Religious Abuse: Animal Cruelty Edition

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Banality of Evil

Nearly a year ago, after Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, I wrote something about the phenomenon of religious abuse and speculated that Jeffs's incarceration would not stop the cycle of abuse. Obviously, I was proved right. News of Jeffs's continuing influence keeps trickling out. But I really wasn't prepared for some of the horrors that are occurring under the control of this megalomaniacal pederast. Colorado City and other FLDS communities remain as Jeffs's fiefdoms, with a substantial membership acting as brutal enforcers. The latest casualty? A kitten. Yes, that's right. Some follower -- or followers -- of Jeffs tortured a kitten to death simply to send a message. (This link contains graphic images. Click with care.)

Controversial Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs’ polygamous sect is accused of sending a cat buried alive in a bucket of concrete to a former church member as a threat. Jeffs was convicted last year on felony charges related to sexual relationships with underage girls, according to The Blaze. A dangerous fast landed the FLDS leader in the hospital in critical condition after his incarceration began. The fundamentalist church once again made headlines after a cat in concrete was sent to a man who had “abandoned the radical sect” as a warning.

AZ Family notes that other former FLDS followers claim to have received similar shocking threats. Isaac Wyler was excommunicated in 2004. He recently discovered the kitten buried in a concrete bucket inside a pipe in his yard. Wyler considers the incident a “threatening message” to “encourage” his silence about the FLDS. Since leaving the FLDS, Wyler has been very outspoken in his opposition to the polygamous sect.

Isaac Wyler has been a thorn in Jeffs's side for years and has been on the receiving end of a lot of threats and intimidation by FLDS enforcers. One of the more telling details in this atrocity points to the scope of the problem. (This link contains graphic images and video. Click with care.)

Frankenstein Mummies of Scotland

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Not so much a horror story as an archaeological mystery, as mummified bodies cobbled together from disparate parts are turned up in Scotland.

An international team of archaeologists have discovered that two mummies found on an island off the coast of Scotland are, like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, composed of body parts from several different humans. The mummified remains, as much as 3,500 years old, suggest that the first residents of the island of South Uist in the Hebrides had some previously unsuspected burial practices.

. . .

The two primary skeletons were buried in a fetal position and showed evidence of having been preserved. Chemical evidence suggests they were mummified by being placed in nearby peat bogs for a year or longer. The high acidity and low oxygen content of the bog prevents bacteria from breaking down body tissues. After preservation, the skeletons were apparently removed from the bog and buried.

But the skeletons did not "look right" to the researchers. The female's jaw didn't fit into the rest of her skull, for example. Closer examination of the male, they reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science, showed that arthritis was present on the vertebrae of the neck, but not on the rest of the spine. The lower jaw had all of its teeth, while the upper jaw had none; but the condition of the lower jaw's teeth showed that they had been paired with upper teeth. The team concluded that the skeleton has been assembled from parts of at least three bodies, some of which were separated by several hundred years of time.

Episcopal Church to Ordain the Transgendered

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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One of my earliest career goals was Episcopal priest. I was a very young, very idealistic gal watching the epic battle over women's ordination from the sidelines. I resolved, in a way that only a young idealist can, that if my Church decided the right way, I would one day join the growing ranks of female priests. Obviously, I went another way, but it was something that was still very much under consideration into my early twenties. My spiritual life took me through many twists and turns that outstripped the confines of Christian dogma -- even the very tolerant, ecumenical beliefs of the Episcopal Church. But I am still constantly surprised and gratified to see the Church growing and evolving in ways I could never have expected all those years ago. Yesterday the Episcopal Church approved a measure that would allow ordination of transgendered people.

At its triennial General Convention in Indianapolis, the church House of Deputies approved a change to the "nondiscrimination canons" to include "gender identity and expression." The move makes it illegal to bar from the priesthood people who were born into one gender and live as another or who do not identify themselves as male or female.

. . .

The vote by the House of Deputies -- which includes lay people and clergy -- followed Saturday's approval of the non-discrimination clause by the church House of Bishops. Both groups have to approve new legislation.

. . .

"It is not just a good day for transgender Episcopalians and their friends, families and allies. It is a good day for all of us who are part of a church willing to the risk to continue to draw the circle wider as we work to live out our call to make God's inclusive love known to the whole human family," the Rev. Susan Russell, a deputy from the Diocese of Los Angeles and an activist who supported the legislation, said in a statement. 

