EXCERPT

ATOMIC CALIFORNIA

A strange desert road trip on the trail of the father of American rocketry.

OCT192015

Author:

Jay Owens

 PARSONS WAS EXPELLED FROM THE JPL FOR DANGEROUS WORKING PRACTICES AND HIS “MYTHIC LOVE CULT”

Jack Parsons was not just a rocket scientist. As a young man he’d read James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which described ritual magic as far removed from science: Both offered an opportunity to “touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast and intricate mechanism of the world.”

Frazer’s message sparked Parsons’ imagination. He and his wife Helen started exploring the burgeoning spiritual landscape of 1930s Los Angeles, a city then undergoing a boom in alternative religious beliefs. In 1939, he attended a gnostic mass at the Church of Thelema, a ceremonial magical group that started in Europe in the early 1900s. Thelema’s founder, Aleister Crowley—described in the media as “the wickedest man in the world”—defined “magick” (with a ‘k’ to distinguish it from stage magic) as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” and rituals saw participants summoning deities rooted in ancient Egyptian beliefs. Only three years after this experience, Parsons was leading the U.S. branch of the organization from a mansion on Orange Grove Avenue, living alongside future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

In his teens, Parsons and his friend Ed Forman built balsa-wood rockets, fueled first by firework powder and then stronger explosives, and headed out into the desert to blow them up. Reaching out to other rocketry enthusiasts at the very beginning of this nascent science, they managed to wheedle their way into Caltech to create the Rocket Research Group, where Parsons could start blowing things up for a living. His expertise lay not in the physics or the construction of rockets, but in the explosives themselves, blending and experimenting with chemicals to create explosions that could be directed and controlled, powering jet engines for lift-off.

Yet by the 1940s, Parsons was starting to become sidelined from the rocketry research he’d helped start; never a formally trained scientist, the abstractions of engineering modeling and calculation were not his strong suit. It got worse: In 1944 he was expelled from the JPL for haphazard and dangerous working practices, and the growing infamy of his involvement in what colleagues described as a “mythic love cult.” His relationship with his wife Helen had broken up, and his subsequent affair with her sister Betty ended too when she left him for L. Ron Hubbard.

Pyrotechnics in Nevada mining country. Photo by: Joel Childers

Left adrift, Parsons poured his energies into magical practice. In late 1945 he began a series of rituals to manifest an “elemental mate,” a magical feminine being to replace and supersede Betty. His biographer George Pendel describes the rituals as ornate: the room dark and the air thick with incense; Prokofiev’s 2nd violin concerto playing on the gramophone; and magical symbols arranged around the room in a pentagram. Parsons traced shapes in the air with a dagger and chanted invocations in a mixture of English and Enochian, a sixteenth century “language of the angels.” He documented every step with the same meticulous dedication he’d applied to rocketry experiments, though the effects didn’t seem much at first: knocking sounds, a wind storm, a table lamp mysteriously thrown across a room.

But then a more tangible result: A woman turned up at the door of Parson’s Pasadena mansion, a 23-year-old artist and illustrator named Marjorie “Candy” Cameron. He credited her materialization to his rituals, which only heightened his fervor. Parsons now believed he could incarnate a goddess on earth: Babalon, the Scarlet Woman, sacred whore and “true mistress of The Beast,” as described by Aleister Crowley in The Book of the Law, Thelema’s central sacred text.

On February 28, 1946, Parsons returned to the desert for the Babalon Working, a ritual he hoped would be his great achievement on earth.

Exploring mines in Nevada. Photo by: Jay Owens

The site of the Babalon Working ritual is disputed. Parsons’ biographers place it in the Mojave Desert, yet occultist forums, desirous of synchronicities, suggest it happened on the site of what is now Area 51. Four hundred miles of California and Nevada desert was littered with resonant sites, and we decided to trace a line between them, to circle round the context of the man, before coming back into Los Angeles to conclude our trip where the Parsons story ended, in Pasadena.

We began by journeying up to Nevada to blow things up in the desert ourselves. Brad had a friend, Joel, a mine explorer living just north of Reno. Joel had guns. And he knew a good place to go shoot them.

We headed southwest on Route 50—“the loneliest road in America”—into the night. It was three hours before we reached our destination in the Lodi Valley, bumping down a corrugated dirt road and searching by beams of torchlight for the track up to the mine Joel planned for us to camp. We set up in the pitch dark. We cleared the dry-as-tinder sagebrush from the ground, dragged rocks off the hillside to make a firepit, and built a blaze. Then, buzzed on adrenaline and 17-year-old Lagavulin whisky, lit only by firelight and head torch, Joel taught me how to shoot a 12 gauge tactical shotgun. The sound echoed off the hillside and into the black night.

