I look forward to losing the job I have of looking at astrology charts each day in order to try to prepare myself and anticipate whatever the drooling psychopaths who believe in astrology are planning for the day.
See, they “believe” sooooo much in astrology that if the “bad thing” that they “forecast” doesn’t happen, they stage that it does happen to someone, either in reality or pantomime. Such fun, such “enlightened souls.”
So I really look forward to the time, either because I don’t have to do it anymore, or because I am no longer here, that I can go back to just glancing at the stars, planets and moon every once in a while and think no further of them.
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
More information for "astrology" believers
First, here are some comments by the Pope. Even if you do not believe his words are helpful in using an analogy that helps you to understand how we view the cosmos.
http://www.zenit.org/article-24710?l=english
snip
Benedict XVI explained that "Christian thought compares the cosmos to a 'book,' -- Galileo himself said this -- considering it as a work of an Author."
According to this book, he said, "divine love, incarnated in Christ is the fundamental and universal law of creation. This should not be understood in a poetic, but in a real sense."
Dante also understood it this way, the Pope said, noting how the author concludes "Paradise" with a definition of God as "the love that moves the sun and the other stars."
"This means that the stars, the planets [and] the entire universe are not governed by a blind force, [and] do not obey only the dynamics of matter," he said. "Therefore, cosmic elements shouldn't be divinized, but on the contrary, in everything and above everything, there is a personal will, the Spirit of God, who in Christ revealed himself as love."
I've written the rational reasons why one should not and indeed must not believe in occult practices and forces such as astrology. Just to quickly link what the Pontiff says here to something I've pointed out before, consider this. The motivation of God is love, and he has created the cosmos based on the pure love that only he possesses and humans cannot understand. Thus the motivation of the entire cosmos and all that is within it is love.
What I've pointed out before is that occult practices assign portions of life to various topics, both good and "bad." Thus in tarot cards, for example, one fourth of the cards are assigned to "bad" categories, making 25% of tarot cards indicative of something bad. This is not consistent with one's day to day life, where one certainly is not having 25% of one's time taken up by tragedy day after day, year after year, and further, as you can now see with the Pope's analogy of a book being written totally about love, tarot cards, for example, dictate that one fourth of the pages of the book are not based on love but about misfortune and tragic events.
Do you see what I mean? Any divination or occult practice "assumes" through its use of numbers, assigned suits, astrology "meanings" and so forth that "bad" and "unlucky" events operate independent of the context of love. That is why the occult is totally contrary to God and his will. Occult practices "assign" proportions of "good" and "bad" "events" totally outside of the context of both divine and humanitarian love. People are therefore reduced to "bottom line" status ("good" or "bad") without giving consideration at all to the ongoing nature of their life.
Here is a simple example. Suppose an astrology reader "assesses" jobs and careers only based on money, future promotion, power and how "happy" you will be. However, are there not millions of people who work in not so great jobs in order to support their families and have a better future? Where is that in a "sword, pentacle, rod or cup?" Occult practices were never developed with day to day normalcy in mind. Ironically, people nowadays crave some stability and normalcy, and less "drama" not more. Yet the occult strips away all the reality of normalcy for a totally unreal worldview that is proportions of unrealistic expectations and bleakness.
With that as an introduction, here is another mental detox exercise I've prepared for those of you trying to, thank God, wean yourselves from astrology. I know many of you have or are working on it, and bless you for that. But it's pernicious and as bad as any drug. So I continue to offer to you who are working on it and those of you who still do not believe helpful exercises in logic to wean you away from occult "thinking" and back to reality.
In astrology there is the assumption that certain bodies in the cosmos called "planets" (whether they are planets or not) "cause" certain types of events to happen. In other words planets have "specialties" and "govern" areas of life. The same is true of the signs of the zodiac, where each of the twelve signs have "specialities" and "govern" areas of life. Thus Mercury is viewed as being "in charge of communications" (even though it is just a dumb rock orbiting the mindless sun). Astrologers care about where Mercury "is" including in which of the twelve signs it is "traveling through." For example, astrologically speaking Mercury is now "in" Aquarius.
Of course Mercury is not "in" Aquarius since Aquarius does not even exist. Aquarius is a bunch of stars that are not even together in space, but are viewed as forming a shape in the same general direction of the galaxy. Suppose you are standing in New York City and have magical eyes so you can see for thousands of miles around the globe. You have someone standing in front of you in New York, and over his or her shoulder see someone standing in London, and over his or her shoulder someone in Russia. They are all in a line. Um, are they "together?" No, obviously not. But this is what astrologers "believe." They take the names and meanings that ancient people gave to stars that appear in the same part of the sky and view them as being "together" in both their meaning and their supposed "influence" on people's lives and events.