Also approved was a provisional standard liturgy for blessing same-sex couples. It is the first Christian church to do so. It's a step towards what I'm sure will be an approval to perform gay marriages as they become legal around the country.  It's only a matter of time.

I'm sure this will hasten the great bigots exodus from the Church, but as ever I say, go with God.

Cafe

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Finding the Heart of the Matter

Assumptions blind us to the heart of the matter before us. The most common reason people cycle around and around working ineffectively on the same issue is their assumptions. The way we view the world creates assumptions, which influence the way we conceptualize our issues and keep us from diagnosing accurately. Without an accurate diagnosis our remedy will be ineffective, whether medical, spiritual or psycho-emotional. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores common contemporary assumptions that disempower our practices before we even start. The remedy? Cultivating a cross-cultural shamanic world-view can diminish our assumptions by simply drawing us back to the real energies that lie under the surface of what is apparent. From this place of deeper truth we can see what lies at the heart of the matter and apply our efforts there. If we are going to work to create change in our lives and our world, let's be sure we are bringing actual remedies to places that truly need change.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.

The Vatican: Men Behaving Badly

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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The gender war in the Catholic Church appears to be heating up. Major battlefronts have opened up with American nuns -- including one who dared to write about s-e-x -- and the many Catholic women who are tired of being scolded for using birth control. Now one of the Vatican's own journalists has leveled a charge of "misogyny in the Church."

Lucretia Scaraffia edits a new women's supplement for the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. It was a risky venture for the paper to add a prominent, female voice, and it would seem that it hasn't exactly gone smoothly. In a recent interview with Agence French Presse (AFP), Scaraffia bemoaned the "indifference" with which her endeavor has been met. And she railed against a male-centric culture that she blames for the scandals that currently imperil the Church.

"The paedophilia scandal was almost exclusively male," she told AFP, at her book-lined apartment in the Parioli quarter of Rome.

"If there had been women in positions of power they would not have allowed those things to happen.

"Women have long been reputed as sexually dangerous. But it's clear that the danger lay with men and children," she said.

Solar Fireworks, Solar Fears

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The sun has had an active Fourth of July week, setting off a number of fireworks of its own. Sunspot AR1515 let lose with an X class solar flare on Friday, after a week of powerful ejections. An M class flare, earlier in the week caused a minor radio blackout. This one does not appear to be aimed directly at Earth but may cause further radio disruption.

The most powerful solar flare of the summer erupted from the sun on Friday, marking the latest in a string of strong storms this week from our home star.

The sun storm occurred just after 7 p.m. ET and registered as a class X1.1 solar flare — one of the strongest types of solar flares possible, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center, run by NOAA and the National Weather Service.

The huge solar flare erupted from the giant sunspot AR1515, which has already fired off several other powerful storms this week. Space weather scientists were closely watching the sunspot for possible X-class flares.

. . .

In a new alert announcing the X-class solar flare, SWPC officials said the sun storm could a "wide-area blackout" in the high-frequency radio communications.

Did All Dinosaurs Have Feathers?

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Exceptionally well-preserved fossil evidence shows feathers on an early, meat-eating dinosaur, suggesting that plumage on the giant creatures was far more common than previously known.

Previously, paleontologists have found feathers only on coelurosaurs—birdlike dinosaurs that evolved later than so-called megalosaurs such as Sciurumimus.

Because Sciurumimus is not closely related to coelurosaurs, the new fossil suggests feathered dinosaurs were the norm, not the exception, Rauhut said.

"Probably all dinosaurs were feathered," he added, "and we should say good bye to the familiar image of the overgrown lizards."

. . .

According to the study authors, this "obviously" suggests that dinosaurs' common ancestor had feathers, which passed the trait on to each branch of the dinosaur family tree. (See pictures of big, bad, bizarre dinosaurs in National Geographic magazine.)

CERN Strikes Boson

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Those magnificent bastards at CERN may well have discovered the God Particle... and cost Stephen Hawking a hundred bucks. It seems the renowned physicist had bet against the Higgs Boson ever being found. It is still not entirely clear that the particle found by the Large Hadron Collider experiments is the Higgs. It may be a different boson but they are pretty darned sure that it's a boson.

“I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva. The agency is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the immense particle accelerator that produced the new data by colliding protons. The findings were announced by two separate teams. Dr. Heuer called the discovery “a historic milestone.”

He and others said that it was too soon to know for sure, however, whether the new particle is the one predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century. The particle is predicted to imbue elementary particles with mass. It may be an impostor as yet unknown to physics, perhaps the first of many particles yet to be discovered.