READ ON

Jay Owens is a researcher and writer in London who once penned 20,000 words on how dust is weird. She now works as an Internet soothsayer for brands, forecasting how culture and community manifest and transform online

SUNDAY SERMON

Is the future of faith female?

OR WHY CATHOLICS AREN'T PROTESTANT/ORTHODOX***

OSV

Theresa Civantos Barber - published on 08/13/22

Women have been saints and leaders in the Church throughout the centuries, changing the world and the Church for the better.

Recently Rachel Harkins Ullman was asked an unusual question: Is the future of faith female?

Ullman is Executive Director of The GIVEN Institute, so she has a particular understanding of the role of women in today’s Church.

If you’re not familiar with The GIVEN Institute (GIVEN), it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to activating the gifts of young adult women for the Catholic Church and the world. 

There’s a powerful description of their mission on their website:

GIVEN inspires and equips the next generation of female leaders to “receive the gift that they are; realize the gifts they’ve been given; and respond with the gift that only they can give.”

So when she heard this question, it gave her pause. Just looking at the numbers and statistics, the answer seemed to be “No.” 

But that’s not the whole story. 

She tells all about it in her OSV Talk, How the Feminine Genius Heals a Hurting World. You can watch it here: 

On the face of it, the future of faith is becoming less and less female. Ullman said that one of the Church’s “greatest challenges” right now is the religious disaffiliation of women.

The Pew Research Center recently reported a 10-point increase in women who are religiously unaffiliated, Ullman said. 

“These numbers are striking, especially when we consider how women have been at the backbone of the life and mission of the Church.”

But Ullman believes that this is only part of the story. 

Women play a critical role in the future of the Church, especially when we understand what it means to be female, to have what the Church calls “the feminine genius.” She explains,

The feminine genius is characterized by four things: receptivity, sensitivity, generosity, and maternity. To me that sounds just like what the doctor ordered. If I could write a prescription to heal a hurting world, it would be those four things.

Ullman points out vivid examples of women who have been saints and leaders in the Church throughout the centuries, explaining how countless women have changed the world and the Church for the better.

She shared a quotation from writer Kate O’Beirne, revealing how nuns have taken a leadership role throughout world history:

Long before NOW held its first organizational meeting, there were female role models who exemplified initiative, intelligence, and independence. America’s first large network of professional women was Catholic nuns. In the 1900s, they built and ran the country’s largest private school and hospital systems. These women were nurses, teachers — and CEOs.

And of course, Ullman points us toward the ultimate example of feminine genius, Our Lady.

We should go to the top; we should look at the greatest Catholic female leader of all time, the woman who took the greatest risk, and that is the Virgin Mother. She accepted a mission that had never been done before and will never be done again. She is the true epitome of bringing forth a new creation to heal a hurting world, just like an entrepreneur, bearing the risks and then enjoying the reward.

Ullman shows how greatly “the world needs what women are,” to quote St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

“Is the future of faith female?” She asks. “It could be, if we learn to lead with our feminine hearts.”

***AS BOTH AGREE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ABSORBED PAGANISM AND WAS ABSORBED BY IT, THE WHORE OF BABYLON AND ALL THAT

The Whore of Babylon | National Gallery of Canada

This chapter sets the scene for the study by briefly introducing some of its core contents and defining the aim of the book: to analyze constructions of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon from the fin-de-siècle until today. The chapter presents Babalon and her origins in the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley and establishes the focus ...

Encountering the Scarlet Goddess | The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

Classical Rock

During the heyday of the 70's, before Disco melted down the creativity level of music to drum beats and homogonized dance music, and before the rebellion of the three chord reaction to the dumbing down of music, the Punk DIY movement, the stellar sphere of sound was Progressive Rock.

That is rock music that was longer than two or three minute radio spots. Rock Music influenced by Classical music, and by the idea of the 'Concept Album', the idea of creating a symphonic sound out of rock and telling a story where the whole album spoke to a singular idea or theme.

The Who created Tommy a Rock Opera, and later Quadraphenia as less popular rock opera, Jethro Tull had created Thick As A Brick, Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer integrated organ music and pre-synthesiser sounds.

