Good Friday

I was struck by the following, from Rebirth of Images, by Farrer:

"On the sixth day of the week, and the sixth hour, says St. John (Jn. 19: 13-22; cf. Rev. 13: 16-14:1), the kingdoms of Christ and Antichrist looked one another in the face in Pilate's court, and the adherents of the False Prophet (Caiaphas) firmly wrote on their foreheads the mark of the Beast, when they said, 'We have no King but Caesar.' Presently they saw the Lamb uplifted with his true Name over his head, 'King of the Jews': and for all they could do, they could not get it erased: 'What I have written,' said Pilate, 'I have written.' Christ's Friday victory is the supreme manifestation also of Antichrist."

Do note that Antichrist is captain of the losing team.

Have a blessed Good Friday!

LSP

Out and About

Drove out to one of the missions to help with a pre-Holy Week clean-up of building and grounds and found myself taking weeds out of flower beds with the Junior Warden; we talked about family, horses, and church. Pleasant; she was a barrel rider and runs riding clinics up and down the land. One day I'll have to pit myself against the barrels in her arena.

Then it was back to the parsonage via the Confederacy flag shop, the falsely named Good Stuff Store - there wasn't any - and the Court House.

The Court House is grand, a relic of the days when cotton was king and downtown LSPland waxed strong and prosperous. It burned not long ago and was well restored - thanks to Willy Nelson, among others. Who knows, perhaps the Town Square will revive itself, along with its temple to The Law; a good butcher, pub and sensibly priced gun shop would help things tremendously.

But in the meanwhile, roosters are kicking up a ruckus in the neighbour's back yard - dogs are mercifully silent.

Have a blessed Palm Sunday and Holy Week,

LSP

When there's no more room in Hell...

...the Dead shall walk the Earth.

Taught the usual course on the Book of Revelation tonight, going over the structure of chapter 6 and St. John's use of the four angelic "beasts around the throne" to launch the sevenfold series of visions brought on by the unsealing of the scroll.

According to Farrer, the beasts have astrological significance - Lion, Bull, Man, Eagle, or, Leo, Taurus, the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and the constellation of the Eagle, which is the heliacal equivalent of Scorpio. These serve as 'leads' for the four horsemen of the apocalypse - Leo/Lion for the conquering rider on the white horse, standing for Christ, the victorious Lion of Judah. The Bull/Taurus follows next, as the beast of slaughter, with the rider of the red horse bearing a sword. Then the Eagle, the rider of the black horse carrying scales, signifying famine, and lastly the Man/Water Bearer rides on as pestilence - a summation of the series.

But why the inversion of Eagle for Man? Because St. John is following Ezekiel's list of plagues - sword, famine and pestilence (Ez. 6:11) - and the constellation of the scales, the sign of scarcity, is in the very claws of the Eagle's zodiacal equivalent, Scorpio. Man, standing for winter and the death of the year, serves duty as the final rider, bringing pestilence ('the Death'). And the horsemen? St. John has gone back to the Prophet Zechariah (Chs 1, 6), where four angelic riders on white, red, black and dappled horses scout the earth.

The following three visions take up the imagery of the first three, ending with a new series of angelic trumpet blasts which unfold sevenfold pestilence upon the earth. And so the series of apocalyptic visions rise in intensity towards the enthronement of Antichrist and the False Prophet.

At which point I asked the people if they suspected that the spirit of Antichrist stalked the land - they did, very much so, and then the heavens opened with a mighty crash of thunder and pounding rain. Dramatic, I tell you.

But speaking of horsemen, a helpful parishioner has found an eight year old thoroughbred, which I could have for the cost of feed. An ex-racer, evidently. Tempting.

And Healthcare? I'm not sure I trust the Executive Order - but what do I know?

Stay on the horse,

LSP

Pelosians!

The Most Powerful Space Alien Woman in the World!

You'll have to forgive the lack of posting, but things have been hectic. In the midst of it all I noticed that powerful space creatures are waxing strong in Washington D.C. Of course everyone knows that they took over The Episcopal Church (TEC) long ago.

