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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-17 03:03 pm
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Degringolade ([personal profile] degringolade) wrote2025-08-17 04:07 pm

Diary: Sunday Morn

I have always found that mornings present no consistent face to me every time I wake up. I suppose that is normal, though there are people out there who claim to wake up the same way every morning, but I don't believe those people.

M. has me a thinking about the way that I think/perceive the world around me. He presents a compelling and logical description of the process. But depending on how I wake up that morning, the description oscillates in a fairly wide range.

I am working now on the idea that perhaps all persons aren't equal. This statement is anathema in today's America, but it seems to me that a persons innate abilities and deficits might have something to do with the thoughts and perceptions that filter into a brainpan.

Since I just started putting things together with this as a starting point, there are quite a few blind alleys I need to explore before I put an essay together. I worry that I might not like the direction that this thought-exercise will lead me.

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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-16 02:13 pm
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Degringolade ([personal profile] degringolade) wrote2025-08-16 03:42 pm

Diary: A Reverse Troll

Now, if you read this little cul de sac of the internet, you will notice that I do screen comments. Not a big deal, in the past I have had to deal with with the small number of unpleasant people who posted responses to the thought in my screed that displeased them, so screening and deleting seemed to be the easiest and way to deal with them. Since I moved to Dreamwidth eight years ago, I think that I have had to deal with one incident (Blogger was kind of a nightmare that way), but then again, I had a lot more readers back then so it only makes sense that there was more unpleasantness.

I do follow an eclectic group of folks here on Dreamwidth. I do actively attempt to look for folks who look at things differently than I do. Since I haven't got things in any way figured out, I hold out the bleak hope that someone else has. So my reading page is pretty varied.

So the other day, during my bitching about coffee in the previous post, I saw that one of the folks who I follow was bitching about the same beverage (a different complaint, but still concerning the beverage. I sent an innoculous (at least to me) comment as a form of saying "Hi". This apparently went over like a turd in a punchbowl. I got a response back reminiscent of the trolling that I recieved back in the day.

For some odd reason, this cheered me up.

kimberlysteele: (Default)
Kimberly Steele ([personal profile] kimberlysteele) wrote2025-08-15 10:33 pm
Entry tags:

Ogham Readings on Saturdays




I am happy to read your Ogham free of charge -- that's how I hone my divination skills.  Please limit your reading request to four or fewer Ogham cards: though this can take many forms, here are some common ones (all of them are basically combos of 4 cards):
 
-a single three card reading for the week or month and a one-off, one card reading
-four questions about four separate items that require one answer (card) per item
-a one card reading to answer a specific question and a three card for a more nuanced question
-Two separate readings, two cards a piece exploring the positives and negatives of two different choices
 
I am happy to do Ogham readings confidentially via email -- just email me at k steele studio at gmail during the allotted time/before deadline.  I cannot answer health questions.  If you have a question about health or another sensitive, private matter, provide a bunch of non-identifying information and the Ogham will be able to figure it out even if I don't. I'm serious... the Ogham actually tend to "know" things without me being privy to what is going on.

Please note I take time off during Solstices and Equinoxes for Druid stuff and because sometimes I simply need a break

My next planned break is from October 23 - November 6.

I take reading requests from whenever this post goes up on Friday night until 8pm US Central Time Saturday.  

For a more in depth look into how I read and interpret the Ogham's symbols, please visit my website druidogham.wordpress.com.

I am currently trying to minimize my use of PayPal.  If you'd like to make a donation, I would be grateful if you did it here:

http://buymeacoffee.com/kimberlysteele

Your prayers of blessing to the deity/deities of your choice are welcome whether or not you can donate.

neonvincent: From an icon made by the artists themselves (Bang)
neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-15 02:19 pm
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Degringolade ([personal profile] degringolade) wrote2025-08-15 03:28 pm

Diary: Cloudy Day

At least the weather isn't all that bad. Lately the temps have been >100 F and despite my knees not hurting (cold makes them ache) temps that high are unpleasant for this particular fat old man.

The complaint today that I wish to register is the price of coffee. A year ago, I bought my cheap american-ground coffee (yuban or maxwell house) for $9.00 for over 40 ounces. Now the same container only holds 38 ounces and costs $23.00 (both prices rounded down to dollars).

Now, I hate to say it, this means I need to change my behavior to conform with current realities. I suppose that I have seen this coming for a while now, having noticed and written about the fact that 98+ percent of our coffee is imported even back in the days of my Blogger account. So my thoughts are that I will need to switch to tea for my morning caffeine fix.

I knew that this was coming. That foreknowledge doesn't make it one damn bit better, So I will take this time to share my feelings (here in my world, this is referred to as "bitching"). Surprisingly, I am not all that annoyed about this turn of affairs. I will adapt to this inconvenience by drinking coffee on the weekends and tea on the weekdays.

