But They're Expected To Be Reasonable Now

"Political expression on the Left...often mixed politics with occultism — magic and witchcraft along with costumes and symbolism drawn from Native American religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For example, at the mammoth antiwar protest near Washington, dc, in October 1967, Yippies performed a mock-exorcism to levitate the Pentagon and cast out its demons."

They're Being Lifted Up (For A Bigger Let-Down)

Please, next, let them beg the Indians for a rain dance:

Texas Governor Rick Perry called on Texans to pray for rain as cooler temperatures on Thursday helped firefighters contain wildfires that have charred more than 1.5 million acres across the state.

Perry, a Republican, sought increased federal help in combating the blazes last weekend and urged Texans to ask the same from a higher power over the Easter holiday weekend.

"Throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer," Perry said in a statement.

"It is fitting that Texans should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this ongoing drought and these devastating wildfires."

And then he's going to ask them to throw virgins into volcanos, find a voodoo priest to burn candles,...the possibilities are endless.

James Arthur Ray And The Secret Regarding His NewAge "Training" (What NewAge "Training"?)

There's an Arizona Republic article, about the NewAge murder trial of James Arthur Ray, that's so good I don't know what to quote. Reading it is like getting a crash course in what this blog is all about, whether I'm discussing NewAge spirituality, NewAge in politics, "ancient teachings", or any other aspect of contemporary fraud that catches my interest.

I have pointed out before that it is in the court of law - not public opinion - that these bastards start to fold like napkins, and Oprah's buddy from The Secret is discovering how true that is now:

Those attending the Spiritual Warrior retreat did not know that Ray already was being accused of misappropriating and misusing others' teachings without permission or proper training. They did not know that his claims to have been initiated into three shamanic traditions, gaining expertise in a variety of spiritual and esoteric teachings, were either exaggerations or questionable.

And they did not know that Ray's way of running a sweat lodge violated the spiritual and safety practices of the Native American traditions he claimed to follow.

Go - it's all broken down in the article - read the whole thing for yourselves. As I said, it's great, and a lesson in how the entire world-wide scam of NewAge is run. I don't care who it is or what they're up to (Ray has Bob Proctor, another notorious scammer from The Secret, testifying for him) it's all a lie, and a dangerous one at that.

They all have blood on their hands and, yeah, that even includes America's "moral leader" Oprah - without whom most of us would never have even heard the name "James Arthur Ray" to begin with - and, thus, those three people he's on trial for killing would still be alive.

Oprah gave James Arthur Ray credibility - as well as all the other charlatans who have ever graced her program - and she deserves to be on trial with them.

NewAge Nazis Made Sweatlodge Into An Oven

And - we must repeat - James Arthur Ray was introduced to the general public by The Secret's Rhonda Byrne and, later, through promotions with Oprah Winfrey.

Don't Tell It Straight (When Somebody's Crooked)

Folks, every so often a story appears that can leave even an old hand at following spiritual beliefs shaking his head in wonder that any reporter in America would dare to try and play it straight. Try this for an opening gambit:

"Minister and licensed massage therapist Janae Thorne-Bird was disrobing at her healing center in January, preparing to perform her most sacred ceremony, the Ananda Nirvana, which is so much more than a massage. Bird was about to open the chakras, or centers of energy, for a new member of her church."

Getting a queer feeling down in the pit of your stomach yet? That sense you know what's coming, though you have no fucking idea what's in store?

I did. See, when I read that kind of paragraph, I instinctively think, "Oh, boy, here we go!" like in those Bud Light commercials. But, like I said, you have no idea. Let's summarize:

Good ol' "Minister and licensed massage therapist Janae Thorne-Bird" has been busted for touching a cop's dick. That's because "She believes that a person’s body is the only temple necessary to worship God and that it’s her religious duty to share her holistic medicine."

Uh-huh. How'd she figure that out? Well:

"She took a two-week trip to Colorado’s Windstar Foundation, the educational and conservation experiment founded by her idol, folk singer John Denver. [Her husband] Kurt went along, but spiritually, Janae was alone. Environmentalism, humanism, Christian Gnosticism, American Indian mysticisms and Asian spiritualism—virtually the entire New Age milieu was represented among Windstar’s guests, and Janae loved all of it. 'I was transformed. My heart chakra opened up to where it was a born-again experience,' she says. 'I determined, "this is my path." '"

Of course she did. That would be the "Thank God I'm a country boy" singer - and weirdo est evangelist - John Denver. Boy-howdie. "Life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle", indeed, because - with that goofy haircut and glasses - I can't see how he was capable of convincing anyone of anything! But then, I'm not "spiritual".

But the good minister is.

See, Thorne-Bird was once a Mormon, and got herself into some polygamist hoochie-koochie with her husband and up to three other "wives" that "had great sexual energy together" - except for the jealousy thing. And I almost forgot about (another popular NewAge theme) the child that died because - like Jenny McCarthy and a lot of other NewAgers recommend - she didn't get her baby immunized.

