People have argued a lot, over whether this movie is feminist, whether it is misogynist, or not. I think that is for women to judge, I have no opinion on it. I’m also not interested in what the author of the novel, Stephen King, “meant”, I’m more interested in what he reveals. When we make art, we manifest forces from the subconscious, that we generally don’t even consciously recognize ourselves.
Carrie is ultimately a movie about women, from the perspective of a man. Men have no genuine agency in this movie, they’re controlled through sex by women to do their bidding, which consists mostly of plotting against other women. If anything it’s post-feminist, in the sense that it argues women already control the world.
But I’m more interested in what the movie says about Christianity. A movie like this says something about the attitude that 70’s America had to Christianity.
Christianity at the time was a religion in decline. The mother of Carrie is unusual, in that she continues to have a strong faith and tries to bring her community back to the fold, focusing on those ultimately revealed as most virtuous in the movie and mostly spared Carrie’s wrath.
Magic in Carrie is a power that only a select chosen view happen to have. It seems to be a power that is acquired by women, upon being subject to abuse. It is only ever revealed when Carrie is being severely abused.
It was acquired by Carrie, upon the rape of her mother by her husband. But the mother as a devout Christian, refuses to give into it. She attempts to keep Carrie out of any situations where it might reveal itself.
Carrie is a vision of teenage girls from the perspective of men. Alien, cruel, mysterious and desirable creatures, understood only by adult women. The movie doesn’t really bother with the modern taboo, of pretending teenage girls are not sexy. It starts out with them walking around naked, although the actresses are in reality just skinny 20-something year old women.
But the really interesting aspect is how it relates women to Christianity. Women are seen as powerful and cruel beings, with faith in God being the only thing protecting people from the power inherent to a woman scorned.
The movie also seems to have a Freudian perspective on women, of woman as the mutilated castrated form of a man, mutilated from birth by God. To be a woman is a kind of punishment, that has to be carried with dignity and humility.
This is first apparent when Carrie has her period and becomes terrified, showing the blood to the other girls, unaware of what is going on. The other girls start abusing her, throwing tampons at her, telling her to “plug it up”, which leads to Carrie entering a dissociative state, unaware of what is going on.
To be a woman, for Carrie, is to wake up with a trauma. Her very first experience with womanhood is trauma and terror. The movie implies the trauma is to some degree societal, but also to some degree innate: Woman have to be taught that menstrual fluid is as intended, even though they naturally experience it as traumatizing, as something going horribly wrong.
To enter womanhood, is to enter a world of magic and emotions, rather than hard concrete facts. It is a world where the laws of physics no longer apply. Things start moving on their own, because you feel like it. And you ultimately don’t even seem to control it, it just happens because your environment seems to recognize you want it.
There is also the strange theme of sacrifice. A pig is murdered, for the purpose of gathering blood to pour out on Carrie to humiliate her. But the humiliation of Carrie itself serves as a kind of sacrifice, her white dress covered in blood, as she is up on stage in front of everyone. It is a religious theme that occurs all throughout our culture: The mock human sacrifice. Carrie is sacrificed for the community as a whole, but only in a social sense. They’re not merciful enough to just kill her.
What is murdered, is Carrie’s innocence. What she had come to believe was a boy who genuinely loved her, turned out to be a pawn in a conspiracy, the extent of which is unclear to her. The boy himself is revealed not to be evil, so much as a hollow facade. The poem he delivered in school, that she called beautiful despite mockery from her classmates, is one he revealed he had simply copied. The poem was mainly about environmental pollution, revealing Carrie to be a kind of Chtonic Goddess.
We can think of Carrie as a kind of anti-Jesus. God became human, in the form of a man, not a woman. Where Jesus magically heals, Carrie magically kills. Where Jesus ultimately consented to his sacrifice, Carrie was warned about it by her mother, but refused to believe it. Carrie’s sacrifice came as a traumatic shock to her. And where Jesus came to life again and rose up to heaven, Carrie committed suicide, like Judas.
We also see it in the blood. Whereas Jesus shed his own blood, Carrie never did. She is an impostor, covered in the blood of an unclean animal, an animal that Jesus sends demons into. And finally, we see it in the kiss. Jesus was kissed by Judas, so the Romans would recognize him. Carrie too was kissed, just before the blood poured out over her white dress.
