The Nature and Purpose of the Title is to Reinforce the sense of a New Beginning which accompanies the crossing of a millennium. It's now roughly 2000 years since the Christian God was born in a human form. Not by chance it's also roughly 2000 years since the reign of Julius Caesar, when the Roman wolf's jaws were still red with the blood of my ancestors, and when "time began," as far as the Imperialist Mindset is concerned.

Why do I say "Time Began" then?  Because it's the first time Northern Europeans were exposed to both the power and the horror of Imperial Power. Since that time, the guiding fantasy of the Master Class has ever since been to rebuild the "Glory" that was Rome, and to build a new Empire, with themselves in the Driver's Seat.

Before we started using the current calendar, time was reckoned as "Year Something of the Reign of King Somebody." Theoretically, the current calendar is the same way, except it's the Reign of King Jesus, according to the Church.  But in a poetic sense, it's also the Reign of Julius Caesar, who by strange coincidence was also betrayed by friends, killed by representatives of the State (a cabal of Senators) and was succeeded by a threesome of dictators, which parallels the "Holy Trinity" whose origins in Christianity are somewhat mysterious.

According to Christian Legend, Christianity became the State Religion of the Empire because Emperor Constantine, praying to any God who would listen for victory in one of his Imperial battles, was told "In This Sign, You Will Conquer."  The "sign" was said to be a cross. An Emperor made a deal with a God on a Battle Field.  The God offered conquest, which was His to offer, him being the Lord of Hosts (of Battle.)  The Emperor offered, in effect, other people's souls to the God. Were they his to offer? He obviously thought so, and the God didn't seem to mind whether new converts came to him by force, guile, or persuasion, just so there were lots of them and they came quickly.

I picture the deal as comprising a bit more than just victory in battle, when you consider what the Romans _meant_ when they said conquer, (vinco,vincere, to conquer, win, or surpass, according to my high school Latin text book.)  Caesar's most famous quote regarding the Gallic Wars (when he conquered my ancestors) was

"Veni, Vidi, Vici"
which means "I came; I saw; I conquered."

The result of this conquest was not unlike the colonization of the Americas: wholesale enslavement, cultural genocide, and a certain amount of actual genocide. Looking at the old Latin text some more, I notice several apparently related words: vincio v. (to bind); vinco v. (to conquer, win or surpass) and vinculum n. (a chain or fetter.)  So to conquer, (vinco) means more or less to bind (vincio) in chains (vinculum.)

So when the Christian God had his negotiation with Constantine, and we can assume Latin was the language, what God offered frankly was to help Constantine to put people in chains, destroy their culture, suck the life out of their people, rape their women and murder their kings.

In exchange for this "help," which is exactly the sort of thing this particular God is always doing in the Old Testament too, Constantine promised the souls of the conquered to God.

For the Master Class in the Empire, (then and now) Christianity was a Dream Come True: a Religion that strengthened the slaves for work, and yet weakened their resistance to being dominated, and made them positively rejoice at being abused, since they were really piling up those points in Heaven. I suspect that at the same time, the Masters saw the enormous potential of Christianity to infest their own class and make whimpering slaves of them, too.  Then they laughed it off, but made certain whenever possible that their own children received a "Classical Education," which is to say, an education in the Pagan Masters.

Am I crazy to consider the possibility that there really is or was a thing called the Lord of Hosts, who used first warfare and then later religion as vehicles to suck human soul energy of some sort?

But all that is done now.  I was just reflecting on the particular bit of Black Magick that resulted in the Unholy Alliance between Rome and the 'Lord of Hosts,' which resulted in the "civilization" of my ancestors, and whose Kingship we celebrate 2000 years of this year.

Makes me want to Spit.

So that's why, here at Arcadia, this is Year Zero.  I choose not to celebrate 2000 years of shame and humiliation while the "best and brightest" explored every way they could think of to squeeze a little more decadence out of the rest of us. I choose not to celebrate Empire except as a thing Ended.

How do we know when it has ended? Well, they don't announce it on CNN.  Empire ends when Each of Us Refuses to Serve IT Anymore.  It was in the last Century that most Western people freed their souls from the Lord of Hosts.  Maybe in this one we will free our TIME and EFFORT HERE and NOW from King Caesar and those who serve his Cult, namely, the Bosses and Bureaucrats.

Why do I say Cult? What does this mean?  Well, most cults form up around charismatic individuals, but the Cult of the Caesars was different than that. It worshiped the "Genius" of Caesar, the Idea of having One Ruler to Unite Everyone, just like Christianity, Tolkien's One Ring, E Pluribus Unum (out of many, One,) and Hitler's "Furherprincep."  This cult unites its many disparate parts by their common belief in a HIERARCHY, (translates "rule by Heaven, or what is Above.")

What was this "genius?" It was the very concept of a chain of command, where the mind and will of one individual is extended through thousands and thousands of others, whether slaves, soldiers, bureaucrats, or other functionaries, everyone moves to one drum, and there's some Imperial Pompousness a-beatin' away on it.

The idea was that many people would form one body, with one Caesar, Pope, Christ or General as the "head," and the rest of us moving in rhythm and harmony having been robbed of our souls and our freedom.
Nowadays the Cult has evolved a new Vessel for their domination: the Corporation (again, related to Corps, Corpus (of Christ,) and corpse. Means Body.) Governments are limited, these days, due to the efforts of heretics and rebels, but corporations are not limited by anything except their ability to make money.  With money, the government can be bought, and thus the limits of both corporate and government power can be stretched. And the demonic power of Democracy, which has been the enemy of every Church, every State, and every Army from day one, can be, shall we say, Neutralized.

