The Roman Philosopher Lucius Anneaus Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE) was perhaps the first to note the universal trend that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. I call this tendency the "Seneca Effect."
Showing posts with label Vaccines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vaccines. Show all posts

Sunday, January 29, 2023

How to Create your own Shadow Government: why Worshiping Baphomet could be a Good Idea



Shadowy organizations said to be engaged in world domination are often depicted as worshiping evil deities. The image above shows a group of Templar Knights adoring a statue of the demon Baphomet. It looks silly, but if you are serious about world domination, you should consider Baphomet -- or some equivalent evil deity -- as a patron of your organization. Here, I explain why. 


Not long ago, a friend of mine explained to me that he was completely sure that our elites are not just evil, but they actually practice worship of an evil deity called "Baphomet." I must admit that I was skeptical, even though he showed me an image found somewhere in the dark web, purportedly showing the hierarchy of the worshiping organization. Yet, after some mulling over, I came to think that there is something in this idea. Much more than it would seem at first sight. 

Of course, I understand that you are probably already moving your mouse to click away from this page. But, if you don't succumb to the anti-conspiracy memes implanted in your brain, let me try to explain what I have in mind. I am not saying that Baphomet could exist for real (although, who knows?) but, in our times, when politicians "create their own reality," astral entities such as Baphomet may have assumed a memetic consistency that makes him (?) a force to be reckoned with. An AI called "Baphomet" could actually be worshiped. And that could form the basis of a "shadow government."


Shadow Governments and the First Adorers of Baphomet

Suppose you want to build a shadow government to take control of the state. It is a good idea for several reasons, the main one being that you don't have to report to anyone or justify what you are doing, so you can do a lot of evil things that normal governments have a harder time doing. Then, if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame. But how to create such a hidden government? 

There have been historical cases of governments dominated by an "éminence grise," someone who has a great influence on the leader(s). One is that of the Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, said to have been the actual ruler of the Roman Empire as long as he could control his pupil, Emperor Nero. Unfortunately for Seneca, Nero eventually decided that he wanted to rule alone and got rid of his old master by ordering him to commit suicide. 

So, if you want to build a working shadow government you need to do much more than have an old man whispering words of wisdom in the ear of the leader. You need a hidden structure that controls all the layers of the apparent government. It needs to be a true alternate government, even though hidden from sight. But how could such a structure be created? How could it function? Let's see if we can learn from one of the first known attempts in this sense: the Knights Templar

You surely know that the Knights Templar were a monastic order of warriors that existed for approximately two centuries, from 1100 AD to 1300 AD. They started by helping the Christian pilgrims who traveled from Europe to Jerusalem. In time, the order became a multinational organization that collected donations from the faithful and could lend and borrow money. They became rich, very rich. They even developed their own militia. 

The problem for the Templars was that the Crusades ended in a colossal failure -- so they had to retreat to Europe. At this point, it is possible that the Templars tried to use their resources as a tool to gain political power in Europe. They were a truly international, multilingual organization that operated very much like a mafia, not unlike our modern European Commission. Why couldn't they take over one or more of the several European governments of the time? In practice, the attempt was a failure. In 1307, the King of France cracked down on the French branch of the order. The Templars were accused of all sorts of crimes, including sodomy, worshipping the devil, blasphemy, heresy, and other similar niceties. The leaders were arrested, put on trial, and several of them were burned at the stake. Their treasure was confiscated, and the order was officially disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312. 

Still, the Templars were successful for nearly two centuries, and they may provide a blueprint of how a shadow organization may operate. In practice, all secret organizations dedicated to controlling the government need to develop four mechanisms. 

1. A "front" -- a fake organization that makes them look like something legitimate.
2. A "carrot" -- something that entices new members to join. 
3. A "stick" -- something that punishes traitors and defectors. 
4. A "leash" -- a way to control the functionaries of the real government.

The Templars had all these mechanisms. First, they had a front as a charitable organization dedicated to liberating the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the rule of the Muslim Heathens. Their good fame brought them donations and inheritances and money was surely a good "carrot" to attract new members. Of course, to maintain their reputations as fighters for Christian ideals, the Templars had to define themselves as "pauperes" ("poor") and they could not use the money they had for personal purposes. But money is just a tool to obtain the thing that humans mostly want: sex. And, often, people are attracted by forms of sex that the society of their time does not accept as legitimate. 

