Blog Archives

Now That's an IQ Test!

12/31/2024

The other day, I stumbled across an invitation to take a free online IQ test. I usually ignore these sorts of clickbait ads and invitations but having nothing better to do at that moment, I indulged.

The test seemed fairly standard. My only complaint would be that it dragged on a little too long. Still, it did contain a few challenging problems. As I neared the end, I became curious about the questions I may have got wrong.

A big red button appeared on the screen after I completed the test. The text within the button informed me that I had achieved a remarkably high IQ score, the details of which the testing company would be happy to share with me for the low price of seven euros, but only if I responded within five minutes.

After that, the fee would increase to twenty euros.

Closing Comments Again For a While

12/31/2024

Comments on this blog are closed for the time being. Posting will continue as usual.

I Confess

12/30/2024

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My digression from some (most) accepted Christian beliefs and assumptions has no serious cause for disagreement or opposition. Moreover, my assumptions have no solid or coherent foundations at all. I mean, let’s be honest—how could they?

No, no, my sole motivation for sharing my views and perspective and refusing to yield to the converged-upon “eternal truths” of Christianity is to aggravate and spite other Christians.

That’s it. Really.

I confess I’m a bit of a sadist. I enjoy watching the aggravation and hatred mount up; however, I promise to seamlessly switch to masochist mode should the stakes, piles of faggots, and torture machines appear again.

Note: By piles of faggots I am, of course, referring to bundles of kindling, sticks, and wood. Just want to be clear there. I mean, the appearance of piles of faggots and torture devices could easily be misunderstood today, and I certainly wouldn't be masochistic if those kinds of things suddenly appeared.

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The Greatest Temptation

12/29/2024

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Ivan Kramskoi (1837 -1887) - Christ in the Wilderness - 1872

The greatest temptation.

In Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor lurks a dreadful idea. Who can be sure, he says—metaphorically, of course—that when the crucified Christ uttered His cry: "Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?" He did not call to mind the temptation of Satan, who for one word had offered Him dominion over the world?

And, if Jesus recollected this offer, how can we be sure that He did not repent not having taken it?...

One had better not be told about such temptations.

-- Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

The idea is dreadful because it diametrically opposes what Jesus created and what he offers via his creation (or, as Dr. Charlton calls it, the Second Creation).

The Synoptic Gospels describe Jesus rejecting all of Satan's temptations, including dominion over the world. The story does not appear in the Fourth Gospel, though a case for the appearance of the three temptations can be made (subject of another post, perhaps).

It is clear that Jesus had no regrets about resisting the devil's three temptations, making the temptation to think otherwise a great temptation, indeed.

The reasons for Jesus's rejection should require no explanation, yet I am sure that some Christians secretly wish Jesus had taken dominion of the world. If nothing else, it would justify their own seeming inability to resist such temptations or, at the very least, seriously entertain them.

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Merry Christmas

12/24/2024

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Winter Landscape - Caspar David Friedrich - 1811

I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. John 12:46

I wish all who read here a Merry Christmas.

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Two "Good" Christmas Commercials

12/22/2024

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I am always apprehensive about commenting positively on anything that stems from the mainstream, particularly when it comes to things like advertisements and commercials--even more so when the ads and commericals are Christmas-themed; however, I recently came across two Christmas-themed commercials that seem at least partly rooted in positive motivations and values.

The first is from a bank, of all things, and features the message, "Your spark can light up the world."

The second commerical -- in this case from Deutsche Telekom -- is more playful, but I was moved by the underlying message of the significance of relationships and breaking through apparently fixed boundaries.

Juxtaposed against the birdemic-related social distancing mania of a few years ago, the commercial comes off as, well, as a much needed breath of fresh air.

Granted, the lyrics of the Carol of the Bells have been altered. Yet, the message still works regardless.

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Cannot Rely on Anything External to Save You

12/21/2024

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An excerpt from William Wildblood's forthcoming book on the end times (bold added):

Once you understand that our modern world is in a state of spiritual decay much about it becomes clearer. Our material affluence is both an inheritance from the past and the result of focus on the material plane, but it hides a yawning chasm of spiritual emptiness. Even liberalism, surprising as it may sound to the mind brought up on it, is the result of intellectual and moral decomposition, order dissolving into disorder and structure into chaos, which is not to say that conservatism in our day is any solution as that is mostly just a reaction against liberalism and not grounded, as it should be, in spiritual understanding.

