangular "scales" are virtually identical to the cockatrice's "barbs." A Christian interpretation would term them the "Devil's tail," or the "tail of the Dragon."

As mentioned, Manson's cockatrice either originates or terminates in the Charleston area, expanding north-by- northwest via the brown segments. Directly offshore from Charleston is the largest "bone-ring" segment of the Serpent -- which, again, infers an origin-point for Chuckles' cockatrice. Both cockatrice and Great Serpent are consistent in color and design.

Beyond the Charleston point the segments-proper end, and the Serpent's body continues offshore northward up the Atlantic, morphing into the shape of a "standing" or risen cobra. Egypto-Chaldean magick is therefore implicated, and the Serpent is extended in both its natural and supernatural aspects.

The cobra's head gazes across the Atlantic, towards Europe, Asia, and its roots, its "home" in the Old World. Occulted within the head and neck of the cobra is a stocky humanoid figure, with a dark patch of hair and slitted eyes. This figure, which appears male (at least to me) also stares across the Atlantic. He is the controller, the Fat Conductor, the inner-daimon or "brains" of the Great Serpent, which he "rides" through the world.
This daimon may be a Manson self-portrait, but I think he's someone else, someone with a more Zodiac-esque body type, darker-featured than Charles.

In the heartland of the U.S., we find two areas of red triangles or "thorns" connected to black blobs. Color and form continuity suggest gestating mini-serpents, or "children," of the main Serpent body. They resemble ants, centipedes, or more likely, crawling worms/maggots.

Another large black patch is connected in a general semi-circle with the "birth region" of the cockatrice in or near Charleston. Likewise, most of the continent/yellow is enclosed by black borders. The black borders and blotches are probably what they seem -- corruption, corrosion, poison . . . the venom of Jorgmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, which is literally devouring, eating away at the healthy body of the continent and its inhabitants, human and otherwise.

Focusing now on the Hudson's Bay area, the thick black border of the Bay's eastern shore occults a small figure facing west. Only the face, and perhaps upper torso, of the figure is identifiable. Because of its size, I doubt this figure was a conscious inclusion.
The figure wears a triangular/conical hat, and its body resolves into a long, feline tail, white at its tip. It appears to be shooting/speaking a bi-lobed dart, or magickal weapon, from its mouth, out into the greenish body of Hudson's Bay.

Wikipedia reports: "Of the dragon-like creatures, wyverns are said to be the most feline, having a cat-like intelligence and temperament."

The yellow/continent is also scored longitudinally with thin, dark lines, perhaps symbolizing fault lines (not naturalistic, obviously) -- cracks or hairline fractures in the continent (and, by extension, faults in North America's culture/society/body politic/collective soul.)

The area around the cockatrice's head is also scored in a cross-hatch pattern, in an area roughly corresponding to extreme northern Canada, the Aleutians, and part of the Arctic Ocean. The cockatrice has an open beak which appears to spit out three smallish blotches of pollution/cancer/poison into the Arctic. Spellcasting /sonic potency is inferred.

Directly across from the cockatrice's upper beak/left eye, magnification reveals that the smaller two black blotches are humanoid. The figure to the viewer's left is kneeling, with hands extended outward, a ritual or supplicating posture. This figure is connected by a thin black line to a larger black spool/blob to its left.
Just beneath and to the right of the first figure is another, whose legs can be inferred. This figure is likewise pretty indistinct, but appears to have its hands bound behind its back. (The details, admittedly, are small. It may help to enlarge the images with a word-processing program.)

The main body of the Great Serpent/cobra closely follows the hurricane track of the Atlantic/Gulf of Mexico, terminating at the final and smallest round segment in extreme Southern California/Baja.
(Given Manson's detailed Beatles' links, Hurrican Rita (Meter Maid( gets at least a hmmm . . . and her predecessor, Katrina, struck the "mouth of the Snake," the Mississippi River's musical boca, New Orleans, whose Ninth Ward sustained severe damage.)
The tail segment of the Dragon is connected by a black blotch to a serpentine line, meshing with the "a" in Manson's signature. This is not an accident.

