ISIS Performs Blood Sacrifice to Their Mean Pagan Desert gods – James Foley RIP

I do not understand why the Media repeats the Press Releases of Animals and calls this an execution which it is not – it is more than an unjust summary execution of a journalist, which we in the West consider an honorable job.

The thugs that want power at any cost in Iraq / Syria etc. call themselves Muslim, of Islam a religion of peace, that they cause genocide toward minorities, forcing conversion to thuggery - is justification for whatever.

To me, these show executions are not justice but blood sacrifice to some blood thirsty deity and personal fucked up EGO. 

Religion sucks in general. This is abysmal.

My condolences to Foley’s family, friends and co-workers. RIP James.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/19/james-foley-war-reporter-from-new-hampshire-reportedly-beheaded-isis-middle-east/i575JbREyx6HGXHgbvZgbJ/story.html

James Foley, a freelance war correspondent from New Hampshire, was killed at the hands of the Islamic State militant group, which distributed a video that said the apparent beheading was retaliation for recent US airstrikes in Iraq, US officials said late Tuesday.

The officials told the Associated Press that they believe it is Foley in the video, bringing to a tragic end a saga that began when Foley was kidnapped in Syria in November 2012.

Sam Brownback, A Pagan High Priest of the GOP, risen in the Heartland to Define but Not Able to Create true life – a General All Around Catholic Dick in Kansas

GOP - The New Pagan Religion Party (Cult) of White Dicks Only Membership?

George Tiller died a martyr of sorts in 2009 doing his job as a Doctor that performed a necessary female medical procedure for those women.  

Kansas has since been caught up in a wave of the New Pagan Religionists of the GOP clinging to some long gone, obsolete No Rights to Anybody except the possessors of White Penises. (We are still talking human species here?) 

Bloody Kansas has a history of killing those who disagree with you going back to before the Civil War.

In Memoriam - Dr. George Tiller - of Kansas

People like Sam Brownback got little attention in Washington DC. A small fish in a big political pond.  He is making good on becoming a big fish in little Kansas and looking presidential.

Similar to the way the Emperor / god Constantine hijacked Christianity, the Governor / god Brownback of Kansas wishes to hijack, That Which is God’s by way of Caesar.

Jesus clearly defined church and state in his God / Caesar statement. Now that the GOP is a quasi-pagan religion that roots itself without permission in the vagina of women, so too I question why “men” like Governor Sam Brownback, obviously are trying to add a metaphoric inch or two to the size of their erect penis to proclaim “when life begins”.

http://www.pentagonpost.com/anti-abortion-bill-kansas-governor-gets-hands-full-with-controversial-anti-abortion-measure/8345668

Life may be begin at “fertilization” or “conception”, strange adding a phrase like that to the latest abortion bill out of historic Bloody Kansas. 

Calling it “philosophical” leans more to religion than science and more pagan as well considering the strictest definition of pagan as obscure and rural and you cannot get much more obscure or rural in fly over country than Kansas.

It is really fucked up in the heartland, fly over country. 

Sam Brownback is not a proper Pagan God, Tin god in fact. Is not Opus Dei, or so he claims, though his conversion to Pagan Roman Catholicism was in conjunction with members of that famous RC cult.

One important thing to Opus Dei inspired Pagan tin gods like Sam Brownback - Defining life is not creating life. And over and above that when does a soul appear on the scene in that matter.

I was taught in the glory days of post Vatican Two Roman Catholicism that the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were the first man and woman that God, the Diety, bothered to bestow soul on.

Nothing else in the Bible I think even mentions the exact time and definition of soul and never will. 

So in theory if I went back in time and I killed either Adam or Eve before they had their God given souls – would I have been technically guilty of killing an animal or a human being?

This new Pagan God or High Priest of the Pagan GOP religion thing is defining the beginning of life and may have impressive sounding ingredients read off a bottle of snake oil but he, Brownback and his Tea Bag Party Legislature, sure as hell does not have the makings of a genuione real snake oil bottle filled with the true magic elixir by which to bestow soul and or humanity.

