Sunday, December 11, 2016

The White Horse


To be fair, Mormons don't drink, so the wine probably wasn't that tempting.

As I mentioned in my post on the "pizzagate" conspiracy, aside from my focus on religious freedom issues, I try to write most of my articles from a neutral political perspective and only delve into political issues that touch on the general themes of this blog. Today I'm going to deviate from that a bit, in order to touch on a bit of religious lore that could become relevant to the current situation - this is, if a whole series of relatively unlikely events actually takes place.

Still, given all that's gone on in 2016, you never can tell. The bit of religious lore that I'm talking about is a prophecy attributed to Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church, dubbed the White Horse Prophecy. From Wikipedia:

Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith went to Washington, D.C. in November 1839 in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain help for his persecuted followers. Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune writes that from then on, Smith and his followers "considered themselves the last Real Americans" and "the legitimate heirs of the pilgrims and Founding Fathers", who would be called upon one day to save the U.S. Constitution. Smith is believed to have then said, in 1840, that when the Constitution hung by a thread, Latter Day Saint elders would step in on the white horse to save the country.

According to a diary entry made by John Roberts of Paradise, Utah in 1902, Joseph Smith gave the White Horse Prophecy in early May 1843, during the period in which the Latter Day Saints were headquartered in Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith is recorded as saying that the Mormons "will go to the Rocky Mountains and will be a great and mighty people established there, which I will call the White Horse of peace and safety." Adding that "I shall never go there" and predicting continued persecution by enemies of the church, Smith reportedly said that "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.... I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense."

The article goes on to explain that the prophecy is not official doctrine of the LDS Church, as aside from the diary entry that was written years after the fact, there is no other historical evidence of Smith actually making the recorded comments. It easily could have sprung up from misremembered quotes and evolving oral tradition. There was talk that during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney considered the possibility that he might in fact be the White Horse - though again, I have no idea whether that was really the case, or if it was just a rumor.


I would hope that it should be clear to anyone outside the tinfoil conspiracy crowd that Barack Obama posed no existential threat to the Constitution in 2012. He did continue a number of the questionable programs of the George W. Bush administration, but it seems to me that many politicians before him posed bigger constitutional threats, especially if you look back through the history of the entire twentieth century starting in 1902. But depending on the outcome of various investigations and so forth, 2016 might turn out to be a different matter altogether.

Donald Trump's surprise electoral college win turned the political system on its ear. Since the election, Trump's behavior has been just as un-presidential as before. He keeps tweeting nonsense. He insists that he "doesn't need" daily intelligence briefings. He has shown no signs of "draining the swamp," but rather has been filling his cabinet with a mix of political insiders and members of the global business elite. And now, the CIA has determined that Russia hacked the DNC and RNC, and strategically released the information they obtained to Wikileaks in order to influence the election in his favor.

There may not be collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, but the possibility is troubling enough that it requires investigation. It would have been a reasonable move for Russia to prefer Trump to Clinton even without collusion, as he made a number of statements throughout the campaign skeptical of the role of NATO in the world and critical of sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Crimea. But still, Paul Manafort's connections to the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine raised suspicions that forced Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign in August, and a number of other odd coincidences seem to link Russia with the campaign.

Now if a foreign power really did influence the 2016 election, and especially if they colluded with an American presidential campaign, it seems to me that this is a bigger potential threat to the Constitution than anything that happened during the Obama administration. If the White Horse Prophecy is true, could this be the time in which it will unfold? Again, those are whole lot of "ifs" - but as I said, this is 2016 we're talking about. "Ifs" seem to be par for the course this year, rather than outliers like they would be any other year.

At this point, the only way for Donald Trump to be denied the presidency is for the electoral college to refuse to vote for him. Electors are not necessarily required to vote for the candidate who won their state, but only a handful of them have ever changed their votes. In Trump's case, 37 electors would have to refuse to vote for him in order to throw the election to the House of Representatives - and to be clear, barring something entirely unprecedented, that won't happen. But if it did, who would they vote for instead?

Members of the Electoral College are not necessarily candidate loyalists, but they are selected for being party loyalists. That's why so few "faithless electors" have ever been seated. Because of this, it seems to me that there is absolutely no chance that enough Trump electors will change their votes to Hillary Clinton and give her a win. If they're going to vote for someone else, I think we can be fairly certain that it will be another Republican. Furthermore, the Republican Party currently controls the House, so if the election is referred there, I don't see them voting for a Democrat either.

So this is not about getting Clinton elected. Where the White Horse Prophecy comes into play is that one of the possible candidates being floated as an Electoral College alternative for Republicans is Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee. Another qualifying possibility might be Evan McMullin, a Republican who ran as an independent conservative - although McMullin struggled with ballot access and his percentage of the popular vote was behind even the Green Party's Jill Stein. Like Romney, McMullin is also a Mormon.