Charles' base of operations and activities, of course, was Southern California, specifically (but not exclusively) Death Valley. In his drawing, both the West Coast and the extreme Southwest/Sonoran Desert are heavily purplish and blackened. These are land-masses in direct contact with the main segment-body of the Serpent.
Those with image-editors now should turn the artwork upside down, and re-view the large pink blob off the West Coast. A smiling, ghostly figure -- probably male -- emerges, mirroring and inverting the "cobra-man" off the Eastern Seaboard.
The Grinning Ghost's right "eye" -- like the roving/scanning Eye of Sauron, whose very name is reptilian -- morphs into the thickest black blob in the drawing. His throat area, or chakra, is also prominently black; much occult practice is sonic.
In the Chinese Calendar, 2005 is the year of the Rooster or Chicken, called pinyin, which translates literally as "join together sounds." A black blotch appears at the genital area of the Grinning Ghost, connected to the two tiny figurines previously discussed by a thin black line. These elements are positioned directly across from the beak of the cockatrice, who is their Master and Jailer.
In discussion of the rightside-up aspects of these two small figures, I noted their postures of supplication, with one apparently begging or praying, and the other with hands bound behind the back. These recall the positionings of slaves or prisoners, and here it's important to remember the Zodiac's stated obsession with "gathering 'paradice [sic] slaves' for the afterlife."
The drawing smacks of predation and bondage, and Charles apparently shares Zodiac's zeal for hyperdimensional/spiritual slavery, the obsessions of necromantic magick.
The postures of the two figurines, especially the bindings, suggest Egypto-Chaldean sorcery. In the Egyptian underworld, captives are hung upside-down in the "caves of the underworld" as part of their torture/humiliation/enslavement. Sometimes they are depicted as headless, sometimes not. Often they appear in positions of submission and/or supplication, like Charles' "praying man."
A few minutes ago, while updating this post on October 22, I saw this article on Yahoonews, excerpted below:

Advertising Guru Leaves Job Over Remarks


By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer 46 minutes ago

LONDON - One of the world's most flamboyant advertising gurus has left his job after reportedly telling an audience that women made poor executives because motherhood made them "wimp out."

Marketing giant WPP Group PLC said Friday it had accepted the resignation of Neil French — a one-time debt collector, trainee matador and rock-band agent who served as the group's worldwide creative director.

French made the contentious remarks during an industry discussion in Toronto on Oct. 6. According to a report in the city's Globe and Mail newspaper, French said women did not make it to the top because "they're crap."
Nancy Vonk, a Toronto-based creative director at WPP subsidiary Ogilvy & Mather who attended the event, said French described women as "a group that will inevitably wimp out and go 'suckle something.'"
The comments sparked outrage among many women in the advertising industry.
Vonk wrote on the advertising industry Web site http://www.ihaveanidea.org — sponsor of the Oct. 6 event — that "my jaded jaw hit the floor" at French's comments.
"If our greatest leaders are busy quietly persuading girls they're just not cut out for this gig, how far is this group going to get — the brave ones who soldier on in spite of the discouragement?" she wrote.
British-born French, 61, known for his ever-present cigar, worked as a debt collector, trained as a matador and was agent to the heavy metal band Judas Priest before going into advertising.
He was among a generation of innovative admen — including future film director Ridley Scott and brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi — who made a mark on British advertising in the 1970s and 80s.
"You can't be a great creative director and have a baby and keep spending time off every time your kids are ill," [French] was quoted as saying.


French's remarks are overstated, of course, but that's an understandable response to four decades of cultural censorship, especially concerning "gender issues." French is now rich and old enough to afford the truth and disregard its consequences.
The dissonance in the West between male experience and Approved Reality is vast, and the deepest rent in the American fabric is not race, but gender.
This A.P. story by Ms. Lawless qualifies as an investigative "hit," because Ridley Scott's name appeared "buried" in the story. A couple
days ago I saw Scott's superb epic, Kingdom of Heaven, for the first time. But, so what? . . . why is my "personal synchronicity" relevant to this blogpost?
Well, the primary motivation for the film's protagonist, Balian, to embark on his temporal/spiritual quest was assurance by a 12-Century priest that if he didn't, his recently deceased wife -- who was decapitated post-mortem for the "sin of suicide" -- would spend eternity headless, lost in Hell.
Thus, the sudden, unexpected, and unlikely appearance of the name "Ridley Scott" confirms one aspect of the "investigation," joining the apparently unrelated concepts of necromantic decapitation and feminism.
As in Kingdom of Heaven, a spiritual war or "holy war" is currently at fever-pitch, though it isn't demarcated by Islam vs. the West.
The nations of the West, regressed and conquered from within, lurch into the future without direction, without thought, without leadership -- headless. The iconography and artwork in this essay are "weapons" in that war.


Decapitation is characteristic of Chaldeo-Egyptian necromancy, as illustrated below. Neil French's critique of Western feminism is brusque but appropriate, as he is describing nations in Hell -- regressed to the chthonic Matrix, the underworld Realm of the Mothers.
The Egyptian Book of Caverns, originating in the 20th Dynasty, is reputedly one of the best available records of the ancient Egyptian understanding of the underworld, which they called the "Place of Annihilation."
Reproduced below from Tour Egypt is a cenotaphic illustration from the First Section of the Book of Caverns.


