So whenever a planet "moves" from sign to sign its "areas of control" and the events that are supposedly "caused" changes in nature and tone since it supposedly picks up the characteristics of the sign it is "in." But that is an optical illusion because the planet is not "out there" among the stars, but just circling our important but boring sun. Like an actor walking across a stage with scenery a planet is seen against the backdrop of stars, but the stars themselves are not even connected together in a meaningful way. Here is an analogy. Suppose that you are standing in your kitchen with your back to the wall that is opposite the doorway to the kitchen. Suppose that by facing the door you are facing west. That means your back and your rear end are against the wall that is to the east. What does any of that mean? Nothing. When astrologers draw their charts all they are doing is using the earth as the back wall that you are leaning your butt against and looking at the door, in this case what direction each planet is in.
Now with very slow planets, such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, astrologers are all ga-ga whenever they are in a sign, calling it a "huge" "shift" and a "generational" impact. So when Pluto spends like ten years "going through" a sign astrologers expect and project upon the big events of humanity the "influences" of that sign. So according to western astrology Pluto has just entered Capricorn. Now astrologers "expect" and "demand" that humanity now has "typical" "Pluto in Capricorn 'behavior' and 'events.'" Here is the problem with such garbage.
Suppose I stuffed you into a rocket ship and took you to the actual planet Pluto. You are now in orbit around Pluto. As you orbit around Pluto, Pluto is not "stuck" in Capricorn. In fact, you see Pluto "framed" against each of the twelve signs in turn. Thus while you are orbiting you see Pluto "in" Aries, then travel more in your orbit and see Pluto "in" Taurus, and then you travel more and you see Pluto "in" Gemini, and you travel a little further and see Pluto "in" Cancer, and so on through each of the twelve signs as you finish one orbit, and your next orbit starts with seeing Pluto "in" Aries again.
Doe that make you Master of the Universe? I mean, if you are out there all by yourself in the rocket that I sent you out on and you can just move your spaceship to any part of your orbit and thus have Pluto, the slowest planet, now moving from sign to sign in a matter of hours, should you not be able to just kind of do whatever you want, make Pluto "serve" you in all ways?
If Pluto goes "into" a money sign, should not money fall into your lap no matter what you do? Except, oh yeah, wait, earth is back over thar in that thar direction and you are sitting in a rocket. I mean, you actually have to be among people and do things, right? So when you move your ship a little more and Pluto is in your most compatible love sign, should you not know find your perfect "soul mate" and have the most powerful love? Oh yeah, except for one problem. Earth and its humans is back over thar in that thar direction and you are alone in your stupid rocket ship. And what if Pluto is now a few hours later in a sign that indicates "war?" And you duck down and cover your ears and worry about the fighting starting. Oh, but wait, you just are thinking Pluto is "doing something" in that "war sign" because you are just a dummy sitting in a spaceship (which I provided to you) so you can orbit it and watch Pluto seem to be in one sign after the other in a matter of hours. Nothing has changed on earth no matter where Pluto "is" or where you are or where you "think" Pluto "is." Except anyone sane who actually cared about you is sad that you are in your stupid spaceship believing still in astrology. (And I worry about how much it has cost me, especially the fuel bill, in letting you go and "see for yourself" that astrology is a bunch of steaming cruel crap).
When one orbits a planet, as the International Space Station is now doing on earth, one has challenges such as, if you are Muslim, which direction is toward Mecca on earth to pray. This is another prosaic example of how the planets do not "move" into "areas of influence" but instead, people just gaze at the rocks and stars in the cosmos from different places and perspectives. The Muslim has to get his or her bearings in space to know in which direction Mecca lies so they can be prone in the correct direction and pray. But it does not change Mecca that Aries is "behind the earth" at that part of the orbit, or that a few hours later Taurus is "behind the earth" and so forth through the signs. Prayers to Mecca are prayers to Mecca, one just needs to point to Mecca. Astrologers "believe" that the chunks of cosmos "work together" in areas of speciality to influence human lives and events. That is so demonstrably wrong and stupid that it would be funny if I have not seen it harm so many people.
So the next time that you read some astrology crap about a planet or a sign and what is supposedly is going to do "for" you or "against" you, imagine getting in a rocket ship and flying to that planet. What would that do for you? After all, you can then see that planet in all twelve of the zodiac signs in one day as you orbit the planet. What would an astrologer say to that? Take my advice and don't ask and don't even read the daily paper's horoscopes for a laugh, because it stopped being funny a long time ago.
I hope you have found this helpful and that someday all people will see what believing orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews see, which is the cosmos as the sign of God's love for life.
http://www.zenit.org/article-24710?l=english
snip
Benedict XVI explained that "Christian thought compares the cosmos to a 'book,' -- Galileo himself said this -- considering it as a work of an Author."
According to this book, he said, "divine love, incarnated in Christ is the fundamental and universal law of creation. This should not be understood in a poetic, but in a real sense."