You can take a dick like Sam Brownback out of Washington DC but you cannot make him human or stop him from being the really same small dick he has always been, city or rural. 

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Quotes by Hypatia

Hypatia

Sketch by Raphael
School of Athens

“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”

“To teach superstition as truth is a most terrible thing.”  -

Hypatia (of Alexandria) murdered by devout Christians March 415 C.E.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

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Don’t call me a “Christian” anymore!

Beards for the Military Industrial Complex

This blog has evolved.  I have evolved.

I am told and I am witnessing the fact that my old label “This Cultural Christian” does not market well.  People under 40 are turned off by all things labeled “Christian” these days.

The Christian Brand has lost most of its luster. 

Rather than turn off potential readers I am going for the mystery of “X”.  My descriptive is above.  I state what I am.  I am an agnostic, areligionist, X-tian.

Please do not confuse me with that knuckle dragging Christian Political Party Shit. (GOP)

It has been a forty year process to officially merge the Republicans with all things hypocritical and hiding under the label “Christian”.

Jesus is one thing.  I like Jesus.

I believe in G*d.  Not madison avenue toothpaste sold as G*d.

 

But this Christ cult thing worshiping Constantine’s army god is not what I believe in.

I think my turning point came this week when the Pagan majority Supreme Court said it was okay to hate blacks and gays and women and others, especially the disabled as in this particular court case, if you are a tax free church and you don’t want to hire them or you just want to fire ‘em.
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What would Jesus do in a situation like the above  Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison of the LCMS? 
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Tell the gimp to go fuck off? I don't think so!

If you look at those dumb Marines pissing on some dumb slob Muslims in Afghanistan, those Marines are nothing more than a beard for the MIC – Military Industrial Complex.  Are they Christian? You betcha.

Death and Profits are all that Christianity seems to represent these days on the worlds' markets.

There is more God in my pet rock than these political hacks masquerading as religions these days.

If Stephen Colbert can run for President, I want tax free status for my pet rock religion and the right to diss anybody I want scot-free.

MY PET ROCK is the ONE TRUE PET ROCK!  

Contributions greatly accepted for your Pet Rock Salvation. Guaranteed. Etc. LOL

I have some hope for some of those mainstream “Christians” that still operate in intelligence like the Lutheran, Anglicans etc.  Some – not much.

Christianity is a dying religion.  It is perhaps already a corpse in some places (like Italy) and merely being propped up by some dusty empty buildings.

But the ignorant Pagans, Roman Church and the Literalists, Fundamentalists, those who worship the words in a book and do not know how to think or consider those words, well, what the world sees is the insane American Government as it stands to the nations, a “Christian” country. It is of late just a waste of any real people’s time, the Christian part that is, to that world.

I want my America.  I want my country back from these religious fanatics and Christians.

I humbly remain This Cultural Xtian.

Have a nice day.

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“religious liberty” war on non-christians - it’s an old cover story

http://thisculturalchristian.blogspot.com/2011/04/agora-alejandro-amenabar-hypatia-of.html

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Take Christ out of Pagan Christmas – Crucified Santa Artwork? in Virginia

Not Artwork IMHO - Get a Day Job

Tis the season to be angry at the godless consumerism of X-mas.

A display in the Virginia town square came and went and did not become another fake far right Christian GOP religion talking point in the media. Amen.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/crucified-santa-on-display-at-va-county-courthouse-64214/

A display of a skeleton in a Santa Claus suit placed on a cross was erected at a courthouse in Leesburg, Va. It was eventually taken down by an anonymous individual.Julie Grandfield, assistant to the Loudon County Administrator, explained to The Christian Post that the individual responsible for the display went through the system.“Board of Supervisors currently has a policy in place to allow displays on the courthouse lawn,” said Grandfield.

I have stated on more than one occasion that Jesus born on April 17 is not the right birthday boy attached to this Roman Pagan Holiday of Christmas.