In Egyptian iconography, the bottom register (level) depicts "hell," the Place of Annihilation. Notice that all these captives or slaves have hands bound behind them, as does one of the figurines caught between the cockatrice and the Grinning Ghost's bespotted genitalia. Check also the coiled, triune-serpents guarding the Cavern entrance and prisoners. The Midgard Serpent and Grendel's Mother likewise live in a waterproof, enclosed cavern at the bottom of a lake or sea. Further, the common use of black to depict the prisoners is mirrored in Manson's illustration of the two figurines.






Again, the bottom, or infernal, register depicts necromantic "paradice slaves," here from the Sixth Section of the Book of Caverns. On the left, three "goddesses" with knives guard and torture decapitated, supine prisoners, their heads mockingly reversed and placed at their feet, a variant upon the upside-down punishment. In the third tableaux from the left, a male and female guard stand in ritual-dominance postures over four beheaded and bound slaves. The slaves kneel like one of the figurines bound between the Grinning Ghost's genitals and the cockatrice in Manson's Christmas 2000.
Both figurines are trapped in a magickal net, illustrated by the black crosshatch lines that form a vast prison-coop in the frigid, isolated abyss of the Arctic Ocean.
Songs are at root incantations, magical expressions capable of creation or destruction. Charles used, and uses, his voice in various ways to affect/effect people and events. Like Tolkien's Saruman, the fallen "Chief Wizard," Charles worked the West Coast during the late Sixties, a ravenous planet drawing many into his sphere.

The sonic potency of voice, crossover between ritual magick and music, is real as crossover between Zodiac and Manson's occult interests.
Both seem obsessed with the "gathering" of spiritual/occult "slaves" or "followers" -- the decpatitated, bound, pleading "enemies" depicted in the Egyptian Book of Caverns.
Zodiac's most stylized, histrionic slaying was the double-murder at Lake Berryessa -- near Vallejo, the vineyards of the Napa Valley (Valley of the Kings), and Bohemian Grove, where the West Coast double of Skull-and-Bones etc. congregate annually.
The vineyard/sacrificed-Lord ritual theme crosses-over (oops!) from Zodiac's Vallejo/Napa Valley killings to Manson via Sharon Tate. Much has been discussed in regard to Manson's interest in her pregnancy and connections to 1968's Rosemary's Baby. And 1968, with its mass trauma inflicted via R.F.K., M.L.K. etc., was indeed a bloodshed year in the dis-spiriting of the American Mind. It was a year of no return.
But it was 1967's Eye of the Devil that most interested Manson and Zodiac. That role -- as the witch orchestrating the vineyard owner/Marquis' rain-sacrifice -- was probably the role that cost Sharon Tate her life.
At Lake Berryessa, underlining the Dionysian/Bacchanalian themes of water/wine, crops, ritual blood-sacrifice, and so on, Zodiac deckrd-out in his "Operatic Executioner" regalia. He held a gun on the couple, but didn't shoot them. It was daylight, and in part, he probably didn't want to draw attention.
However, he then engaged them in a long, drawn-out conversation, including a bizarre rap about being an escapee from a Colorado prison on his way to Mexico. So he likely was "employing dialogue" -- using his voice and the "audience response" as a prop, a contrivance or artifice, a kind of Greek Chorus, part of the event's larger "plot."
At Berryessa, on September 27, 1969, two days before the Feast of St. Michael, Zodiac used his voice ritualistically to both terrorize and "charm" Cecilia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell, age 22 and 20, respectively -- just kids, really, and especially "receptive" -- stabbing them to heighten "theatrical energy," preparing them as his servants/slaves for the Place of Annihilation, an afterlife or parallel Shadowland.
It doesn't matter whether that Shadowland "really" exists. What matters is Zodiac -- and others -- "really" believe it.
To provide "closure" to the day's "play," Zodiac then drove down the serpentine, switchback Berryessa Grade to a phone booth near the Napa Car Wash, not far from Napa State Hospital. Then he called police and taunted them with his voice, leaving his sonic imprint, territorial spoor on the wire and in the air.
Each of the Zodiac's slayings was a re-enactment of an ancient sacrificial drama, the oldest drama of the race.
When Zodiac contacted local media, his cryptograms usually began with the tagline: "This is the Zodiac speaking."
Why, in a letter or cryptogram, refer to oneself as "speaking"? As if one were before the Microphone Knot at a Presidential Address?
In his detailed communiques, Zodiac's intended to implant his "inner voice," his Magickal Voice, en masse into our "inner ear" -- with effects similar to a catchy or powerful tune. Like Manson with Reprise Records, Family "Conserts," and televised legal platforms, Zodiac sought stage and amplification for his voice and the power of his word.
Because Zodiac complemented his "voice" with a variety of other stimuli -- photos, cryptograms, "signatures" on cars, phone calls, the imagined screams of the victims, etc. -- we have a "readymade world" or inner cosmology in our imaginations/minds to which he has entry, influence and (dependant on various factors) control . . . a host for his Personal Infection, so to speak.
A gate, a door ajar via trauma-magick.
That's not Harry Potter.
That's sorcery. Real sorcery.
Egypt's Pyramid Texts, for instance, are actually spells, spoken aloud by the ancient "tending priests" aiding the "deceased" king through his descent and ascent experiences. Egyptian magic is principally vocal and choral. Angels have Choirs. Mansons have Families.
Sonic influence, especially combined with the trauma of bloodshed or death, make long-lasting impressions on the psyche, both collective and individual. The purpose of death-rites with sonic undertones, as Zodiac stated forthrightly, is the "gathering of slaves."
This is the Zodiac speaking.
It is a COMMAND, during which he "expands" in the ether, and his listeners diminish.
Our egoic boundary oscillates, slightly disturbed, and instead of separation via the San Francisco Chronicle, by the nonvisceral "barrier" of observation that makes us safe in body and soul . . . suddenly the Zodiac is WITH US, manifest, SPEAKING alongside our inner dialogue -- and the culture's mass-dialogue.
An image of him forms spontaneously in our minds. He has wormed in, DEMANDING our attention, and, if we're not careful, like any mesmerist masterful in alpha-predation, he feeds and grows, assumes our submission.
Manson and Zodiac have many fellow-practitioners, some of whom don't even know the repercussions of their own works. "Empowerment" through occult techniques is widespread in the West, following decades of strong pagan revivialism.
Other, more organized practitioners, however, are acutely aware of repercussions.








