Notices by Nate Cull (natecull@mastodon.social), page 23

don't mess with the space witch lady with the sword and the boy at her feet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_of_Ivrel

don't mess with the lady with the sword and the boy at her feet

@Azure Speaking of: Lindsay's bestseller book was apparently ghostwritten by a woman, Carole Carlson!!! Now that's something I did not know.

https://historicist.info/articles/carlson.htm

@Azure Yep! It's like someone spiked all the communion wine with silly pills and paranoia juice in the 1990s.

Though that had been going on at least back to Hal Lindsay's Late Great Planet Earth, 1970.

@Azure Oh yes indeed that one too!

Tim LaHaye really majored on the Secular Humanism being the big evil.

Aaaand then he wrote Left Behind and I was like '....what, no seriously, wt actual f is this utter nonsense.....'

@Azure and then I dig up some of these 1970s 'New Age' ideas and oh, okay, they were discovering the exact same idea. So okay then.

And then I poke at Kabbalah and oops, same idea, coming through the late medieval and Renaissance Jewish community.

@Azure Yep!

Over the last few years I've been drawn to the idea that 'the coming of Christ' is a real historical event which is in process and has been for hundreds of years... but the Christ who is coming is a cosmic-level being who is being born *in every human soul* (and probably in nonhuman ones as well). Of whom Jesus is only one expression. Even he can't replace *our* individual identity and sacredness. All life is part of the fractal image of God and every part is needed.

And again, I think Jesus said as much when he said the stuff about 'no man knows the day or the hour, not even the Son or the angels in heaven'. And here's maybe actual angel-level entities agreeing.

It is a deeply decentralising and freeing idea, to me, and fits with a radically democratic politics. Of course the people undergoing lived experience have knowledge of their own experience that others who only have abstract knowledge don't! The users are as important as the engineers.

<< And John said: "You know, in many ways we know less than you do, because you're the experts in the physical world">>

This idea also comes across in, eg, the Council of Nine stuff from Phyllis Schlemmer (Briefing for the Landing on Plant Earth / The Only Planet of Choice), another deeply feared bogeyman to conservatives. Tom/Atum several times says that the aeons/angels/ higher beings are kinda watching *us* and learning from us because they don't know what's going to happen.

One reason why I really like Spangler's teaching is that it vibes with a message I've gleaned from multiple other sources: that we as 'mere' incarnate humans have a very important role.

I also want to know whether Spangler's 'John' might not actually be the Apostle John, because while it doesn't *matter*, I wouldn't actually be surprised. The saints, when they manifest to us, are quite surprising beings and don't necessarily hold the doctrinal frameworks we might ascribe to them.

But it's definitely because of that concerted Evangelical attack on Spangler that I haven't read him up to now.

I guess it also took me quite a while to become comfortable with the idea of 'non-physical mentors' and not see them as eek! scary! aliens/demons but as just... people who can help.

Spangler in 2013. His focus on 'incarnation' I think places him squarely in the Christian tradition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh-7xQhHoqk

@Azure Same for me.

Here's, eg, the 'Luciferian Spangler' claim circulating as of 2010, with a slightly expanded quotation:

https://thecontemplativeobserver.wordpress.com/category/david-spangler/

As far as I can parse it, Spangler's arguing that apparent evil in the world performs a valuable function for us, by testing us, and so we should treat it as an agent of good.

This does seem hard. But, if I understand correctly, it is actually Jesus' approach to evil. Hence why he tells us to 'forgive' rather than to fight evil.

@Azure For that reason I would love to get hold of the original text of Reflections on the Christ to find out just in what context Spangler used that phrase.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't now. He ditched a lot of Theosophical jargon and theory after deciding it didn't really accurately describe the 'subtle worlds' as he experiences them.

@Azure but 'daimonic' influence - yep!

It didn't help that Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey used the word 'Lucifer' to describe some arcane theoretical construct like 'the collective soul of Mankind' and David Spangler quoted Bailey in his 'Reflections on the Christ', and so the Evangelical Christians (and the Lyndon La Rouche people, which gives some idea of who was on whose side) decided he was 'a Luciferian'. And you'll see that very specific claim repeated today.

@Azure Yep!

And the thing is, if you look at David Spangler, who was kind of the Lindisfarne spiritual guru, he is a quite powerful psychic and did/does have a spirit guide and had his name on some prophecies at Findhorn.

So there's some truth to the deep 1980s existential Christian panic that powerful non-human entities with human disciples were trying to bring about a new world order.

Only, I've kinda come to the conclusion that those beings aren't the 'demons' they were cast as.

What's really funny is the Lindisfarne group shared very similar concerns to the right wing of Silicon Valley. Very much worried about the potential of genetic engineering and cybernetics to give power to an elite to control the world and wanting to promote decentralisation.

But their vision of a unified yet decentralised planetary society (and including the Lucis Trust's strong support for the United Nations) is what the Right could only read as 'a Pagan-Communist planetary tyranny'

What's really funny is the Lindisfarne group shared very similar concerns to the right wing of Silicon Valley. Very much worried about the potential of genetic engineering and cybernetics to give power to an elite to control the world and wanting to promote decentralisation.

But their vision of a unified yet decentralised planetary society (and including the Lucis Trust's strong support for the United Nations) is what the Right could only read as 'a religious-Communist planetary tyranny'

I'm even wondering if St John the Divine isn't the prototypical 'scary Illuminati cathedral headquarters' that pops up in, say, the Deus Ex games. Relocated to Europe, usually, but also showing in the idea of a shadowy New York elite.

StJtD certainly appears as a villain figure in a lot of right-wing constructions of the New Age / New World Order mythos from the 1980s right up through the 2010s.

Lindisfarne and the idea of a coherent Green politics scared a LOT of people on the right.

"Mystery" by Jeremey Gaffen and Paul Winter and sung by Susan Osborn, from the 1982 release of Missa Gaia (recorded 1981 at Cathedral of St John the Divine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vukjNtbNBbs

I am finding myself very much attracted to the Lindisfarne - St John the Divine group, probably the closest to an 'inner circle' that the New Age movement ever had, and this is maybe the closest thing that exists to their anthem.

Madeleine "A Wrinkle in Time" L'Engle was also in the StJtD circle, I believe.

"Mystery" by Jeremey Gaffen and Paul Winter and sung by Susan Osborn, from the 1982 release of Missa Gaia (recorded 1981 at Cathedral of St John the Divine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vukjNtbNBbs

I am finding myself very much attracted to the Lindisfarne - St John the Divine circle, probably the closest to an 'inner circle' that the New Age movement ever had, and this is maybe the closest thing that exists to their anthem.

Madeleine "A Wrinkle in Time" L'Engle was also in the StJtD circle, I believe.