Dante also understood it this way, the Pope said, noting how the author concludes "Paradise" with a definition of God as "the love that moves the sun and the other stars."
"This means that the stars, the planets [and] the entire universe are not governed by a blind force, [and] do not obey only the dynamics of matter," he said. "Therefore, cosmic elements shouldn't be divinized, but on the contrary, in everything and above everything, there is a personal will, the Spirit of God, who in Christ revealed himself as love."
I've written the rational reasons why one should not and indeed must not believe in occult practices and forces such as astrology. Just to quickly link what the Pontiff says here to something I've pointed out before, consider this. The motivation of God is love, and he has created the cosmos based on the pure love that only he possesses and humans cannot understand. Thus the motivation of the entire cosmos and all that is within it is love.
What I've pointed out before is that occult practices assign portions of life to various topics, both good and "bad." Thus in tarot cards, for example, one fourth of the cards are assigned to "bad" categories, making 25% of tarot cards indicative of something bad. This is not consistent with one's day to day life, where one certainly is not having 25% of one's time taken up by tragedy day after day, year after year, and further, as you can now see with the Pope's analogy of a book being written totally about love, tarot cards, for example, dictate that one fourth of the pages of the book are not based on love but about misfortune and tragic events.
Do you see what I mean? Any divination or occult practice "assumes" through its use of numbers, assigned suits, astrology "meanings" and so forth that "bad" and "unlucky" events operate independent of the context of love. That is why the occult is totally contrary to God and his will. Occult practices "assign" proportions of "good" and "bad" "events" totally outside of the context of both divine and humanitarian love. People are therefore reduced to "bottom line" status ("good" or "bad") without giving consideration at all to the ongoing nature of their life.
Here is a simple example. Suppose an astrology reader "assesses" jobs and careers only based on money, future promotion, power and how "happy" you will be. However, are there not millions of people who work in not so great jobs in order to support their families and have a better future? Where is that in a "sword, pentacle, rod or cup?" Occult practices were never developed with day to day normalcy in mind. Ironically, people nowadays crave some stability and normalcy, and less "drama" not more. Yet the occult strips away all the reality of normalcy for a totally unreal worldview that is proportions of unrealistic expectations and bleakness.
With that as an introduction, here is another mental detox exercise I've prepared for those of you trying to, thank God, wean yourselves from astrology. I know many of you have or are working on it, and bless you for that. But it's pernicious and as bad as any drug. So I continue to offer to you who are working on it and those of you who still do not believe helpful exercises in logic to wean you away from occult "thinking" and back to reality.
In astrology there is the assumption that certain bodies in the cosmos called "planets" (whether they are planets or not) "cause" certain types of events to happen. In other words planets have "specialties" and "govern" areas of life. The same is true of the signs of the zodiac, where each of the twelve signs have "specialities" and "govern" areas of life. Thus Mercury is viewed as being "in charge of communications" (even though it is just a dumb rock orbiting the mindless sun). Astrologers care about where Mercury "is" including in which of the twelve signs it is "traveling through." For example, astrologically speaking Mercury is now "in" Aquarius.
Of course Mercury is not "in" Aquarius since Aquarius does not even exist. Aquarius is a bunch of stars that are not even together in space, but are viewed as forming a shape in the same general direction of the galaxy. Suppose you are standing in New York City and have magical eyes so you can see for thousands of miles around the globe. You have someone standing in front of you in New York, and over his or her shoulder see someone standing in London, and over his or her shoulder someone in Russia. They are all in a line. Um, are they "together?" No, obviously not. But this is what astrologers "believe." They take the names and meanings that ancient people gave to stars that appear in the same part of the sky and view them as being "together" in both their meaning and their supposed "influence" on people's lives and events.
So whenever a planet "moves" from sign to sign its "areas of control" and the events that are supposedly "caused" changes in nature and tone since it supposedly picks up the characteristics of the sign it is "in." But that is an optical illusion because the planet is not "out there" among the stars, but just circling our important but boring sun. Like an actor walking across a stage with scenery a planet is seen against the backdrop of stars, but the stars themselves are not even connected together in a meaningful way. Here is an analogy. Suppose that you are standing in your kitchen with your back to the wall that is opposite the doorway to the kitchen. Suppose that by facing the door you are facing west. That means your back and your rear end are against the wall that is to the east. What does any of that mean? Nothing. When astrologers draw their charts all they are doing is using the earth as the back wall that you are leaning your butt against and looking at the door, in this case what direction each planet is in.
Now with very slow planets, such as Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, astrologers are all ga-ga whenever they are in a sign, calling it a "huge" "shift" and a "generational" impact. So when Pluto spends like ten years "going through" a sign astrologers expect and project upon the big events of humanity the "influences" of that sign. So according to western astrology Pluto has just entered Capricorn. Now astrologers "expect" and "demand" that humanity now has "typical" "Pluto in Capricorn 'behavior' and 'events.'" Here is the problem with such garbage.