ELP originated out of King Crimson and the classical music sound of Keith Emerson's earlier band the Nice, which rockified classical and symphonic music through the use of the electric organ, the percursor to the synthesizer. One of Emersons best rock classical albums is entitled the Five Bridges Suite, took several well known classical compositions and Rockified them, sped them up and underscored the basso sound using electric organ and moog synthesizer. The Bridges are tonal overlaps in classical music. Thus Rock music went from pop sound to full symphonic sound.

Tarkus, ELP's second album was a rock version of Hungarian modernist composer Bela Bartok's work without credit. Their third Album was the rock version of Russian modernist Mussgorsky's Pictures at an exhibition.

Moody Blues were one of the first bands to really work with a symphonic orchestra with their first album and hit single, Knights in White Satin.

Deep Purple would follow up with their concept album Deep Purple in Rock which again contained longer 6-9 minute songs, including the hauntingly beautiful Child in Time, recorded like the Moody Blues had, with the London Sympthonic Orchestra.

In Europe Vangelis first concept album with his band Aphrodites Child; 666 was released as an unheard of double album, live recording which was a musical concept album about the Anti-Christ, Babalon and the book of Revelations, which included famed Greek Actress Irene Papas singing the part of Babalon.

My favorite band of this period is Rennaissance, whose rock motifs are based on Russian composers. Russian Classical music by its inherent nature has been and is modernist, daring to create sound poems and aural stories, using themes to tell stories, not merely using the music to express an inner ideal.

Rennaissance picked up on this as the Folk revival was kicking off in England, and as concept albums, the creation of Progressive or Experimental rock, was begining.

I just picked up the live two CD collection of their performances which were released in the late 1990's almost twenty years after their performances were recorded. The complete collection of their work has yet to make it to CD. So look for them on vinal.

I reccomend the link above on Progressive Rock from Wikipedia, though I must say that while they show the progression from the early rock concept bands such as the Yardbirds, from whence Renaissance originated, and which gave birth to such bands as Led Zepplin, they missed one of the most influential of the Classical, Jazz, Rock crossover musicians, who really should be credited with being the father of the concept album and Progressive Rock, none other than Frank Zappa.

His only hit single Peaches in Regalia is a wholy unique and original modern classical piece of instrumental music. Zappa was influenced by the fifties modernist composer Edgard Varese, whose compostion Ameriques is a stunning combination of modern symphonic music and jazz with a continual police siren in the background, and was written in the 1920's!!

Now compare that with Leonard Bernstiens paen to America, West Side Story, and you can see the paths that modern classical/symphonic music was moving towards, where we end up in the seventies with its merger into Progressive Rock.

Varese and Zappa created tone poems, and Zappa was as egotistical an orchestra leader as ever one could find in the Classical realm. In fact his clashes with that other symphonic egotist, conductor Zubin Meta (whose 1812 Oveture with small live cannons is still the ne plus ultra version of the composition) during 200 Motels is well documented, indeed why Zappa placed Meta and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a concentration camp setting in his movie. Nasty.

What Zappa has never been given credit for is his guitar playing. He was one of the best guitar players of his generation. And it is perhaps his classical approach to the instrument that deminished the appreciation of his abilities. Becuase he approached his guitar playing like his composing and his leading his band like a conductor, his tightly controled playing did not appear wild, arm swinging, hair flinging, style that was so popular amongst other expressive rock musicians that led to his underappreciation as a guitarist.

What Zappa got from Varese was the concept of the Idee Fixe, "Some of Edgard Varese's later works make use of the 'Idee Fixe', a fixed theme, repeated certain times in a work. "

Through out his work a common Idee Fixe will appear repeatedly, this is a the very essence of modernist classical music, and Zappa was not only a Rock and Roll guitarist but the very essence of a modern classical composer.

By the 1980's Progressive rock was having a well deserved revival in the works of Genesis, the Quebec band Harmonium, the electronic works of Vangelis, and his team up Jon Anderson former lead singer of Yes, to create thematic concept albums like the Friends of Mr. Cairo, heralded the return of the concept album and the revival of Progressive Rock.

The Alan Parsons Project overlapped many of the concept albums coming out in the eighties, where Parsons had worked with folk musicians like Al Stewart, again there is the connection between the English Folk revival and Progressive Rock, and Pink Floyd, before coming out with his own Concept ablums with the Project.

But it was short lived revival as the ninties diminished all new sound into a wave of unoriginal remastering of 'found' sounds and the diminuation again of music to the drum beat machine staccato of Hip Hop.

