Hammer a Witch Modern-Style

I have long contended that the persecution of witches never really ended; it is just the form of persecution that changed. Burning women and torturing people in unimaginable ways in the name of the Inquisition was not a very clever long-term strategy. After a while, people begin to raise their eyebrows, complain quietly, stop being your friend. So a change of tactic is required: something more subtle, more softly-softly maybe.

The force that led to the persecution of witches shows itself in many ways today. There is the demonisation of so-called psychedelic-type plants and substances, a theme explored in various posts on Pale Green Vortex already. Then there is the matter of our physical health, a topic close to the heart of any bona fide witch. The draconian measures quietly implemented in the EU against plant and herbal remedies can be easily researched, should you be unfamiliar with the subject. The explicit aim: to protect the general public from exploitation by unscrupulous herbal people (read 'witches') with their unproven remedies. The real aims: to maintain a monopoly for Big Pharma in human health, and to eradicate any opposition to the materialist philosophy underpinning that monopoly.    

'Cancer: the Forbidden Cures' by Massimo Mazzucco is a film readily available through You Tube, and well worth watching (catch the complete, 92-minute version). The effectiveness or otherwise of the 'forbidden cures' covered in the film is not the main point here, and I am in no position to say much about them anyway. Most revealing is the manner (described in the first part of the film) in which the pharmaceutical giants took control of health care at the beginning of the twentieth century, establishing the paradigm that has remained in place ever since. They remain as jealous of their monopoly as ever - check out, using discernment and the ability to read between the lines, the aggressive dismissal of all the 'forbidden cures' on Wikipedia, for example. In the UK there exists the Cancer Act, which makes advertising anything outside the holy trinity of surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy a criminal act. Again, the general public needs to be protected from manipulation, and from being given hope where none exists. Bloody hell, this general public seems so hopeless and stupid that it should all be lined up against the wall and shot, to put it out of its collective misery. Fortunately, there are some all-loving bodhisattvas around to take care of the interests of this idiotic general public. They utilise their undoubted superiority to great effect. You can find them in government, sitting as experts on panels, pocketing academic grants in universities, looking after the general public by compassionately sitting on boards of directors. Meanwhile, the fact remains that our modern drug producers don't have a clue as to what cancer really is, and can only repeat ad nauseam their holy trinity of crude solutions: chop it out, blast it out, or poison it.

At the end of the day, witch hunts, witch persecutions, are about our minds; the battle for our minds. Anything that challenges the mainstream paradigm of personal disempowerment is fair game. Any dissenting voice is the siren call of an evil witch, threatening to expose the Great Lie that underpins the mainstream. So I was interested to come across this article recently. Persecution of the witch extends across the entire board of our health: spiritual and psychological health (sacred plants, alternative therapies), physical health (forbidden and ridiculed cures) and mental health (defining the norm and removing whatever does not conform to that definition as being 'sick'. The Cuckoo's Nest is alive and well.....)

Yes, catch this:

www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=28584


          

Thinly Coated With Dishonour?

The quoting of well-known people is a common device of writing across the board. It happens on Pale Green Vortex, and it happens almost everywhere else. A good quote can be invaluable: it may encapsulate in a few fine words what the writer has been struggling to put across in paragraph after tortured paragraph. It may wake up the reader with the concentrated power of a single sentence, or illumine a tricky subject with the use of humour, irony, or paradox. This is all just tickety-boo. But maybe - just maybe - another element can creep in from the shadows.....

There's the matter of having confidence in ones own voice. It should stand alone, its own justification, without requiring the rubber stamp of approval of the rich and/or the famous. Take Pale Green Vortex a couple of weeks back. Let's really make an oft-repeated point about the pernicious power of the media by rolling out a Pale Green Vortex hero in all his flawed magnificence, Jim Morrison. OK, but he has his detractors. Now let's bring on Naom Chomsky, who surely gets the nod from a goodly portion of Pale G. V. readers. And to round it all off, we'll bring out one of the really big guns - hey, it's Adolf Hitler!

So, quotes can be great but, as with everything, they are best received with an attitude of discernment.

Following this proviso, Pale Green Vortex happily presents a bit more from the lesser-known side of Jim Morrison....

'Death makes angels of us all, and gives us wings
where we had shoulders round as raven's claws.'

'People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing.... Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it.... If you feel ashamed of (your feelings), and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality.'         

'The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act.... There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.'

Thanks Jim.

Too Much Thought

Occasionally, the universe screams a message relentlessly in your ear. It could be during full-on conversation, or maybe just a chance remark or aside from a friend. Every book casually opened has the same story to tell. It's as if around every corner there's a packet of wisdom waiting to come and smack you in the face. 'Oi, you. Yes, you! Listen!'

This has been the case for me just recently. The refrain ringing in my inner ear has been this: 'Too much thought'. By 'thought' I here mean something quite precise. Thinking can take many forms, but in this instance it's the kind of thought that aims to sort things out, understand things so they all make sense and fit into a nice, neat package. You know where you stand, you know what you're doing, you're in control, and you can get on with life.

I have been aware for decades of the limits to thought in its purely linear cause-and-effect manifestation. It has its place, but no more. You can't think your way to enlightenment, and for this reason I consider the mystical approach, which emphasises direct personal experience, to be more relevant - we could almost say 'superior' - than the philosophical way; though philosophy also has its necessary place.

The 'sorting out' kind of thinking appears in different guises and levels of subtlety. It is, I observe, more prevalent among men than women. I have long since abandoned the hopeless and impossible task of trying to sort out the universe into a nice, neat, logically coherent whole. Got it, understand it, control it, have exorcised the demons of uncertainty. The chimera-like nature of this pursuit is hinted at by, however many of the western philosophers you may read, looking for 'the meaning of life', you will inevitably come away disappointed. Many have interesting, illuminating even, bits and pieces to say, but beyond that, no...  The thing is, the universe, reality, don't work like that. But I note that the question I posed recently, in the 'Gorillas and humans' post, about 'The demonstration or Zen?' as the approach to effective change in the world smacks of the same mentality. Looking for a blueprint; an over-arching principle that I can lay down onto the variegated multitude of events that present themselves in daily life. Maybe I can live without that; maybe it's not needed. It's something to experiment with. at least....

For an aspiring mystic, a major task is identifying and removing the 'veils of obscuration', as certain Buddhist traditions call them. Veils that obscure direct apprehension and experience. Beliefs are one such veil - they need to go, or at least be put to one side from time to time. 'Sorting out the universe' and 'blueprints for action' are another. All interpretation is something we lay on top of the infinite diversity of the universe. While we hold onto these interpretations, bound as they normally are by a linear, cause-and-effect way of seeing the world, we are merely boxing ourselves in. Confining ourselves to the shell of three dimensional material existence, while cutting off entries into other aspects of the universe, where synchronicity, for example, may be the norm. Put another way: if you believe that linear cause-and-affect is the only way the universe works, that's all you're likely to see.

Synchronicity - a mode of happening that is acausal in the normal sense, based on connectivity and outside linear time and space. You can put away the dominoes. It's actually there all the time. But you need to pull aside the veils first, before the wider universe can come shining in......

For myself, I shall attempt to stride boldly and courageously into every day afresh, free from blueprints, agendas, preconceptions. Face each new challenge in its uniqueness with fascination and intelligence. Let's see.....

  

       

In the Mist: a Postscript

'Whoever controls the media, controls the mind' - Jim Morrison

'The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow a very lively debate within that spectrum' - Naom Chomsky

'All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach' - Adolf Hitler

Pay heed, dear friends, pay heed.......