My tea will be of the "not snooty pooty" variety. I have always felt that emotionally linking your foodstuffs to your self image is a fools game. So I go to Wally world or out on the big wide web and buy myself bulk tea (a brand called Tea India). Two pounds for around $14.00 delivered. Now, this seems expensive at first glance, but for coffee in my 1.5 liter french press is is a minimum of three scoops (2 tablespoons) and the tea is 1-1/2 scoops for 1.5 liters.

Now, this isn't the last adaptation I will need to make in my life. Things like coffee and tea are imports that won't go away and while I half approve of the tariffs of imported stuff we really could without, the fact is that I really like some of the little luxuries that I might well have to do without.

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John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2025-08-15 10:53 am

Frugal Friday

domeWelcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

Rule #5: don't post LLM ("AI") generated content, and don't bring up the subject unless you're running a homemade LLM program on your own homebuilt, steam-powered server farm. 

With that said, have at it!   
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neptunesdolphins ([personal profile] neptunesdolphins) wrote2025-08-15 10:04 am

DOMESTIC CAT: Equanimity

 Bred from the more social African Wildcat, the Domestic Cat has been a part of people’s lives since before the time of the ancient Egyptians. Remains of Domestic Cats were found, on the island of Cyprus, dating from 8000 B.C.E. Unlike her elusive cat cousins, the African Wildcat liked living close to towns and villages. The Domestic Cat, like her ancestor, is tamer and less secretive than most wildcats. She socializes with people, however like a true cat, only on her terms.
 
Living in a social hierarchy, the Domestic Cat forms close friendships. In her family group (kindle), the Domestic Cat sits with and nose-bumps her friends. By rubbing her body against other cats, she reinforces the bonds of her kindle. (A cat that is rubbed the most is the highest-ranking cat.)
 
Throughout the centuries, the Domestic Cat’s fortunes have risen and fallen. In Ancient Rome and Egypt, she was a goddess. Because a Domestic Cat symbolized the Egyptian god Bast, any person who killed one was put to death. As the Cat-Mother, Bast embodied the benevolent aspects of Cat: fertility, love, and life-giving heat. An inscription on the royal tombs at Thebes reads “Thou art the Great Cat, the avenger of the gods, and the judge of words, and the president of the sovereign chiefs and the governor of the holy Circle; thou art indeed…the Great Cat.”
 
In a magical spell from the reign of Nectanebo II, the Thirtieth Dynasty (360-343 BCE), the Domestic Cat is hailed. “…You cat, your head is the head of the Sun, the Two Lands’ lord, who strikes disaffected subjects, fear of whom is in all lands and all the living forever. You cat, your eyes are the eye of the Effective Eye’s owner, who illuminates the Two Lands with his eye, who illuminates the face in darkness’s path….” (The spell continues naming the body parts of the cat associating it with a God.)
 
Meanwhile, the Celts were in awe of the Domestic Cat. They regarded cats to be beings of great power and treated them with caution. Some clans had cat totems which gave them strength and good fortune. Meanwhile, the Celts would avoid the Cat Sith, a mysterious cat being.
 
The Cat Sith is a large black cat with splashes of white fur on his chest. He is believed to consume the souls of people, before they were buried. If a cat was around a dead person, the family would engage the animal to keep the person’s soul from being stolen. On Samhain, the Celts made offerings of milk for blessings from the Cat Sith, and to avoid being cursed.
 
In early Christian times, the Domestic Cat was regarded as a helper. Aboard Noah’s Ark, she kept out the Devil, who had taken on the form of a gnawing mouse. The “M” on her forehead was placed there by the Virgin Mary, in gratitude for her aid in putting the Baby Jesus to sleep. Stories of the saints featured the Domestic Cat killing the mice that tormented various Catholic saints.
 
However, as Christianity spread, the Domestic Cat became associated with evil. Thought to be a familiar of witches, the Domestic Cat was endowed with evil by the Christian Church. For example, medieval people believed that she would try to thwart an expecting mother from giving birth. “Having kittens” meant that a cat, inside of a pregnant woman, wanted to get out. Such beliefs were rooted in earlier times when cats were sacred to various Goddesses, connected to childbirth. In the Medieval Christian mind, the Domestic Cat was closely tied to Paganism and hence to evil.
 
The nadir for the Domestic Cat’s fortunes occurred when Baudouin III, Count of Flanders threw his cats from his castle towers. His cat killing was a symbol that Baudouin embraced Christianity with all his heart. Since then, an annual cat festival was conducted in Flanders, complete with throwing cats out of windows to mark the occasion of his conversion.
 
The connection with Black Cats and witches began with the Goddess Hekate. Later the Medieval church presented the Devil as black and furry. Then, “Satan’s felines” were sought out for burning on the Feast of Saint John. The Black Cat became the “wicked, sorcerer’s cat of Medieval Europe.” (Note 1)
 
A late arrival in Japan, the Domestic Cat did not appear in Japanese folklore until about the 1400s. Since the Japanese believed that she brought good fortune, they made statues of the Domestic Cat with her front left paw raised for good luck. In addition, Japanese sailors believed that the Domestic Cat kept the evil spirits away that dwelled in the sea.
 