Suppose I stuffed you into a rocket ship and took you to the actual planet Pluto. You are now in orbit around Pluto. As you orbit around Pluto, Pluto is not "stuck" in Capricorn. In fact, you see Pluto "framed" against each of the twelve signs in turn. Thus while you are orbiting you see Pluto "in" Aries, then travel more in your orbit and see Pluto "in" Taurus, and then you travel more and you see Pluto "in" Gemini, and you travel a little further and see Pluto "in" Cancer, and so on through each of the twelve signs as you finish one orbit, and your next orbit starts with seeing Pluto "in" Aries again.
Doe that make you Master of the Universe? I mean, if you are out there all by yourself in the rocket that I sent you out on and you can just move your spaceship to any part of your orbit and thus have Pluto, the slowest planet, now moving from sign to sign in a matter of hours, should you not be able to just kind of do whatever you want, make Pluto "serve" you in all ways?
If Pluto goes "into" a money sign, should not money fall into your lap no matter what you do? Except, oh yeah, wait, earth is back over thar in that thar direction and you are sitting in a rocket. I mean, you actually have to be among people and do things, right? So when you move your ship a little more and Pluto is in your most compatible love sign, should you not know find your perfect "soul mate" and have the most powerful love? Oh yeah, except for one problem. Earth and its humans is back over thar in that thar direction and you are alone in your stupid rocket ship. And what if Pluto is now a few hours later in a sign that indicates "war?" And you duck down and cover your ears and worry about the fighting starting. Oh, but wait, you just are thinking Pluto is "doing something" in that "war sign" because you are just a dummy sitting in a spaceship (which I provided to you) so you can orbit it and watch Pluto seem to be in one sign after the other in a matter of hours. Nothing has changed on earth no matter where Pluto "is" or where you are or where you "think" Pluto "is." Except anyone sane who actually cared about you is sad that you are in your stupid spaceship believing still in astrology. (And I worry about how much it has cost me, especially the fuel bill, in letting you go and "see for yourself" that astrology is a bunch of steaming cruel crap).
When one orbits a planet, as the International Space Station is now doing on earth, one has challenges such as, if you are Muslim, which direction is toward Mecca on earth to pray. This is another prosaic example of how the planets do not "move" into "areas of influence" but instead, people just gaze at the rocks and stars in the cosmos from different places and perspectives. The Muslim has to get his or her bearings in space to know in which direction Mecca lies so they can be prone in the correct direction and pray. But it does not change Mecca that Aries is "behind the earth" at that part of the orbit, or that a few hours later Taurus is "behind the earth" and so forth through the signs. Prayers to Mecca are prayers to Mecca, one just needs to point to Mecca. Astrologers "believe" that the chunks of cosmos "work together" in areas of speciality to influence human lives and events. That is so demonstrably wrong and stupid that it would be funny if I have not seen it harm so many people.
So the next time that you read some astrology crap about a planet or a sign and what is supposedly is going to do "for" you or "against" you, imagine getting in a rocket ship and flying to that planet. What would that do for you? After all, you can then see that planet in all twelve of the zodiac signs in one day as you orbit the planet. What would an astrologer say to that? Take my advice and don't ask and don't even read the daily paper's horoscopes for a laugh, because it stopped being funny a long time ago.
I hope you have found this helpful and that someday all people will see what believing orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews see, which is the cosmos as the sign of God's love for life.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
An ironic death of an astrophysicist
Remember I've posted in this blog before about irony? Well, here's another example.
On Tuesday, September 9, CERN got all huffy and self congratulatory as they flip the switch to test their apparatus that will "find the God particle" and "look back into time to moments after the universe's creation at the Big Bang."
On Thursday, September 11 a Max Planck astrophysicist falls to his death changing lenses on his MAGIC telescope.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Condolences to his family. Some of my former best friends are astronomers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Goebel
On Tuesday, September 9, CERN got all huffy and self congratulatory as they flip the switch to test their apparatus that will "find the God particle" and "look back into time to moments after the universe's creation at the Big Bang."
On Thursday, September 11 a Max Planck astrophysicist falls to his death changing lenses on his MAGIC telescope.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Condolences to his family. Some of my former best friends are astronomers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_Goebel
Friday, August 1, 2008
Another big pop song dragged out for eclipse
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/YOU
You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't You?
Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won
Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not you're with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife from a close friend, and...
You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't You? Don't you?
***
I liked Carly Simon back when this song was a hit, and admired the pathos of much of her content. But I admit, I really grew to dislike this song when I found out "new age" cultists are so into eclipses for occult reasons and actually use eclipse dates to ruin people's lives. So that ruined not only this song for me, but also the eclipse part of astronomy too. Not astrology, astronomy. I'm not even interested in the science or aesthetics of the eclipses anymore because cultists have made total dog poop (that's pop with an extra "O") out of one of God's beautiful natural creations.