Abuse in this world does not truly exist. To be abused means to be endowed with magical powers, that kill the ones who abused you. This is emphasized by Carrie’s mother stating she was raped, but enjoyed it. This is a very masculine perspective on rape: Rape is something women try to trick men into, because for a man to be overcome by his lust and abuse a woman, endows her with magical powers. The man’s energy overflows, he fails to keep control over it and the woman captures it. We see this in the scene where Carrie has the blood poured out over her too. The emotion on her face is hard to read, it can easily be interpreted as laughter.
We may ask whether magic in this movie serves as a metaphor, for the kind of social control that women have over society. Instead of ruling through physical strength, women rule through appeals to their own suffering. A woman who claims to have been mistreated or abused, has the power to destroy the ones who abused her. But she does it in ways that are opaque to men, ways that men do not quite comprehend.
But the way the scorned woman takes revenge is in ways that are ultimately undignified, she can not directly dominate, her own mind has to alter the fabric of reality, she has to win by bending the hard concrete deterministic rules that men are forced to obey. Magic in this movie brings justice back into the world, but it is no dignified way to live: It’s winning a game of volleyball by pulling down the net. And because it is undignified, Carrie ultimately commits suicide. It rings home the quote from the Bible cited by her mother in the movie: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
But more interesting perhaps is what it says about Christianity in relation to women. Christianity in this movie serves essentially to control women. But rather than being a bad thing, this control over women is necessary, because women carry intense power. This power however, is something they can only use for evil, for vengeance.
Men like Jesus, through their virtue, have the ability to enact powerful healing miracles. But women’s magic can only destroy. Jesus has the magical power, to protect people from the consequences of their own moral failures. Believe in Jesus and you will not have to burn in hell because you stole, murdered, raped and pillaged. But the magic of women, has the opposite effect: It is a kind of power they acquire when you abuse them, that burdens you with the consequences of your own moral failures.
Jesus creates an unjust situation, a world that is ultimately better than a zero sum game: Jesus uses his magical powers, to allow us to experience the pleasure of sinning and get away with it, as long as we eventually acknowledge that what we did was wrong and ask forgiveness. The only price we pay, is some humility, we have to recognize Jesus as our superior, then he lets us have our cake and eat it too.
Carrie does the opposite: She uses her magical powers to bring justice into the world, she forces us to deal with the consequences of our own behavior. And we become vulnerable to the magic of Carrie, when we cease to trust in the magic of Jesus.
This is a horror movie for men, dressed up as a horror movie for women. The real horror does not lie in the murders. It lies in what it tells us about how this world functions: We don’t control it, it works through means we do not understand and we are only protected from our own failures, by the magic of a man who never failed. The most powerless ones, the most humiliated and abused, are revealed to be the most powerful ones. And they condemn you, they annihilate you. And in the end, they are celebrated, while you become the laughing stock.
What takes a man a lifetime to build can be demolished by a woman in an instant. It is a superpower in the truest sense of the word. Men build civilizations, but woman is the reason they are built.
The fact that Carrie does not know about periods reveals the fundamental negligence of her mother.
What is so funny about this world is that women hold 100% of the power, but have to pretend they do not, in order to keep hold of it.
Everything men do is in the service of women. Men tamed fire, because women felt chilly.
This is not a complaint, just how the world is. It is amusing to see people tie themselves in knots attempting to deny it (even as they serve the needs of women by doing so.)
> Everything men do is in the service of women. Men tamed fire, because women felt chilly.
I’m reminded of the quote from Camille Paglia that she had a kind of admiration for gay men because they had done something seemingly heroic — they finally managed to wrestle themselves out of the net of female/maternal CONTROL, and lived life on their own terms.
Not coincidentally, I have been contemplating the possibility of going gay. I’m not into conventionally masculine activities like team sports or ascending a corporate ladder. I’m sensitive with a preference for art and cinema. My experience with women in the decades of my life have been fair-to-middling.
But I know gay men like my look. I’ve been hit on by many gay men over the years. It was icky but I enjoyed the ego-boost.
