News: Satanists curse Trump...really?

You can listen to an YouTube version of this post here.

Satanists curse Trump!

 Is a headline you may have seen recently. I implore you to remember where you saw headlines like this because they are fake news. i should point out that i am using the term fake news correctly here, that is to say that the news story is demonstrably incorrect and misleading. I am not using the trumpian definition of fake news which seems to be anything that is not pro-trump propaganda.

 I am referring to the spiritual of the world who are working good magic against the evil of the Trump administration. So what makes these news story's fake exactly? Firstly the claim that the movement aims to in any way curse Trump is simply untrue. The ritual was a binding ritual, which specifically designed to merely prevent Trump from doing harm. 
 I will point out here that anyone trying to counter this ritual is admitting that they want Trump to do harm, and are actively trying to aid Trump in causing harm. 

 A lot of the news story's refer to satanists and Satan worshipers participating in these rituals. Now while Satan worshipers are certainly not disallowed from participating, i find it difficult to imagine that these Satanist Christians would want to. Surely Satanists would be supporting the evils of the Trump administration not opposing them? And if Satanists are trying to prevent harm and other Christian sects are trying to stop the Satanists from preventing harm....then i think those other Christians need to have a good hard look at their own moral code.

 The ritual is to be performed on every every waning crescent moon which is not technically monthly. The spell will continue to be performed until he is removed from office which doesn't necessarily demand impeachment.
 Lets get it straight the ritual is not a curse, it is not evil! How could preventing someone from doing harm be an evil act? Its not even dangerous, if your really concerned about your spiritual safety or any "karmic" repercussions, you could add something like "harming none, and for the greater good of all" just before you say "so mote it be".  
 You could also just remove the lines "Heavenly hosts. Demons of the infernal realms" if those lines concern you. 
 Also if you follow any gods you would definitely add "In the name and by the power of (your deity's names)", after you list the elemental spirits. 
 In this way the divine will add their own power to your ritual and they will also filter your intent through their moral code. That seems to be the whole idea of this ritual its amorphous enough to be altered without losing intent. I do understand that this may be foreign for a lot of people who are not proficient in spiritual matters, but performing this ritual might enlighten many to the fact that there are other paths. 
 The  #MagicResistance / #BindTrump movement has a Facebook page and the actual ritual can be found here. Remember too that any spiritual advisers who are feeding you a fake narrative about this movement should be of concern, they may actually have little knowledge and couldn't be bothered to educate themselves or are possibly being actively deceitful.

 As an aside i had a lot of trouble just getting the headlines for this post. A lot of Christian websites never stop loading, they play advertisements constantly and they slowed my Internet to a halt if i opened more then one at a time. Some of them even played music?!?
 Don't forget to act in the mundane world to help those being oppressed by Trump and his supporters.
 I would also encourage any "sceptics" to actually study the science before making any uneducated or false claims.

 I implore those with magical knowledge who feel they have legitimate concerns or criticisms to produce their own version of this ritual. Below you can see the ritual modified in a way that should alleviate those concerned with accidentally doing any harm. I also tried to "tidy" the wording up a little and added specific references to divinity. Changes should be in bold. I provide this just as an example of such alterations and encourage you to check out the full ritual,. In fact only the spoken part of the ritual is shown below so you will need to reference the original.

RITUAL TO BIND TRUMP

(v. 2.2 with PRUDE edits)

(Light white candle)

"Hear me, oh spirits
Of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air
O (name deities)

And blessed spirits of our ancestors
Protect and aid me as i do this good work"

(Light inscribed orange candle stub)

"I call upon you good spirits, Elemental, Ancestor and Divine
To bind
Donald J. Trump
So that his malignant works may fail utterly
That he may do no harm
To any human soul
Nor any Animal, or any Environment

Bind him so that he shall not break our polity
Usurp our liberty
Or fill our minds with hate, confusion, fear, or despair
And bind, too,
All those who enable his wickedness
And those whose mouths speak his poisonous lies

I beseech thee, spirits, bind all of them
As with chains of iron
Bind their malicious tongues
Strike down their towers of vanity"

(Invert Tower tarot card)

"I beseech thee in my name
(Say your full name)

And In the name of (name deities) 

In the name of all living things
Of all the spirits of place
In the name of Justice, Liberty, Love, Equality And Peace

Bind them in chains
Bind their tongues
Bind their works
Bind their wickedness"

(Light the small photo of Trump from the flame of the orange candle stub and hold carefully above the ashtray)

(Speak the following loudly and with increasing passion as the photo burns to ashes) 

"Harming none, and for the greater good of all
By (name deities) divine hand
Donald J. Trump and those who abet him are bound  from doing any harm!

So it shall be!"