You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't You?
Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won
Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia
To see the total eclipse of the sun
Well you're where you should be all the time
And when you're not you're with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife from a close friend, and...
You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you
You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't You? Don't you?
***
I liked Carly Simon back when this song was a hit, and admired the pathos of much of her content. But I admit, I really grew to dislike this song when I found out "new age" cultists are so into eclipses for occult reasons and actually use eclipse dates to ruin people's lives. So that ruined not only this song for me, but also the eclipse part of astronomy too. Not astrology, astronomy. I'm not even interested in the science or aesthetics of the eclipses anymore because cultists have made total dog poop (that's pop with an extra "O") out of one of God's beautiful natural creations.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Part Seven: How I tried to handle the astrologers
I thought I’d captured most of the highlights, or actually lowlights, of how I tried to deal with astrologers, specifically RAP triumvirate believers (reincarnation, astrology and “psychics”), but then I remembered one other very important set of events and attempts by me to be positively subversive to share. So here goes with “another chapter” in a time that really should have been spent with people finding their way back to God instead of pulling my chain.
I spent a lot of time counseling a friend who I met through the message board and I don’t regret any of that time, even though I know she was lying to me. This is because this was hands on restoration of sanity work that I knew people could observe and learn about how I do things (the right way). That’s no brag, just fact. And so we did a lot of work on what we called her bipolar and attention deficit issues. It went so well that at one point she suggested that we write a book together about the bipolar treatment techniques that we used in our conversations. And also, of course, I thought of us as friends, though being entirely through email, it had its limits. We also decided to have an astrology website that could encapsulate my teachings. Hmm. While promoting astrology was not at all in my interest, or the Lord’s, like I’ve explained, the situation on earth is so dire that I long ago realized I had to go into their lingo, their values, and try to teach them to be the best that they could be even within the vile philosophies they have chosen. Jesus explained this when he was challenged why he had sinners to his table, using the doctor analogy, that the healthy do not need a doctor, but the sick do. So I decided to hold my nose and create an astrology site, but to use it to be positively subversive. I mentioned this concept in a previous posting in this blog series. Subversion means to undermine something from within and underneath it, but not to ruin it (that is sabotage). Positive subversion is to undermine the negative components from underneath and subtly replace them with positive components. And so I started my “Doris Day” and “Little Mary Sunshine” toned astrology daily web site. Here is what I did to try to teach and subvert.
1. I monitored the daily movement of the planets, sun and moon, and taught a lot of math about how they moved but rather than emphasizing the math for “forecasting” as astrologers do, I was reintroducing people to the reality that these are hunks of rock moving through space. So I used math and physics ostensibly to monitor astrology body movement, but instead intending to make this more about astronomy than astrology. I felt the more people saw the boring trudging of dumb bodies of rock through space day by day the more they would regain a realistic grip on the non-numinous nature of science and just plain old reality of matter and energy in space over time.
2. Every planet, every aspect (angle or position) and every hour of every day was a good time to do something! Ha ha ha, no bad times of doom on my web site. Day after day my “fans” would have seen “Great time to do something creative!” “Great time to do something charitable!” “Great time to have an important discussion!” I never “predicted” trouble and I never made it look like someone should avoid doing something due to stupid planets humping along in their stupid orbits. Every day was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows no matter what the planets were “doing.” Lord, did the “fans” think I was dumb and naive!
3. I discovered that RAP philosophy (not to dignify it) also included a demented method of “interpreting numbers” called numerology that was also as depressive, counterintuitive and anti-reality thing as I had ever seen. So I did an interpretation of the “daily number” that was always, well, you guessed it, a good day to do something no matter what the number was. Numerologists are stupid morons on a good day. I’ve blogged about this before so I won’t hammer it again in this posting. But understand that my web site was a way to subvert another stupid and wicked practice once I read up on it enough to understand what harm it was causing.
4. In an effort to get people to stop looking at the sky and their own butt holes, I introduced a daily quote from a poet or author. I’d use the pretense of looking up famous births for the day, but instead of focusing on celebrities (don’t even get me started on that) I kept a number of sources to look up birthdays of poets, artists, authors and historical figures. I would post snips of their poems, for example. I never said moronic things like “Oh look, what a typical Gemini thing to say.” Subversive.
5. I wrote essays that were analogies and parables. They were basically analogies and parables that starred astrology concepts. For example, a man would try to build a house, and wise old Saturn, who he meets in town, is the one who kept the man from building on a floodplain. I wrote about towns that have as their mayor a Zodiac sign. I tried to make them funny and imaginative. My purpose was to reintroduce people who were looking at imaginary or real hunks of rock and their own butt holes to looking at human nature and possibilities, and the incredible range of behavior and choices that people have. So these people were named signs of the Zodiac and manifested their stereotyped qualities, but I was trying to be subversive in introducing people to a realistic, funny and charitable view of humans as they really are, not robots in some mean and stupid imaginary karma A-hole machine.