Take a look at the Templars' seal, here. Some people interpreted it as a reference to homosexuality and, indeed, at their trial, the Templars were accused to engage in homosexual practices (the term "sodomy" was commonly used at that time). It was considered a heinous crime during the Middle Ages. We don't know if the accusation was based on something real but, in any case, there would have been people attracted to the order just because of the fame it had in this sense. We may not exclude that other forms of sexual entertainment were included in the membership in the order. Those were strong "carrots" for new adepts. 

A further carrot for the adepts came directly from the religious slant of the organization. During the Middle Ages, medicine was not as prestigious as it is nowadays with us, and people wisely tended to avoid doctors and their awful concoctions (it is becoming a good idea again). So, the Templars offered the adepts a highway to heaven because of their good deeds and donations. It seems to have been a popular concept for our ancestors during the Middle Ages. 

As for the stick, all close-knit religious or political organizations tend to threaten their members with the most awful punishments if they dare betray their companions. There are plenty of possibilities for physical punishments, but an even better way to ensure that members will not lapse is to engage them in forbidden activities. And here comes the story of Baphomet, a demon with a goat head, goat's legs, human torso, wings, and more. One of the many representations of demons in ancient Christian iconography. 

For us, prostrating in front of an ugly statue of a horned demon looks like some kind of Halloween fun, but during the Middle Ages worshipping the devil was a serious crime, punishable by death. So, once an adept had worshipped Baphomet, betraying the order was tantamount to confessing to being a devil worshipper. The same was true for sodomy: it was not just a carrot, but also a stick. That ensured that betrayals were very rare. 

Finally, as a "leash," the Templars could simply use money for corrupting people in positions of power. The corrupt officers didn't need to be enrolled in the secret organization. They would simply be paid to do what the organization would tell them to do. And, if they didn't, they could be threatened, removed, or physically eliminated. The modern mafia works in this way, and there is no doubt that it works very well. 

Secret orders in our time. New Baphomet adorers? 

Following the Templars' idea, let's try to imagine how a modern secret society could take the role of a global shadow government. First, the front organization. Liberating the Holy Sepulchre is no more a popular goal for us, but there are plenty of activities that we consider worthy of our admiration and our donations. How about health care for the poor? It should work. 

Then, the carrot: how do we reward the faithful adepts? Sex remains one of the most powerful carrots around. In our society, sex is often easily available, but some sexual activities are considered abominable just as much as, in the Middle Ages, sodomy was. For us, it is typically sex with underage people. So, even billionaires would be interested in an organization that promises them sex with young women or men under the umbrella of humanitarian activities. Once an adept falls into the trap, it works as both a carrot and a stick. The organization has a powerful blackmail weapon to keep the adepts silent and continue providing donations. 

There is more in terms of a powerful "carrot." In our times, people are not so much concerned about a place in Heaven, while modern medicine can claim to be close to using mRNA technology to provide some sort of immortality serum. It doesn't matter that such a serum does not exist, so far. The organization would promise a fast lane to it, as soon as it becomes available.

Does this organization also need to engage in rituals of adoration of evil deities, such as the sinister Baphomet? In our times, cults of Pagan deities are not supposed to be punishable and are not even regarded as evil. Yet, there is something in the idea of the "forbidden cult" that makes it attractive. "Baphomet" doesn't need to be a silly statue of a horned demon. It could be a code word for all the secret activities involved in the core of the organization and, why not? It might include actual rituals of worshiping evil deities. 

This reasoning leads us to see our global shadow government as an organization operating in the healthcare industry. It would have a front based on financing research in the most advanced fields of genetic engineering for the benefit of humankind.  Let's call it, say, "Great Association for Vital Improvement." A parallel organization would manage a shady ring of juvenile prostitution, maybe based on an island in the Caribbean. It would cater to the rich donors and also to the scientists involved with the organization, (even top-level scientists are sensitive to carnal temptations). If worse comes to worst, the leaders of the sex trafficking organization can be considered expendable, they may well "commit suicide" when they become an embarrassment.