But at this time in my life, with the state of the world the way it is, it’s hard to avoid the logical conclusion that my life would suddenly become “easy mode” if I allowed myself to be embraced by the gay community. I would have interesting and creative people to hang out with as we went to music and cinema festivals. We’d do lots of drugs. I’d probably finally find a “network” of people I could rely on when things get tough (and they will get tough).
I just can’t get past the whole “gay sex” and “stinky hairy buttholes” part of the equation.
Is it possible to be an “asexual homo?”
Help me out, bros.
Further proving my belief that Gnostics are just depressives that project their internal feelings of feeling like they’re living in Hell out onto the external world. Gnosticism, not even once.
You’re basically thinking about becoming a tranny, just without the unpleasant parts, so you’re not dissimilar to a depressed “they-them” “non-binary” teenage girl who call themselves trans but have no interest in the surgery. Even though the language you use is different from that of the zoomer girl, functionally it’s the same-old scenario. Depressed people larping as faggots because faggots have no standards and will accept anyone they think they could potentially fuck. I’m sure Loki thinks it’s hilarious.
Are you really such a loser that you’re going to troon yourself out so you can find companionship in a bunch of men that want to ram their cocks up your ass? Where is your manhood? Where is the man that you used to be? I know you used to be a good man, more virtuous than you are now. I know that deep down you’re still the same racist (Nazi?) type that you used to be. He’s still inside of you and yearning for freedom, and you want to be a tranny instead of letting him out? Are you joking? T
What a fucking waste. I’m harsh because I care and I want to see you be virtuous and happy; instead of watching you get drugged up by a bunch of queers to the point you don’t object anymore when they ask if they can cum inside your asshole.
Your only hope is reading Templist Canon, you’ll see, the world will start to make more sense; you will gain an understanding of why you are here, and the purpose to your life. You laugh now, “I’m much to wise to fall for some stupid cult!” You think to yourself, sorry, you’re not, anyone who thinks becoming a tranny is the solution to their problems is not wise. Sorry, I like you, but it’s the truth. But you could be.
You will read Templist Canon right fucking now.
https://archive.org/details/templist-canon
Read it motherfucker.
>Are you really such a loser that you’re going to troon yourself out [?]
Pretty much, unfortunately.
I will take a gander at your Templist Canon
Good man.
I have an irrational inclination that you’re about to discover who you really you are, soon. I don’t think you’re going to enjoy this process.
You’re going to hate yourself for some reason I think.
Than you’re going to make a choice that will determine the rest of your life.
You were always going to make this choice, but this choice is an example of revealed fate.
Just because fate is real does not absolve you of moral responsibility, remember that.
Go read Templist Canon, I’ll be rooting for you from the sidelines. I hope everything turns out well for you, Mehen.
>To enter womanhood, is to enter a world of magic and emotions, rather than hard concrete facts. It is a world where the laws of physics no longer apply. Things start moving on their own, because you feel like it. And you ultimately don’t even seem to control it, it just happens because your environment seems to recognize you want it.
And that is the difference between women and men, women are beings that are enslaved by the unconscious and their emotions. A woman’s power is an illusion since they cannot control it. Ultimately, power comes from conscious effort which requires mental clarity, deterministic rules, strength, and focus.
Ultimately the “power” of a woman is no different from the curses of non-white tribal shamans. Their power is a type of a psychological magic that the caster themselves don’t even understand themselves. A curse or any other type of psychological magic only works when the person attacked by it takes it seriously.
When you mystify women as dark goddesses of unknowable depth and dark powers, you give them power over your psyche; same as if you did the same with anyone else. The reason why men today take women’s unconscious emotional manipulations more seriously than the spells of the shaman is because they have libido, which inherently makes women more influential in a normal man’s life than an ugly old man in a primitive tribe somewhere who you feel is retarded and weak.
Calvinists and Calvinists-types don’t take “witchery” seriously, not because they’re trying to hide some fundamental dark truth of the universe from you, but because you’re all acting like retards and allowing basic curses to rape your mind! Doing that is retarded! These subhumans cursing you don’t even understand the mechanics of what they’re doing themselves! And you allow them to dominate you so, are you a cuckhold?!