So here's the long, crazy series of "ifs" that I think could be interpreted as the prophecy coming true. If (A) Donald Trump is found to be a threat to the Constitution on the basis of his ties with Russia (rather than just on the basis of being a total doofus), (B) at least 37 Republican electors vote for another candidate, (C) this alternate Republican candidate wins in the House of Representatives, and (D) this candidate is a Mormon, such as Romney or McMullin. Will any of that actually happen? Quite probably not. But this year, who knows?

Guidelines For Comments: Since my "pizzagate" post kind of went off the rails here and over on Facebook, I want to point out ahead of time that I'm really not interested in discussing the relative merits of Clinton versus Trump - or Obama, for that matter. I'm neither a Clinton fan nor a Trump supporter. I think that Trump is going to be a terrible president, but I'm not interested in debating that either, unless it's directly relevant to the content of this post. Thanks in advance for understanding.

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14 comments:

Scott Stenwick said...

An interesting observation - with two political posts, I currently have more hits on this blog from Russia (3394) than from the United States (3358) in the last week. That's not normal, folks. Over the last month, the numbers have been United States - 13449, including the 3358 in the last week, and Russia - 6225, including the 3394 in the last week.

Curiouser and curiouser...

Anonymous said...

:)) The KGB are on to you. Or FSB or whatever their name is now.

Scott Stenwick said...

I don't know if that means they are down on Mittens, or if they support him. Probably the former, if they really were working to help Trump.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't surprise me if they had pulled some strings for Trump.
Mittens :))))))))

Scott Stenwick said...

Yeah, the CIA thinks they did, but the Trump camp is (of course) disputing it. Either way, I just wish the Russians would buy some of my books if they're going to be checking out the blog... ;)

Anonymous said...

I've heard about the whole hacking of the voting machines and all that. I try to keep myself away from these things, but it could be possible. From what I know both Rusia and China have powerful software divisions that are used for just about anything, from protecting government data to economic and military espionage.

I don't know about the Chinese, though I suspect them too, but the Russians also have a powerful occult division dating from the time of the tzars, and even before that. If you saw the movie The men who stare at goats, they talk about this briefly, although in a comical way.

So it could be possible that in the off chance the KGB were on to you, they might also be interested in your books.

Scott Stenwick said...

I really am not that interested in debating it either. Voting machines are not networked, so in order to hack them you would need something like a piece of malware that transmits itself by memory stick. I could write that in an afternoon, but getting it onto voting machines would be a challenge. So far, with the exception of four counties with crazy vote total errors that were caught almost right away, the Wisconin recount has only shifted the totals towards Clinton by 25 votes. That probably means even if malware was deployed, it was unable to disseminate itself.

I have studied paranormal research in both the old Soviet Union and the United States, and unfortunately the Russian program was littered with frauds. They did manage to identify a few people who probably had some sort of psychic ability like Nina Kulagina, but a number of others were later debunked by other researchers. By the way, if you want to watch the non-fiction documentary that "The Men Who Stare at Goats" was based on, check out "The Crazy Rulers of the World" by Jon Ronson.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437000/

The United States really did have a "Project Jedi" back in the 1980s, and the Stargate remote viewing program lasted until 1995. In my novel Arcana I put forth the idea that this program was a front for the "CIA Magick Office" which was made up of serious paranormal investigators trying to combine magick with conventional science. For the most part I think it's something I made up, but it's also true that you can never be entirely sure with some of this stuff.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the documentary! I've seen a program on History Channel where they talked about the real Project Jedi. I'll try to find that documentary online and watch it.

As for the Russians, I've meat in person a guy who was recruited in their paranormal division. I think after the fall of the Soviet Union he left to Tibet. Nowadays he's a Gon Po master. You don't need to undestand the language. I'm only showing you this so you can see the guy. He was born in the ancient Romanian territory of Basarabia, which became part of the Russian empire in 1812 and again was anexed by the USSR in 1940. I know from him that Stalin had used Siberian shamans to bring heavy snow and freezing temperatures when the Germans were approaching Moscow.

http://www.conferintespiritualeromania.ro/interviu-exclusiv-cu-maestrul-gon-po-serghei-danisin/

Anyway, my father is ex military. He spent almost 10 years in Russia in the 90s. He found out many interesting stuff there from people who were involved into different Soviet programs - I think i told you some time ago on fb about their anti-gravity cygar shapes object that could fly across all the USSR in 16 seconds. They told him all this because with the collapse of the USSR they needed jobs and sponsoring from abroad and he had contacts.

One time he was in a village near Moskow and he was told that not far from there Napoleon had passed through with his grand army. It took some time, but eventually a certain number of old women had gathered in that village from great distances. Those women worked together to produce the same conditions that stopped the Germans a century later.

Scott Stenwick said...

You're welcome. It is a good documentary, and I think you will be surprised at how much of the material "The Men Who Stare at Goats" kept.

I'm good at working weather magick here where I live, and Minnesota has a lot of same weather that Russia gets, so using magick to increase snow and cold doesn't surprise me a bit. Especially if there was a group of magicians involved, not just one practitioner.

I probably would do the exact same thing if somebody ever tried to invade Minnesota, though I can't imagine why, say, Canada would want to. ;)

Anonymous said...

