Yule Love Saturnalia

Welcome to the Golden Age, or at least the celebration of it, called Saturnalia.  According to Roman myth, and the much older traditions on which it was based, Saturn ruled over a period when humans lived in eternal bliss, food literally dripped off the trees and things were generally pretty darned good.

From the viewpoint of the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun reaches its lowest point in the southern sky and on 21 December.  At this point, winter begins and the Sun appears to "die" for three days, as it ceases to move in any direction north or south relative to the horizon.

On 25 December, the Sun is "reborn," as it begins its months-long trip northward again, culminating in the Summer Solstice on 21 July.  As the Sun "dies," the original King of the Gods - Saturn - once again takes control of the Heavens and for a brief time, the Golden Age returns.

Saturnalia was marked by the suspension of social norms.  Wild parties ensued, with people exchanging gifts, slaves being treated like house guests, and lavish feasts that sought to recreate the Golden Age of plenty.  People disguised as Cronus/Saturn, with great white beards, would tote sacks of gifts around, tossing goodies to random children as a good luck token, since any one of the children could be the young New Year in disguise.  Special lamps were lit all night to provide the light that the dying Sun could not.

As the Roman empires spread into northern Europe, aspects of the Germanic winter festival, called Yuletide, were added to Saturnalia.  Evergreen trees symbolizing Eternal Life were cut down and set up in public areas, decorated with candles and glittery glass objects to catch and reflect the light.  Groups of people would wander around singing traditional Yule songs.  Special Yule logs coated with cobalt, copper and other minerals were tossed on bonfires to add multi-colored flames to the festivities.  Feasts eventually centered around roasted boar, a favorite of the Germanic people.

The festivities ended on 25 December, with the birth of the Sun.  The 12 days of feasting and partying gave way to the somber reality of winter, as they retreated indoors for the next three months, until the resurrection of life in the spring.

Saturnalia would then give way to the Feast of Janus, the two-faced god of thresholds, who stood on the dividing line between inner and outer, past and future.  Old man Cronus would surrender to the infant Sun, now slowly rising again in the sky.  Darkness and death would eventually become light and life once again.

The festival was so wildly popular that the emperor Constantine could not stop it in favor of his new christian religion.  Instead, the birth of the Sun became the birth of the Son.  The plethora of Roman and Germanic gods were replaced with a single deity and a Christian veneer was cast over the proceedings.

Vestiges remained and proved hard to squelch.  Old man Cronus became Santa Claus, Yule songs were replaced with Christmas carols and the evergreen trees - symbols of Eternal Life - took on more symbolic roles.  The festival proved so popular and enduring that two thousand years later it has become a global event marked with gift-giving and sparkly decorations, and even here in the tropics and in the Southern Hemisphere, the imagery of snow cannot be extricated from the celebration.

The next time someone tells you that Christmas is a sober holiday celebrating the birth of the Son, you can say with certainty that it is actually synonymous with wild parties and extravagant feasts, and that the New Year celebration is the one that is supposed to be a sullen and somber reflection on the passing of time, things lost and things to come.

In the meantime, I'll have another mug of eggnog, hold the egg, and would you mind carving off another chunk of roast boar for me?

The Divine Comedy

It has never ceased to amaze me that those who decry the coming of Big Brother and the All-Seeing State do so on the basis that it is anti-religion.  Yet, religion is the embodiment of Big Brother.  The only difference is that God is a metaphysical being performing His violations of your basic rights through Nature, while Big Brother is simply a human institution doing the same thing via technology.

What, for crying out loud, is the difference?!

As George Carlin so wonderfully put it, religion posits a Man, living in the Sky, who watches everything you do, everything you think and has a list of ten things you must never do.  As far as I can tell, the modern western state watches everything you do, everything you say and think using satellites in the sky, and has a list of 19,000 things you must never do.  Frankly, the former is more attractive, as far as authoritarianism goes.

Science is the priesthood of the modern Church.  There can be no Truth unless a "scientist" blesses it.  The Big Bang and Evolution are doctrine that very few question, nay are allowed to question, though at their base, they are nothing but theories built on 17th and 18th century metaphysics and alchemy without a whit of proof or observation.  No one, despite all you've been inculcated with, has ever witnessed the Big Bang, nor has anyone ever seen one species evolve into another.  Oh sure, there is the 3 micron background radiation and the observations of intra-species adaptation, but honestly, these are hardly proofs of bigger Truths.  They are interpretations and over-wrought expansions on metaphysical concepts without solid and real examples.