In “Cats: Keepers of the Spirit World,” John Rush writes that “The word cat (emphasis Rush’s) is a symbol and, contrary to a sign, can point in many directions at the same time. The symbol, in its own way, is like the waveform that supports the tangible universe in that it can represent many things. And, like Schrodinger’s Cat (Note 2), the symbol is in superposition and only becomes “tangible” within a context or situation.”
 
Throughout it all, the Domestic Cat has kept her equanimity. No matter what people thought about her, she lived her life as a champion mouser. The Domestic Cat helps those who ask, and ignores everyone else. People speak of her independence, but what she really possesses is inner peace. No matter what happens, she knows that she is still a goddess.
 
Notes:
Note 1. There are regional variations on whether Black Cats are lucky or unlucky. For example, in Yorkshire (England), they are lucky, while in Ireland, they are unlucky. In Wales, they bring blessings and good fortune.
 
Note 2. Erwin Schrodinger, a Quantum Physicist, devised a thought experiment with a cat being locked in a box with a vial of poison. (Schrodinger’s Cat) When it decays, a radioactive atom inside the box will activate the poison. Since no one could pinpoint the decay in a closed box and observe the animal within, the cat was both alive and dead. From this experiment came the theory of quantum entanglement – “the idea that particles of the same origin, which were once connected, always stay connected. Even if they separate and move far apart in time and space, they continue to share something beyond a mere bond — they shed their original quantum states and take on a new, united quantum state which they maintain forever.” (as defined by NASA).
 
Further Reading:
Andrew Anderson, “The Magic of Cats.” Moon Books. 2023.
John Rush, “Cats: Keepers of the Spirit World.” Destiny Books. 2023.
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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-14 05:57 pm
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John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2025-08-14 05:20 pm

Three More Podcasts

On the off chance that any of my readers are interested in hearing me talk, here are three more podcast appearances of mine that might be of interest. All three were good lively conversations, and the topics were about as different as I can manage! 

podcast 1Magnetic Memory with Anthony Metivier: 

https://www.magneticmemorymethod.com/john-michael-greer/

The Art of Memory was the focus of this talk. 

podcast 2Pearl Snap Tactical with  Mark Booher: 

https://pearlsnaptactical.substack.com/p/the-warriors-path-through-collapse

We talked about myth, initiation, and how to learn from the heroic legends of the past. 

podcast 3The Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harris: 

https://content.blubrry.com/paranormalplus/The_UFO_Book-UFO_Encounters_228.mp3

We talked about my new book The UFO Book, and the UFO phenomenon generally

Enjoy!  
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Degringolade ([personal profile] degringolade) wrote2025-08-13 10:13 am

Essay: The Salutory Effect of Crazy Neighbors

Still think this is a cool picture

 


 This turned out to be a bit of a disjointed ramble, but I don’t really feel like editing it.  How to tell people to stop worrying about possible futures that you cannot control and cannot foresee is futile.  Sorry about the ramble.

 


 


I live in an itty bitty apartment in an older, less cool small complex with a really good vibe.  I am quite content here.  But for quite a bit of my eight years here, I have had the experience of a crazy neighbor several times.  It is quite enlightening.  While living in an apartment is my preference, this is one of the “not-upside” parts of the overall experience.

For about two years, a young Palestinian (born in the US, but still identifies as Palestinian) lived to my right about five years ago.  He would routinely march off to protests wherever they were being held that day.  He would also spend time shouting “death to Israel” at random times (usually during the day on weekends).  My only concession here was that I decided that my mezuzah would go up when he left (which took about a year).

Then there was the serious dope smoker who usually wore a t-shirt featuring Ted Kascinski and would, whenever we chatted, spend a great deal of energy explaining to me the mechanics of striking out against the man.  However, he usually followed this up by smoking a lot of dope and then sleeping for a day or two.  He did punch a lot of holes in walls and wrecked the fridge and dishwasher when he got evicted for non-payment of rent, but I tend to think that this wasn’t a political act.

The latest is doozy though.  She claims to be a retired nurse practitioner.  So far she has conveyed earnest and slightly panicked warnings about:  (1) Port International Airport being closed down due to an impending attack on the United States by Kenyan terrorists; (2) The stock market crashing the next day and the CIA performing a coup d’etat with Trump being drugged and forced to do their bidding; and (3) The government on her tail because he father/uncle was heavily involved in the JFK assasination.

Where this is going is that it forces me to assess my sometimes less than mainstream ideation with a nod toward where I sure as hell don’t want to end up.  