Here is a side-by-side comparison of the "Clock Towers" of Baghdad and Nashville -- two "Featured Speakers" on the "world stage." The image is borrowed from William Henry's companion essay, "The Baghdad and Nashville Connection: A Tale of Two Cities," in which Henry theorizes that these sites, with their Osiric coffin-key layouts, are occult instruments designed to operate on a grand scale in "resurrecting Osiris" and completing the ancient Sumerian duranki -- the link between heaven and earth (i.e., the ouroboric joining of the opposites, the eschatologic sine qua non of sorcery.)
Before dismissing Henry's speculation, look closely at the right-hand image. At its bottom, at either corner, are two greyish buuldings of similar height, with cross-hatch roofing. They're positioned at the "entrance" to the coffin/keyhole, partway up the hill between the "transformation chamber" below and the Tennessee Capitol above.
Both buildings resemble enormous Speakers. Here it's worth recalling that the former World Trade Center was also a twin structure, with vast communicative capacities.
Saddam considered himself the reincarnation of Nedudchadnezzar, and his "Clock Tower" and surroundings, like the Nashville Bicentennial Mall, may be sonic weapons.
Joseph Goebbels hung Hitler's voice, godlike, from speakers all across The Rhineland. Nimrod's chants rang around his Tower in Babylon, each level of the ziggurat representing an occult stage, a planetary passage. The King's Chamber at Giza is a Rock Boombox.






And Bill Graham almost built an ampitheatre at the terminus of Lake Herman Road, site of Zodiac's first lovers-lane-couples slayings, there in the Shadow of ole Mount Diablo.
Bill even had an agreement with the City of Benicia for upcoming construction . . .
. . . until his helicopter ended up dangling like a hung slave from some hi-power-lines, caught like a thief between Napa and Vallejo during a Wildhunt Storm, the copter blades twisted and broken, blackbird wings in an angry iron tree.
Serious business, that Music Business . . . .