That possibility is particularly exciting to physicists, as it could point the way to new, deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality.

For now, some physicists are simply calling it a “Higgslike” particle.

Hunt Vampires Just Like Abe Lincoln

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

You too can hunt real, dead vampires, just like our 16th President. Or at least you could have done if you'd been alive in the early 1900s when these snazzy vampire-slaying kits were available for purchase. Today you'd have to steal one from a museum.

The 19th Century box, containing a crucifix, pistols, wooden stakes and a mallet, was sold for £7,500 at an auction in North Yorkshire on Friday.

It had been left to a Yorkshire woman in her uncle's will.

The Royal Armouries said it expected the box would prove a major attraction when it went on display at the Clarence Dock museum later this year.

. . .

As well as the weaponry, the box contains a copy of the Book of Common Prayer from 1851 and a handwritten extract from the Bible which quotes Luke 19:27.

Admit it. You want one.

No, It is Not a Vagina

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I like Cracked. They're fun. And they do set the record straight on many commonly accepted canards. But on this one, they're just wrong.

Apart from the cross, the most ubiquitous symbol of Christianity is the ichthys, known to us as the Jesus Fish, and today it appears predominantly in its natural habitat -- car bumpers. The ichthys actually dates right back to ancient times, when Christianity was still an obscure sect, and considering that fish and fishing were frequently used as symbols in the Bible, you could argue that it's a more appropriate symbol for the teachings of Christ than the device used to torture and kill him.

. . .

It's a vagina.

One of the names given to the pre-Jesus Jesus Fish is the vesica pisces (vessel of the fish), and it was used as a symbol of every female fertility god ever, from Atargatis (the Syrian fertility goddess), Aphrodite/Venus (the goddess of love and sex) to the pagan Great Mother goddess, where it symbolized her life-giving vulva. Basically, whenever you encountered an image of fish in the pre-Christian world, it was probably an opposite-of-subtle metaphor for lady parts.

No one loves Goddess mythology more than I. And I can truly understand the temptation to tweak sexist, paternalistic, patriarchal, evangelicals by telling them they've put vaginas on their bumpers. But it's a gross oversimplification of a very rich symbol.

And, no, it's not really about Jesus making "fishers of men," either. (Matthew 4:19)

Cafe

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"Why Shamanism Now?" with Christina Pratt

Restoring Spirits of the Land with David Franklin Farkas

What do we do when things stop flourishing? What do we do when houses don’t sell, businesses fail, and illness keeps cycling through the family? Where do we go when we sense that the very matrix of the energy that supports life is somehow torn or set asunder? This week guest, David Franklin Farkas, joins host, Christina Pratt to explore practical ways to clear and restore the energies in our physical world so that we are able to maintain good communication and reciprocity with the spirits of the land, the elementals, and the Earth herself. Years ago a moment of prayerful asking how to repair a profound distortion in our energy world David was shown the energetic geometry of the etheric matrix and instructed in how to repair it. Over the past two and a half decades David has developed this proprietary method he calls Quantum Grid Restructuring, which normalizes distortion in the energetic geometry of a buildings and space by clearing the human dramas, the emotional history of human events, and other traumas we inflict on the world around us. These practices support the reconciliation with underground water, ley lines and vortexes as well as offering a context for rescuing ghosts and banishing meaner entities. Join us this week as we explore how to effectively clean up the mess we have made and restore right relationship with our world.

This Week's Guest:
David Franklin Farkas

David Franklin Farkas is a thought leader, independent (rogue) scholar and master practitioner in the area of remote clearing and healing of land, buildings, people, businesses and situations. He has over 35 years of experience as a professional house healer and ghost rescuer and prefers the term Technician of the Sacred. He also provides clearing and metaphysical coaching for individuals.

David apprenticed for three years with a psychic healer who had been trained by indigenous healers in the Philippines, and was mentored by a Cherokee medicine man. Now, most of his Spiritual and practical training comes directly from the Angelic realm during his work and meditations.

Over the past two and a half decades David has developed a proprietary method called Quantum Grid Restructuring which normalizes distortion in the energetic geometry of a buildings, clearing the human drama and trauma that caused these distortions. This is analogous to reformatting a hard drive on a computer. The old stuff is gone and new information can now be added to the cleared space. He can also see and mitigate issues in the land itself including underground water, ley lines and vortexes.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.