There is no outer thing, group, institution, organisation or even religion, in our world that can protect against the dissolving qualities of the end times. That is because they are all affected by those qualities. Some more than others but all are affected. Your only recourse is to go within and forge your own link to God, and that is what you are meant to do. You can certainly use outer things for support and guidance if you find that helpful but you should do so with discrimination. You cannot rely on anything external to save you. That doesn't mean you can save yourself but you must go within to find that which can save you.

That pretty much sums up my perspective of what we should be doing in this time and place, particularly the bit about not relying on anything external to save you. And not relying means just that.

Can you use externals for guidance and support?

William suggests that you can. I agree with him. However, William adds that we should be discriminiating about our utilization of any such external guidance and support, and I believe that is key.

Forging our own links to God by going within to find that which can save us is definitely what we should be focusing on in the here and now.

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Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Sorath-ness in the West

12/20/2024

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As violent, disturbing, and traumatic as Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is, it contains barely a hint of any Sorathic impulse. If anything, Glanton and his murderous gang of bloodthirsty scalp hunters represent the Luciferic rather than the Sorathic.

Though vicious and brutal, no one in the Glanton gang, not even the judge, aspires to self-annihilation amid the seemingly endless killing spree. The evil their motivations spawn is proximal, personal, and serves a purpose, regardless of how dark and depraved the purpose is. The scalps they take provide them with financial reward; the lives, an altogether different kind of reward, yet reward all the same.

The judge is not Sorath. He is a Lucifer possessing a faint yearning to become an Ahriman; a destroyer who slays so he can one day rule, as exemplified in his oft-quoted “whatever exists” utterance.

“Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.”

He is no Sorath, the judge. There is no destructive deluge threatening to sweep him away with all existence. On the contrary, after he “consumes” the Kid, he takes to dancing:

“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”

Even war—which the judge considers god—remains uncontaminated by any trace of sorathic impurity.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

If war is the truest form of divination, then the war the West is currently waging prophesies a sorathic supernova aiming to remove everything from existence, including itself. Or, at least from earthly existence.

Death is an illusion. The true prize is chaos—a collapsing back into the seeming nothingness of a cold, meaningless, and loveless void.

Evening in the West is saturated with a sorathness that melts up from the horizon like a sunset bleeding backward—all too visible, yet somehow unseen. Unfamiliar. Unknown.

Our sorathic judges glare at creation and hate it because it exists without their consent, but unlike Judge Holden, they are not moved to know in order to rule. They seek something else entirely, something that would paralyze Judge Holden’s light and nimble feet and turn them into lead.

The sorathic judges reject any unity of existence. Their objective is disunity leading to collapse and, finally, oblivion—what Bukowski once referred to “as the most beautiful silence never heard.”

The average Westerner cannot accept the reality of the sorathic judges who walk secretly among them. If war is god, then a religion of some sort must follow. There is always a next chapter. A continuation of the story. No one would ever work to end the story and destroy it. Dissolve creation back into chaos. No, no. Life goes on. Life will go on, they insist.

Until one day, it does not.

The evening sorathness of the West lives to survive on inconceivable paradoxes that all culminate in chaos. The meridian is sorath now, not blood. Blood, at least, has Christian connotations. For Sorath, blood is merely a meaningless side effect. It looks great, but it serves no purpose beyond that.

Creativity is the only meaningful opposition to the evening sorathness in the West; creativity based on freedom and love. The sort of creativity that saves from death is merely the surface. If love is deep and free enough, it can save from death and chaos, and thus stave off the silence never heard, at least for the individuals who actively choose Creation.

Note added: The judge may never die, but he also refuses the offer of the Second Creation, and only the Second Creation provides immunity to spiritual death and the universal collapse into chaos Sorath seeks.

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Das Kolosseum in Rom

12/18/2024

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Carl Gustav Carus - after 1828

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What I'm Repenting at the Moment

12/16/2024

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Better if you don't ask...

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