Anyway, I hated doing it because like I said, it’s all part of the waste of years of humanity in chasing the occult and coveting power, control and wealth, and I don’t like writing about the unreal. But I don’t regret the success that I did have in subversion, because I know that while at first people dismissed me as being a particularly fat and dense ignoramus who just can’t seem to take a hint about the “wisdom” out there about “who I really am and who everyone really is” (boo hoo hoo, puff and snort), over a period of time they had to start wondering why I was so unchanging. I do think the time and pain that I spent on it was probably the only way to get them to hear the clue phone ringing.
I would occasionally do a “for pay” reading, usually less than $50. Why is this? Because in the real world of the institutional church, there is a secular misunderstanding that somehow people “with spiritual gifts” should “give them away.” That is part of a demonic temptation that seeks to withhold cold hard cash funding from Christians, to be honest. The words of Jesus are often twisted by those who seek to undermine Christians to make it sound like people should give away their services for free. Yes, religion is free. But a man who presides over a wedding should get a fee, since he sits there and prepares services for you; he’s not just sitting by you while in free prayer. So when this subject came up, I, in my secret thoughts, weighed whether to not accept payment and that way not seem to endorse that anything RAP is worth paying one plugged nickel for, versus another chance to realign these people’s thoughts properly, which is that Christian preachers, for example, deserve financial support, but not because religion is being bought or sold.
I illustrated it when my friend told me she no longer had money to pay me for my counseling. I continued to do it, gladly, and accepted in payment the occasional photograph that she took of roses. Barter is something I strongly believe in and that is a great return to the foundational church where the Apostles preached in return for room and board, food and clothing. I have an overall plan of “how I would do things” that includes a huge network of coop, barter, guild and charitable swap of services. The balance is to recognize that the members of the institutional church deserve compensation for services, and that is not the same as “selling the faith.” However, money corrupts, there’s no question about it. So I tried to answer the RAP fee question by demonstrating service has value, but religion is free, and that mutually charitable swapping that does not involve money is the best where at all possible. One priest whose blog I read has a wish list on Amazon and I think that is a GREAT idea, and I’ve bought him items from his list. It is a way that people can support him for his service (the enormous time he puts into education and sharing of news on his blog) without trying to discern “a price” for his service AND without forcing him to be distracted from his religious calling by having to do unnecessary money handling and accounting for his needs.
Well, so there is more from the memory bank, and what a not fun and wasteful ride it’s been.
I spent a lot of time counseling a friend who I met through the message board and I don’t regret any of that time, even though I know she was lying to me. This is because this was hands on restoration of sanity work that I knew people could observe and learn about how I do things (the right way). That’s no brag, just fact. And so we did a lot of work on what we called her bipolar and attention deficit issues. It went so well that at one point she suggested that we write a book together about the bipolar treatment techniques that we used in our conversations. And also, of course, I thought of us as friends, though being entirely through email, it had its limits. We also decided to have an astrology website that could encapsulate my teachings. Hmm. While promoting astrology was not at all in my interest, or the Lord’s, like I’ve explained, the situation on earth is so dire that I long ago realized I had to go into their lingo, their values, and try to teach them to be the best that they could be even within the vile philosophies they have chosen. Jesus explained this when he was challenged why he had sinners to his table, using the doctor analogy, that the healthy do not need a doctor, but the sick do. So I decided to hold my nose and create an astrology site, but to use it to be positively subversive. I mentioned this concept in a previous posting in this blog series. Subversion means to undermine something from within and underneath it, but not to ruin it (that is sabotage). Positive subversion is to undermine the negative components from underneath and subtly replace them with positive components. And so I started my “Doris Day” and “Little Mary Sunshine” toned astrology daily web site. Here is what I did to try to teach and subvert.
1. I monitored the daily movement of the planets, sun and moon, and taught a lot of math about how they moved but rather than emphasizing the math for “forecasting” as astrologers do, I was reintroducing people to the reality that these are hunks of rock moving through space. So I used math and physics ostensibly to monitor astrology body movement, but instead intending to make this more about astronomy than astrology. I felt the more people saw the boring trudging of dumb bodies of rock through space day by day the more they would regain a realistic grip on the non-numinous nature of science and just plain old reality of matter and energy in space over time.
2. Every planet, every aspect (angle or position) and every hour of every day was a good time to do something! Ha ha ha, no bad times of doom on my web site. Day after day my “fans” would have seen “Great time to do something creative!” “Great time to do something charitable!” “Great time to have an important discussion!” I never “predicted” trouble and I never made it look like someone should avoid doing something due to stupid planets humping along in their stupid orbits. Every day was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows no matter what the planets were “doing.” Lord, did the “fans” think I was dumb and naive!