Speaking of which, here's a picture of Rev. Carter Hayward.

Here's what she thinks about 'reproductive health':

"Abortion would be a sacrament if women were in charge. Abortion should be a sacrament even today. I suspect that for many women today, and for their spouses, lovers, families and communities, abortion is celebrated as such, an occasion of deep and serious and sacred meaning."

If any of you are interested in 'abortion as sacrament', check out the French witch, Ginette Paris, who wrote a book on it. She thinks in terms of blood sacrifice to Artemis. Nice.

God bless,

LSP

Clean the Gun, Clear the Head

One of the reasons Texas is great is the fact that you get to see dogs in the back of pick-ups as you go off for a shoot. I try to get out a couple of times a week to blast away, or plink about with a .22, which is an old bolt action J.C. Higgins with iron sights. Nothing fancy, but accurate - I like the deliberation of working the bolt and focusing on the front bead sight, also the length of the thing works well for me. So that rifle gets plenty of use, but just because it's a lowly .22 doesn't mean it somehow cleans itself.

Speaking of which, I gave it a well needed take-down this evening by way of displacement activity and as usual found cleaning the weaponry clears the head. There's doubtless a moral in that, but I'll spare you the sermon. Here's a picture of some saddles instead.

Stay on the horse, shoot straight and have a blessed Sunday.

Gun rights,

LSP

Just a lot of nice people

You'll have to forgive the lack of gun and horse posts but I've been busy with our holy mother, the Church, which oddly enough led me to this interesting Bakunin quote:

“The Evil One is the satanic revolt against divine authority, revolt in which we see the fecund germ of all human emancipations, the revolution. Socialists recognize each other by the words, “In the name of the one to whom a great wrong has been done.” Satan (is) the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds (he) emancipates (and) stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty…in urging (man) to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. In this revolution we will have to awaken the Devil in the people, to stir up the basest passions. Our mission is to destroy, not to edify. The passion of destruction is a creative passion.”

Of course Bakunin was all about destroying bourgeois oppression; part of that was the family. Margaret Sanger, eugenicist founder of Planned Parenthood, had this to say:

"The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order," and that, "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."

Sanger, one of 'sex magician' Havelock Ellis' lovers, was friendly with H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley, among others. Her organisation had no connection whatsoever with Alfred Kinsey, who had nothing to do in any way with "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" Aleistair Crowley. AC fancied himself the 'Beast' as foretold by St. John, and so, perhaps, we return full circle to Bakunin.

Charmers.

God bless,

LSP

Motorway City

Years ago I left the booming city of London for, er, Detroit, and its oddly Logan's Run style 'Ren Cen'. Why? Good question and therein lies a tale. Regardless, a friend from England came for a visit and we wandered around town, looking at weeds growing out of the roads. "This isn't so bad'" said Horsemouth, "it's like Dalston." I thought that over for a moment, scanning the arcs for opposition, "Sure, Horsemouth, but this is the center of the city."

"Ah." replied my English friend.

Came as a bit of a culture shock, Detroit, God bless it, a place where nature's reclaiming its own. Speaking of which, here's a picture of the Motor City's former Mayor, 'Kwame', being released from gaol some time last year. He's in Texas now, I think.

Top body guard result.

Lord have mercy.

LSP

Solzhenitsyn to Harvard

I meant to post something on the structure of the book of Revelation but got waylaid by Solzhenitsyn's address to Harvard in the late '70s. Here's a bit of it:

"I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward."

I agree with the above, you may not, but I'd say it's interesting regardless. You can read the whole thing here.

God bless,

LSP

Barnyard Face-Off

Lent seems to be proceeding apace and with it an increase in neighbouring poultry, which kick up a row at most hours of the day and night. Sometimes they fire up the local dogs, who answer their strangled crows with fierce barking, but there seems to be less of that lately, thank God.

I tell you, it's not easy to concentrate on the sacred mysteries of the Mass when there's some kind of barnyard face-off between bird and pitbull.

