Tuesday, December 09, 2008

The Real Story of Christmas













The following is a Jewish scholar's account as opposed to that of an Indigenous American traditionalist, although I agree with most of it minus the hostility towards even the peaceful elements of paganism, which is typical of the spiritually and psychologically sado-masochistic orthodox theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Some traditional Indigenous American religions are panentheist while others are pantheist. Both tend to incorporate a certain amount of polytheism and animism as well. But by orthodox Jude-Christian and Islamic standards, both are regarded as "pagan".

Indioheathen


I. When was Jesus born?

A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1 C.E.

B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.

C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:

a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of Rome’s reign, etc.

b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.

c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.

d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).

e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.

f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.

D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.”

E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.

II. How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

A. Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3] Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4] However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

III. The Origins of Christmas Customs

A. Christmas Trees

Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”. Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B. Mistletoe

Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

C. Christmas Presents

In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).

D. Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil” who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

IV. The Christmas Challenge

· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.” It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25th.

· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance. If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning. “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday. April 20th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony. Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.” If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:

If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.

It was an appropriate thought for the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?

AUTHOR: LAWRENCE KELEMEN

Friday, November 21, 2008

Sissy soldiers




















U.S. President-elect Barack "Change" Obama says he's going to delay changing the U.S. military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prohibits non-heterosexuals from devulding their sexual oriention to fellow military personnel. Those that do or who are found out to be gay are subject to being discharged from the military, although with "honorable" status if they have a clean service record. (The U.S. military has always had an unspoken exception of not discharing known homosexual intelligence officers and special ops that are certain not to be subject to blackmail because of their sexual orientation).

The U.S. and Turkey are the only NATO members that as of this date prohibit homosexuals from serving openly in their militaries even though a prerequisite for serving in any militia or military is courage and bravery. In the more valient militaries, any heterosexual that is too cowardly to serve along side known non-heterosexuals in the military just because of their sexual orientation is emotionally unfit for military service. Perhaps Germany and Japan could have won WWII had they thought of attacking the white regiments of the racially segregated American army and Marine Corps with black and homosexual human "bombs", which the straight white boys were supposedly too sissy to fight alongside as fellow soldiers. That would have sent them swishing into retreat like frightened little girls.

Even the predecessor to the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Cavalry, wasn't too cowardly to include black "Buffalo Soliders" in their non-racially-segregated militaristic campaigns against "containing" Indigenous Americans as does the contemporary Border Patrol in controlling the ancient, natural practice of free northbound migration on the part of Mesoamerican Indian-blooded people from south of the artificial border as mandated by Republican and Democrat immigration policy.

The emotional sissies that uphold "Don't ask, don't tell" have the same mentality as those that support laws against "unsightly" conditions such as private junk yards and unkept lawns in their neighborhoods. For them the Eleventh Commandment is, "Thou shalt not offend the (weak) emotions of thy neighbor".

And they think us non-colonized and non-Christianized injuns are backward in our ways and thinking. At least we never invented superstitions and "sins" about "two spirit" (other-than-heterosexual) people like their ancient Middle Eastern spiritual role models did.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Keith Obermann on California Proposition 8
















CLICK HERE

Also click on Homosexuality and Marriage in the right topics column to review previous commentaries on these subjects by Indioheathen.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology as elitist and culturally-biased pseudo-sciences












The fields of "Philosophy" and "Classical Music".

What do they have in common in the West?

They are broad terms that essentially mean between the lines, "Euro-centric philosophies" and "pre-twentieth century European instrumental string, wind, percussion, orchestral and vocal operatic music".

And what about the fields of western "psychiatry" and "clinical psychology"?

A psychiatrist is one who first obtains a doctorate in general medicine, and then goes on to learn about various types personality and mental disorders as defined by European and/or American psychiatric and psychological associations, and the various treatments or therapies for them as developed primarily by Euro-centric and Euro-American-centric psychotherapists. Then upon completing that education, which includes a clinical residency, publishable research, and written and oral-qualifying exams, one is awarded by the professional medical association of their jurisdiction board certification as a psychiatrist.