I see all the feigned outrage in the public forum of put “Christ back into Christmas”?  Whatever that no-brainer FOX NEWS meme is all about?  Well that equation makes us shut down all the retail outlets selling us pagan junk to properly celebrate this Pagan Holiday ( Birth of Apollo – Jesus’ half brother etc.)

Regarding Virginia putting all points of view on display in a public – kudos.  Regarding the actual crucified Santa thing – not really art – decoration perhaps – another Tim Burton imagination thing – but definitely not art.  Get a day job please etc.

I do not see blasphemy.  Blasphemy is in the heart. Only God can judge in that department when it is truly in the heart.  Point is – have a heart to begin with in order to enter the equation and or discussion etc.

Have a nice annoying Pagan Holiday.  Merry X-mas.

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Quintus Aurelius Symmachus – Victory (Nike) - Tolerance - Ecumenism

A sacred shrine of the goddess Victory (Nike) was removed from the Roman Senate chamber in 382 C.E. by one Roman emperor.

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, a Roman politician, statesman, scholar and Pagan appealed to the next emperor in 384 C.E. for the return of this sacred feminine symbol that had been in the Senate for over four hundred years and placed there originally by Augustus himself.

An appeal to religious toleration and ecumenism within the Roman family of religions by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus was made to the politically weak and notorious pedophile Roman Emperor Valentinian II, and on the fence in terms of beliefs in the theology monopoly sought by Constantine’s Christian Cult.

"And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for the truth. Not by one avenue alone can we arrive at so tremendous an understanding of the mystery, the all, of the Universe." -- Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

To which a reply for puppet emperor Valentinian arrived from the anti-feminist, self-hating homosexual bishop of Milan, Ambrose, which set the tone of religious intolerance for another thousand years in western culture. One can only imagine what words came out of such a twisted human mind and heart.

Victoriam et nudus ante frustra neque ad militiam neque ad gloriam Christi Dei nostril 

The naked tits of Victory serve no purpose, either to the army or the glory of Jesus, our God

The magic sacred trinity of power: the Emperor, the Army and the Church, was born.

And, also sealed, for another eleven hundred years, the standards of Catholic religious intolerance and Catholic Bigotry until the arrival of the great Christian Reformer Martin Luther in 1517.

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

I have been aware of this temporary Hippie like tent city celebration in the Nevada desert for maybe a decade or more. 

At first, it looks exotic, almost Road Warrior exotic as in the movie, as in post-apocalyptic culture.  You may see the avant-garde art, smell cannabis, the reverence for all things green and or ecological and I see a party in the desert for 50,000 people where you hang out, drink and kill a few days in the heat.

Supposed to be a "spiritual" experience for some.  (If there is no cell phone connection to the rest of the planet as stated, that is perhaps a good start.)

Been in the desert. Done that.  Camping in the desert in the summer is for fools, crazy tourists, old hippies and kids hanging out on mom and dad’s dime.

 Whatever.

Black Rock City Nevada – Burning Man Festival

They build some pagan like wooden man and temple and burn them down at the end of each festival which is the week before and including Labor Day in the U.S. each year.  But it’s not pagan.  It is art.  Or the usual BS on such plane of things pseudo-intellectual and ar-tis-tic.

Burning Man, Black Rock Playa

Navigate the many photos in the above link/blog to touch some the magic of an old fashioned happening American, Planet Earth style.

The festival started in the late eighties in San Francisco, where else, and migrated to the desert shortly thereafter.  I believe this is the twenty-fifth year of the festival.

(view from the air)

Do Corporations Have a Soul? – Vatican?

The United States Supreme Court decided in 2010 in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, that corporations are to be considered as people and therefore cannot be limited in the amount of funds given to promote free speech and propaganda under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Fine. Well. Good?

Mitt Romney got caught in a heckling match with people at the Iowa State Fair today when it came down to the issue of taxes and paying off our national debt.