Oopsie!

Anyway, Thorne-Bird eventually left that situation and started pondering, as NewAgers will, life's big questions:

"During a vision quest in the mountains of Higher Ground in 1998, not long before she left, she had a revelation that she was an ancient soul whose return to the Earth had been foretold by prophets past. She was told that her mission was to unite the world’s people in peace and love. The Lakota people of the Great Plains have a legend of a mystical White Buffalo Calf Woman who brought the tribe a peace pipe, a sacred tool. In Heart Wide Open, Janae’s 2010 self-published autobiography, she writes, 'Was I that White Buffalo Calf Woman? Or was I simply an archetype or perhaps even a wannabe?

Whatever the case, Janae felt compelled to pursue her revealed mission."

Yea - "whatever the case" - White Buffalo Calf Woman or not, she was going to plow ahead - and plow ahead she did, right until, somehow, a close friend got killed (how do these things keep happening to those around NewAgers?)

Then she met lots of sexual "creeps", and got associated with what American indians call a con man “plastic shaman”, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At this point, I've heard this sad/evil story - including the dead kid - a billion times before.

Hell, I've lived it.

Long story short, the crazy bitch is in trouble with the law (for touching the cop's dick) and is now claiming she shouldn't be busted for prostitution because - are you ready for it? - she's sooooo religious! So religious, in fact, the rest of us just don't understand:

"It’s like Taoism. Once you try to define God, you’ve lost it. You have to experience it,' she said."

Yea - with her - um, naked.

For, like, $200.00 a session.

Funny, one of my best friends is a professor of religion - the Tao, specifically - and he goes to China every few years about it, but, somehow, he never mentions anything like this stuff.

He's also never killed people he loved, been associated with sexual "creeps", or “plastic shaman”, or got busted for touching a cop's dick for money, either.

But then, obviously, he's not a NewAger, so it must be he - and not "Minister and licensed massage therapist Janae Thorne-Bird" - that's got this "spirituality" stuff all wrong.

I'll have to tell him to work on that.

Conservatives: Missing The Forest For The Trees

"Probably no one has coined as many memorable phrases about belief than GK Chesterton. His key insight was to observe that 'human nature simply cannot subsist without a hope and aim of some kind'. Hope is like a drug which humanity can’t survive without. Therefore hope — and the faith that it will be fulfilled –  is 'as dangerous as fire.' The wisest treat it with caution because it can be twisted into a noose around their necks; but the most careless of humanity imagine themselves above it and fall into it more completely than those who see it from what it is. Chesterton wrote that 'the modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas.'"

Someone just sent me this Richard Fernandez piece, and that quote, above, made me laugh.

I was married to a killer NewAger, someone who was convinced - despite numerous failures - she could "heal", so the idea that "hope — and the faith that it will be fulfilled –  is 'as dangerous as fire'" isn't something I'm completely unfamiliar with.

As a matter of fact, I'd say I'm more familiar with the reality of Fernandez's topic than he is (I'm his "ordinary" guy who's been handed an "aim of some kind" while, apparently, he's a Christian who muses about cults now and then):

In other words, I've actually been living what he's just writing about - and writing about pretty cluelessly:



I think I might be able to see a few things Richard Fernandez, or most people reading this post, might not.

Like Chesterton's observation that "the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas" only leads me to Slavoj Žižek's observation that today "New Age 'Asiatic' thought ... is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism."

Didn't see that one coming, did you? That's right: you could already be under it's spell and not even know it.

Not getting mentioned much on the 6 'O Clock News, is it?

Yea, such little nuggets should start to inform your ideas about the reach of those "ridiculous" cult leaders pretty quick.

And you've got a lot of catching up to do:

"Political expression on the Left in the American sixties was split. Radical activists such as Students for a Democratic Society (1960-68) drew their ideology from Marxism, with its explicit atheism. But demonstrations with a large hippie contingent often mixed politics with occultism-magic and witchcraft along with costumes and symbolism drawn from Native American religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For example, at the mammoth antiwar protest near Washington, DC, in October 1967, Yippies performed a mock-exorcism to levitate the Pentagon and cast out its demons. Not since early nineteenth-century Romanticism had there been such a strange mix of revolutionary politics with ecstatic nature-worship and sex-charged self-transformation. It is precisely this phantasmagoric religious vision that distinguishes the New Left of the American 1960s from the Old Left of the American 1930s and from France's failed leftist insurgency of 1968, both of which were conventionally Marxist in their indifference or antagonism to religion."

That's the history of your enemy.

Richard Fernandez is on Pajamas Media with Victor Davis Hanson, who's looking at our current politics and crying, "What is the logic behind something so clearly unhinged?"

Maybe , if Fernandez ever reads this, he can show it to VDH and everything will start to make a lot more sense. You know, like this:

"The Material Girl is such a fervent believer, she reportedly paid almost $10,000 to have the radiators in her 10-bedroom London house filled with Kabbalah holy water so the heating system would radiate spirituality, according to London’s News of the World.