(Blow out orange candle, visualising Trump blowing apart into dust or ash*)

(Pinch or snuff out the white candle, ending the ritual)

Review: The Shannara Chronicles

The Shannara Chronicles 

Season 1 Review

 

 This review may contain minor spoilers, but i will try to avoid any major ones.

 The story begins with An elven princess and a magical tree that imprisons demons or something. 

Wil Ohmsford (Austin Butler- Arrow), a half elf being given blue balls from his late father.

The blue balls are actually magical elf stones.

  Will meets Allanon (Manu Bennett - Spartacus, Arrow )

a human druid, and adventuring ensues as the group travel the land trying to imprison demons and avoiding those who would want to relieve Will of his blue balls.

 The scenery is fantastic and the eye-candy is delightful with some notable actors being; Aaron Jakubenko, Daniel MacPherson, Mattias Inwood and Marcus Vanco. 

 Having said all that, there are also some strong female characters or whatever.

 The show is definitely fantasy but there is a backdrop of sci-fi in that the story is set in the far future. Where humans have caused some kind of cataclysm and magic has resurfaced and diminished since then.

This history isn't really important to the story and its pretty much summed up, in my mind, by one scene where two of the main characters are riding past a rusted ute and one mentions in passing that he wonders what this stuff was all used for. Its just kind of there, it could just have easily been an ancient ruined fantasy civilization.

The fantasy races existing in our Earths far future seems to be a bit silly, its not really a major issue though. Some of the demons look cool but most just look like armored humans, which was a bit disappointing. There are a few races in this world and one, the gnomes are by far the most interesting.

I'm giving it 3 out of 5 because while the world isn't the most engaging, where that let me down the eye-candy kept me coming back for more. Long enough to actually enjoy the story, there isn't enough fantasy on television and i did enjoy this.

Book Review: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Omnibus 1-7

 Buffy The Vampire Slayer OMNIBUS 1-7

 

This is going to be a little different as we are going to look at an entire series of books. I won’t go too in-depth into each story or each book, this is a guide to help you decide if you want these or not. All these graphic novels are published by Dark Horse.

The Buffy the vampire slayer omnibus comes in seven volumes, starting off at a retelling of the original movie and moving all the way to the end of the television series. I should note that pretty much everything in these comics happens “off screen” in relation to the TV show.

The books themselves are well made, with bright colourful art, they do suffer somewhat from the problem that a lot of graphic novels suffer from, and that is “hidden crack”, I am not sure if it has a real name, but this is where it is difficult to see the entire panels of art or dialog in the middle or “crack” of the book. This was not a consistent issue, which kind of made it more obvious where it did occur.

One of mine did have an issue with the binding, but I purchased it as “nick and dent” so that was expected.

The stories are a varied lot, with some funny and sad moments, the dialog was very good and I found myself actually reading with the TV characters voice.

The art varies a lot between stories and volumes, but is generally of a consistent quality. There are a few very simple short stories with very cartoony art, but these are the exception.  I was kind of surprised to see bat-like monsters hanging out with the vampires at first. Then I realised they were also vampires, being in comic form they could explore more the idea that the vampire grew more monstrous over time. Some lucky vampires started off their undead existence looking like man-bat from batman.

All in all this was a great read, and really made me realise how much I missed shows like this. I am happy I purchased this and can recommend it to any fan of the show. I don’t know how consistent or coherent the whole would be if I had not seen the TV show, I would definitely watch that first.

 I am seriously thinking about grabbing the continuation of the TV show in graphic novel form. 

 Volume:              ISBN:                                PAGES:

1                                 978-1-59307-784-6                                          312
2                                 978-1-59307-836-3                                          316
3                                 987-1-59307-885-0                                          302
4                                 978-1-59307-968-0                                          368
5                                 978-1-59583-225-3                                          368
6                                 978-1-59582-242-0                                          388
7                                 978-1-59582-331-1                                          404

Charlie Charlie challenge

Charlie Charlie can we play?

There is a craze going around at the moment, called the charlie charlie challenge. You basically take a piece of paper, divide it into four squares. You write yes no, yes no, each to a square. Then you take two pencils and balance them along the lines, so they intersect at the crossroads.You then ask 'Charlie Charlie are you there?" when Charlie Charlie says yes you ask, "Charlie Charlie can we play?" he he again says yes you can ask him questions and he will answer them yes or no. 

NO

Apparently to end the session you should say "Thank you Charlie Charlie, can we stop?". If he says yes you should say "Charlie Charlie, thank you" and stop, some even say to crumple the paper, and drop the pencils on the ground.
He answers yes or no by moving the pencil so it falls into one of the labelled squares.

YES

The 'game' seems to have come from Spanish speaking country's, though it does beg the question why it isn't Carlitos Carlitos? There are even some claims that Charlie Charlie is a ancient Mexican god, such claims seem unlikely unless the deity has had a name change. 