Lest I be accused of playing favorites, here's an old painting by Bob Dylan, called "Lo and Behold." A red-clad figure, indeterminate of gender -- but bearing features reminiscent of, perhaps, Down's Syndrome or a similar condition, and wearing a huge talismanic medallion -- holds a hand in ritual gesture over a broken city that's similar to, if not literally, New York. Once again, the connection between music, ritual, and mass creation/destruction is overt.
Bob has a companion song called "Lo and Behold." Like the painting, it has to be "deciphered." I won't bore you here, but a hint: the figure is "be-holding" the City in his/her hand.
In No Direction Home, Joan Baez comments:
There are no veils, curtains, doors, walls, anything between what pours out of Bob's hand onto the page and what is somehow available to the core of people who are believers in him.
Especially when upraised, the hand -- here "flaming" or "gloved" -- has ancient connections with sovereignty, solar/sky deities, and the "world tree" found throughout myth. In the Edda, the proto-Germanic deity Tiwaz, Taz, or Tyr sacrifices his hand to the Fenrisulfr Wolf (i.e., the wolf of war/blood magick) so the other gods could bind the Beast -- a cosmogonic order-from-chaos event.
Diana Paxson points out that the Navajo call evil shamans "wolves." In her "Coming to Terms With Tyr" , she notes:
Among the major symbols associated with Tyr are the sacred post, weapons, and the Hand .... The god whom the Latin writers identify with the Roman Mars is Tyr (the ancient Tiwaz or Tiw), and his connection with the Irminsul supports the theory that he was the original sky-god and lord of the world-tree (note that the Tyr rune is also part of the astrological symbol for Mars)....
According to Nigel Pennick, the "kings" on some decks of old French playing cards carry a scepter or rod on the end of which is a hand.
The sovereign sky-god, the world tree, and the hand form a complex of symbols that go back to an extremely early time. Ellis-Davidson's discussion of the hand symbol in The Chariot of the Sun adds some interesting evidence.
Single handprints are often found in connection with Bronze-Age Scandinavian rock carvings of the sun disc. The one-handed Irish god, Nuadu, was the sovereign of the Tuatha de Danaan (although he was ritually deposed when his hand was cut off in battle and only after he was given a new hand of silver could he reign once more). The hand, whether represented by a palm-print, an armed fist (the Red Hand of Ulster), or a hand at the end of a scepter, seems to have been a symbol of regal authority. In addition to the Ulstermen, a number of Scottish clans have legends in which a chieftain cuts off his hand and throws it onto a piece of land to claim sovereignty. The hand is also, of course; a symbol of law, and shaking on bargain still constitutes a legal agreement.
Nigel Pennick's chapter on "The Royal Centre, Fairs, and Sacred Boards" in Games of the Gods, provides some evidence which may illuminate these relationships. Medieval Fairs were laid out on a grid based on the same principles that governed both Germanic and Celtic concepts of spatial organization, with four (sometimes subdivided) sectors surrounding a sacred center, which was the place of the King.
This center was marked by a pole (representing the sacred tree often planted at the center of a town, and surviving in the Maypole which still stands in the central square of many German villages) at whose top was placed a glove.

When this pole was raised, the fair was open, and the Law of the Fair took effect within its borders. The cry, "The Glove is up!" opens the Renaissance Pleasure Faire to this day. In her discussion of the significance of attaching Grendel's hand to the eaves of Heorot, Ellis-Davidson remarks that it may recall "... an earlier tradition of a great hand which once symbolized the power of a deity." (p. 159). It seems to me very likely that this was precisely the case, and that the glove on its pole at the center of the medieval fairs was in effect the Hand of Tyr at the top of the Worldtree....

In helping to bind Fenris, Tyr not only breaks an oath, but betrays a trust. He and the wolf are linked by more than his hand. In effect, Fenris is Tyr's fosterling. He and the god therefore become the polarized aspects of a single archetype.... Tyr's sacrifice can also be seen as a higher law in conflict with a lower one, or two kinds of power achieving equilibrium. As Odhinn sacrificed self to self and gave his eye to gain true vision, so the uncontrolled violence of war (the wolf) is bound by cosmic justice (the god).
[emphasis added]

If Tyr and the Fenris Wolf are a single being, at least at conception, then this myth concerns the control of the limbic/reptilian/libidic/violent energies in a single being (Tyr), and in the species. Thor/Midgard Serpent, Marduk/Tiamat, Archangel/Dragon etc. are analogs.
Fenris represents greed or lust for war beyond what is necessary, or for mean/selfish purpose, and the Warwolf can possess nations as well as individuals. The Beast is always a polarized doppelganger, a willed unconsciousness of the Shadow that permits atrocities in the name of dualism (Me/Us good, You/Them bad.)
Because war is a kind of power, it's a hard habit to Jones. A war-god's power, after all, is war. In peace he is usually retired. Since he cannot be defeated, the Violent God must bind himself.

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

"Gates of Eden" (Bob Dylan)

Paxson concludes:
One of Tyr's functions is to bind the wolf whether he appears as unbridled destructive fury in nature, the force which impels nations to make war, corporations to rape the environment, or individuals to battle themselves. To serve Tyr, one must learn to deal with both the energy of the warrior and the forces which that energy is meant to control.