Somehow, mere common ordinary people think that Corporations as people should be taxed according to blood and flesh people rates. Romney no doubt thinks that corporations are elites and the new tax exempt royalty of the United States and as such should be taxed according to the privileged ( King George III ) rate of taxation. 

DO CORPORATIONS HAVE SOULS?

What is the Vatican’s position on this important culture war issue in the upcoming American watershed Culture War election of 2012? Now that the Mormon Church has apparently signed off on this new species of unbaptized entity in control of our lives?

If they have souls, should they be baptized?  Are they Pagan?  How can a Christian nation be led by Pagan Corporations? Are there any true Christian corporations outside of true Christian religions etc.?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Romney to Hecklers: ‘Corporations Are People’

Mr. Romney was speaking at the fair’s soapbox Thursday morning, but when it was time for the question-and-answer session, the mood turned heated, with a small group of angry hecklers calling on Mr. Romney to support raising taxes on the wealthy to help fund social entitlement programs.

“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” Mr. Romney said. “One is we can raise taxes on people.” 

“Corporations!” the protesters shouted, suggesting that Mr. Romney, as president, should raise taxes on large businesses. “Corporations!”

- “Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No they’re not!”-

Are they?

Isis, Horus, Serapis - IHS - a Pagan Trinity?

I have to wonder when the Mary cult thing in the RC church got started.  It definitely was after Constantine hijacked the faith to suit his military and personal ambitions. 

In a way the mother child icon is thousands of years old.  One has to speculate that maybe all this Mary stuff comes out of Egypt.

There was that church father Cyril of Alexandria who insisted that his coinage of the phrase “Mother of God” was the perfect antidote of whatever flavor of the month heresy was spreading in the young church throughout the superstitious middle east of the time.

“Mother of God” in a way ended the – which came first, the chicken or the egg – Gnostic conundrum of the early church.  It does make Mary an equal of Jesus.  Worthy of equal worship?

A product of a virgin birth has the same DNA as the parent from which it was cloned, though apparently the sex is different.  The spiritual end of the equation or the father or the scientist involved in an experiment of the creation of a child so to speak gets as complicated then in the past, the same as similar real scenarios that exist now in science.  It’s all a matter of labeling and marketing the product, is it not?

But let’s put aside whatever religion bashing you might think that this is.  In terms of modern reality, if Isis was still a viable goddess worthy of worship by the majority of the population, a modern translation would sell better than the ancient myth. 

The modern translation of some future society that will worship Isis again after an atomic apocalypse goes something like this.  The last woman on earth went to a still operating sperm bank and obtained the frozen semen of her dead five star general husband, inseminated herself, and the human race was reborn. 

In terms of ancestor worship alone, a thousand years down the road, the Isis figure would stand out in all human culture and the story with its plausible historical sequences would be accepted as truth. 

“Mother of God” was a term the Egyptians felt comfortable with and in terms of a visual, you have the Isis Horus statue that existed all over the Roman empire from Britain to Alexandria.

In a way I am not sure there was a trinity thing in Egyptian mythology and or religion. 

The assertion by some that I.H.S., a Christogram, really represents the pagan trinity of Isis, Horus and Serapis is probably not true. 

I do find Serapis to be a fascinating god.  He was totally molded by the new Greek rulers of Egypt, the Ptolemies, descendant from Alexander’s conquest of Egypt.  The Greeks did not like the mix of animal with humans in the pantheon of Egyptian gods.  So, they invented the creature known as Serapis, mixing the name Osiris with the name of a bull god Apis.  Serapis was the dominate Egyptian male god for hundreds of years until the last days of paganism at the end of the fourth century.

No doubt when Cyril and his Christian mob took over the last remnants of  the pagan establishment, idols got broken or maybe just chipped a little.  The horns came off of Isis and the measuring cup came off Serapis’ head.  In any case, I have no doubt that the icon of Jesus to this day is really a recycled image of Serapis.  A cultural void left by Isis, mother of Horus and dad Serapis soon got filled in with the icons of the new gods of the eastern church. 

