What's Left of Heritage USA

A blinded alligator cries to heaven from the ruins of the park

This story was posted on the Internet last year, but it seems to me that it might be a cautionary tale for Ken Ham's beloved Ark Encounter. In the mid-1980's, a Christian amusement park called Heritage USA in South Carolina became a very popular tourist attraction. The park was owned by Jim and Tammy Bakker, who at the time were wealthy and powerful televangelists. These days, Jim is busy selling potato soup to survivalists and doomsday preppers - but I digress.

In 1986, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA was the third most-visited amusement park in the US, behind only Disney World and Disneyland. Now the park that once entertained millions of guests is falling to pieces, and looks more like the scene from a post-apocalyptic movie than a place for family fun.

Heritage USA opened in Fort Mill, SC, in 1978, and by the mid-eighties drew in six million visitors each year. The park was perhaps best-known for "Jerry's Slide," a 163-foot water slide that Falwell slid down in his suit, resulting in one of the most famous photographs of the televangelist. But those water slides and fairy tale castle were, in part, responsible for Falwell's downfall. After scandals regarding Falwell's fundraising efforts to build the park's never-completed hotel and the IRS's revocation of its tax-exempt status, Heritage USA was hit by another, more physical blow. Hurricane Hugo wreaked havoc on the park's buildings in 1989, and Heritage closed for good shortly afterward.

So basically, it wasn't just fundraising scandals that doomed the park. Essentially, God smote it. You never know, he might actually have something against science-deniers and prosperity gospel freaks. Remember back in 2010, when God went on a bit of a smiting binge? One of his targets was "touchdown Jesus," a 62-foot tall statue depicting Jesus with his arms raised to the heavens. Could there be something to that whole "graven image" prohibition after all?

There's already a fake news story floating around (see what I did there?) claiming that Ark Encounter was destroyed in a flood. Which it would be if a flood ever happened, because Ham's ark isn't actually seaworthy but rather just a big boat-shaped building. The story has been able to get so much traction because the fact is, it would be just plain hilarious if it really happened - maybe even hilarious enough for God to go ahead and do it.

Hacking The Middle Pillar

Many years ago now, before I started using the Elevenfold Seal (the First Gesture from Liber V vel Reguli) as part of my daily practices, like a lot of other magicians I practiced the Middle Pillar technique. I say "technique" and not "ritual" because I didn't learn the version used by the modern Golden Dawn orders, but rather interpolated my own based on Israel Regardie's general arrangement and Aleister Crowley's Liber 777.

This is pretty easy to do, because the basic idea behind the technique is simple. The Middle Pillar Ritual proper mostly consists of aligning the sephirothic names of God found on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life with the corresponding points on your body by vibrating the name while you hold your attention at the proper point. So right there, you actually have most of what you need to do what I did. You can make this more elaborate, too, by adding the sephiroth from the Pillar of Mercy and Pillar of Severity.

So when I recently went to look over online versions of the actual ritual, there were a few parts that I found surprising and, frankly, a little weird. I mentioned the Middle Pillar Ritual in the Elemental Work posts, but unlike the other rituals I decided not to link to the "official" version from those articles. If you really are looking for that, one of the places you can find it is here, but I also want to point out some of the differences between my version and the way that the ritual is often taught.

I will add the usual caveat here: if your practice is getting you good results, there's no reason to for you to change anything. My suggestions are based on my own experiments and may not be for everyone. However, if you are just learning this technique, I invite you to try out my suggestions along with the official version and see which seems to produce the best results. In the end, the final rule of magick is that if it works it works, regardless of how pretty a particular pattern might be.

A Qigong Sleep Spell?

I don't usually post videos this long here on Augoeides, but I found this one particularly fascinating. It shows footage of a Japanese Qigong master putting animals to sleep using the power of energy work. As a student of Qigong, I'm aware of techniques that you can use to make other people tired or help them wake up. But this seems to be a whole other level.

A caveat - this is from a television program, so hypothetically it could have been staged. Generally speaking, I'm not one to jump to the conclusion that anything on television is automatically a hoax, and I haven't found any evidence or testimony that these demonstrations were faked. So I'm assuming that the footage is genuine, with allowances for editing and such.

Most of what I was doing while watching the footage was trying to figure out exactly what the Qigong master was doing so I could see about imitating it. He's using his cupped projecting hand, and appears to be alternating slow "down" motions with quicker side-to-side motions with his arm slightly bent at the elbow.