The binding of the "battle fury" of nature in conjunction with national destiny and a personal, internal war -- that is, the madness of psychotic nations and/or individuals -- is especially relevant to this essay. Paradoxically, though, a measure of potential to unleashed chaos -- the looming berserker, hand poised over the civilized City -- is requisite to maintaining a balance between chaos and order.
Returning to Bob Dylan's "Lo and Behold": just above the "flaming" or upraised hand may be a yellow "dialogue balloon" emerging from the figure's mouth.
Yet the "dialogue balloon" is empty, suggesting either the occult dimensions of song, or more likely, literal muteness. Supporting the latter interpretation, the yellow-shading extends across the figure's face. No word is manifested, but the potency of the upraised hand (i.e., the figure's gestured-will) is sufficient to raze -- or raise -- the entire metropolis. Power, like the figure's face, is masked and slightly abstracted.
Bob's painting also fleshes-out a comment by Maria Muldaur in Scorcese's Bob-ocumentary, No Direction Home. As Muldaur re-tells the story, a young Bob declines her post-concert offer to dance because "his hands are on fire" -- presumably with the Holy Spirit.
But being with the Spirit and being the Spirit may not be precisely the same. Who is this Spirit? Is it Bob? Is it even a single being?
Bob is hardly mute -- LOL! -- but autistic people often are, sometimes temporarily, sometimes for life. The figure's mongoloid-ish features suggest autism and/or Down's Syndrome, as does the fact that the figure is looking away from the "action." The "action" is not just buildings, but the people of the City. The lack of human depiction combined with the askance gaze is characteristic of autism.
In Lo and Behold, Bob might be representing his own magickal/sonic potency through the figure in red. Bob's "flaming hand" may be raised over the ruined City . . . but I don't really think so.
The figure just isn't Bob-esque. Instead, I think Bob is revealing a functional aspect of a certain "tribe" of persons amongst the human population, with whom he has contact, and through whom he draws inspiration.
He is externalizing his Muse, and displaying its real-world power -- a consciousness concurrent with, yet independent of, his own. The figure is not a projection of Bob's ego, but another being who shares aspects of his consciousness.
It's called music, after all. Not bob-ic!
In Christmas Day 2000, however, whether focusing on the "cockatrice" image, the "black mini-worms," or the Vast Encircling Serpent, there appears no intermediary figure, no buffer, no second-opinion, between the "artist" and the potential/realized threat. Except for Manson's signature, his drawing actually is untitled, as if even a title is too much power to share while Charles stares, fractured and fascinated, at himself.
Both Charles and Bob are powerful sorcerers, of ancient and immanent lineage. Both are servants. Bob probably knows this, Charles might not.
Perhaps one is a maestro, and the other a wannabe, requiring captive audiences -- the difference between fear of God, and plain old animal-fear.
Manson had many music industry contacts in the late Sixties during his singer/songwriter days. Known at that time as "The Wizard," some of his rage may stem from perceived and real rejections by that industry.
In the late Sixties, Neil Young swayed to Charles' song, at least briefly, purchasing a motorcycle for Manson, and apparently recommending him to Reprise Records for a recording contract. To paraphrase the character Amsterdam in Scorcese's Gangs of New York, "It's warmer than you think under the wing of a dragon."
Young once said of Charles:
"He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. He would sit down with a guitar and start playing and making up stuff, different every time. It just kept comin' out, comin' out. The he would stop and you would never hear that one again. Musically, I thought he was very unique. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a living poet."


In "Revolution Blues," Young takes on the persona/voice of The Lizard . . . er, I mean Wizard:
Well, I'm a barrel of laughs with my carbine on
I keep 'em hoppin' till my ammunition's gone
But I'm still not happy, I feel like there's something wrong
I got the revolution blues, I see bloody fountains
And ten million dune buggies comin' down the mountains
Well, I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars
But I hate them worse than lepers and I kill them in their cars.



The final line is the giveaway -- killing people in cars is the Zodiac's M.O., not Manson's -- but Young is correct in connecting the two.
The Laurel Canyon "stars" mention is a lyric doppelganger. Young may suggest that Manson and Zodiac are hunting the "celestial host." Ritual blood-magick relies on the potential "charge" available from victims. When it comes to "paradice slaves," quality counts!
Young's reference to "lepers" conjures an Antichrist imago. Instead of curing and loving lepers, Young-as-Manson hates them -- though not as much as "stars"! Further, one of the most memorable characters in Kingdom of Heaven was Baldwin, the masked Leper King.
Now -- if you've survived this far, poor thangs!! -- compare Manson's drawing with the python-eats-gator A.P. photo at the top of this post. The crocodile, as we've already established, is related etymologically to the cockatrice. Words have hyperphysical dimensions, just like embodied entities, and etymological relation infers both spiritual and material connectivity ("In the beginning was the Word," etc.)

In both photo and drawing, the cockatrice/crocodile appears to burst, grow, or extrude from the "main body" of a Great Serpent.