The old and new Pantheons in Rome

I love architecture. Everybody knows about the Pantheon in Rome. It is almost two thousand years old and it is virtually intact.

It is the only intact ancient Roman, still functioning, original building in existence.

The Pantheon and the name imply was a home or a temple to all the gods of Rome.

It of course got turned into a church somewhere along the way. The pagan idols got scraped away and replaced with Christian idols of the saints etc. It also got an interior face lift during the Renaissance with a lot of marble and design and whatever.

The most important feature of the Pantheon is the Oculus, the eye open to the sky in the center of a vaulted circular concrete ceiling/roof.

Hadrian designed the Pantheon to be a solar calendar. Indeed the sun, through the oculus, goes through the front door on the June 21st Solstice.

The only thing that saved this pagan temple from destruction was its construction, very hard to destroy, and its being dedicated to the catholic earth goddess Mary in 609 by bishop/pope whomever.

What I find interesting is that when it got its Renaissance makeover was that Rome’s Pantheon moved across the Tiber River to the new Saint Peter’s being built.

Of course you are going to say that Saint Peter’s is filled with statue after statue of Christian saints and not pagan idols.

If a second century Roman got swept up into a UFO and was frozen and came back to today, deposited back onto the streets of Rome in his toga and he saw the present church of Mary and the Martyrs, he might wonder what had happened to the gods.

If our ancient visitor might by chance catch a glimpse of the one of the tallest structures in Rome today, if he walked there into present day St. Peter’s he would cry and realize that they moved the Pantheon across the river to Vatican Hill.

Whatever.

Tale of Sainthood and Three Popes

The ancient Romans used to cremate their dead. Then they ran out of fuel and then burial underground in catacombs became popular with most Romans, as was already popular with the Jews/Christians in town.

One of the legacies of this bone ossuary type thing with Christians became this worship of bones and or relics from ancient Rome onward.


I thought it quite disgusting from a western secular civilized sense when I saw a picture of Joe the Pope kissing a vial of John Paul II’s blood in some silver reliquary at the beatification service on May Day, May 1, the great eternal pagan earth thing.


John Paul II lowered the high standards, Sacred Tradition, that got put into place centuries ago to document and certify so-called saints within the pagan sect and or RC sect of Christianity.


Indeed, I was quite disgusted when then tore John XXIII’s eternal rest from him in order to put his body on display in a glass case in St. Peter’s Basilica awaiting his second miracle to make him a saint.


And of course, you have the so-called Hitler pope of Pius XII and his ongoing PR war with Zionist propaganda against him that he did not save enough Jews when he was CEO of the catholic religion business during WWII.


Most accounts will say that John Paul II helped bring down the hegemony of communism. All well and good. But was that a moral thing or a political thing? Tough question.


Anyway, his blood, in other vials, is at home in Krakow and is being used to raise money for a John Paul II memorial church/shrine. Relics have always been a great way to bring in the tourist/pilgrim money. That, and the sale of indulgences etc.


Hell, even I in the secular world would pay a buck to see Walt Disney’s frozen head. But when you do the fantasy magic relic thing on the so-called religion side of the aisle, well, it just seems so primitive to me.


Perhaps it is the fact that John Paul the Great was on the throne for so long. Many political and moral issues got entangled together and John Paul more or less with his crony underlings covered up sexual abuse by their clergy for so long as well. That, to me, comes under the heading of mismanagement and not sainthood. But then again I am only a Cultural Christian and not a catholic Christian.


Pius XII, and I have done much research on him, lasted nineteen years. His hottest critics do not see that as a CEO he wore many hats. And that is his problem as well. There is too much documentation to hold him accountable for the actions or inactions of his bureaucracy. One day he made efforts to save Jews and the next he was totally indifferent to their plight or so it would seem.


That he, as a lifetime diplomat, was more the first Appeaser with Hitler in Europe, setting that precedent, in that he as the Vatican representative made and signed a bad treaty between the Vatican and Germany in 1933 in order to get on with his greater career ambitions back at the Vatican.