Still, there's plenty of peace of mind to be gained from riding and shooting; who knows, maybe one day I'll be good at both - at once.

I'd say that was a fine ambition, unlike the strange new "hate database" for children in the U.K., where there's evidently a rash of overweight preteens calling each other "gay boy".

Just say no to dhimmitude.

LSP

Horsing About

Got to the barn this morning to find horses getting a good brush down, which they needed,

then rode about for bit in the fresh air - windy, but sunny with it. Practiced riding without stirrups, good for balance and seat, evidently, and generally carried on in the equine way. Fun.

Barndom over, I took a picture of bucolic utopia and stopped at the oddly named "Karen's Authentic Mexican Food".

Well, I don't know if it is or not, but I like their Bean & Brisket tacos, which always seem to go down well after a bout with the quadrupeds.

So that was the morning - "ride more" objective lived up to - shooting? Not today, sadly, but tomorrow will be a different story, probably involving pistols and AR, along with scouting out set-ups for a night time coyote call.

More on the Book of Revelation later.

God bless,

LSP

Eschaton

Along with the ride and shoot imperative goes a bit of reflection on the Revelation to St. John the Divine. Why? Because apocalypse seemed suitably Lenten and I foolishly told one of the Missions that I'd teach a course on it - something I've never done before. Farrer gives a powerful account; here's an excerpt, on bestial numerics:

"The number of the Beast reveals him as both the instrument of judgement on the wicked and the object of judgement himself. But that is not all. St. John takes up two mathematical properties of the 666. First, 666 is what we should call the recurrent decimal for 2/3. St. John's age did not talk about recurrent decimals, but of course St. John could recognize 666 as two-thirds of that standard quantity, the thousand. Why is Antichrist two-thirds? because the angels of the trumpets (showing the enthronement of pagan power) have destroyed one-third of everything before he begins to reign, and the angels of the vials return with total destruction as he comes to his end. In the interval he reigns over a kingdom of two-thirds."

Farrer goes on to describe 666 as the triangulation of 6 x 6:

"666, therefore, is a 12 fold triangle with a periphery of 30 x 3 1/2. St. John's calculation of the period of the Beast's reign, in days, is 12 (months) x 30 (days) x 3 1/2 (years). The coincidence between this reckoning and the factors of the 666 triangle is no mere accident... the purpose of the artificial reckoning is to exhibit the Beast's fatally limited reign as a function of his number."

There's a lot of mathematics in the Revelation, unfortunately for me, but whoever said life would be easy?

Speaking of maths, my Revelation class added up the number of horses that were collectively owned by the people in the room and came up with 21 beasts. A decent little force multiplier if things get all eschaton and we have to leave the Union of the False Prophet.

God bless Texas.

LSP

Shoot More, Ride More

You'll have to forgive the recent lack of posting but I've been busy, not least with self-examination, which is a Lenten discipline leading to penitence, confession and amendment of life. With that in mind, several things have become very clear after Ash Wednesday, including:

Shoot more

Ride more

So I've been doing both and think it's time to up the ante on the former with a night-time coyote call - there's been plenty of paper punching lately but precious little hunting and it's time to put the AR to practical use. Viz. horses; it's all very well to spend a couple of hours a week on the quadruped, but how are you ever going to really advance on the basis of such minimal acquaintance? A bit like someone wondering why they don't get very far spiritually when all they do is spend an hour and a half in church on Sunday.

Speaking of church - today's Gospel was St. Luke's variant of Our Lord's temptation in the wilderness. Different than Mathew's because the mountain temptation is placed in the middle of the narrative.

With that in mind, it struck me last night that what Luke portrays is an inverse, or diabolic mirror image, of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai - successfully resisted by Christ, who refers "Old Scratch" to the "first and great commandment" (gotta love the old Prayer Book), by way of Deuteronomy.

If any theologians would like to comment, well, I'd welcome the thought.

Have a blessed Lent.

LSP