It takes a dragon to whup a dragon. And most often, as with croc and python, or with Thor and Jormungandr, they croak each other.

Good conquering evil makes good teevee, but down here in Zooville, 'mongst the fields of grey, it's a bit more practical. We hope the Lesser Evil can conquer the Greater Evil. (Then we usually scapegoat and dispose of the Lesser Evil, enjoy the Atonement Rush, pretend We're The Good Guys, and start the Loonie Loop all over again!)
Talk about a "Ring of Power."

Sorcery, shamanism, necromancy, and the modern glut of magico-occult practices are not games. The more they are discounted as mere popular entertainments, the more effective become their practices and adepts.

We inhabit a profoundly strange world, to say nothing of the universe. Both are quite alive -- if, perhaps, not quite fully conscious. Both are stranger than we can imagine.
Much stranger.
Quite a caution.
Whatever Charles Manson and the Zodiac were doing, whatever they were involved in, they are still at it. Big-time and full-time.

One of Manson's overarching interests in murder/sacrifice/occult activity was to trigger the Healter Skelter Race War, prinicpally between American whites and blacks. Because no massive conflict has erupted since the Tate/LaBianca killings, common assumption is that his attempt to manifest race war failed.









How does this drawing make you feel? Is Charles Manson Grendel the Monster, or Beowulf the Hero? Because whatever's happening in that drawing wasn't over-and-done-with in 1969. Manson's Christmas Day 2000 isn't a retrospective. It's his willed prophecy, and his will is very much alive.
Manson's Jormungandr, Midgard Dragon, Great Serpent, wraps around the southern border of the U.S. like an old lover, and makes landfall, perhaps, around the "Africa of the West," New Orleans. The reactions of the Federal Government and the American public to scenes of New Orleans deluged -- many of the stranded being black -- was mixed, to say the least.
Hear That Long Snake Moan, Michael Ventura's devolutionary essay on New Orleans, voodoo, sex, rock 'n roll and sundry other matters pertinent to our subject, helps reveal the occult/spiritual undercurrents that shaped America and not only produced Manson and Zodiac, but mandated them.
They are powerful limbic currents, enatiodromic and ouroboric. On the LaBianca walls, "rise" was written, perhaps a blood-prayer to Manson's cobra, rising from the Atlantic, swollen, voracious, and preternaturally intelligent. "Race wars" need not be won by armed combat; a civilization can also be overturned culturally -- flooded by its mojo, sauteed in its Primal Juice, dipped in its magic cauldron, cooked in its own Melting Pot.
McCartney's song "Helter Skelter" (1968) is a prototypical shamanic descent, in which the narrator, with casual cynicism, describes his spiral incarnation into sub-lunary matter and subsequent descent to "her" -- Earth and its inner Kore, who is likewise experiencing her own nekyia or descent.
Of African/voodoo drumming, Ventura comments:
The drumming and dancing together form an entity from which, in Metraux’s words (and my italics), “emanates a power that affects the supernatural world... If the music and dancing please the spirits to such an extent that they are affected, even against their will, then it is because they themselves are dancers who allow themselves to be carried away by the supernatural power of rhythm.”

Helter Skelter is not over. To say nothing of 9/11, something shifted, something loosened in the American experiment with Katrina and Rita, and much of it concerns racial/cultural assimilation (or non-assimilation) -- the hairline fractures in the American fabric that Charles expresses so poignantly by hand.
And that's to say nothing of the Great Rift, the broken bond between female and male in America and the modern West.
Sorcery and spiritual warfare have always co-existed, hidden, running alongside objective/mundane events. As in the parallel structure of Scorcese's Gangs of New York or Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, or in the artwork of Charles and Bob, our generation is witnessing the scaffolding of power, the hidden hand.
Spiritual awareness and adeptness -- including the darkest aspects of such adeptness -- is the technology of the new millennium, and it is fully resolvable with rationalism and science.
In Stephen King's Christine the protagonist, carrying the feminine christos, says:

It was as if I had seen a snake that was almost ready to shed its old skin, that some of the old skin had already flaked away, revealing the glistening newness underneath.