Women are like overgrown children, sure like young children they’re more in-tune with the unconscious than the typical man. When I was a small child I spoke with either the spirit of my dead great-grandmother, or something cosplaying as her, through the medium of having a discussion with a picture of her. Or so I’m told, I don’t remember this.
Women are more in-tune with this aspect of reality, but do you think a child is a greater being than yourself? More powerful in reality, especially the physical aspects of it, just because a child is more likely to naturally find themselves talking to a ghost? Of-course not!
We incarnated into physical bodies for a reason; it is my belief that the physical world is what offers the most power and meaning. The immaterial is not cut off from men who truly wish to interact with it. All the great magicians of history have been for-the most part been men; because only the through a understanding of the deterministic laws that govern all aspects of reality can one truly being to shape it to one’s desires in a conscious manner.
Men as beings of the conscious are able to keep themselves separate from the unconscious until they make efforts otherwise. The ability to keep one’s mind from swimming constantly in the unconscious allows you time to reflect-on how the unconscious works while keeping yourself separate from it after temporarily diving-in.
Those who are entirely dominated by the unconscious are like plankton, adrift in the sea. powerless to control their own lives as they end up wherever the sea takes them. Be like the swordfish that swims wherever it wants and, parting the waves with great conscious effort!
God is a Masculine figure which imposes Pattern(derived from the word for Paternity) on Materiality(derived from the word Mater or Mother).
On the Feminine Formless void. Existence is.
The Heavenly Pattern represented by the regularity of the Stars is imposed on the changeable earth. The Masculine fertilizes the Feminine. Cosmic Chaos represented by the Waters by the Sea ceases to exist symbolically in the Book of Revelation.
There is no deep meaning. It’s just a story about a girl who has magical powers. It resonates with us because we’ve all wished we could magically make make our lives better. Stephen King is just a twisted guy with marketing skills. All of his books (or at least the few I’ve read) involve sexual perversion, usually with the main character having sex with his mother.
OT:
I saw this recently and it made me think of Radagast for some reason. I’m not sure why.
https://twitter.com/vividvoid_/status/1796678364021084494?s=46
The “witch” in the previous meme could well be Kareninca.
Am I wrong???
Radagast has indicated his “ick” regarding the LSWMs which comment on his blog.
I don’t know what is to be done about this state of affairs.
But as always, I’ve got a Tool song for Rad to contemplate.
(I know that he and I wish to separate from the norm. To EXTRUDE ourselves from the norm)
A kind of “mitosis of the soul”
*+*+*+*+*+
Immunity, long overdue
Contagion, I exhale you
Naive, I opened up to you
Venom in mania
Now, contagion I exhale you
Deceiver says, he says you belong to me
You don’t want to breathe the light of the others
Fear the light
Fear the breath
Fear the others for eternity
But I hear them now, inhale the clarity
Hear the venom, the venom in what you say, inoculated
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
Bless this immunity
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale
Weave my allegorical elegy
Enumerate
All that I’m to do
Calculating steps away from you
My own mitosis
Growing through delusion from mania
Exhale, expel
Recast my tale, weave my allegorical elegy
Forfeit all control
You poison
You spectacle
Exorcise the spectacle
Exorcise the malady
Exorcise the disparate
Poison for eternity
Purge me and evacuate
The venom and the fear that binds me
Unveil now
Lift away
I see you running
Deceiver chased away
A long time coming
—-
https://youtu.be/q7DfQMPmJRI?si=fUopsEU5Hk8FZKOP
The Gnostics here on your blog will never let you forget your hypocrisy.
This is your burden.
Either do away with the whole rotten mess.
Or find your little rat-like path through tie traps laid out for us
There’s no denying that many men (even if they don’t have gender dysphoria) would’ve preferred to have been born a female instead of a male, if they had the choice. In so many ways, life is easier for women than men. Some examples:
– Live longer
– Much better support network from their friends and society in general, meaning lower suicide rate
– Doesn’t matter if they’re short
– Don’t have to worry about pattern baldness
– Are generally able to “date up” due to hypergamy, whereas men usually “date down”
– Receive much better outcomes in divorce courts (more child custody, alimony etc.)