3. I discovered that RAP philosophy (not to dignify it) also included a demented method of “interpreting numbers” called numerology that was also as depressive, counterintuitive and anti-reality thing as I had ever seen. So I did an interpretation of the “daily number” that was always, well, you guessed it, a good day to do something no matter what the number was. Numerologists are stupid morons on a good day. I’ve blogged about this before so I won’t hammer it again in this posting. But understand that my web site was a way to subvert another stupid and wicked practice once I read up on it enough to understand what harm it was causing.
4. In an effort to get people to stop looking at the sky and their own butt holes, I introduced a daily quote from a poet or author. I’d use the pretense of looking up famous births for the day, but instead of focusing on celebrities (don’t even get me started on that) I kept a number of sources to look up birthdays of poets, artists, authors and historical figures. I would post snips of their poems, for example. I never said moronic things like “Oh look, what a typical Gemini thing to say.” Subversive.
5. I wrote essays that were analogies and parables. They were basically analogies and parables that starred astrology concepts. For example, a man would try to build a house, and wise old Saturn, who he meets in town, is the one who kept the man from building on a floodplain. I wrote about towns that have as their mayor a Zodiac sign. I tried to make them funny and imaginative. My purpose was to reintroduce people who were looking at imaginary or real hunks of rock and their own butt holes to looking at human nature and possibilities, and the incredible range of behavior and choices that people have. So these people were named signs of the Zodiac and manifested their stereotyped qualities, but I was trying to be subversive in introducing people to a realistic, funny and charitable view of humans as they really are, not robots in some mean and stupid imaginary karma A-hole machine.
Anyway, I hated doing it because like I said, it’s all part of the waste of years of humanity in chasing the occult and coveting power, control and wealth, and I don’t like writing about the unreal. But I don’t regret the success that I did have in subversion, because I know that while at first people dismissed me as being a particularly fat and dense ignoramus who just can’t seem to take a hint about the “wisdom” out there about “who I really am and who everyone really is” (boo hoo hoo, puff and snort), over a period of time they had to start wondering why I was so unchanging. I do think the time and pain that I spent on it was probably the only way to get them to hear the clue phone ringing.
I would occasionally do a “for pay” reading, usually less than $50. Why is this? Because in the real world of the institutional church, there is a secular misunderstanding that somehow people “with spiritual gifts” should “give them away.” That is part of a demonic temptation that seeks to withhold cold hard cash funding from Christians, to be honest. The words of Jesus are often twisted by those who seek to undermine Christians to make it sound like people should give away their services for free. Yes, religion is free. But a man who presides over a wedding should get a fee, since he sits there and prepares services for you; he’s not just sitting by you while in free prayer. So when this subject came up, I, in my secret thoughts, weighed whether to not accept payment and that way not seem to endorse that anything RAP is worth paying one plugged nickel for, versus another chance to realign these people’s thoughts properly, which is that Christian preachers, for example, deserve financial support, but not because religion is being bought or sold.
I illustrated it when my friend told me she no longer had money to pay me for my counseling. I continued to do it, gladly, and accepted in payment the occasional photograph that she took of roses. Barter is something I strongly believe in and that is a great return to the foundational church where the Apostles preached in return for room and board, food and clothing. I have an overall plan of “how I would do things” that includes a huge network of coop, barter, guild and charitable swap of services. The balance is to recognize that the members of the institutional church deserve compensation for services, and that is not the same as “selling the faith.” However, money corrupts, there’s no question about it. So I tried to answer the RAP fee question by demonstrating service has value, but religion is free, and that mutually charitable swapping that does not involve money is the best where at all possible. One priest whose blog I read has a wish list on Amazon and I think that is a GREAT idea, and I’ve bought him items from his list. It is a way that people can support him for his service (the enormous time he puts into education and sharing of news on his blog) without trying to discern “a price” for his service AND without forcing him to be distracted from his religious calling by having to do unnecessary money handling and accounting for his needs.
Well, so there is more from the memory bank, and what a not fun and wasteful ride it’s been.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Some amateur astronomy talk
Regular readers know that one of my first favorite hobbies was astronomy. This is because when I was a small child my teenage neighbor was an amateur astronomer with his own observatory and was very generous in supporting my interest.
Back in the 1980's, when it seemed that the teaching of science in schools had hit its lowest, I was looking at the stars with my niece. I explained to her that when you look at a star you are not seeing how it really is right now, but you are seeing how it was millions of years ago. This is because they are so far away that it takes millions of years for that "snapshot" of the star to arrive at our eyes to see. So if a star is three million "light years" away that means when you look at it you are seeing it as it was three million years ago, not how it is today.
Well, read this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Exploding-Star.html
Star Explodes Halfway Across Universe
snip
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.
snip
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
''This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe,'' Burrows said.
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.