Underscoring all this is the continual return to the classical roots of music, its symphonic sound, that ability to layer sound to create depth and imagery. Whether it was with the eight track revolution of the Beatles sound on Sgt. Peppers or the Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesty's Request, both concept albums, or with the later use of synthesizer, the progressive sound in rock was its imitation of and merger with symphonic music.

As Bakunin once joked when asked if his anarchist revolution would get rid of all culture, he replied, "No we will keep Beethoven's 5th." It was the progressive and radical music of its day. An elegy to human reason. As it remains today.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
rock, music, progressive, bands, Who, Rennaissance, Beatles, Yes, King, Crimson, Vangelis, Bakunin, Beethoven, ELP, Varese, Bartok, Jon, Parsons, Rolling, Stones,

BABALON

HEKATE BY WILLIAM BLAKE

ONE IS LUCIFER ONE IS BABALON
The Difference Between a 'Morning Star' and 'Evening Star' (Because It's Not What You Think)"

Everything you think you know about the “Morning Star” and the “Evening Star” is wrong.

By Stephen Johnson

If you’ve ever heard anyone mention the morning star(s) and the evening star(s) and didn’t know what they meant, here’s what’s really going on up there in the heavens. First off, the names are misleading. “Morning star” and “evening star” both originally referred to the same celestial object, and it’s not a star at all. It’s Venus, the third brightest object in the sky, behind the sun and the moon.

Venus always appears close to the sun, but because of its orbit, it sometimes appears to be leading the sun and sometimes following it. When Venus is trailing the sun, it appears in the sky moments after the sun goes down. This is when it is called an “evening star.” When it’s “leading” the sun, it appears to rise near dawn, just before the sun comes up. That’s when it’s called a “morning star.”
Ancient astrologers made a huge mistake

Egyptian, Mayan, Greek, and other cultures’ star-gazers understandably believed Venus was two separate stars. They thought the same thing about Mercury, which also appears relatively close to the sun. Around the 5th century BC, Pythagoras delineated the objects as two separate planets, but it wasn’t until 1543 when Copernicus straightened everything out by discovering that Earth is a planet, too, and all the planets revolve around the sun.

On “wandering stars” and whether they are “morning” or “evening” stars

Because Venus isn’t the only planet we can see in the sky without a telescope, we now refer to “morning stars,” which are Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and sometimes Uranus (if it’s very dark, and you have good eyesight). These used to be called “wandering stars.”

Determining whether Venus and Mercury (aka the “inferior planets”) are considered morning or evening stars is usually easy; it’s determined by how they appear relative to the sun. But with the other, “superior,” planets, it get a little trickier, and can involve morning stars becoming visible just after sunset and vice-versa. Here’s how space.com describes it:

In order to differentiate between what qualifies for the branding as a “morning star” versus an “evening star,” we would say that during the time frame from when a planet is moving from its conjunction with the sun to just a day prior to its opposition (when it is directly opposite to the sun in the sky) it is considered a “morning star.” At opposition, the superior planet in question would be rising when the sun sets and sets as the sun rises. From then on it is branded as an “evening star,” rising or already in the sky as daytime ends.

Did you miss the Venus Transit? Too bad for you.

Occasionally, Venus appears to pass in front of the sun and blocks out some sunlight, like a wee eclipse. On average, this transit happens every 80 years, but more accurately, it’s a “pair of pairs” pattern that repeats every 243 years. So if you caught the Venusian Transit on June 8, 2004, you could get a repeat showing in June 2012. If you missed it, you’ll have to wait until 2117. Sorry.

HOLLOYWOOD BABALON;SCIENTOLOGY
Danny Masterson, star of That ’70s Show, found guilty of rape

The charges against Danny Masterson date to a period when he was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s That ‘70s Show. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Images

47-year-old actor, who allegedly drugged women’s drinks, faces up to 30 years in prison after jury finds him guilty

Associated Press

Wed 31 May 2023 

Danny Masterson, the actor best known for his role in That ’70s Show, was found guilty of two counts of rape on Wednesday in a Los Angeles retrial in which the Church of Scientology played a central role.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdict after deliberating for seven days spread over two weeks. They could not reach a verdict on the third count, that alleged Masterson raped a longtime girlfriend. They had voted 8-4 in favor of conviction.

Masterson was led from the courtroom in handcuffs. The 47-year-old actor faces up to 30 years in prison.

His wife, actor and model Bijou Phillips, wept as he was led away. Other family and friends sat stone-faced.