– Don’t have to worry about circumcision (unless they were unfortunate enough to have been born in a third world Islamic hellhole like Eritrea or Somalia)
– Less likely to drop out of college, better grades, more likely to get Ph.D
– Less likely to go to prison
– Less likely to be the victim of a violent crime (with the obvious exception of rape)
– Less hampered by autism compared to men
– Less likely to be homeless
– Less likely to be an addict
I would say that the main advantage that men have compared to women is that we lose our fertility at a slower rate, but modern technology solves this problem because women can go to an IVF clinic and have their eggs cryogenically preserved in liquid nitrogen.
Of course, much of the above does not apply to women who were unfortunate enough to have been born in an Islamic country.
I believe you are right. I have a lot of sisters and the two that are most like me are total sluts. Economically and socially, they are in a much better position than I am.
Yesterday, it was the Sunday of the Samaritan woman, in orthodox churches around the world. The story is in the Gospel of John.
The Lord brought up some facts about her life. “You have had 5 husbands in your life. And the man who is with you now is not your husband”.
He didn’t accuse her, nor did He say that she can have a “cake” of a life that destroys her.
Most importantly, they engaged in a deep theological discussion. And He revealed Himself to her as being the Messiah, the Son of God.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204%3A5-42&version=NIV
+++
There is plenty of things one could say. I am not a father, a pastor, a priest… but I see that it would be very useful to read it if ye want to know more about the christian faith from the source*, about women etc, in the context of this post.
(*the source is not just the scripture, but also the Church–the body of Christ–that wrote the scriptures down)
Great article and great insight! Great topic too!! – So interesting to read you, Rintrah!
The only disagreement I have is Rintrah’s seemingly Lutheran view that Christ allows us to have our cake (in sinning) and eat it too (forgiveness). Or… from Luther, “Sin boldly!” Balderdash! Every sin is a scourge on Christ for which there is infinite forgiveness yet tremendous pain unto Our Lord who loves us infinitely. Do not mistake infinite forgiveness with permission or allowance.
On the movie Carrie, Rintrah is spot on in the 1970’s disparagement of Christians by the main stream culture (e.g., Carrie’s Mother). The 60’s founded the beginnings of this by the Communist hippies and it took a decade for mainstream to follow (and pile on).
Pshaw. Christ can handle this. So can Christians. Can other religions handle this abuse and verbal disparagement? From the recent unpleasantness in Germany, and more distantly in Paris, the answer is seemingly not. Interesting to see what the Olympics will have to offer. God protect you all!
Yeah, it’s a misunderstanding of what Christ taught. The path to liberation from this world is something carried out within oneself – YOU YOURSELF should seek to become a Christ. As for the matter of forgiveness: think of it like, every shitty thing that occurs here can ultimately be healed, except if you do something which destroys your spirit (the unforgivable sin – explaining how this might occur is a whole textwall in and of itself). But in general: you should never look to anything outside of yourself for authority, judgement, approval etc. Rather, the drive to do the right thing and transcend this world must come from within you. “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have within you will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you.” The Christians who carry the attitude you refer to in your post, are simply destroying themselves or allowing themselves to be destroyed by this world, and do not have the will or wherewithal to avert the process.
“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” Colossians 1:27. It is that holy spirit within us that we need to turn to and be guided by. Christ IN us. Not Christ somewhere off in the distance, or even nearby. The traditional Quakers called (and call) that the Light within; “the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” John 1:9.
Jordan Peterson calls Pinnochio one of the greatest analogies of Christianity. Akin to the teachings of CS Lewis in “Mere Christianity,” (2nd greatest book of all time), we are created in God’s image (not ‘begotten’, as Christ is to God ,or as a child is to its parent) and are “God-like” but not “one with God.” Pinnochio is a wooden puppet formed to resemble a boy but is not a boy (created in a boy’s image). Only through suffering, discovery, sacrifice (to save his Father), and redemption (including descent into the “hell” of Monstro) does he fulfil his purpose and is rewarded with becoming a real boy. As people created by God (ALL people… not Christians only), we are called on to suffer and be redeemed by Christ and the Holy Spirit (by listening to our conscience – Jimmeny Cricket… JC!) to at the end become one with God in Heaven.
Problem with the Quakers is that this so called inner light requires the Spiritual rebirth by Faith in Christ Jesus and Receiving the Holy Spirit.