There are also claims that Charlie Charlie is a demon, and the practice is satanic, though i can see nothing overtly christian / catholic about Charlie Charlie or the game itself, so we can probably rule this out. Some say he is a ghost of a young man. Charlie Charlie is said to have black eyes and a red robe and to harass people who don't play the game by his rules. 
Such people have experienced disembodied voices, Telekinesis, unexplained shadows, sinister laughing among other 'paranormal' events.

To my eyes this seems less like Ouija board use, or even use of a Pendulum for divination. But with the Spirit of the Pendulum given a name and back story.

After some experimentation it seems Charlie Charlie does give adequate answers. It can be difficult to set up the pencils where they wont be inadvertently influenced by table movements and your own breath, though it could be argued that maybe that's the energy that can more easily be used by Charlie Charlie to answer the questions.
It seems harmless enough, and might teach the young folk that ending a ritual is just as important as starting it. As well as the ability to tell when a given phenomenon is supernatural or mundane, this is a very important skill to develop and it seems severely lacking in our current society. So many people jump to the illogical conclusion that something is mundane despite all evidence to the contrary.
Personally for my quick divination needs i would stick with the pendulum, its just as easy to perform and gives more reliable results. Please comment below if you have tried it and let us know what happened.
As with everything, caution should be used when dealing with the other realm.

Charlie Charlie can we stop?

Update:

While making a video version of this blog i may have been visited by Charlie Charlie himself.

 

Book Review: KRAMPUS, The Yule Lord

  KRAMPUS

The Yule Lord

 

Authors:                                Brom

Design:                                  Paula Russell Szafranski

Publisher:                             HARPER Voyager           

Type:                                     Hardcover

Pages:                                   357

Genre:                                  fiction

Published:                            2012

ISBN:                                    978-0-06-209565-7

Source:                                 Independently purchased 

What happens when The Krampus decides he wants his holy day back?

The Krampus for those who don't know, is a Yule nature spirit or possibly even an ancient Pagan deity. Krampus travels door to door at Yule, rewarding good children and giving naughty children a swat with his birch stick. He is hairy, with a long tongue, goats horns and hooves.

The book itself is beautiful, the pages have a kind of corrugated old manuscript feel, almost like the edges are ripped . The dust cover was bright and colourful.

The book is lavishly sprinkled with black and white pictures, there is even a section in the middle where the main characters of the story have full colour glossy pictures.

Though it doesn't specifically say anywhere i could see, i believe all the art is done by Brom the author. Whom you may remember from the art in the Dark Sun setting of D&D.

The book is a good read, it has mystery, action, adventure a bit of horror and sort of romance thrown in for good measure.

 Your probably wondering if i enjoyed the book on an artistic level and thought it a worthy read, that 3 1/2 eucalyptus leaves seems a little low.  You would be right, as two things bothered me about the book.

The first thing that bothered me was the main character, he just was not very likable, he also made homophobic jabs at a coworker whom he disliked so that didn't endear me to him or make me root for him at all. I understand that a character can be flawed but the character didn't seem to grow, the homophobia just kind of happened and was not really addressed again.

The second thing was the biggest for me, Krampus is pre-christian, he is thought by some to be a remnant of the ancient god of the witches, that would make him my god. 
In one part the Krampus has a conversation with a priest, christian or catholic, Krampus taunts the priest about the state of the world and its evils, he mentions homosexuality along with some actual evils, in the same sentence, as if they were like things. Now Krampus may have just been listing things the priest thought of as sins, but it didn't really read  that way.

Krampus as a pre-christian entity wouldn't (doesn't) have anything against homosexuality, most deity's through history have accepted homosexuality as a normal form of human sexuality, some even considering homosexuals sacred because of their unique perspective.

I may have read far to much into that conversation, and after the comments of the main character, i may have been on the defence, and alert for any signs of homophobia by the characters. Like i said the conversation is ambiguous, it isn't clear if the Krampus puts homosexuality with those evils or if he just knows the priest does.

So to be fair without taking those two issues into account, i would give the book a lot higher rating. If you can overlook those things, and knowing they are there might dampen the shock. If the main characters homophobia was further addressed and the Krampus acceptance of homosexuality stated clearly, the book would get a better score, as it was otherwise a very enjoyable read and is physically beautiful.

To be clear i am in no way implying that the author is homophobic, in fact i believe he is not. It is simply the character that makes offensive comments (and doesn't seem to learn the error of his ways) and a (non homophobic) god whose meaning isn't exactly clear.

 Brom is an experienced artist, who has art books published and has also written The Child Thief, The Plucker and The Devils Rose novels.

Have you read it? What did you think of the issues i had, did you even notice? Which way did you interpret The Krampus comments? Was the paperback just as beautifully designed?