I never understood why in the West psychiatrists have to obtain a general Doctor of Medicine or O.M.D. degree first in order practice psychiatry. Dentists and podiatrists, for example, just receive the sufficient amount of medical and pharmaceutical training for their specialties without having to obtain a general medical degree first.

A clinical psychologist in most jurisdictions of the West must have a doctorate in that field to advertise as such, and is prohibited from prescribing or treating patients with controlled medications, although in the U.S. for instance, the states of New Mexico and Louisiana allow state-licensed clinical psychologists with certification in clinical psychopharmacology to prescribe most types of psychopharmaceuticals to their patients, and even administer electroshock therapy in psychiatric facilities. A shrink of that category is thus also known as a medical psychologist--basically a psychiatrist without an M.D.

And in countries like Mexico where most medications including most (but not all) categories of synthetic mood stabilizers can be purchased over-the-counter without a prescription from a licensed physician, psychologists can recommend such medications. In fact in most Latin American countries, one only has to have a minimum of a masters' degree in clinical psychology to advertise as a "clinical psychologist", and does not have to be licensed by the state to practice psychotherapy or relationship therapy in a private setting. Those that practice in state-funded clinics, hospitals, or institutions only need to register with the federal government for a cédula (professional certification), which just requires proof of completion of the minimal educational requirements for the field of specialty.

Most state-licensed psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and clinical social workers in the U.S., Canada, and Europe become aghast when they learn of those more relaxed requirements in third world countries because they treat their professions as exact and objective sciences that need to be regulated instead of the subjective pseudo-sciences they really are.

Granted, some mental illnesses and personality disorders are neurologically-rooted as opposed to being psychosomatic, and some of those that are neurological in origin can be medically and scientifically detected with CAT scans and other empirical, objective instrumentation and methods just as, for example, the mental retardation of some individuals can. It is those conditions that can be demonstrated medically and scientifically that must be separated categorically from disorders defined by professional psychiatric and psychological associations, and published in ever-evolving amended texts such as the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; (DSM-IV, DSM-IV-R, and on-and-on).

There is a branch of western psychology known as "Experimental Psychology". It is only a "branch" because that's how most western psychologists as a collective treat it, even though in reality, the field of "Clinical Psychology" as whole and even psychiatry to a degree are nothing more than subjective, experimental, non-exact pseudo-sciences.

As a non-Euro-centric person, I have always regarded the field of western psychology as the white version of American Indian, Chicano (Mexican-American), and African American Studies. Such ethnic studies programs include an examination of the social psychology of such groups, and the field of social psychology can overlap to a degree with clinical psychology when it comes to certain general behavioral characteristics of an ethnic group and their cultural perceptions of certain behaviors. (My sometimes controversial friend Russell Means jokingly states that he has a Ph.D in White Studies from the State Penitentiary of South Dakota when asked about his academic background :).

Nevertheless, as a means of adding prestige to and limiting and controlling competition in the specialities of therapeutic Clinical Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy, and Clinical Social Work, the elitists of those fields demand state licensure in them, and needless, rigorous academic requirements to qualify for licensure.

The protectionist psychiatric mafia even goes a step further by continual lobbying of most state, provincial, or federal legislatures to maintain the prohibition against other categories of psychotherapists from having the legal privilege of prescribing mood stabilizers and psychotropic medications to their patients.

Of course all of these professional restrictions and requirements are under the guise of "consumer protection" when in reality it is nothing more than "professional protectionism" from too much competition.

In California, the State Board of Behavioral Science Examiners will suspend the license of any state-licensed MFT (Marriage and Family Therapist) or LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) that publicly advertises, states, or even implies that he or she is a "psychologist", and will see that unlicensed persons that practice any type of psychotherapy for remuneration are prosecuted, except for "clinical hypnotherapists", who do not have to be licensed by the state as long as they do not treat DSM-IV-R defined "personality or mental disorders".