Pius XII, by his silence, tried to save the institution founded by Constantine. He did so at the expense of Jews, Catholics in Poland and the Balkans, Orthodox Christians, as well as Protestants dissenting against the Reich. He let a lot of people down for the sake of a lot of institutional dust, marble and glory.


The two career politicians, John Paul II and Pius XII, are only eligible for sainthood after they changed the rules of the game in the 1980s, moving the outfield to fifty feet and everybody gets to have five hundred homeruns per season now, that is, if in retrospect you are found worthy, and your blood or relics can be sold to raise cash etc.


Angelo Roncalli however, John XXIII, broke and bent the rules and directly saved not hundreds of Jews like Pius XII, but thousands. He did so not for ambition it would appear but for the sheer humanity of doing what was right and within his limited powers to grant and act in a time of great moral crisis during World War Two.


John XXIII deserves the title of saint. He earned it. He deserves it and would make it under the old six miracle requirement, 4 and 2 miracles, for sainthood, and not the current saints on steroid rules, 1 and 1, put in effect by General Wojtyla, the prince bishop of Krakow and Rome.


Have a nice day.




Pagan Transcendency into the Divine

Christianity is not a holistic religion in the ways that ancient religions were concerned with the whole and the parts of the whole and the interdependence of those parts.

By strictest definition, the word pagan means rural. In the context of ancient Rome with it hundreds of official and non-official gods and temples, pagan was a label for a country bumpkin religion with a country bumpkin god etc. As such Rome was the big time and so were its gods.

Along comes Christianity and every non-Christian religion gets a pagan label and then gets the heave ho off the side of the boat. Past wisdom, culture and insight got tossed as well. A respect for nature got a bad rap and label in the Christian stream of thought thing.

I have to laugh when I hear the apocryphal story of the mother of Jesus coming to live her last days in Ephesus and living with Mary Magdalene.

I do not think that that happened. Ephesus was home to the largest and grandest Greek style temple on earth, pictured above, and dedicated to a Greek earth goddess called Demeter. The temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Demeter can also be Gaia etc. The Roman version of the name Demeter is Diana.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the best you can do for a basic earth goddess in the male dominated monotheistic Christian religion. With a handful of sentences mentioning her in the NT, Mary is the stuff of myth and legend and not based on much sacred scripture.

I was doing some recent research or refreshing my memory from Freshman highschool English class whereby we had to memorize all the names of the Greek and Roman gods as a background to reading stories of ancient mythology.

What’s wrong with myth? Nothing. Before there was culture or churches and mosques, there was myth. Myth is the verbal and later written down sharing of culture around the small community nightly fire. Tribes are smaller than modern day countries. Myth is no longer small. Small myth sometimes now covers big modern countries and cultures but not too well. Something missing perhaps in old myths not properly retrofitted to today. As such, most myth is relegated to obscure storage and forgotten library shelves.

Myth or no myth, the western culture follows ancient Rome’s hatred of Nature to this day. Rome is long gone. Western civilization is not far behind using the British Petroleum’s behemoth haphazard failure to manage nature responsibly as a watershed mark in human history.

Do we finally take macro responsibility of the planet or do we, and all cultures globally, continue to ignore our environment? Our platform of life, on which we see life happening on many levels, must be shared with other living creatures in the oceans and on the lands. One species, if it goes extinct, sets the stage for other extinctions including our own species.

The ancient religious myth that God set us in change of Nature is a poorly written piece in that it leaves out the implied statement that we must take charge of nature responsibly.

I am not talking Neo-Paganism here. I am talking about resuscitating those portions of ancient culture that saw, felt and acted in response to the key points of nature that cause mankind to survive and prosper.

Gaia as the earth goddess is not really an ancient concept. Gaia as resurrected myth is an accumulation of many ancient earth goddesses. And what are earth goddesses? They are symbols of the sacred feminine.