I was reading my favorite part of JMG’s online writing repertoire (Frugal Friday’s or FF).  For the most part, it is a great nuts and bolts discussion of how to live cheap in a world where such seditious thoughts are very unwelcome by the mainstream of society (the mainstream concentrates on making more money and buying more shit). 

Yesterday at FF the discussion went a just a little bit into the realm of the end-of-world-as-we-know-it.  Essentially people began to discuss the means to communicate with folks of their ilk when the intrusiveness of the internet exceeds their tolerance or if the structure of the current means of communication becomes unavailable.  

I think that this kind of thing, while valid, has to be approached carefully if one is going to go down that path.  I am not certain that folks at FF won’t be offended by this statement, but it isn’t meant to be insulting, merely a caution that there be monsters there that can convince you to go farther than is necessary to deal with perceived and possibly imaginary problems.

I have been fighting back against my paranoia for years now.  It has not really cost me anything that matters (though there are a bunch of 20 year old #10 cans of freeze dried food worth around a grand that are a bit of an embarrassment).   Mostly it came down to understanding the now time-worn and unwelcome heresy of “indifferentism”.

Google n-gram chart for use of indifferentism

What the whole thing boils down to is the simple idea that the universe doesn’t really care about us.  I suppose that coming around to this way of thinking over the past couple of years has colored my thoughts and values and made my way of thinking foreign to everyone around me and an extremely minor irritant to the folks who think that the world should run the way that they want to.

My latest crazy neighbor reminded me about the tolls that taking the world around you too seriously and expecting the world to conform with your quite parochial visions and prejudices leads.  You start trying to figure out how to retain the things you have because the way things are seems to work well enough.  Anything that threatens that little bit of comfort leads you down a path to those #10 cans if you aren’t careful.

The discussion at FF the other day led me to believe that little things like the discussion there are the first, tentative steps down that curious path.  How do we maintain a system of communication among ourselves when the system starts hiccuping?  Well buckaroos, I suppose we’ll figure it out when it comes to that.  Trying to plan for the unknown failure of a system which isn’t fully understood and out of your control seems to be a fool's game.  

A long time ago I chose the nom de plume of Degringolade.  "Dégringolade" is a French noun that translates to a rapid decline or deterioration, or a downfall.

The #10 cans came about because of the mindset I was working with at the time.  I had let myself get all worked up because the economy was looking pretty effing shaky and was raising two sons.  I did end up losing my job in that so I spent time scrambling and ended up in a different financial bracket.  The compromises that I made were always there (public school versus private school, lots of home cooking, etc, etc) but you adapt to the conditions.

The internet isn’t going away this week, it will probably be around for the remainder of the remainder of anyone’s lifetime who reads this.  I think that you will be able to send e-mails well into the future.  You will have to struggle along as the segment allotted to you starts looking more like usenet than facebook (text is super cheap to send in terms of money) but you won’t see as many pretty pictures or watch a talking head explain things from his point of view.

So the “options” presented in all earnestness in the discussion aren’t really all that realistic, MESh networksand packet HAM are technical and spotty and will probably never grow beyond the cadre of true believers that currently proselytize. Reversion to xerox’ed, staple newsletters are really expensive and the fate of the postal service is in question.

I don’t know what is coming for the means of wide area communication.  Planning for a situation to keep what you have when the system that allowed what you have is vanishing is pretty much a waste of effort.  All you can do is worry about it when the time comes and try to figure the work around if and when the shit hits the fan is all you can do.  


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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-13 10:41 am
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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-12 01:25 pm
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Degringolade ([personal profile] degringolade) wrote2025-08-12 03:24 pm

Diary: The Day After

The GI doctor informed me yesterday that the procedure performed would be the last one I would have to endure. Many thanks were given.

I didn't do much to celebrate. A plate of Udon noodles with beef at the local hole in the wall Japanese restaurant and then the rest of the day rehydrating and snoozing. I did try to read a little, but snoozing took center stage.

Hot blue sky here in the upper left. I think that I am getting old because the heat doesn't bother me the way that it used to. Don't get me wrong, 100-degree weather does make me flee to the dark cave that is my studio, but where 70-ish used to be the upper end of my comfort zone, I have come to appreciate 80's and low 90's.

There isn't much else going on. Today I am thinking about how people who harp on about the "need" for relocalization spend so much time fretting about things happening on the international stage. This appears to me to be quite the conflict in goals.

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neptunesdolphins ([personal profile] neptunesdolphins) wrote2025-08-12 11:03 am

Sumerian Month: Kin-Inanna: August-September

 For the people of Sumer, the month of August-September is when the Ezem-Inanna-Ka occurs. Therefore, in Sumer, this month is called “Kin-Inanna” (the work of Inanna). The fourteen-day festival is to prepare Inanna for her descent into the Underworld. People wash and consecrate her statues (usually in a river). Offerings are made at the beginning and end of the festival.
 