Madonna, 51, reportedly believes it gives the house a spiritual quality and will help heal and protect its residents. The Pope doesn’t even go to such lengths at the Vatican.

'It’s cost a fortune. She’d have Kabbalah water coming out of the kitchen taps if she could,' a source told the tabloid.
Word about holy water coursing through the house leaked (so to speak) when plumbers were called to her residence to fix a faulty radiator.

The housekeeper informed them that they couldn’t drain the radiator because of the water.

'The housekeeper was in a flap and told them it was blessed water and they could not drain it,' the source said.

'But they insisted they had to change a broken valve. It took almost an hour before she gave in and allowed them to put the water in steel buckets, pleading with them not to spill a drop.'

Holy Kabbalah water apparently was one of the reasons behind Madonna’s split from Ritchie.

She apparently blew up when he cancelled a near $20,000 order for Kabbalah holy water to fill the swimming pool at their Wiltshire house, the paper reported.

Madonna was also said to have caused an uproar when boy toy Jesus Luz’s parents found out that Madonna was trying to convert their Roman Catholic raised son to the mystical religion."

It's called NewAge, Gentlemen. And it'll haunt your dreams.

Sweating Out The 60s

"Websites and spas insist that sweating rids the body of toxins. Native Americans and New Age disciples believe that visions during sweat lodge ceremonies lead to enlightenment.

Medical experts stress that there's a lot of misinformation about the benefits of sweating.

Essentially, its function is to cool the body and that's it, they say.

'Don't believe everything you read or hear,' said Dr. Dee Anna Glaser, professor of dermatology at St. Louis University. She's been studying sweat for years and chuckles when asked about the benefits of spending time in a sauna or spa.

There really are no medical benefits, she said."

-- Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian, telling the health nuts they've been fooled again - is there nothing they won't fall for? - all because they won't work on their minds, and read STLtoday.

The Evil Mind

"The lawsuit filed by a survivor of James Ray's 'Spiritual Warrior' program, Sidney Spencer, charges that Ray has an 'evil mind'.

In order for the deaths of the three victims to have meaning, we need to learn something from this tragedy. We need to learn something that will prevent others from falling victim to con-artists like James Ray.

The only thing that protects us from deception is our God-given reason. If the victims had strongly embraced and constantly used their reason they would be alive today. Their reason would make them question claims made by one of the defendants in the lawsuit, Angel Valley Ministries. As just one example, on their site they make this statement while describing their real estate in an attempt to lure customers to their ranch: 'It is about entering a place where powerful earth energies are present and active. It is about connecting with the invisible realms. It is about being at a place where the veil between the dimensions is thinner than in most other places.' If the victims had not abandoned, or at least suppressed, their God-given reason they would have asked for and demanded answers for questions that would require evidence to prove the stated assertions.

James Ray's customers were told that Indian tribes used sweat lodges as a way of generating visions. They should listen to reason and they would have realized that visions, like dreams, are meaningless. As the thoughtful and altruistic Deist and one of America's founding fathers Thomas Paine made clear, dreams are what happens in our minds when we and our reason are asleep and imagination is allowed to run unchecked by our reason. They, and 'visions', are nothing more than that. It is folly to give importance to something that doesn't deserve it.

One powerful example of visions not being worthy of our attention is the vision the Sioux Indian medicine men said they had just prior to the battle/massacre of Wounded Knee. They believed that by doing a Ghost Dance for four or five consecutive nights they would have a vision. The vision they had promised a resurrection of their dead ancestors and an Indian promised land here on earth minus white people. They also believed based on their visions that the Ghost Dance Shirts they wore while doing the Ghost Dance would protect them from being shot by the soldiers. A medicine man even told Sioux warriors that the bullets of the White American soldiers would not hurt them. Like James Ray, he was dead wrong.

It seems that the big three Abrahamic 'revealed' religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all help to set people up to be victims of cults and of con-artists like James Ray. They do this by requiring their followers to give up or to suspend their God-given reason in order to believe what their 'revealed' religion is teaching. For example, in order to believe that Joshua made the sun stand still to give the Hebrews more time to slaughter their neighbors, to believe that Jesus walked on water, or that Mohamed flew up to heaven on the back of a Buraq, we need to let go of our God-given reason. We can't believe these, and many other unreasonable claims made by 'revealed' religions while still using the gift of reason which God gave us. This rejection of our reason sets a precedence which allows us to repeat this harmful and unnatural act. The only way to prevent it is to never give up our God-given reason, not for religions, not for governments and not for celebrities."

-- Bob Johnson, laying it all out there for everybody to see - without mentioning Oprah anywhere but in the title, and (this is rich) by using his "God-given" reason - all of which, as part of my own personal "healing process", I'm now willingly accepting as a tiny bit o' proof all things are possible, for The Examiner.