Prosecutors, retrying Masterson after a deadlocked jury led to a mistrial in December, said he forcibly raped three women, including a longtime girlfriend, in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003. They told jurors he drugged the women’s drinks so he could rape them. They said he used his prominence in the church – where all three women were also members at the time – to avoid consequences for decades.

Masterson did not testify, and his lawyers called no witnesses. The defense argued that the acts were consensual, and attempted to discredit the women’s stories by highlighting changes and inconsistencies over time, which they said showed signs of coordination between them.

“If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something in this case,” defense attorney Philip Cohen told jurors, “you should consider not believing anything that witness says.”

The Church of Scientology played a significant role in the first trial but arguably an even larger one in the second. Judge Charlaine F Olmedo allowed expert testimony on church policy from a former official in Scientology leadership who has become a prominent opponent.

Tensions ran high in the courtroom between current and former Scientologists, and even leaked into testimony, with the accusers saying on the stand that they felt intimidated by some members in the room.

Actor Leah Remini, a former member who has become the church’s highest-profile critic, sat in on the trial at times, putting her arm around one of the accusers to comfort her during closing arguments.


Founded in 1953 by L Ron Hubbard, the Church of Scientology has many members who work in Hollywood. The judge kept limits on how much prosecutors could talk about the church, and primarily allowed it to explain why the women took so long to go to authorities.

The women testified that when they reported Masterson to church officials, they were told they were not raped, were put through ethics programs themselves, and were warned against going to law enforcement to report a member of such high standing.

“They were raped, they were punished for it, and they were retaliated against,” the deputy district attorney, Reinhold Mueller, told jurors in his closing argument. “Scientology told them there’s no justice for them. You have the opportunity to show them there is justice.”

The church vehemently denied having any policy that forbids members from going to secular authorities.

Testimony in this case was graphic and emotional. Two women, who knew Masterson from social circles in the church, said he gave them drinks and that they then became woozy or passed out before he violently raped them in 2003.

The third, Masterson’s then-girlfriend of five years, said she awoke to find him raping her, and had to pull his hair to stop him.

The issue of drugging also played a major role in the retrial. At the first, Olmedo only allowed prosecutors and accusers to describe their disorientation, and to imply that they were drugged. The second time, they were allowed to argue it directly, and the prosecution attempted to make it a major factor, to no avail.

“The defendant drugs his victims to gain control,” said the deputy district attorney, Ariel Anson, in her closing argument. “He does this to take away his victims’ ability to consent.”

Masterson was not charged with any counts of drugging, and there is no toxicology evidence to back up the assertion. His attorney asked for a mistrial over the issue’s inclusion. The motion was denied, but the issue is likely to be a major factor in any potential appeal.

These charges date to a period when Masterson was at the height of his fame, starring from 1998 until 2006 as Steven Hyde on Fox’s That ’70s Show – the show that made stars of Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis and Topher Grace.

Masterson had reunited with Kutcher on the 2016 Netflix comedy The Ranch, but was written off the show when an LAPD investigation was revealed in December 2017.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Babalon Rising: Jack Parsons' Witchcraft Prophecy

Erik Davis

PaperRank: 2.018 Pages

1 File ▾

History of Sexuality,

Witchcraft (Magic),

Occultism,

California History,

Neo-Paganism and Western Esotericism

The story of Jack Parsons--the Southern California rocket scientist-cum-sex magician who co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and did Thelemic rituals with L. Ron Hubbard--features a charismatic blend of sex, sorcery, technology and death. The tale haunts a dark crossroads of the SoCal mindscape, scrawling a prophetic glyph in the wet pavement of postwar America. In this essay, I explore an unremarked aspect of Parsons’ life and thought, what I will call his magickal feminism. In his 1946 text "Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword," Parsons issued a call for women to take up the spiritual, sexual, and political sword—a libertarian cry for female autonomy that also eerily anticipated the militant witchcraft that would finnd historical expression in California over twenty years later.

https://www.academia.edu/35338116/Babalon_Rising_Jack_Parsons_Witchcraft_Prophecy

I ALSO CAME TO THIS CONCLUSION ABOUT FREEDOM IS A TWO EDGED SWORD.
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/02/new-age-libertarian-manifesto.html

OUR LADY OF BABALON

A prayer for Evita: Here's why many Argentines are devoted to a first lady who died in 1952

New president Javier Milei's election represents shift away from nation's Peronist legacy

Associated Press
Published February 19, 2024 

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Early every morning, just as she reaches her workplace at a labor union in Buenos Aires, Ángeles Celerier heads to the chapel and prays to Saint Cajetan, Saint Teresa and Eva Perón.