Finally, the organization would have an inner circle of leaders who would use their financial power to create a "leash" to influence the activities of governments all over the world. The top leaders might be some of the hyper-rich people who accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars. They would be able to control the media and ensure that dissenting opinions would be censored on the Web. With money and sex, almost anyone can be corrupted. Then, with near-complete control of the world's media, the leader(s) could set up huge campaigns aimed, for instance, at depopulating the planet. 

It could work. But it would face the same risks that the Templars faced and that, ultimately, doomed them. Playing with huge amounts of money is always risky. In our time, criminals are not anymore burned at the stake, as was the use during the Middle Ages, but our jails seem to be a good environment for committing suicide for people who have become an embarrassment to someone powerful. And, in the end, the sword is always stronger than the banknote. So, an organization like the one I have described could be assembled, but it would also risk being wiped up by a military ruler who decides he has had enough.  

Fortunately, I am completely sure that nobody set up such an organization, so far. 


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 A list of the posts on "Seneca Effects" of the series "The Age of Exterminations" 












Friday, August 19, 2022

Drowning in Magic. How our Leaders are Possessed by the Same Demons they have Unleashed on us

 


Yesterday, for some reason, I was rethinking to Einstein's E=mc2 iconic formula. It is fascinating how popular it has become, and how everyone believes it, even people who are fully convinced that the lunar landings never took place. But what it does actually mean, well, it is another story, and not a simple one. For a curious coincidence, today I saw it shown in Simon Sheridan's blog with the caption "Dude, it’s totally magic." Perfectly correct. Sheridan is producing a series of extremely interesting posts on the magical foundations of our society. This one is correctly titled "Drowning on Magic"


Simon Sheridan at his best. Are our leaders possessed by the same demons they are unleashing against us? An excerpt from his post at 

"A key point to bear in mind is that the elites have been practising a form of Magic that had been accidentally discovered through Freudian psychology. But they don’t call it Magic. They call it marketing or public relations or spin or nudge units or whatever. The typical conspiracy theorist explanation is that they are all psychopaths who are using manipulative tactics to confuse and deceive the public. No doubt some of them are psychopaths. But if we think about this in Magical terms and we assume none of them know what they are doing when it comes to Magic, then another possibility opens up: they are possessed by their own Magic.
The robotic hypnosis of a Justin Trudeau with his ever-perfect, so serious, speech intonation or a Jacinda Ardern with her automatic “smile” or here in Victoria with our very own political terminator, Dictator Dan Andrews, betray all the hallmarks of Magical possession. Modern politics has become based almost entirely on Magic to the exclusion of reason and logic. Why else would politicians continually back projects that have no chance of working (like stopping a respiratory virus with an experimental vaccine). This would make them not just psychopaths, but imbeciles too.
Politics is now nothing more than a power game and Magic is power. But when you practice politics as nothing more than a power game, when you are willing to say anything, absolutely anything, to hold onto power, you must give up any last vestige of the Mental Consciousness, which is to say any last grasp you might have on reason, logic and law. That seems to me to be a pretty good description of where the leaders of most western nations are right now."

Monday, August 30, 2021

The Slow Collapse of the Catholic Church

This image may have been created as a joke, but the fact that it exists is a symptom that something is deeply wrong with the Catholic Church. If it is true that the Church has been existing for nearly two thousand years, it is also true that no structure is too big to fail. The churches are empty, the faithful have been turned into masked zombies afraid of each other, and the very sanctity of the human body, one of the pillars of Christianity, is in doubt. Are we going to see the end of God-based religions, replaced by scientism as the state religion? According to the Seneca Principle "increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid."

 

It is a long story that of religions. The first forms of religious organizations go back to the birth of civilization in Mesopotamia, during the 3rd millennium BCE. At that time, there was no such a thing as a "Church," but there existed temples dedicated to local deities that were a mix of manufacturing centers and shopping malls. But what made temples unique in human history was their role as banks. The priests would assist economic transactions by weighing the silver and the gold involved. The benevolent local God would ensure honest weighing. In those times, there were no such things as moral codes or promises for the afterlife. Religion was a very down to earth enterprise in which you paid something for the favor of the God(s).

This role of the temples lasted for millennia and we still find traces of it in the gospels when Jesus chases out the money changers from the temple of Jerusalem. Actually, they were not "money changers," they are defined as "trapezitai" in the original, which translates as "bankers." But, at the time of Jesus, this role for temples was already a relic of the past. The invention of coinage during the 6th century AD had changed the rules of the game. Coins could simply be counted, and their weight was guaranteed not by God, but by the King or the Emperor. 