The California lobby of clinical psychologists on one hand moan because the psychiatric lobby prevents them from being able to prescribe psych meds, while on the other hand their lobby is zealously protectionist about MFTs and LCSWs from applying the term "psychologist" to themselves even though they have to have a minimum of a masters' degree in psychology or clinical social work to qualify for those state licenses academically.

Most first world psychotherapists in private practice charge outrageous hourly fees, even just for talk therapy.

As libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz originally pointed out in his well-known book The Myth of Mental Illness and in related subsequent works of his that have been published, most western definitions and descriptions of the various categories of personality and mental disorders are essentially determined or amended by the votation of an elite collective of Euro-centric psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. For example, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder by the American and European psychiatric and psychological associations for many decades until enough lesbian and gay shrinks and their straight, progressive counterparts became voting members of those associations and got homosexuality removed from the list of mental disorders (and rightfully so I might add).

I once had the honor of meeting Dr. Szasz some years ago, and consider myself a small "S" Szaszian, in that I share many of his views, but am not anywhere near as anti-psychiatric medication as he is, being that the vast majority of people who are prescribed synthetic mood stabilizers and psychotropics gain a certain amount of benefit from them as opposed to adverse side effects.

And although at least one semester course in Cross-Cultural Psychology has been required in most western schools of clinical psychology and psychiatry out of political and social correctness for the past several decades, some behavioral traits and actions on the part of non-Euro-centric and indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere are nevertheless treated as personality or mental disorders in both clinical and legal settings.

For example, what is defined as autism in the West is not regarded as such among many traditional Hindu peoples of India, who instead view autistic-like traits as being a form of intoxication with the divine. Such people are called maasts.

Most Euro-centric westerners also assume that psychotic and schizophrenic episodes are purely hallucinogenic fantasies, whereas many indigenous peoples regard such episodes as uncontrolled perceptions or altered state of consciousness voyages into alternate states existence, but which can be controlled with the ingestion of certain medicinal plants.

Most types of western psychotherapy, particularly when it's outpatient, involves at least a certain amount of conversational counseling and talk therapy whether it be cognitive, hypnotic, or behavioural. Yet in the U.S., Canada, and most of Europe, there is no such thing as the right to free speech if you want to pay someone skilled in the art of psychotherapy to dialogue with about your emotional. mental, or relationship issues if he or she does not have a permission slip to do so from the special interest-pandering protectionist nanny state.

Many people that have a natural talent in a visual art elect to go to art school to sharpen their skills. Most people who go to art school to learn to be artists normally don't succeed in becoming good artists because they lack the natural aptitude.

Likewise, providing competent psychotherapy is not a skill one acquires by going to graduate or medical school. Psychotherapy is an art form that one must already have a natural aptitude for before entering a graduate school of clinical psychology or specializing in psychiatry after medical school. Like with art school, such formal education is for sharpening the natural skills one already has for practicing psychotherapy, especially when it comes to talk therapy. I have known board certified psychiatrists and state licensed Ph.Ds in clinical psychology who I wouldn't refer anyone to for therapy even if they didn't charge for it.

Of course the rigorous academic requirement and state licensure advocates would reply that is the reason why all shrinks should meet those requirements for the "privilege" to practice for remuneration; i.e., to deter incompetent and unethical shrinks from victimizing their patients.

For example, if a therapist ends up having sex in his or her office with a consenting adult patient, and the patient later claims to have been emotionally traumatized from the event even though it was consensual, and files a complaint with the state bureaucracy that investigates such complaints, most license fetish authoritarians would say that the shrink should have his or her license suspended or revoked by the state if proved guilty as charged.

Now I'm not implying that shrinks having sex with their patients should be condoned ethically, but there are other ways consumers, i.e. patients, and even HMOs and health insurers that provide coverage for mental health services can get an idea as to whether a potential therapist has good reputation or not if not referred to one by reliable word-of-mouth. There are already local, state, and national private organizations of mental health professionals that shrinks can join if they meet those organizations' minimum requirements. All the consumer/patient, HMO or health insurance company needs to do before hand is research which organizations have been around the longest and have the best reputations, and see if the potential therapist candidate is a member. Plus out of all the health-related professions, clinical psychologists, MFTs, and LCSWs are charged the lowest mal practice insurance rates by insurers that provide that category of insurance because very few of them get sued for mal practice.