Perón — unlike the others — has not been canonized by the Vatican, but this doesn’t matter to Celerier.

ARGENTINA’S POVERTY LEVEL RISES TO 57.4%, MARKING 20-YEAR HIGH

"For me, she is the saint of the people," the 56-year-old Argentine said.

Many union members think of Evita as their patron or gaze at her photos with nostalgia, feeling that she and her husband, three-time President Juan Domingo Perón, brought prosperity to their country through an equality and social justice-driven movement that was named after him in the 1940s: Peronism.

That movement is currently the biggest opposition force in Argentina. And some political observers attribute the recent vote to elect President Javier Milei as a means to defeat Peronism and its previous hold on the presidency.

"For us, she is the spiritual reservoir of the people," said Julio Piumato, human rights director at the largest union in Argentina. He signed a 2019 document requesting Evita’s beatification.

"No other figure has a deeper significance," Piumato said. "The humble sectors are synthesized in Evita."

A mural of Argentine former first lady María Eva Duarte de Perón, better known as Evita Perón, or Evita, depicting her with a saints halo, adorns a wall inside the Peron Peron restaurant in the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, Feb. 9, 2024. ((AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko))

According to the union leader, between 1946 and 1952, when Evita died of cancer at age 33 and Perón concluded his first term, the couple dignified the working class and prioritized social justice.

"Saints show us paths to reach Christ and intercede before God for us," reads the beatification request delivered to the archbishop. "In our homeland, one generation after another continues to be converted by the humanist and Christian message of the standard bearer of the humble."




Aside from a 1996 movie starring Madonna or Andrew Lloyd Weber’s 1978 musical, many foreigners know relatively little about this former first lady who died 71 years ago.

But in Argentina, Evita is a constant presence. Her face is printed on 100-peso bills, decorates a mural on a key government building, and greets guests from an altar placed in a restaurant called Saint Evita.

"I carry her image in my wallet, and I have it at home in a small picture frame with a candle," Celerier said. "I ask her for protection."

HOW A FIRST LADY TURNED INTO A CHAMPION OF THE POOR

The secret behind the fascination that she awakens might be hidden in her name.

Long before becoming first lady, she called herself María Eva, a girl who left the town of Los Toldos to try her luck as an actress in Buenos Aires. As a modest film star she was known as Eva Duarte and afterwards became Eva Perón, the president’s wife. Then came Evita.

"Evita is the one who is close to the people," said Santiago Regolo, a researcher at Museum Evita. "People began to call her that, and that construction is linked to the political and social work that distinguished her from the women who preceded her and take her as an example to this day."

Evita was the one who paid visits to elders and single mothers. The one who handed out toys for children and bread for families. The one who promoted paid vacations for workers who had never been able to afford a break and gave a final push to achieve the women’s right to vote in 1947.

She has also inspired some feminists — who carry her photo along with their green scarves during protests — as well as a political organization that asks for social transformation using her image as a logo.

"Having Evita on our flag represents being with those in the lower classes and trying to vindicate her name over time," said Iván Tchorek, from the Evita Movement, which has 155,000 members nationwide and was created after an economic crisis in 2001.

She’s relevant as ever, Tchorek said, because Peronism is. Thousands of workers like him recently led a general strike against the right-wing Milei, who defeated Peronist candidate Sergio Massa last November. Soon after, Milei issued a decree that would revoke or modify hundreds of existing laws in order to limit the power of unions and deregulate an economy that has traditionally featured heavy state intervention.

Even as a union standard-bearer in polarized times, Evita and her memory have the ability to transcend politics. "Certain issues are linked to matters of a sentimental, sacralized nature," Regolo said. "She is seen as a companion, a sister, a mother for the humble."

At her home in an impoverished neighborhood outside Buenos Aires, 71-year-old Rita Cantero says she almost met Evita. When her mother asked the first lady for help, she was pregnant with her.

"My mother used to say that Evita was very supportive, that people really liked her for the service she provided."

Aware of the challenges of being a single mother, Rafaela Escobar attended a public event held by Evita in a plaza near her home. After being able to approach her and confide in her distress, Evita hugged her and said: "Don’t worry, I will help."

Three weeks later, Escobar received a cradle and clothes for her unborn child.

Cantero says her mother never met Evita again, but she sent her letters and the first lady replied with envelopes carrying money.