***
OK, so this means that on Wednesday if someone had been looking at the sky at the right spot and time they would have seen this exploding star. They would have seen the star explode, but it actually exploded 7.5 BILLION years ago!
Now I have to make the obligatory *talks like a broken record* explanation to "astrologers." Some "astrologers" think they are extra "serious" because they monitor and use "fixed stars" in addition to planets for their "predictions." I've always giggled, except it's so awful and serious, the damage astrologers have done, that they "monitor" and "predict" based on stars that may or may not even be in existence at the time they are drawing up their stupid retarded astrology charts. In theory none of the stars they use might actually even exist anymore, because if they had blown up no one on earth would know about it for millions or billions of years, since the light of their demise has not reached here yet. However, they make the gullible think that the stars are the key to destiny and spirituality. Nothing like making "predictions" based on a star that blew up millions or billions of years ago and humans don't know that it had. Ha ha ha. It would be funny if it wasn't so sick.
BTW, here's the link to the time lapse image so you can see it yourself. Remember that you are seeing a star that explodes before the earth was even in existence.
http://grb.fuw.edu.pl/pi/ot/grb080319b/normal.html
*Clue phone continues to ring*
Back in the 1980's, when it seemed that the teaching of science in schools had hit its lowest, I was looking at the stars with my niece. I explained to her that when you look at a star you are not seeing how it really is right now, but you are seeing how it was millions of years ago. This is because they are so far away that it takes millions of years for that "snapshot" of the star to arrive at our eyes to see. So if a star is three million "light years" away that means when you look at it you are seeing it as it was three million years ago, not how it is today.
Well, read this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Exploding-Star.html
Star Explodes Halfway Across Universe
snip
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday.
snip
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
''This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe,'' Burrows said.
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said.
***
OK, so this means that on Wednesday if someone had been looking at the sky at the right spot and time they would have seen this exploding star. They would have seen the star explode, but it actually exploded 7.5 BILLION years ago!
Now I have to make the obligatory *talks like a broken record* explanation to "astrologers." Some "astrologers" think they are extra "serious" because they monitor and use "fixed stars" in addition to planets for their "predictions." I've always giggled, except it's so awful and serious, the damage astrologers have done, that they "monitor" and "predict" based on stars that may or may not even be in existence at the time they are drawing up their stupid retarded astrology charts. In theory none of the stars they use might actually even exist anymore, because if they had blown up no one on earth would know about it for millions or billions of years, since the light of their demise has not reached here yet. However, they make the gullible think that the stars are the key to destiny and spirituality. Nothing like making "predictions" based on a star that blew up millions or billions of years ago and humans don't know that it had. Ha ha ha. It would be funny if it wasn't so sick.
BTW, here's the link to the time lapse image so you can see it yourself. Remember that you are seeing a star that explodes before the earth was even in existence.
http://grb.fuw.edu.pl/pi/ot/grb080319b/normal.html
*Clue phone continues to ring*
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Eclipse is pretty from my view in Mississippi
I actually forgot about it so around dinner time I decided to jump in the car to do some "retail therapy" (shopping). I'm trying to organize my tiny apartment so I don't feel like I'm living in a storage unit so I bopped over to Lowe's for some plastic storage containers, and got 4 at a great price. Then I went to Walmarts because I've been doing without all my cooking gear these past 18 months (all in storage over a thousand miles from here) so I bought some pretty kitchenware. (By the way you can balance buying made in China by also finding some great made in USA dinnerware, like Corelle, a long time favorite of mine. I picked up 8 of their bamboo design plates). I've been a long time fan of Corning and their fine art division Steuben Glass. Corelle is an innovative GLASS product (I remember when it first came out in 1970) and regular readers know that I'm a big advocate of glass as a chemical and metal free substance to use for beverages and dinnerware.
http://www.corelle.com/index.asp
It's only when I pulled back into my apartment parking lot (such as it is) that I remembered the eclipse since I had a clear view of it already underway. There are some clouds which gives it a nice misty look, but it's still easily visible. Since we don't have winter down here it's comfortable to stand outside and watch, which I've been doing the past 30 minutes or so. Got a little chilled though so I came back inside to have a warm piece of toast. Think I'll take another look and see how it's doing "up there."
(It was entirely clouded over so I ended up gabbing with neighbors who just returned from some good Mexican dining!)
http://www.corelle.com/index.asp
It's only when I pulled back into my apartment parking lot (such as it is) that I remembered the eclipse since I had a clear view of it already underway. There are some clouds which gives it a nice misty look, but it's still easily visible. Since we don't have winter down here it's comfortable to stand outside and watch, which I've been doing the past 30 minutes or so. Got a little chilled though so I came back inside to have a warm piece of toast. Think I'll take another look and see how it's doing "up there."
(It was entirely clouded over so I ended up gabbing with neighbors who just returned from some good Mexican dining!)
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