Also, a lot of therapists in private practice don't charge for their first session. In most cases, a patient can get a good enough indication as to whether he or she will be comfortable or not with that therapist for further sessions, and whether or not the shrink or relationship therapist seems competent in the art of psychotherapy or marriage and family therapy.

There is less of a pragmatic argument for requiring the licensure of those that exercise the subjective profession and art of psychotherapy than there is for licensing dogs. Doing so just smacks of cultural bias, pretentious elitism, and competitive protectionism.

U.S. federally-recognized Indian tribes can't hire federally-funded shrinks as part of their reservation health services team unless they're licensed by a U.S. state, which puts limitiations on competent Indigenous American centric mental health professions who have no desire to exercise their profession off-reservation, and thus have no need to pursue all the extra bullshit required for obtaining state licensure.

Since when did the tribal medicine man or woman have to have permission from the chief to provide counsel and healing?



Saturday, August 09, 2008

The 2008 U.S. presidential race




















Although U.S. presidential candidate preferences vary even among Indigenous American traditionalists, Indioheathen concures with
this blogger.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Those strange things in the sky and on the ground






Mayan hieroglyphic of a star person.












This recent alien peeping Tom story (which I suspect to be a publicity hoax) prompted me to finally blog about UFOs and other media-popular mystery phenomena, which indigenous elders are often questioned about knowledge and opinion-wise.

Many indigenous cultures do include direct knowledge about and encounters with such phenomena, which is why I often like to listen to programs like Coast to Coast to compare what is mysterious and puzzling to non-indigenous westerners to that which is taken for granted by Indigenous American traditionalists.

Star people, fur children, and UFOs

The ancient Hindu Sanskrit texts tell tales of flying machines called vimanas and beings that fly them. Some regard them as purely myth while others regard them as part of the technology of an ancient world era that eventually disappeared.

Some Indigenous American cultures believe that their ancient ancestors came from the stars to colonize on Grandmother Earth and traveled here in what they describe as the "bellies of large shiny birds".

Some other Indigenous American cultures believe that human beings are the progeny of one race of star people that traveled to Grandmother Earth in what they describe as "the wombs of great birds", who eventually implanted their seed in the eight races of fur children that Grandmother Earth originally gave birth to out of the soil mixed with her water-filled womb. The star people are said to have sowed their seed through the winds and waters of Grandmother Earth that the fur children breathed and drank. However, the star people eventually departed from Grandmother Earth because the elements of her breath made them sick.

The progeny of the star people and the fur children resembled more the star people in form, but maintained some of the features of the seven distinct races of the original fur children. One race of fur children had been very tall and another very short. They were the fewest among the original races of fur children and their progeny eventually merged with the other six races that were the progeny of the star people and Grandmother Earths fur children.

Like with the other creatures that were born out of the womb of Grandmother Earth, there were few elements of her breath that made her original fur children sick. However, as a result of being half star people by blood, the progeny of the star people and the fur children, which are what we know as human beings today, are more susceptible to the maladies that the star ancestors were afflicted with while they lived on Grandmother Earth. That is why human beings as we know ourselves today are prone to suffer more illnesses, birth defects, and other physical and mental maladies than any other creature native to this earth, and why many women are prone to have more pain and complications with child-bearing than any other of Grandmother Earth´s creatures.

On the other hand and as already indicated, the fur children, particularly the males, had a much more predatory and aggressive nature than the star people, which is a trait their progeny mankind inherited.

Prior to the "marriage" between the star people and the fur children, the various races of fur children lived in their own regions of the world, but under some circumstances such as migration, would come into contact with one another. However, unlike the human race today, their bodies were able to resist most of the regional diseases of the other when they came into contact.

It is said that the star people sowed their seed in the wombs of the physically stronger fur children because the fur children thought and acted more like wild animals that could not be tamed to perform labor for the star people, such as the mining of minerals that they needed. However, the human progeny of the two races of beings were able to both think and act accordingly.