The west and its hatred of nature is mixed with hatred of women in the mean desert monotheistic religions. Nature is buried along side with the feminine. The Roman military calendar replaced the lunar calendar. Conflicts were settled in blood along with the destruction of ancient pagan belief systems, based many times on nature. A world religion like Hinduism is based on many previous cultures and many previous cultures’ beliefs, gods and goddesses. Inclusive is one way to do religion.

Christianity, if it wants to survive must look differently at the world and be part of nature, God’s nature or be prepared to quickly, at this point in time, fade out permanently of historic view.

Part of a culture war in recent years in the west, or more accurately America, is between the dying western culture and against Secularism or Neo-Paganism. Neo-Paganism also goes by the name of Pantheism, whereby you believe in many gods instead of the mean singular desert gods of Judeo Christian Islamic monotheistic myth.   The many gods or idols that some secularists or neo-pagans would seem to worship are science, technology, cars, fast food, fashion, and greed and or success.  Any means to succeed including warfare are okay so long as you win at any cost.  Any cost these days means at the expense of humanity and the fragile nature of our planet.

Of course, the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims do not all agree that they are talking about the same god. As such and to such people, I label their beliefs myth. There seems to be many gods even amongst the so-called monotheists.

Transcendence into the energy of the universe is possible on any level, at any time and in any culture.

Transcendence into the concept of God is a way pagans used to channel into the Spiritual. The universe did not live, breath and evolve for a billion years waiting for the one true religion (there are so many) to finally arrive on this planet.

The ancients, the pagans, the pre-Christians did a thriving business in many belief systems. Those forced from the scene belief systems were many times balanced in being male and female. Transcendence into the energy of God was possible within some of those belief systems. Human or animal sacrifice though crowded out the clarity of any hoped for vision of God as we think of Him today.

Western civilization is in a way an extension of a single male god myth – now gone sterile over time. Western Civilization on the religious level is an extension of a long, out of date myth created by Constantine. The forced male only paternalistic religion thing does not work anymore in a total member, total cultural global society. That the culture attached to that lone god myth has perhaps travelled as far as that culture and myth can travel.

Time to think outside the sterlile (at present) western Christian box.

Any ideas I have at the moment are to restore at the very least the regular value of the feminine if not the sacred feminine back into western culture and its institutions in order to save it at this critical time in history.

Time to re-examine some of the ancient pagan ways of reaching out to the spiritual and the Divine that are in true balance with Nature and Nature’s God / Goddess.

Candlemas - Groundhog Day

Punxsutawney (puhnk-suh-TAW'-nee) Phil, a groundhog of Punxsutawney Pa. saw his shadow today and there will be six weeks more of winter. It is a quaint custom brought to Pennsylvania by the Germans from their European back woods. It blends in with centuries of paganism and this date February 2, which is one of eight important days on a solar Celtic calendar. In Pagan myth, the animal coming above ground to seek a shadow and searching for Spring is either a badger or a snake.

The snake of course gets the raw deal in the Adam and Eve myth. Adam, a man, blames Eve, a woman, who blames the snake, a snake. In any case the Romans, who hated all pagan beliefs except their own, stamped out this paganism or these nature based religions, well passed the reality of a Roman Empire and continuing with its official offshoot of the Roman Church. The RC church made this date Candle Mass day, a day to bless all the candles to be used in the church in the coming year.

The blessing thing springs from a passage in Luke 2:22-40 where Jesus’ parents take him up to the Temple and pay for animal sacrifice for the newborn forty day old child. It was also a day of purification for the mother because birth somehow was thought to be some nasty unclean thing and you had to purify yourself, more cash and more animal sacrifices, to make things right with the Temple. The Roman church did not celebrate this holy day as vigorously as the eastern orthodox Christians. It is all a matter of choice and preference and regional clinging to ancient pagan customs.