This is the Cult of the Caesars as it comes down to us.
It ends when we end it.
Each of us must end it for himself or herself.
Nobody can end it for anyone else without becoming a new kind of Caesar, a new kind of Priest, and so continuing the disease in a new form.

What if I'm wrong?

What if the Conservatives are Right?

Then Humans are Natural Slaves, invented to be that by God, as the Bible says.  In that case, I am just a disobedient slave, refusing to accept authority, and thus the worst kind of rebel. Satan himself, according to their fable, was supposed to be just such a one, refusing to take orders, insisting on thinking for himself, corrupting God's Happy Human Automatons by suggesting that they too should think for themselves. If the conservatives are right then I'm pretty screwed, but then if they are right then America "stepped off the path of righteousness" at the Declaration of Independence.  After all, the Bible never says it's OK to rebel against authority, declare yourselves "free," appeal to "nature's god" for help in founding a country based on all men being created equal. That was just rankest heresy, from a strictly Biblical perspective.  It's no mistake that the British flag was all crosses, representing the forces of Christian Monarchy (two great tastes that taste great together.)  While the Americans were using flags with trees on them, to invoke the nature spirit, or with rattle snakes to invoke protection, or with circles of occult symbols like pentagrams.

Sometimes I think the Fifth Force in the Universe is just raw stupidity. That's the force that stops matter from coming alive anymore, and dancing electric jigs of its own. That's the membrane that keeps us trapped in the grooves of biological necessity, unable to shuck off this mortal coil and animate some other chunk of matter, like a rock, or some air, or a fire, or a stream.

There are wise folk who say it's best to accept stupidity as a fact of life, learn to like it. Watch television. If you keep challenging the rule of stupidity, they will throw you out of the garden and you can't play the reindeer games anymore.  Build, cultivate, and love your stupidity like a layer of winter fat.

To be thought conventionally wise, all you have to do is make excuses for the status quo. Conventional wisdom: work makes you free.  That was written above the gate at Austwitz. It's above the gate at a lot of prisons in America too. It could be the mantra of conservatives.  Poor ones work themselves to death while their kids are neglected, repeating that mantra, heroically believing that if they can work _just a little_ harder, then they can be free, and they keep believing this right up to the last minute, the unspent creative potential of that life shooting like an orgasm to heaven ... to be slurped up hungrily by Jehovah Jaw head. Rich conservatives understand the mantra differently. With them it's Work makes _YOU_ free, in the sense that if you work hard enough as my employee, I'll allow you a little freedom.  This is a mantra they keep repeating to _other_ people. Listen to them. They repeat it at you.
 
 
 
 

Imbolg
Anno Arcadia 5
 

Have planted the Black Sword in the May Pole Circle.  When it comes out will begin the time, in my adaptation of a Slavic tradition, when it is taboo to cut the Earth with iron, "because she is pregnant."

May the tears of a long Winter become the Bright Seeds of Spring.
May all our highest aspirations bear fruit, and may we let go of the rest without pain.

Next new moon is the Chinese New Year, when we transit from the Year of the Rabbit to the Year of the Dragon.

Some thoughts for today, elicited by the Lyst:
Y'know, I really think that from the point of view of an alien
anthropologist or zoologist, all the bullshit between the genders, in all
its manifold flavors and forms is nothing but a fairly complicated mating
dance.  The males are programmed to seek sex more or less constantly, and to compete with one another for it, and the females are wired to want it just about as much, but they get pregnant.  And so the female's desire for sex is tempered by the question of offspring, and food.

This programming to seek sex and compete for it is the root
drive behind nations, universities, virtually all work which does not yield
something necessary.  It's all about sex and food, and how MY particular DNA can enjoy the best of both, and prosper and spread, within the gelatin-like matrix of MY particular culture, which has evolved over time to deal with the quirks and peculiarities of a given gene pool in a given environment. There really is not a whole lot going on besides that.  Culture, language, religion, warfare, music, literature, all at the end of the day are but the trappings and accouterments of our highly complicated mating/gestation ritual (AKA family life.)

Why? Why are human babies born prematurely and need just insane amounts of care for weeks and months after birth, (compared to other high mammals) thus necessitating some sort of group situation to keep the mamas and babies safe and warm and fed?

Again it's just biology.  As primates evolved, their heads kept getting
bigger, and their hips kept getting smaller, and the posture more erect.
This made us, presumably, faster and smarter.  The downside was that these two currents made childbirth a nightmare, since a bigger and bigger head was getting pushed out of a smaller and smaller hole.  So evolution's compromise was premature babies.  Premature babies meant we needed to be social creatures, and develop all the ways we could of bonding, working together, etc.  And so culture was necessitated by biology, and just as in biology, cultural innovations that don't work don't last.

Buddy of mine, another social science student at the time, told me that a
study was done that isolated a cycle of hormonal changes in couples that
fall in love.  The cycle lasted two years, roughly, and at that time,
whatever sort of passion the two have is pretty much used up.
Interestingly, that's about the bare minimum time before the baby produced in the union can walk for itself.  That's when biology kicks out and culture kicks in. Culture demands that the couple stay together, either falling in love again, or reaching some other sort of compromise, even though the hard-wiring of the body, shaped by millions of years of evolution, is ready to roll for greener pastures.

It amazes me how many people are infuriated by these notions. (Maybe the Lyst will be different...)  It's like folks just get all their buttons
pushed by talk like this.  It's like biology is the Devil, the little man
behind the curtain that they wish was not there.  I guess the culture itself is a quasi biological thing,  running parallel to the genetics, and
these thought taboos are part of its "immune system."
Truth is a virus.
Thoughts for today.
C