When the star people realized that they could not permanently survive in Grandmother Earth´s environment, they passed on their wisdom, ways and tools to their "human" children and left them to develop further on their own. And by that time, hardly any fur children continued to exist.





Mayan flying vehicle.





These oral traditions also teach that the the star people came from the other wing of the great infinite eagle and colonized other worlds as well, including one close to Grandmother Earth, but which had no fur or other people on it. The star people eventually had to abandon that world due to its natural life sustaining elements dying a slow death, but that they left some of their great monuments behind as they did on Grandmother Earth. The monuments were said to have been charged with great powers and served multiples purposes.

Egyptian

Aztec

Mayan

Chinese

Martian

Illustrated Mesoamerican


The ancestors have also taught that Grandmother Earth has gone through many great changes and cataclysms since the time she came into being, and that most of the tools that the star people left behind for their human progeny vanished as a result of one such great cataclysm. Those humans that survived the great cataclysm viewed the event and their survival as a sign that they were to begin a new simpler life more in line and harmony with the simpler creatures of the earth, which is why most formed and elected to exist in tribal-like societies instead of great civilizations as their ancestors had previously. However, certain members of those societies were charged with keeping the sacred wisdom and knowledge of the history of the ancestors and passing it on from generation to generation.

It is said that the star people continue to observe life on Grandmother Earth from a distance, and that beings from other worlds observe and visit Grandmother Earth as well to observe her life forms and to partake of some of her elements. These beings are described as "ant people" and "snake people".

The indigenous ancestors named them that because the ant people are said to have heads and facial features that resemble those of the ant, and the snake people are said to have skin that resembles that of the snake.









The ant people and the snake people also travel across about the great infinite eagle and its worlds in the wombs of birds that appear as shining eggs, and others that resemble the form of a black wing.

It is said that the ant people and the snake people sometimes communicate and interact with those earth people that hold the knowledge of the star people and the ancient ways, but that the character and personality of the ant people and the snake people is more different from the character and personality earth people than the difference in character and perception is between a great, educated, civilization aristocrat and a simple man without formal education who lives an indigenous lifestyle.

It is said that these beings are able to fly and travel in their "birds" about Grandmother Earth and beyond without being noticed except in rare cases when they will to be noticed, or when something goes awry temporarily with their technology. Although they are very different, their wisdom and technology is beyond the imagination of ordinary men, and their nature is peaceful and non-intervening in relation to the evolution of humanity.

It is said that there is another race of star people who are monolithic in size and that they cannot walk upon worlds the size of Grandmother Earth without causing damage.

Indioheathen says that if such beliefs and stories are more than just legend, they perhaps explain some of the mysteries that some people see about the skies, and explain some of the ancient structures and other phenomena deemed mysterious by western and civilized minds.

Ufologists and other non-indigenous people proport all kinds of assertions and theories about what those strange things reported in the skies are and where they come from. Although you can find plenty of skeptical debunkers of him on Google searches, one of the most fascinating UFO-related accounts comes from that of Bob Lazar who claims to have been a engineer at Area 51.

Any government that has concrete evidence and possession of anything of an intelligent extraterrestrial nature on and about this earth is not going to reveal it to the public because it wants to keep the technology to itself for various reasons, and is concerned about emotional panic over it on the part of various segments of the world population. However and needless to say, even the house of government and its intelligence agencies are not immune to leaks.

Alien contact covered up, says Apollo veteran Edgar Mitchell



Sverdlosk, Russia. March 1969:



Mysterious Earth creatures

The investigation of legendary critters is called cryptozoology. The most popular ones that usually come to mind first and foremost these days are Sasquatch and his Himalayan cousin the Yeti, and Scotland´s Loch Ness Monster.

"Sasquatch" is the Salishan word for "big foot". Non-indigenous people have claimed sightings of this primate/Neanderthal-like creature all around the western half of Canada and the United States. Some indigenous people I know in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia say that have seen a Sasquatch at least once in their lifetime and those that have not take their existence for granted anyway because their ancestors have handed down knowledge about this species of fur people for thousands of years.