A great example of the modern state taken to its natural extreme is North Korea.  Though many Westerners will point to this hapless nation as the quintessential example of the State run amok, it is, in fact, the natural outcome of what most governments want to achieve.  It is also the natural outcome of religion, though the two entities are diametrically opposed to each other.

God and the State are interchangeable.  Both have as their raison d'etre the total subjugation of humanity. The former does it in the name of a fanciful Creator, the latter wishes to become the Creator.  That is the sum total of their differences.  In Western culture, the royalty claimed Divine Authority, stating that the sovereign derived his power from the Almighty.  The modern State wishes to cut out the middle man and establish itself as the Divine Authority.  We see this trend begin in ancient Rome with the deification of Julius Caesar.  The king became god, and thus the State he established was divinely inspired and ordained.

The concept of Divine State continued under the Roman Church, with Jesus claiming divine Nature, and by extension, the popes were all-encompassing power to rule the Earth in God's name.  Nowhere is this better demonstrated than with Boniface VIII's Unam Sanctam, declaring the Roman Church's authority over all the Earth and all the creatures in it.  In fact, this claim has never been challenged and is still positive law in the West today.  We need look no further than the fact that modern administrative law is based on Roman Canonical law, and the Canon principles still reign.

In fact, it is the Church's doctrine of Collective Guilt in perpetuity for Adam's Sin that is the basis for the concept of a Corporation as a Person in Western law.  You can follow the concept through Medieval theology and into modern court rulings on the concept.  It is the very reason why a CEO cannot be jailed for the actions of a corporation (corporate veil), and so the entity (corporation) must be punished, rather than the individuals who made the decisions.

It is a short step from that concept to the corporate State assuming a form of divinity, because it is now a "person," sharing equally in the Divine Nature of the individual Human Being, but since the corporate State is a collection of individuals, it is therefore more powerful than any individual.  And since the corporate State is now a "person," it can answer only to God for its crimes.

POOF!  The Divine State.  Replace the black frocks and celluloid collars of the priesthood with white lab coats, and viola!, the new priesthood.  Question Global Warming or the Big Bang, and you will receive the same treatment as Bruno or Galileo - burned at the stake or imprisoned for life - even if you have empirical evidence, or simply point out the New Priesthood's lack thereof.

Though the wolf has changed clothes, the result is the same - an authority claiming Divine Status watching every single move and thought you make.  Further, it claims Divine Right over all the Earth, regardless of who or what it must destroy in the process.  And since the Divine Authority is claimed on behalf of an invisible and mute God, the only way to prove the authority is to fulfill the "prophesies" of ultimate destruction and reveal the Truth in the Final Judgement.

Thus, Western civilization has at its core the seeds of its own destruction.  While attempting to conquer the Earth under its Divine Authority, it must also destroy everything to prove it is right to do so.

Roman authoritarianism was established by the divinity of Julius Caesar, who was replaced with Jesus Christ (JC2), which solidified the State's Divine Right, which became Unam Sanctum, which became Manifest Destiny.  Original Sin established collective guilt, which led to Corporate Personhood, which led to Fascism (from many, one).  Apocalyptic prophesies became justification for any number of horrific crimes in the name of "greater good," whose righteousness could only be proved by the ultimate destruction of everything in order to bring on the Final Judgement.  In the process, we replaced Church Dogma with Scientific Dogma, neither of which is questionable, regardless of the utter lack of evidence in either case.

There is nothing new under the Sun.  Millennia-old edicts and choices still infuse and surround the current events in your daily news feed.  We see its proof in the Apotheosis of George Washington
(see illustration at top) and the architecture of Washington, DC (New Rome), and the Authoritarian subjugation of all humanity under one rule (NWO).  God is Big Brother, and vice versa.  There is no conceptual difference in either form or function.

Ultimately, in order to change the world, we must first change nearly all of our a priori assumptions.  We must question the origin and authority of every single public institution and seek completely new alternatives.

Any bets on how likely that will be?