In the beginning of the month, Inanna’s statue goes to the sanctuary of Ninlil for offerings. Then two days later, the statue goes to the temple of Nanna-Suen. On the day of the full moon, gifts are presented to Inanna. Her Treasures and Jewelry are returned to Her for re-investiture at the Kianna ritual. A purification ritual with fire (giizila) is performed. Then offerings are made to Inanna.
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John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2025-08-12 10:11 am

Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 208

science then and nowWe are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; new revelations are leaking out about just how bad the Covid vaccines are for human health; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules have been slightly expanded due to a recent discussion here:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.


5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button. 

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.


With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 
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neonvincent ([personal profile] neonvincent) wrote2025-08-11 11:10 pm
kimberlysteele: (Default)
Kimberly Steele ([personal profile] kimberlysteele) wrote2025-08-11 12:04 pm
Entry tags:

The Bathroom Class and the Bad Karma of Investment Income

The term 401(K) comes from the tax status of the earnings.  A 401(K) is a type of adjacent bank account that siphons savings away to play the stock market.  Supposedly this form of gambling is safe.  

Though the term Black Friday has come to be associated with Christmas shopping orgies in late November, the "black" part of the moniker used to apply to stock market crashes.  September 24, 1869 was one such crash.  It was said to be caused by two greedy investors named Jay Gould and James Fisk.  The investors bought obscene amounts of gold, driving up the price due to scarcity.  President Ulysses S. Grant tried to put a stop to the shenanigans by selling a large amount of the US Treasury's gold which in turn caused the stock market to crash.  More crashes came and went during the Belle Epoque until the Great Crash of 1929, which led to the Glass Steagal Act of 1933.  Glass Steagall was a set of banking reforms that put the kibosh on any bank's ability to use its customer's money to play the stock market.

Glass Steagall was repealed in 1999 by President Bill Clinton, which

"opened the door to an orgy of financial mischief so arrant and awful, and to a plague of corruption so broad and deep, that American life is now pitching into a long emergency." -James Howard Kunstler in 2015


The Bathroom Class

The middle class that President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to protect in 1933 is clinging on for dear life in 2025.  In one corner, we have the lower eighty percent comprised of the working poor and their dependents such as the elderly, children, the disabled, and those on welfare.  All of the above (or should I say below?) live hand to mouth and paycheck to paycheck if they are lucky enough to have one or more jobs and hustles.  Theirs is a game of robbing Peter to pay Paul for the last thirty years; an exhausting runaround of managing debts.  There is no "saving money" for the lower eighty percent.  It does not exist.  Every time they get ahead enough to maybe purchase a one month backup supply of off brand Kleenex, the car needs a three thousand dollar overhaul or a tooth decides to go full root canal.  Every time they go to the grocery store, the products either shrink in size or inflate in price.  A loaf of bread cost seventy five cents in 1992.  Nowadays a half loaf of bread costs $3.50.  Wages have not risen in a way that is anywhere near commensurate to what life costs.  Anyone who still works retail or fast food, and there are quite a few working retail and fast food, is making $13-15 dollars per hour.  I worked in the local shopping mall in 1990 and I made $12 an hour... that was considered poverty wages back then and bread only cost seventy five cents.  

The upper twenty percent has many names: Professional Managerial Class, salary class, stockholders, laptop class.  They are truly in a class to themselves.  Unlike those below them, they feature retirees who do not have to work until they die.  They are shareholders and trustees.  They enjoy safe neighborhoods with good schools that are perpetually on the up and up, with older, more modest homes being gutted or outright demolished for spacious new construction and the latest in countertop trends.  They always have luxurious, new bathrooms.  We might as well call them the Bathroom Class because they have more luxury toilets per person than any clique in history.  As much as I castigate them, I count the Bathroom Class among my friends.  Many of them are hardworking, helpful souls.  Many of them have earned their retirements, and the only difference between them and the non-Bathroom class is that they actually have money to retire.  Whatever virtues the Bathroom Class might possess do not hide the fact that investment dividends are not earned wealth.  Investment is speculation for financial gain.  Speculation for financial gain is gambling.  Unless the investment is a personal and uncontracted agreement of trust, it is what the Bible calls usury.  The repeal of Glass Steagall and a list of other factors means that investing in the stock market, including with the "safe" 401(K), is playing fast and loose with the meager pennies of the lower eighty percent and their earned wealth. That sort of usury may not hold any consequences in the present incarnation where all subsist in a spiritual Dark Age of ignorance and Greed as God, but it does not bode well for future incarnations as things balance out.  

Most investment dividends come indirectly or directly from private equity firms such as Blackrock and Blackstone.  These firms are corporate goliaths that control the media, drive up home prices, and perpetuate the System of child trafficking that keeps the world trapped in low vibrational consciousness.  There is nothing inherently good about the System or the private equity firms that keep it running.  