"For us she is like a saint," Cantero said. "Many judged her because she was a woman, but she was an honest, hard-working girl. She fought for our nation and was the force of Perón."

EVITA'S MIXED LEGACY AND THE FIGHT OVER HER EMBALMED BODY

Perón died two decades after Evita, in 1974, but his name continues to spark both admiration and hatred, yearning and blame.

His critics — among them legislator Fernando Iglesias, who has published several books contending Peronism ruined the country — claim that Perón was an authoritarian leader and his movement's social assistance disguised corruption and patronage while generating too much dependence on the government.

Critics address Eva too. Her foundation pressed donors for resources, some say. She was careerist and a hypocrite, others assert. On the one hand, she claimed to defend the poor and on the other, she dressed in Dior.

"Would she be the saint of the lazy?" a user tweeted when the union requested her beatification. "Patron of criminals," someone else wrote.

Erasing her from history was once a command. After a coup overthrew Perón in 1955, it was forbidden to say her name, display her image or keep her gifts. The military removed her embalmed body from a union’s headquarters, where it was initially kept, and sent it to Europe.

The body came back after 14 years, and when the military took over again in the 1970s, it was given to her family under one condition: She would be buried eight meters underground, sealed in a marble crypt so that no one would ever see her again.

"Evita is the best thing that could have happened to this country," said Carolina Castro, 22, holding back tears next to Evita’s grave in Recoleta Cemetery, where Argentines and foreigners alike honor her with flowers, letters and rosaries.

According to Castro’s mother, 56-year-old Andrea Vellesi, Evita is a sensitive topic because their family is going through a difficult time. "I have never been in such anguish," Vellesi said about economic measures that Milei recently decreed and that she claims hurt her business.

Víctor Biscia, 36, says that he doesn’t keep photos of Evita at home, but he does have images of the late President Néstor Kirchner and his wife and successor Cristina Fernández, another Peronist couple that prompts devotion and resentment among Argentines.

"They were key to achieving rights that are being curtailed by the current government," said Biscia, who thinks of Fernández as a sort of 21st-century Evita.

"She reflects a lot of what we are as Argentines," says Gimena Villagra, 27, standing next to Evita’s tomb. "I don’t think there’s anyone for whom she doesn’t mean something."

 

 

The Death of Quality TV

In a discussion of the decline of quality Sci-Fi TV programing, in this case Battlestar Galactica, in the niche market of cable channels like the Sci-Fi network, Space in Canada, James Bow concludes;

Clearly what has happened is that the vaunted 500-channel universe has not delivered the democratization of programming that was promised twenty years ago. We used to believe that any niche program could find itself an audience here, but we forgot the other side of the demand/supply equation: television costs money to produce, and sometimes good television costs a lot of money to produce.

Well actually we didn't forget that good TV costs money to produce. What some folks forgot was that the bottom line always was the basis for all commercial TV production. Which is why we have the rise of reality TV programs, including whole channels devoted to reality TV like the Food Network, Home and Garden channel etc. All this costs far less to produce than a regular network show which of course has real writers (unionized), directors (unionized), actors (unionized), techies (unionized).

In other words the 500 channel universe did not democratize TV nor did cable. What has happened is that the business tycoons who own the studios and production companies have expanded into a variety of other entertainment and amusement businesses and are using TV to support these endeavours. In doing so they are looking to create cheap productions and that has resulted in a plethora of union busting bottom line programming hence reality TV. The sound you hear is the owners cashing in.

Look at the Sci Fi programming on mainstream channels; ABC, NBC, CBS that were launched last year and were canceled; Surface, which was excellent and had potential, Threshold, and Invasion. Gone. In some cases they barely lasted one season. While the networks cash in on them by issuing them on DVD.

Just as the Sci-Fi network did in killing Babalon 5 and later Farscape. They still profit by issuing them as DVD's and with mini series tie ins.

Quality TV programing especially science fiction and drama is now too costly to produce, not because it is, thanks to the advances in CGI technology, but because the bottom line is so low in production costs that anything that is quality is priced out of the market. Thus reality TV is the thin wedge of union busting in TV land.

Nor has the 500 channel universe opened itself to DIY programming, in fact it has closed off access. It is still controlled by the same corporate interests the owners of production and cable companies.

While fears that the 500 channel universe would be the Deathstar to commercial mainstream TV such has not been the case. Instead mainstream TV and its cable, movie, news, DVD rivals are the New Empire; resulting from interlocking corporate ownership .