Sasquatch are said not too be very numerous; generally live in small clans in remote forests far away from people and civilizations, and are generally docile unless provoked.

Indigenous traditionalists of the Pacific northwest are very protective of Sasquatch in the way that they don't like to talk about them with non-indigenous people much and don´t want anyone trying to "discover" or bother them.

Sasquatch are also said not to be as smart as humans but wiser than a wolf, bear, or whale. They communicate with one another with various vocal sounds but don't speak a human-like language. The don't smell very good except after bathing in a lake or pond.





The indigenous traditionalists of the Pacific northwest also believe in the existence of the thunderbird. Like Sasquatch, they are not numerous and live about in very remote areas, but on rare occasions are still sighted by Indians and anyone else who happens to be in the right place at the right time.

If the Loch Ness Monster exists, it is most likely some sort of rare sturgeon or a descendant of some prehistoric aquatic creature believed to have become extinct around the time of the great cataclysm involving the dinosaurs.

Then there are some of the other legendary creatures such as chupacabras and mothman, which could be real, imagined, or just cases of mistaken identity species-wise.

Crop Circles

There are a lot of people out there that make their living off of selling the paranormal and want you to believe that crop circles are signs, symbols and coded messages from extraterrestrials, apparently including the ones that look like Mickey Mouse. I admit that the real elaborate ones are pretty convincing, but they are nevertheless created by human crop circle artists who either own the land they show up on, or who pay the owners of those fields a fee to create their works of art on and to keep their mouths shut about it. Most of them "crop up" in Great Britain because that´s where the greatest concentration of crop circle artists are based.




Thursday, May 01, 2008

Botanical genocide













Until I came across this news item the other day, I had not been aware that a number of U.S. states have already outlawed the possession salvia, which is more commonly known in English as sage.

There are a number of varieties of the plant. This medicinal and incense herb grows wild in abundance in rural areas throughout the southwestern United States and in Mexico. Here in Kumeyaay territory, there are two varieties that grow in the wild that can be used as a medicinal tea for gastrointestinal conditions. Both varieties also make a nice ceremonial incense when dried out first, especially the salvia indio, which has a nice, sweet fragrance to it.

Salvia doesn't have a particularly pleasant taste when smoked or chewed and doesn't have any particular medicinal benefit when smoked, although it can nevertheless alter mood and state of consciousness when the leaves are smoked in a pipe or rolled as a cigarette, or when the leaves are chewed.

I have previously blogged about cannabis, peyote, and other mood and mind-altering psychotropic plants on this blog, so I won´t go into detail about them from an Indigenous American traditionalist perspective here again, only to say that salvia is suffering the same fate as the other mood and mind-altering plants in relation to the asinine police statist War on Drugs.

Authoritarian social conservatives in America in particular have conflicting notions about what is natural and what is not and how to respond to what they perceive as being unnatural.

Calvinistic religious sects and Mormons in particular believe that the consumption of mood-altering substances are sinful, and like good theocrats along with paternalistic nanny statists, they believe that whatever makes people feel better, especially mood-wise, ought to be illegal unless it´s a synthetic prescription medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Non-Indians at some point in time discovered that they could get high off of smoking salvia, and as a result of that and documentation of it posted on YouTube, paternalistic, prohibitionist scumbag Republican legislators in particular want to ban its possession everywhere.

If the federal government ever decided to try and ban salvia, they will have to exempt Indian reservations from it because if they don't, most reservations in the southwest would be burnt to the ground as the only means of eradicating all of the salvia that grows wild on them.

Preferably, I would rather see the God of Lightening strike down dead the botanical Nazis that have or are attempting to basically outlaw one of Grandmother Earth´s ancient natural remedies just because of what boils down to some young white people enjoying getting high off of this harmless plant.

I have added to the list of links in the right hand column the link to Stop the Drug War.org, which goes into much more detail about the insane war on salvia. The direct link to one article on this subject can be accessed here. Salvia.net

2009 update: The Salvia Ban Wagon


Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The Psychology of Racism


Most social scientists treat racialist attitudes and behaviors as being the result of
social influences and conditioning only; that is, they believe it to be a learned condition.