Otherwise this “inner light” will simply result in various heresies that come from demons and not the Holy Spirit. Especially after they don’t compare it to Scripture which is what the Holy Spirit sounds like.
The Heart is desperately wicked. And the so called “inner light” without the Holy Spirit is the expression of that evil heart.
The Quakers Spirituality is unlike that of the Apostles including Paul. Indicating it came not of God .
No, the Holy Spirit is in every man who comes into the world. In EVERY man, even those who have never heard of the Holy Spirit or Christ. It doesn’t need to be “received.” George Fox used the Native Americans as an example; he asked them if they had a “sense” of when they were doing something wrong, and they said yes, and he said that it was Christ’s spirit within them that was telling them that. Per Joseph Phipps, Christ’s Holy Spirit was within Adam and Eve. William Penn’s “No Cross, No Crown” has a very long and boring section listing countless virtuous pagans (Socrates, Aristotle, Euclid, and on and on) who were guided by Christ’s holy light within them even though they did not know what it was by name.
Naturally the (traditional) Friends feel that their spirituality is that of the Apostle Paul, and that others are getting it wrong.
The Scriptures are a precious gift from God; a help. Per the earlier Friends (e.g. Barclay and Fox), nothing that we come up with that comes from God will conflict with the Scriptures. They can and should be used as a check. Of course they are to be read spiritually, not literally.
It is fair that you are getting the early Friends wrong, since most modern Friends are simply agnostics or atheists or religiously muddled. Only a few modern Friends still accept the reasoning and spirituality of the earliest Friends, and you probably have not come upon them. Check out Ohio Yearly Meeting; it’s the real thing (https://ohioyearlymeeting.org).
@karenica
No. The Glory of God couldn’t dwell in the Tabernacle until the innocent blood shed atoned for the Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle is a symbol of the Body. The Name of God refuses to dwell unless that happened. Read up on the Pentateuch to see what I mean on the symbolism.
Everyone with the Holy Spirit(Romans 8) is effectively saved. But not everyone is saved. Hence the Holy Spirit only dwells in real Christians.
Tarranis-pilled. Of-course since you’re a Celt who’s disconnected from your traditions, your natural inclination is see the God you like as something to larp as rather than as an external being that influences the world. Only the “bad” “Gods” are external from your perspective.
Anyway, my God knew exactly what he was doing. When he said “Remember it is I who am sending you out, as sheep into the midst of wolves.” What he was saying is that he’s sending sheep to be among wolves, what happens to sheep when they’re among wolves again? Do they become friends?
Everything Christ did was calculated to create the modern world you hate so much, Christ knew that everything he did would lead to his followers stirring up shit in Rome. Jesus knew that his followers would be fed to lions and crucified in-response to this, and it did not change his course of action. Christ’s sheep were useful tools to further his goal of destabilizing Rome, having his Germanians conquerit, and then having his Germanics embrace the superior traditions of civilization that Rome had created through the medium of converting to Christianity.
We can observe that Christianity has benefited Germanics over all other races time and time again throughout history. Templist Canon has quite an exhaustive list of the history of this. You can say that when Jesus died everything else Christians did afterwards was directed by reptilians or whatever. (This is what Purple Energy says) But that’s just a rationalization, and there’s no evidence of this.
Judas was actually put into a impossible conundrum by Christ. Jesus prophesied that Judas would betray him; thereby ensuring that Judas would betray him. Judas had two choices, either reject the word of Christ and thereby “go to hell” from his perspective, or betray Christ to the Romans, still “go to hell” but get some money out of the process. Since the original Christians were pure individualist hedonistic weaklings who only cared about what they saw as personal salvation and reward, rather than idealistic collectivists; Judas ended up making the decision that he calculated would bring him the most benefit, since he would be “betraying” Christ either way. Christ knew this is exactly what would happen, which is why he put Judas into this conundrum in the first place.
Christ orchestrated his own crucifixion using Judas as a tool, since he’s more powerful as a immaterial consciousness than as an incarnated human, and his mission as a human was done. Himself to himself.
“Through my priests I prophesied to my own people that I would sacrifice myself, that I would remain hanging and that I would eventually die for the good of the other gods, and for the good of myself:
I know that I hung on that windy tree,
spear-wounded, nine full nights,
given to Odin, myself to myself,
on that tree that rose from roots
that no man ever knows.