Quiznos and Smashburger, a Tale of Private Equity

In the early 2000's, Quiznos was the fastest growing sandwich chain in America.  Though I always thought their sandwiches were mediocre, my husband loved their new (at the time) concept of roasting the sandwich under a broiler before adding the final lettuce and sauces.  Quiznos, like many fast casual strip mall restaurants, was a franchise.  Each store was run by someone who had bought into the franchise with his or her own money and in return gained the suppliers, the name, and the opportunity to up their class status by ostensibly becoming a business owner instead of an employee.  Quiznos took off and its franchises began popping up on every corner.  There were approximately 4500 Quiznos franchise locations at the restaurant's peak. Sometimes a Quiznos would pop up across the street from another Quiznos, literally within three to four hundred yards, as if they were competing gas stations.  The private equity firm that owned Quiznos not only allowed this, they encouraged it, wantonly pitting franchisees against each other in a race to the bottom. My husband noticed that our local Quznos degraded in quality, often running out of ingredients, skimping, or substituting with poorer quality food.  Little did he know what was going on in the background.  The private equity firm allowed many Quiznos to cannibalize other Quiznos, following the catastrophic failures and losses with a promise to reform, which was (of course) a fake out.  The private equity firm lured its surviving franchisees into an exclusive supplier contract, which at first brought back affordable purchasing for those left standing.  If you guessed the private equity firm also owned the supplier and promptly jacked up prices so more franchisees went under, you guessed correctly.  Once Quiznos was fully cannibalized and transformed from the leading sandwich seller to a barely-there also ran of closed restaurants and broken dreams, the private equity firm consolidated and sold off its debt, offshored the profits, filed for bankruptcy on all except the intellectual property, which it kept.  These ill-gotten gains from Quiznos franchisees's hard work, sweat, and tears was repackaged and used to open a fancy burger chain called Smashburger.  It was like Quiznos never happened for all except the franchisees.

Young couples who wish to buy homes and start families nowadays cannot because a private equity firm has either already bought the house and turned it into an eternal rental or Blackstone has raised the overall price of housing around the globe.  I am reminded of a scene in the first Resident Evil movie, a film about an evil Umbrella corporation that unleashes a zombie virus.  In one scene, a group of characters is forced through a laser room where they must play a macabre version of twister to avoid lasers slicing off various body parts.  Spoiler alert: in the end of the laser room scene, the cleverest guy gets sliced into neat little cubes when the laser turns into a mesh.  It is the movie equivalent of a brute smashing the chessboard because he was losing the game.  Private equity is the Umbrella Corporation.  It owns the laser room and it does not like to lose.  

A rising tide raises all ships, but it devours any who cannot afford a boat.  I know many people who regularly go on fabulous international vacations and who have trained their children to embrace the same grandiose lifestyles.  These people are not the direct trustees of private equity firms, but their wealth is private equity money all the same.  Private equity is invested in almost every major company at this point.  It is rarer to find an area of life where private equity is not in the process of cannibalizing wealth.  When people derive income from investing, they give the private equity firms more license to roam free and unchecked in their cannibalistic benders.  Since private equity is the latest form of wendigo, no amount of misery or destruction will ever be able to glut its appetites.

When Covid rule descended and small business owners like me were cannibalized so that more wealth could be transferred to the Bathroom Class wendigo, stockholders sat in their well-apppointed homes and ordered food delivered to their door while bingeing on Netflix, Hulu, and online games.  The Bathroom Class benefited from Covid rules and the lower eighty percent footed the bills and did the work once again.

They Say the Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

I could be wrong but I don't see things going well for some of our current high riders in the far future.  The infuriating bit is that for now, those who choose to enjoy wealth that was earned by those they considered beneath them are not about to change status.  The consequences of human behavior seldom if ever play out at the human scale... at least not immediately.

I believe that everyone who does serious spiritual work eventually comes to the realization that there is a Law of Wealth that exists for humans and perhaps any species that develops an extremely abstracted wealth system.  The Law of Wealth states that the person who amasses and keeps unearned wealth merely agrees to earn that wealth in a future lifetime.  There are a ton of mitigating factors that get thrown into this seemingly simple karmic equation.  Generosity, for instance, sublimates by exponents.  If your actions were compulsively generous in one lifetime, you can manage to repay major chunks, if not all of your unearned wealth.  Generosity pays with compounding interest of the soul.  If you fill your life with good works, gratitude, and humility, you can rectify a massive amount of "bad" karma.