In the Cthulhu "mythos" of H.P. Lovecraft, the ocean depths are inhabited by the "Deep Ones," a humanoid race grown gigantic in stature and power after milllennia undisturbed.
They can also function, less optimally, on land, and "gigantic" approximates Biblical and apocryphal usage of "giant" -- not physical stature, but great occult/spiritual/mental potency carried across millennia.
Home base of Lovecraft's Deep Ones is the undersea city of Y'ha-nthlei, lying just off the Massachusetts coast [ahem], and their principal contact-point is the "fictional" town of Innsmouth, MA and the land-based "Esoteric Order of Dagon," it's land-human interface "religion," that itself uses Masonry as its own front.
The Esoteric Order worships the Great Deep Ones: Father Dagon and Mother Hydra who, like their fellow Deepies, survive a-la-Moloch, via human sacrifice.
In his "story" titled "Hydra," Henry Kuttner reveals that the "sacrifice" extends beyond the physical plane, and again reminds us -- like Zodiac -- of the inner intent of those seeking "paradice slaves," particularly in our Era of the Mass Mind:

There are innumerable tales of multi-headed monsters, all springing from the actual entity of whose real existence a few have known through the ages. This creature did not originate on earth, but in the gulfs Outside. It was... a vampiric entity, living not on the blood of its victims but on their heads—their brains... Through the eons this being has ravened in the abyss beyond our dimension, sending out its call to claim victims where it could. For this entity, by absorbing the heads and brains of intelligent creatures both of this world and of other planets, emerges with its powers and vitality greatly augmented.


Kuttner's "fictional" description accords with other "nonfictional" texts, which assert that the Great Serpent -- at least in essential aspect -- dwells outside of time -- and is therefore not subject to the usual forms of confrontation, control,, or destruction
Wikipedia, paraphrasing Kuttner, describes the Serpent's method:
The Hydra's worshippers trick others into sending the god sacrifices through a pamphlet known as On the Sending Out of the Soul. The last page of this pamphlet contains a magical formula for projecting oneself astrally. If followed, the formula works as expected—the user is harmlessly transported in astral form to whatever destination is desired. However, unbeknownst to the user, the ritual also brings the subject into contact with the Hydra. The Hydra then merges with the subject's astral self, using it as a host. Anyone present at the place where the astral traveler appears is decapitated, the victim's head taken to become part of the Hydra. Afterwards, the astral traveler is returned safely to his or her original body, suffering no ill effects, except perhaps receiving a terrible shock from what he or she has seen.
In Japanese mythology, the Many-Headed-Serpent is called Yamat no Orochi, and in Greek myth, The Lernaean Hydra.

Note the cockatrice-clawed feet. The multiple heads connote wide organization under a single "authority" or subtle-"Body" (fill in the occult organization of choice), as well as vast intelligence (e.g., CIA, fraternal orders). The crowns suggest earthly power, and here it helps recalling that, as Time Magazine reported, ALL American presidents are descended from European "nobility," and our last two Presidential "candidates" were (and are) BOTH members of Yale University's necromantic Skull-and-Bones society.
Also, check the illustration of the Lernaean Hydra above -- the the circle-within-circle "scales" on its back match Manson's "bone-rings."
The Hydra's spiral tail is meant three-dimensionally, as a "track" that leads not simply around and around, but also DOWN -- into chthonic regression, fulfilling the Hydra's role as Gatekeeper of the Underworld.
If one were a nation "surrounded" by such an energy/entity, one would expect to find violence, overt sexuality, ecstatic experience, and regression to chthonic matriarchy. Sound familiar? LOL
Unsurprisingly, in Greek myth the World Serpent/Hydra/Midgard Beast was (is) a creation of the Mother Goddess, working in alliance with her "son," designed and functioning as "sleeper agents" of primal power. Though in the Greek myths it's Heracles who kills this entity, the individual's name is unimportant (Thor, Perseus, St. George, Marduk, etc.).
The motif is of a mortal or semi-divine human male (i.e., incarnated repeatedly), in deadly conflict with this avatar of the Great Mother (Hera to the Greeks) who represents not merely planetary rulership, but heavenly or extraterrestrial dominion. The struggle takes place "on Earth," because that is the center of materiality -- the most dense plane. But its repercussions are celestial.
The artwork of Bob and Charles document the "rising of the Id Monster" in post-war North America, the unleashing of our individual and collective doppelganger, our Shadow. Fundamentalist regressions (e.g., political correctness, prison-economies, evangelical politics) subsequently entrenched dualism, as a way of "holding back the tide." (Bush Administration's "Evildoers," feminism, etc.)


_________

Tom: Do you want to say anything about what Brent meant by Oz?

Nick: Yes. Oz you. Tom Perry wo you. Rot tutu zoo OE Jojo! ( He may have mentioned Perry here because I had just talked to him on the phone. The statement about Jojo [Geof] is significant. It fits in what was said before about the more destructive type of signs that I would see in the comming year that I believe are directly related to this project.)

Tom: What’s Nick trying to say here Geof?

Geof: Torture it. Rotog to toll.

Tom: Rotog?

Geof: Rok w/k. (2/97 ? Got me)




-- quoted from Qim Tunes




_________


Thanks to J.L. and crew for help with this post. All ashore that's going ashore!