I remember as an altar boy there was a tradition that a woman would meet the priest in the sacristy, pass him a few bucks and ask to be “Churched”. It was nothing more than meeting her at the altar rail with an altar boy holding the holy water container as he blessed this woman who had recently given birth. I don’t know if that is or was an official ritual or something traditional and lingering on from the temple days of Mary and Joseph and Jesus.

What strikes me is how the Roman church plays down the Jewish rituals in favor of blessing candles to both forget the Jews and cover up the pagan animal shadow thing in the back woods of Europe. If you can divorce yourself from your Jewish source you can also reinforce your Roman Empire traditions against nature too.

Another bizarre ritual took place on February 3, Saint Blaise day. Patron saint of wool and throats. We school children would enter the church and be lined up alone the altar rail and the priest would take two candle joined with a red ribbon in the form of an “X”, put the candles right on your neck and mumble a quick prayer. I did not like this blessing of your throat with the newly blessed candles from February 2nd as the priests usually were in a rush and usually ended up not being gentle with the quick movement of a cold wax candle against your throat.

Rituals, superstitions, so called holy masking the so called secular and pagan – does not matter anymore. As the world rushes to the future everybody is forming their own personal belief systems independent of any institutional church.

Ran into this article about how the Air Force academy in a priority to meet the religious needs of its cadets was making room on top of a hill for the Druids and Wiccans – yes Druids and Wiccans at the Air Force Academy.

Earth religions get worship area at AF Academy

The Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worship area for Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers, school officials said Monday.

A double circle of stones atop a hill on the campus near Colorado Springs has been designated for the group, which previously met indoors…

"It's about our commitment as airmen to protect freedom and defend freedom. To me this is a freedom thing," he said.

The school also has worship facilities for Protestant and Catholic Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists.

There is something for everyone these days. The world has changed and then again it has not. Ask Punxsutawney Phil.

Avatar --- Greed, Ecology and Interracial Love

Avatar, as a movie, is a story about Greed, Ecology and Interracial Love.

The greed represents the big ugly corporation, let’s say a Halliburton as example, about to plow under a whole race and culture for the sake of the quarterly bottom line.

The ecology is about living in balance with nature, respect of which is somehow pagan in the eyes of the people who brought you denial about global warming.

It is a story of Interracial Love in the retelling of the basic John Smith / Pocahontas ecounter of learning from one another on many levels - from the different angles of European versus Native cultures and on the old eternal theme of the male female level of human natures.

The movie is set in the future and on the rain forest like planet of Pandora inhabited by blue skinned beings/people – shades of Star Wars with a few more anthropological footnotes.

There is of course the high tech thing, science fiction within the movie storyline and the 3D screen effect of depth and a different movie perception.

The big style of the big Cameron movies seems to have a baroque quality matching the style though not necessarily the substance of the artist Caravaggio. In any case everybody is talking “Cameron” on this new flick the same way they used to talk “Caravaggio” when one of his new canvas’s hit town four hundred years ago.

Many religious and political nuts have come out of the woodwork to frame this artful masterpiece by Producer, Director and Writer James Cameron of Titanic and Terminator fame – frame it as some sort of Pagan Green Worship thing.

References to Americans and foreign wars in Iraq comparisons abound but I am told this old west Cowboy and Indian, recycled Pocahontas story, script, was sitting on a shelf long before the Neocon age of Bush 43. Cameron had been waiting for the technology to arrive to do what he and his artistic vision wanted to express on the screen ( thus my comparison to Caravaggio ).

And with TV documentaries, (perhaps projects of love) The Exodus Decoded (2006) and The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007) with fellow Canadian and Orthodox Jewish “Naked Archeologist” Simcha Jacobovici - charges of Paganism, Druidism and Pantheism as labels attached to this film seem totally groundless – the grist of fool critics with alternate agendas.

Indeed, the poltical right, religious right, do not seem to know how to deal with different ideas on the stage of Hollywood success. This staking out and preparing boilerplate fodder to throw at different ideas mixed with recycled westerns, love stories and anti-war themes – with this brilliant film – is so anti-future and so anti-global. Get a life. (go visit Pandora)