As I have speculated and hypothesized in other essays, I believe many human-incarnated souls are going to wind up in animal forms as the current Holocene extinction is followed by the next great explosion of life on Earth.  The unique part of our era is its prolific number of incarnated human souls.  In the stripe of Hermetic Druidry to which I subscribe, this means that there are many formerly animal beings running aroud the planet at the moment.  The cycle of evolution is not just for matter, it is for spirit.  I was standing by my piano one day when I asked a wandering entity "What's it like to be a god?" The being, which I believe was a god though it's anybody's guess which one, gave a cryptically comical answer:  "It is like turning an amoeba into a pianist".  In other words, it is a long, slow process in geological scales of time to gradually complexify a spark of life in a tiny amoeba and put it through existence after existence until it is a human being who can manage a piano sonata.  When a being gets to the pianist stage, it is a true coming of age.  Not that the pianist is the final event in the chain -- of course not! -- but what has occurred is that cellular consciousness has become animal consciousness and then human animal consciousness.  This takes many, many trips around the sun.  The addition of fine motor skills such as music means that layers of sediment have built to mountainous heights.  The etheric body became an astral body and now the astral body develops a mental sheath.  Gods went through this process long ago, possibly in other universes.  They earned their mental bodies (body is a terrible, inadequate, and primitive word for the phenomenon of which I speak) as well as spiritual bodies that are much more intricate and masterful than our fledgling mental bodies.  Some gods deign to take an interest in human slugs like you and me.  From my experience, they are far more likely to interact with those who do not presume to speak for them personally or through a book or to be on equal footing with them, but I digress.

With such an excess of human-incarnated souls as we have now, we have a natural excess of humans who were wild or domestic animals fewer than a hundred years ago, which is not much in the span of geological time.  Though I believe vaccination and its aluminum adjuvants has been the primary gasoline on the autism dumpster fire, there may be other, deeper reasons why so many autistic people are being created.

The development of a full etheric body is the precursor to the development of the astral body, which is the body that animals are working on and the one upon which humans have a fairly decent grip.  Complex astral skills include written language, architecture, philosophy, music, computing, and large scale urbanization and warfare.  None of these phenomenon make humans any better than rocks, trees, animals, or bugs, but they indicate we may be more skilled in the astral plane than some of the previously mentioned things.  

So if you've made it this far in a long essay by a fringe occultist who talks to her toilet, you may be one of those who feels surrounded by stupid people.  Please keep in mind many of those people were quite literally cows, sheep, birds, cats, mice, crocodiles, fireflies, and squirrels a mere five to one hundred years ago and keep sympathy in your heart.  Like you, they are doing the best they can.  Energy is neither created nor destroyed.  It only changes form.  This is true for soul sparks of billions of animals who die are are quickly reincarnated as humans in the frenetic, overpopulated schedule of today.  

There is nothing wrong with being an animal.  It is neither inherently better nor worse than being a human.  Though our Faustian culture wants to push us to see reincarnation as success or failure where the superior human "wins" by ascending to non-embodiment, the kind of Buddhism and gnosticism that craps on all incarnation as essentially worthless is toxic.  Human life is hellish.  Being an animal is also hellish.  Both are also heavenly.  It depends on where you focus.  In my own case, human blackness and despair had me wanting to end my life.  I have fond memories of being a goose.  I was flying with my flock, the wind lifting my wings and my beak straight ahead.  We knew where we were going.  

As this era of overpopulation recedes like a tide -- and I would argue this is already happening -- some souls will bubble off into non-incarnation, stepping off into a new set of responsibilities that likely do not include anything like holding down a job or harvesting food.  This is not to say they won't have responsibility; I am almost certain they will and those could be difficult to handle.  In my own case, if I ever leave incarnation (I do not believe this will happen anytime within the next six hundred years at the minimum) I think I will become a Bodhisattva.  If I go back to being a cat or a goose as I was thousands of years ago, I don't foresee having a problem with it.  

I have spent a few years looking into what might happen to the vaccinated in their afterlives, and I was recently intrigued to find a couple of other people who are doing the same thing, Bernard Guenther and Thomas Mayer.  Guenther and Mayer are both heavily influenced by the work of Rudolf Steiner and hold him in high esteem.  Steiner had odd things to say about vaccines long before they were as de rigueur as they are today.  He said that vaccines will be responsible for the retardation of spiritual development in many humans and I believe he is correct.  Guenther and Mayer mainly that they can cause separation, detachment, and damage to the subtle bodies and they can make it much more difficult to engage in spiritual work.  For many years, I have had dim perceptions of the same phenomena. Guenther and Mayer speculate that recipients of Big Pharma protocols like MRNA vaccination and chemotherapy face becoming earthbound in the afterlife, which is to say that their etheric and astral bodies seem to end up tethered to the incarnation in which they vaccinated or became inundated with drugs via chemotherapy for an unusually lengthy period, but not forever.  Because these speculations are about the dead and based on unreliable communications with them, nobody knows if any of it is true and there is no way of proving it.  

From my own experience of communicating with the dead, I believe there is a glut of possibilities in the afterlife for the average Joe and Jane that is so vast, a retard like me could not hope to speculate it with any accuracy.  Obviously this has not stopped me from trying.  One possibility is that a large number of human-incarnated souls will return to non-human animal incarnation as wilderness subsumes Gaia.  Another possibility is that many souls will choose the accelerated evolution of spiritual work and become an army of non-incarnated beings themselves, having evolved beyond the need for physical manifestation.  