The field of Indigenous American medical psychology tends to agree with that in relation to collective racism on the part of nation states that have exercised it institutionally in the past and even to a certain extent still today, such as only allowing indigenous communities, reserves, and reservations a certain amount of autonomy from the government of the dominant immigrant settler nation as opposed to the option of full sovereignty.

Racism on the part of non-indigenous industrialized governments basically holds the attitude that the more traditionally indigenous a peoples are in their attitudes and lifestyles, the more inferior they are socially, culturally, and even in intelligence, which calls for a certain amount of institutional subjugation and oversight.

Like with many individuals who held or once held racialist beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, collective institutional racialist attitudes and policies can eventually be overcome in time with education apart from legislation, etc. However, like with many behavioral and mental disorders, racialist attitudes and behaviors in some individuals are the result of a pathological brain disorder.

Obsessive and chronic racialist ideations, attitudes, and behaviors on the part of many individuals are the result of a neuro-pathological disorder centered around that part of the brain that regulates fear and anger, and also the prefrontal cortex, which regulates one's sense of right and wrong, morality, and exercising self-control over not violating other persons or their property for the purpose of personal gain or benefit, or just emotional satisfaction. People who intentionally violate the life and property rights of others for such personal gain are called sociopaths. And again as just indicated, various sociopathic attitudes and acts are the result of an abnormal or dysfunctional prefrontal cortex, which I discuss in greater detail in my commentary entitled Sociopathy.

Exercised racism in particular is a form of irrational cowardice or phobia, and cowards and phobics generally retreat from or lash out with rage against what they fear and veil themselves with a superiority complex. As phobic cowards, they don't normally act alone in carrying out the latter, forming some sort of small or large, temporary or permanent mob rule to meet their ends. Institutionalized racism utilizes the creation of laws and government coercion to enforce itself.

As with people who suffer from various types of irrational psychological fetishes, psycho-pathological racialists form alliances with one another for camaraderie, sharing and support. One of the largest racialist-obsessive collectives in the world can be encountered online at Stormfront.org. Having monitored this site for a number of years, I have come to the conclusion that racialist ideations and sentiments expressed by the vast majority of Stormfront members are the result of psychopathology in the prefrontal cortex which causes neurotransmitters to signal those portions of the brain that regulate fear and anger. Whenever the basic senses are alerted by whatever means of a differing race, the reaction biologically in the brain is similar of that to a food or beverage item that is not agreeable with an individual's taste buds.

Like with bad-tasting food or drink, some pathological racialists are not as repulsed by certain races as others. For example, Adolf Hitler and those who subscribed to his Nazi ideology considered most "non-Aryan" gentile peoples of European origin to be somewhat inferior genetically and in intelligence to Germanic and Scandinavian peoples, especially Slavs, but not as inferior as Jews and people of most other races.

Exceptions to the rule were Hitler-designated "honorary Aryans" that consisted of the Romans (Italians), the Greeks, the Spaniards, and the Japanese due to their ancestors great classical civilizations and imperial conquests. Other exceptions to the rule were individuals of other nationalities who were Nazi ideology sympathizers and Axis Power collaborators. (Most Greeks were not Nazi sympathizers, which is why Greece was not part of the Axis Powers and Mussolini invaded that country).

Can psycho-pathological racism rooted in prefrontal cortex dysfunction be "cured"? Putting aside the fact that most pathological racialists don't believe there is anything wrong with their racialist views and attitudes and thus nothing in their brain that needs fixing, it all depends on each individuals unique extent of "damage" so-to-speak and biological response to various types of conventional and experimental treatment. And although not yet conclusive, some medical researchers suspect that many people have a genetic, hereditary disposition for sociopathy by way of the makeup of the prefrontal cortex.

The bottom line is that there is unfortunately no magical pill one could spike a racialist's drink with to cure his or her obsessive and compulsive psychological fear and anger-based dislike of other races excused by delusional ideations of superiority.