With the Roman Empire, religion took a position of complete subordination to the state. The priests would bless the troops leaving for battle, provide potions, charms, and amulets to those who could pay, but little more. From the time when Augustus Caesar took the title of Pontifex Maximum, in 12 AD, the religious and the political leader of the state were one and the same person: the Emperor. In time, the emperor started to be considered a living God himself. 

But the great wheel of history keeps turning and soon the mighty Roman Empire found itself in trouble. The mines that had made it rich were exhausted with the 3rd century AD. And one constant of history is that if you have no money you can have no empire. 

So, the Christian Church arose from the ashes of the Roman Empire as a structure that, within some limits, provided the services that the state could not provide anymore. The security once guaranteed by the once mighty Roman army was now in the hands of the ἐκκλησία (ecclesia), the gathering of the faithful, and the επίσκοπί, (episcopes, or bishops), the overseers. The Church replaced the old Empire in many ways and for centuries was a fundamental force in maintaining the cultural unity of Europe. It provided services that the small states of the time could not provide: a common culture, a common language, a common heritage.

Toward the end of the first millennium, the great wheel of history turned again. The discovery of new precious metal mines in Eastern Europe remonetized the European economy. In 800 AD, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, became powerful enough to have himself crowned "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope. The idea was to recreate the ancient Roman Empire, but the Church stubbornly refused to cede the title of Pontifex to the new emperors. It would have meant, again, the complete subordination of the Church to the State. 

There followed centuries of struggles, with the Church slowly losing ground. With the Church becoming more and more corrupt, in 1520 there came Luther's reformation that forever broke the unity of Western Christianity. The last time when the Church tried and failed to have an important political role in Europe was with the "Controversy of Valladolid" in 1550, an attempt to soften the harsh exploitation of the Native American peoples by the European colonists. Not only the Church was ignored, but the attempt backfired, generating the legend that it was the Church that had promoted the extermination of the natives. This is the way propaganda works. 

With the 19th century, the states were turning to a new kind of ideological support for their domination of society. It was "Scientism," usually called just "Science." The new set of ideas emphasized growth and expansion, providing also new weapons and technologies that allowed Europe to conquer most of the world. 

The last attempt of the Catholic Church to escape the growing encroachment by the state was with the encyclical letter "De Rerum Novarum" of 1891. It was an attempt to "reset" the huge, millenarian structure by returning to its original vision of a revolutionary force on the side of the poor and the oppressed. With the "De Rerum Novarum," the Church strongly reaffirmed its international status and its privileged relation with the poor.

It was a valiant attempt, but it failed for several reasons. One was that the Church had placed itself in direct competition with the Communist party for the souls of the workers. But the Communist party had better leverage because it wasn't contaminated with the superstructure of compromises with the rich that the Church carried along. Another was that the national states were simply too powerful to be contrasted by the internationalist movements (Communism, Socialism, and Christian reformism). By 1915, Europeans assisted to the disheartening spectacle of two Catholic countries, Austria and Italy, making war on each other. And, on both sides, Catholic priests were blessing the soldiers and exhorting them to kill their Christian brothers on the other side of the frontline. The same sad spectacle was taking place on all frontlines. Something was deeply wrong at the core of Christianity.

Both the Church and the Communist party managed to remain important political forces for most of the 20th century, but they faded with the turn of the millennium. The Communist Party went first with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Right now, it has no organized presence in the world, except in China. But the Chinese Communist Party has no pretense of organizing proletarian revolutions anywhere. 

The Church survived a little longer, but its decline is evident. In the 1990s, it received a heavy blow from a propaganda campaign that painted Catholic priests as pedophiles. It should go without saying that there is no evidence that pedophilia is a larger problem in the Church than it is in other organizations. But the accusation stuck and the polls show that, still today, a majority of people are convinced that the Catholic Church is a den of pedophiles. It is not known who started the campaign or why. In any case, it was another devastating blow.