The sucking sound you hear is not Darth Vader, it's the decline in quality TV production as the Empire expands in the inevitable mediocrity of the bottom line.

SEE:

Blade Runner

Dr. Who Curse

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
science fiction, film, movies,hollywood, Sci-Fi,
TV

Egypt; camel roams hospital after escaping slaughterhouse

A camel in Egypt can be seen roaming around a hospital after escaping slaughterhouse

December 8,2020

Footage of a camel wandering the corridors of an Egyptian hospital on Sunday after evading security guards has gone viral on social media.

The video, filmed by a nurse at the Awsim Central Hospital in Giza, shows doctors and nurses trying to lead the animal outside.

According to the National, the camel was en route to a nearby slaughterhouse when it escaped and ran into the hospital grounds.

       GIMEL (CAMEL) ALEISTER CROWLEY, THE BOOK OF LIES (SO CALLED)

73

ΚΕΦΑΛΗ ΟΓ

THE DEVIL, THE OSTRICH, AND THE ORPHAN CHILD Death rides the Camel of Initiation.36 Thou humped and stiff-necked one that groanest in Thine Asana, death will relieve thee! Bite not, Zelator dear, but bide! Ten days didst thou go with water in thy belly? Thou shalt go twenty more with a firebrand at thy rump! Ay! all thine aspiration is to death: death is the crown of all thine aspiration. Triple is the cord of silver moonlight; it shall hang thee, O Holy One, O Hanged Man, O Camel-Termination-of-the-third-person-plural for thy multiplicity, thou Ghost of a Non-Ego! Could but Thy mother behold the, O thou UNT!37 The Infinite Snake Ananta that surroundeth the Universe is but the Coffin-Worm!

COMMENTARY (ΟΓ) The Hebrew letter Gimel adds up to 73; it means a camel. The title of the chapter is borrowed from the well-known lines of Rudyard Kipling: "But the commissariat camel, when all is said and done, 'E's a devil and an awstridge and an orphan-child in one." Paragraph 1 may imply a dogma of death as the highest form of initiation. Initiation is not a simple phenomenon. Any given initiation must take place on several planes, and is not always conferred on all of these simultaneously. Intellectual and moral perception of truth often, one might almost say usually, precedes spiritual and physical perceptions. One would be foolish to claim initiation unless it were complete on every plane. Paragraph 2 will easily be understood by those who have practiced Asana. There is perhaps a sardonic reference to rigor mortis, and certainly one conceives the half-humorous attitude of the expert towards the beginner. Paragraph 3 is a comment in the same tone of rough good nature. The word Zelator is used because the Zelator of the A⁂A⁂ has to pass an examination in Asana before he becomes eligible for the grade of Practicus. The ten days allude merely to the tradition about the camel, that he can go ten days without water. Paragraph 4 identifies the reward of initiation with death; it is a cessation of all that we call life, in a way in which what we call death is not. 3, silver and the moon, are all correspondences of Gimel, the letter of the Aspiration, since Gimel is the Path that leads from the microcosm in Tiphareth to the Macrocosm in Kether. The epithets are far too complex to explain in detail, but Mem, the Hanged Man, has a close affinity for Gimel, as will be seen by a study of Liber 418. Unt is not only the Hindustani for Camel, but the usual termination of the third person plural of the present tense of Latin words of the Third and Fourth Conjugations. The reason for thus addressing the reader is that he has now transcended the first and second persons. Cf. Liber LXV, Chapter III, vv. 21 - 24, and FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam: "Some talk there was of Thee and Me There seemed; and then no more of Thee and Me.") The third person plural must be used, because he has now perceived himself to be a bundle of impressions. For this is the point on the Path of Gimel when he is actually crossing the Abyss; the student must consult the account of this given in "The Temple of Solomon the King". The Ego is but "the ghost of a non-Ego", the imaginary focus at which the non-Ego becomes sensible. Paragraph 5 expresses the wish of the Guru that his Chela may attain safely to Binah, the Mother. Paragraph 6 whispers the ultimate and dread secret of initiation into his ear, identifying the vastness of the Most Holy with the obscene worm that gnaws the bowels of the damned. NOTES (36) Death is said by the Arabs to ride a Camel. The Path of Gimel (which means a Camel) leads from Tiphareth to Kether, and its Tarot trump is "The High Priestess". (37) UNT, Hindustani for Camel. I.e. would that BABALON might look on thee with favour.

 

Back | Return | Next