:)) I'd say Canadians might be well prepared for even the 9th circle of hell. But if say, Mexico were to come that much north (because Trump will have declared war on them or something), they'll be feeling how it's like to be a popsicle. No offence to Mexicans.

From what I've heard, Canada and the northern part of the US are expecting a freezing arctic front, so it seems like a good idea to use that weather magick the other way around.

Hmmm I think I've heard of Kulagina. I think she's the one who thought many that went one to become parapsychologists, like this woman:

https://m.facebook.com/mosneaga.alexandra

During the cold war, the US and USSR lead the way into paranormal research and practical applications for it. Israel was third. Romania was fourth and Czechoslovakia fifth. We here had experts that found out how to harness the energies of pyramid structures and there were plans to build a huge pyramid in order to use those energies. I can't remember the names of those involved, but i think the US started their paranormal research in two institutes, one in Virginia and the other one in California. They eventually shut them down, but some people who worked there founded private companies. One of those guys was even asked if he could remotely kill Gorbachev. He replied that he couldn't, but he could try to influence him to become more open to western ideas. That guy was allegedly responsible for Glasnost and Perestroika :) This kinda sounds like Project Jedi. I have it from a different source, so I'm not sure it's the same thing. I'll have to watch the documentary first.

I'm pretty sure many countries still have such departments, although i can't prove it. But I think they are pumping more money and resources than Reinassance monarchs were with people like Dee.

Scott Stenwick said...

I have been known to cast against some of the more ridiculous cold that comes our way up here, but the problem is that while getting a short-term effect lasting a few days is easy, it often destabilizes the system and the weather "pushes back," so to speak. On the other hand, if you just want the weather to be as awful as possible to stop an invading army, you probably aren't going to care.

Nina Kulagina is at least well-known enough to have a Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Kulagina

Of course, the page mentions that Skeptics think she used trickery. It's possible that she did for some tests, too - magick and psychic abilities are hard to use on demand under laboratory conditions, and I have no idea how much pressure the Soviets were putting on her to get results. Others strike me as genuine, though.

One of the things I like about the Russian approach to paranormal research is that they don't spend a lot of time trying to do nothing more than prove paranormal effects exist, like a lot of American researchers do. Instead, they think of it more like, "Here's a phenomenon people are reporting. Let's see what it is." Even if the phenomenon turns out to have a normal explanation, that information is still useful.

Anonymous said...

"Winter is coming" lol and I think I'm going to use Baligon on the weather again. Which spirits do you use for this purpose?

That's true about the Soviets. I think it comes from the nature of the Russian people itself. They're known to be more on the mystical side. Even though comunism/marxism in general promoted atheism and instigated against a belief in a higher power, the comunists themselves didn't mind at all using all the methods that would help them achieve their goals. So the paranormal was like a means to an end for them. They even used monasteries, which they've ordered to be abandoned, as bases for all sorts of special facilities - psy training, agent training etc.

The westerners in the other hand are far more inclined towards science and view the paranormal as fairy tales. I think this minds set was a set back for them when they started reasearch in this field.

Here's a Russian man who perfected a technique that helps people to see without using their eyes. He's the one I've told you went to James Randy with a little girl who was trained to use that technique, but the bastard Randy refused to pay.

https://m.facebook.com/MarkKomissarov/?hc_location=ufi

Scott Stenwick said...

I can often just do it by opening an operant field, holding a visualization of the current weather radar map, and then adding the changes I want to see happen. If you are using the Heptarchia, though, Baligon would be appropriate.

I don't think the Soviet paranormal research had anything to do with religion or mysticism. Based on what I've read, the researchers just considered psychic phenomena to be another technology. This perspective has informed a lot of my own research, though I do work with spirits, deities, and other mystical entities.

Randi has always put in place too many hoops for anybody to jump through. In order to pass even his "preliminary test," you have to be able to beat 1000 to 1 odds. That's already outside the range of most magicians for a single trial. And to win any money, you have to beat million to one against odds. Statistically, you could make more money playing the lottery than trying to pass Randi's test if you could do a shift like that.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing the weather altering technique. I think I'll be giving it a try pretty soon.

It looks like the conversation on the topic has moved to fb, so I'll just leave it like this. But not before saying that the Russian people have an ancestral belief that they are the redeemers of all human kind, and they will save the world through Slavic orthodoxy which they greatly treasure. It's like it's in their DNA, whether or not individuals are consciously aware of it. It's something similar to the nazy belief of being descendants of white gods, but in a whole different way. This belief was with them at the time of the early principalities 1000 years ago, continued with the tzars, all the way through comunism and in the present day, when I'm sure Putin has a messianic image about himself. But that's a whole other subject :)

As for the idiot James Randy... That Russian guy went with the girl to take the trials. It was recorded on video that she could name random colors shown to her while being completely blindfolded. But Randy and his guys kept making excuses that it was all a trick, eventually putting so much pressure on the girl that she almost lost her skills permanently. You can see some demonstrations on the guy's page.

So I'll switch to fb now :)