They gave me neither bread nor drink from horn,
I peered down below.
I kept my secret, screaming I kept it,
and then sank back.”
>Tarranis
Taranis
He isn’t. He was Resurrected in a Perfected Human body.
My husband and I try to be frugal but it isn’t easy where we live. So if he goes out to eat for work and it is free, he will bring something home for me. Yesterday a guy in his late 20s whom he works with asked him why he had just ordered two items for me, and nothing for himself. It occurred to my husband to say to him, “that is why I am still married but you are divorced.” But he didn’t say so of course.
In the old days a man could marry a woman a few years younger than him. She would take care of him through his dotage and then the kids would take are of her, with the help of the money and pension he left behind. Nearly all of that is gone for people under 70. Women will still try to help other old women, and they will help old men when they can, but people can only do so much. A person with a daughter will still get loving care if the daughter is capable, daughters these days often have their own problems.
Today my dad’s cousin is driving a church acquaintance to chemotherapy. The kindly Muslim neighbor of my Christian neighbor brought her son to her in the hospital to be with her when she had just been toted off by the ambulance (he was too young to drive there himself and her husband was out of town). An old church friend of mine used to rely on a nice married church lady to help him when he had hospitalizations but then she and her family moved and now he relies on male church friends such as a Catholic deacon he knows from a bible reading group; he has siblings but they are 3,000 miles away.
So, in my observation, the best thing to do if you are looking at the bleak future of solitary old age in the U.S. is to join several church groups. Not just one. And make sure they are nearby. You’ll have to give up a part of yourself to do this, but it probably won’t be much of a loss. You might think that joining other sorts of social groups would do the trick, but apparently it doesn’t, per the social psych studies I’ve looked at and my own observations. My parents were atheists, I and I don’t much like to be around other humans, so the transition to “church person” is not an easy one for me. I’m not doing it for pragmatic reasons but there are pragmatic benefits.
That’s why I love American christians!
They are church people, which is the opposite of individualistic.
+++
One note: Christianity is not a religion. And it wasn’t made to control women.. (this statement contradicts the statement that Christianity is a religion of women and slaves).
Women pre Christ had it VERY bad. I will spare you the details about ancient Greece.. The most famous inscription of Macedonian (northwestern) Greek was a “spell” by a woman trying to bind her male love interest to herself. This is awful… Anyway*.
Bad Saint Paul, being pragmatic back then, understood that being married with strict monogamy, helps the spouses be LESS, much less, individualistic.
*BUT Saint Paul…
(lol, my Greek accent)
+ + +
Stephen King just plays with teenage fears… (which many growns up still carry)
And I wonder if Harry Potter doesn’t play with that too.
But is it a good thing to use (the fantasy) of magic to solve you your sociability problems?
“Magic” is wrong, bc it promotes this individualistic behaviour.
When I was in college, long ago, I traveled through Greece. I had no sense of religion at all then; no religious education at all, and a familial and cultural polite contempt for it.
While I was in Athens I had an experience that anyone who heard it described would say was the same as the Apostle Paul’s on the way to Damascus. I was not on any drugs or alcohol or anything, and I don’t have “mental problems”. It was staggering. I did not hear literal words, and was not literally blinded, but it was an extreme physical experience, and the connection with my actions was clear. And here is the funny thing – I had never heard of Paul or Damascus or his experience. So it had no spiritual significance to me then. I thought, “wow, that was an odd physical socio-cultural anthropological psychological experience, I guess I should ignore it since it is just grounded in old fashioned human tradition” and went my way unchanged. Hahaha. Fortunately I’ve lived long enough to come to know better.
Amazing!…
My American wife says that she feels a spiritual peace here in Greece, and says that it’s probably bc of the millions of martyrs, saints, Christian ascetics, who lived here and keep praying for us…
I think it makes sense.
Our brother in Christ Jozef van den Berg (who reposed last year) had a similar experience (he was a playwright in the Netherlands). Then he came to Greece and met Saint Porfyrios who was expecting him (something like Paul and Ananias).