A Special Kind of Stupid

Somewhere between seventy and eighty percent of the world's population vaccinated, and many who did either died while still in the salty phase of trying to force and coerce others into the vaccination pyramid or are still pushing the vaccine narrative today.  Due to the nature of vaccination dislocating the subtle bodies as well as the karmic consequences of forcing others to do what you want (you will be in turn forced to do what you don't want to do) it seems logical that many vaccinated individuals will become earthbound after death.   But even they have the possibility of being redeemed and spared depending upon their vibe and openness to change. 

There is a special set who embody the rejection of spiritual evolution.  For instance, I have often said Sean Combs, also known as Diddy, seems doomed to reincarnate on a comet.  When I gave it some thought, I could easily see him ending up earthbound, almost content in that state because his etheric body would be able to wander its local area (provided he was not cremated) and vampirize people much like he did when he was still alive.  Diddy's astral body is most likely to remain earthbound, which will give him plentiful opportunities to enter nightmares and wreak havoc.   There are plenty just like him.  This is why everyone needs a banishing ritual.  Those who reject the Light at the end of human life and its companion, the Darkness of Judgement, stymy and delay the reincarnation process.  The Earth is currently teeming with formerly human spirits of this nature who could not let go and who also cannot pass into the next realm: that is how we get the most common of negative hauntings.  All of these stuck spirits had a choice.  They were shown (as you will be shown) a glimpse of the higher planes without so many blinders.  Like you, they were given a choice to go towards the light, which represents the higher self along with the higher selves of their particular soul swarm.  The cosmic ushers known as Bodhisattvas were there showing the path towards a natural progression of lives.  Their souls were given the chance to rest and digest the hard lessons of Meatworld among friends.  

Souls like theirs rebelled in the worst sort of way in life and they continue the path in death.  Having betrayed their soul swarm while in Meatworld, they run away, thinking there is someplace else to go.  As in life, they try to take the lazy way out in death, believing themselves to be entitled.  It is at that point where they are thrown to whatever demons they are tied to via the bargains they made while alive.  Demons, infection, disease, and narcissism overlap.  One leads to another.  For instance, a propensity towards alcoholism may be exacerbated by a little voice inside the future alcoholic's head whispering "Have another drink... it will be fine".  If you think that voice always came from the person's own head every single time, you are too naive to be helped.  Before long, the alcoholic's benders make her prone to both physical and nonphysical infection: disease.  On the more subtle planes, she is host to colonies of etheric larvae that feed off her diseased energy. She is also a vector of astral infection as she pleads for others to join her alcoholic astral pyramid in the form of drinking buddies.  Her energy is hungry and wants joiners.  

Unearned wealth is the ultimate addiction, which brings us full circle to the private equity firm CEO owner of Quiznos and Smashburger.  It's not that his human soul will ever amass enough power to become a demon, nor will that happen for Diddy after he dies.  As much as a power and money hungry human wants to assume the mantle of a superbeing in life or death, the hungry human is never going to be the owner of the casino.  Instead he will be merely another player.  The following, like the rest of this essay, is pure speculation.  The CEO of Quiznos/Smashburger (there have been several) is going to have the usual reception by their soul swarm shortly after dying.  They will be given a brief glimpse of rest and bliss before being sent to feel all that they put others through, and to sort wheat from chaff when it comes to the lives they touched.  If they had many good works that we know nothing about, those will be taken into account and balanced against the wealth they stole from their franchisees.  The balance between those things and their attitude towards it will determine where they will spend time between lives.  I believe people with obscene amounts of unearned wealth cannot hope to balance the scales in their favor, and it is also my belief that the CEOs of private equity firms will spend an inordinate amount of time earthbound and caught in a limbo as a result of running from accountability.  They will act in death as they did in life, avoiding responsibility for what they have done.  They are going to be against the natural law that forces them to earn every penny they stole, and that will mean finally becoming empathetic to emotional pain of the sort they inflicted and a lineup of existences as everything from a sweatshop slave to a dray horse.  Earn it back, earn it back. They will haunt the earth as hungry ghosts until they incarnate as humans in a much different and harder era, and they will not be born as queens and kings.  If they don't get enough redemptive human incarnations in before the Holocene era wraps, they will be reincarnated as non-human animals for the foreseeable future.  If they piss off the gods and powers well enough, they just might end up having to start over as plankton.  Now you see why I want nothing to do with unearned wealth!  I could be wrong, but I also could be right.



 






ecosophia: (Default)
John Michael Greer ([personal profile] ecosophia) wrote2025-08-10 09:37 pm

Magic Monday

it remainsMidnight is only a few minutes away, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through.  If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here

Also:
 I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.  And further:  I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

(The image? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed. See you next week!***