The coup de grace may have arrived in 2020, with the Covid epidemic. The Catholic Church found itself completely defeated by a propaganda campaign that turned some of the basic tenets of Christianity over the head. Already in Roman times, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, considered one of the precursors of Christianity, had said "Homo Sacra Res Homini" -- "humans are holy to each other." And the Church had at its basis the sacred value of the human body. Just think how the central belief of Christianity is that God himself incarnated inside a human body, in flesh and blood, for the love of humankind. And that the believers are supposed to reincarnate in the flesh on the day of judgment.

Suddenly, the Church saw the human body turned from a holy image of the divine spirit into a receptacle of dangerous germs. Whereas St. Francis would kiss lepers, the devout Catholic is now advised to hide their face and keep at a distance from their Christian brothers and sisters. The holy water, a basic feature of Church rituals, was suddenly turned into a dangerous bacterial soup that no one sane in his mind would even dream to touch. Once, the Christian mass ritual required shaking hands with each other as a sign of peace. Now, the mass has turned into a gathering of zombies, unrecognizable and afraid of getting too close to each other. Even worse, the dead of Covid were denied the last sacraments and even a Christian burial. Their bodies were considered unclean and treated in the same way as urban waste is treated: first dumped into trucks and then into incinerators. 

Given the situation, you may understand how the Pope recommended to the faithful to vaccinate themselves "as an act of love". Of course, you may argue that it was not the business of the Pope to recommend that, not any more than recommending the use of flushing toilets as an act of love. But the pope was not alone: the whole Church hierarchy is recommending vaccination. They hope that with vaccines everything will return back to normal and the churches will fill again with unmasked people not afraid to shake each other's hands. 

Unfortunately, the Pope's recommendation may backfire. One problem is that by now it is becoming clear that the vaccines do not guarantee full immunity and that all the other "non-pharmaceutical measures," masks, distances, etc. will be maintained for a long time, perhaps forever. So, we may never return to what we once considered as "normal." Then, by recommending vaccines, the Pope was officially declaring that the Church was powerless and subordinated to the dominant Scientism. 

The Covid may well be the bullet at the head that kills the zombie that the Catholic Church has become. It managed to exist for nearly 2,000 years, one of the longest-lasting organizations in history, but no organization has ever been too big to fail when its moment comes.  Surely, the collapse will not be sudden, especially considering that the Church still has important economic assets, and even a small state, the Vatican City State, with a seat in the United Nations, a small army, a diplomatic corps, and much more. But, when things take a certain direction, the flow may be impossible to reverse. Sic transit gloria mundi.

But is this so bad? Sometimes, change needs to be radical, otherwise it does not occur. Even the pope emeritus, Cardinal Ratzinger, said that the Church "needs a reset" in a recent interview. In the book "Niente Sarà Più Come Prima" (2021), the Catholic theologian Stefano Didoné says, 

"The collapse of the religious form that Christianity had taken in the West does not automatically mean the collapse of the very experience of the Faith, but its transformation in a human experience characterized by the strong desire of authenticity. <..> A formal religiosity without relations and without love does not attract the young (and not even the adults). This would open the way  to new (and urgent) theological interpretations of this post-secular age."

In other words, there is no religion without an authentic experience of Faith. And in the Christian tradition, no one can save himself or herself alone, praying in front of a TV screen. There is no salvation except in the gathering of the faithful, the ecclesia. Religion intended in this way has existed since the times of the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna and will not disappear so soon. New forms of religion or renovated forms of the old ones may appear. It may be a good thing that we badly need to get rid of the current vision of the world that sees everything (including human beings) as an economic resource to be exploited.


(*) This analysis of mine does not pretend to be exhaustive and it deals mostly with the Catholic Church, which I know reasonably well. Other organized religions are facing the current situation in different ways. If we take the resistance to vaccination as a proxy for independence from the state, the data show that Protestants are less integrated than Catholics in the US. In Eastern Europe, the Orthodox Church has suffered a long period of persecution from the state and has emerged out of it rather wary of everything that the state recommends. Asian religions, such as Buddhism, have ceased all attempts to affect politics, at least from the time of the Japanese warrior-monk, Benkei. Finally, about Islam, we have a completely different organization. Whereas in the West the state and religion are two separate entities, in Islamic countries religion is the state. Muslims have a historical diffidence on the tricks created by Western-style states. For the time being, Islam generally recommends vaccination, but things might change. As they always do.