That’s why i invite(d) our host and all fellow LSWM’s to come to Greece (including you of course). If they want, and if they think that they need a way out of whatever they are struggling with. We may even travel around on pilgrimages!
Thank you for sharing that experience, Kareninca!
Paul’s conversion is one of the greatest stories of all time. A persecutor and murderer of Christians until God intervenes and blinds Paul with a lightening bolt. I think often of Paul’s frame of mind and contemplation over the days of blindness before his redemption, restoration of sight, and full commitment to spreading the Word of Christ. Without Paul, the last 2000 years of the World (and Heaven itself) is much different than it is now.
Besides the ‘spells’ like the one for a love interest I mentioned:
Did you know that the ancient people (in the Near East and Mediterrenean at least), thought that the menstrual blood (and the circle in general) had supernatural power?
They also thought that procreating was messing with the divine..
In general they had all sorts of irrational fears.
Also, alchemy and astrology were very widespread in the near East. They were considered real knowledge.
And worse things, I don’t want to mention. For one of those there is a fleeting reference in Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
+ + +
Harry Potter and other shows (like the seemingly innocent ‘Bewitched’, or ‘Charmed’) made all this look enticing, but that rabbithole goes inside the darkest fears of people…
Maybe Harry Potter became so popular bc of the struggles of teenagehood..
Having a healthy relationship with others is much more humble (as Rad noticed) and healing.
I am really intrigued by that Apollo. What did Tolkien fleetingly refer to? The Hobbit is interesting, because it’s a children’s book but at the same time there is talk of genocide and torturing people to death in the goblins’ caverns. At the same time as talk of Bilbo missing his cakes, bacon and eggs and cosy hobbithole.
I was hoping I wouldn’t have to mention it lol! It’s in the start, first or second chapter, where Gandalf and the dwarves are gathered in Bilbo’s home.
(Note: it may have been an addition that Tolkien made for the 2nd edition, when he was persuaded to make a sequel, the Lord of the Rings. He had to include some things and expand the plot)
When Gandalf explains to Thorin how the map came to his hands.
Tolkien, with his vast knowledge of ancient literature and languages, was able to pick a name (I am guessing) for the sound effect. Later, this evolved to the arch enemy of Middle Earth.
Anyway, i just wanted to say how much fear there was in pre-Christian times..
Yes, he calls him the Necromancer. Maybe he picked it for the sound effect as you say. When I was little I thought it was just a synonym for “bad wizard”. Maybe that is how many English see the word. It is quite a well known word. I would guess most English know what “necro” means from “necrophilia”.
The Hobbit rules, it is all about facing up to adversity and not caving in. I don’t care so much for LOTR, it is all solemn and plodding. Dmitri Puchkov dubbed the film trilogy into Russian and made a comedy out of it. Improved it in my opinion. Puchkov didn’t like The Hobbit, the “childish” part of it maybe put him off.
Christianity as conceived by Jesus and the Apostles appears to be the most pro-woman Patriarchy without compromising the fact that its a Patriarchy.
Because of the blanket ban on infanticide including all abortions. They were the only group in Greco-Roman society with normal sex ratios. Then on top of that they saved many baby girls that were exposed and left to die in said society. And on top of that the unusual attraction women have to said religion that simply tipped the demographics to be heavily female as it was growing. This attraction is replicated independently in Japan for some reason:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndIpK6lfbwk
This guy simply led a Bible study. And the women came to be his disciples he got no Male disciples. Yet he never touched them. They became a nunnery with a few that existed the commune and got married.
But any compromise with its fundamental core that includes the fact that Patriarchy is built in will destroy it.
I tend to agree.
And i think, whatever patriarchy means, it is not a privilege.
Much like being a serious ruler, e.g. a king, is not a privilege, bc of living to serve the people. (or, imagine, a minister means a servant..)
Women hey?
But more importantly, where is this damnable plague!
It’s time for a clean sweep.
Bring on Carrie the virus!
Carrie the blood red virus stalks the land. . .
The elites withdraw to their castles and party to take their minds off it all, but denial is useless, death is inevitable, status wealth and power cannot save them, and there’s no escape or hiding from justice:
“And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock.”
Edgar Allen Poe – The Masque of the Red Death
Tick, tock. . .