In addition to this, I assume he's doing proper Qigong breathing along with a visualization something like the macrocosmic orbit, which extends from the core of the body to the "bubbling well" points on the palms of the hands and feet. The hand motions make me guess that what he is trying to do is increase the amount of Earth energy in the animals' subtle bodies relative to Heaven energy.

According to what I have been taught, Qi comes in two forms - Heaven and Earth. Earth moves from the feet upwards and Heaven moves from head downward. Earth is calm, placid, and sedate, whereas Heaven is active, alert, and in extreme cases on edge. The "down" motions could amplify Earth, whereas the side-to-side motions could disperse Heaven to keep it from descending as fully through the body.

Theoretically, that could put an animal or a person to sleep, but I expect that it would take a lot of practice to get to the point where I would be able to do it this reliably. At the same time, that's what practice is for, right?

Lizard People Meet!

...but so alone

So you're a poor, lonely reptilian humanoid, trapped on a world ruled over by others of your kind just trying to get through the day. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could find a lizard person just like yourself, or even a human slave, to share the trials and frustrations of navigating this unfamiliar planet? Well, now you can! Lizard People Meet is the first dating website specifically designed for shape-shifting reptilian humanoids!

Sure, you've stolen of hundreds of humans hearts. But isn't it time to let someone steal yours? With Lizard People Meet, you can connect with Lizard People from all over the galaxy right from the comfort of the home you recently invaded. Just whip out your comically over-sized genitalia, and start falling in love.

Unfortunately the site doesn't look all that useful, since while you can select items from the dropdown on the front page, it doesn't seem like it actually allows you to search profiles - or do anything else, for that matter. Or maybe I can't get the site to work right because I lack the appropriate lizard marker in my DNA. As a point, there's not much overlap between sorcerers and reptilians, despite what fundamentalist Christians who like David Icke will tell you.

The couple of "sample profiles" are funny, but it looks like that's about all there is. I always knew that Dick Cheney was in it with the aliens, and they have proof! Otherwise, you can buy t-shirts and "register," though it's not clear whether you can actually sign up or if it just puts you on another marketing email list or something. Also, the "script" link looks like a treatment for B-movie or something, so perhaps that's what these folks are trying to promote.

Anyway, this gave me a good laugh. The site is amusing and pretty well-done. Maybe one of these days the conspiracy folks will figure out that the whole "lizard people" thing is little more than a big joke - you know, just like David Icke.

Free Will, Presentiment, and an fMRI Bug

Over the course of the last decade, a number of neuroscientists have come to the conclusion that "free will" is in fact an illusion, and that all human behavior is fundamentally deterministic. As evidence, they cite studies showing that brain scans can predict the decisions individuals make moments before those individuals become aware of their decisions. They have even developed a model built around this notion, called passive frame theory. According to this model, consciousness does not make decisions, but simply observes the results of autonomous processes.

But there's a big problem with this model and the studies on which it is based. Other studies have identified a phenomenon called presentiment, which appears to show that the brains of subjects who are randomly shown photographs that are either neutral or designed to provoke strong emotional responses react to each photograph a moment before it is displayed. This may not be evidence of some sort of psychic awareness, but it does call the studies on which passive frame is built into question.

Simply, you can't conclude that a free choice has not occurred if the brain can somehow perceive future information. Likewise, if a problem with the scanner is making it look like the brain can react to the future when it really cannot, the same issue is probably affecting the free will studies. When confronted with the presentiment results, most skeptics will immediately jump to the conclusion that something must be wrong with the scanner. But the free will studies have not received the same scrutiny.

Normally I find skeptics far too dismissive of possible paranormal results, but based on some recent findings I'm going to agree with them this time around, believe it or not. A recent review of fMRI data from the last fifteen years has turned up a bug in the software that runs the machines, and those bugs could easily have produced data collection errors in both the free will and the presentiment studies.

This is especially true because both sets of studies rely on tracking neural firing at a very high resolution, where any inaccuracy could significantly skew the results. Generally speaking, all it would take is a shift of a tenth of a second or so in the scans to produce results for both studies that conform to common-sense intuition. That is, they would show that the conscious mind is making decisions as they happen, and that it is not seeing into the future.

Ark Encounter Finally Opens

So in the end, Ken Ham did it. He pushed junk bonds, got state tax incentives and then lost them, and delayed the project numerous times as the funding kept coming up short. But today Ark Encounter, Ham's full-size replica of Noah's Ark, finally opens next door to his Creation Museum in Kentucky, drawing both supporters and protesters.

The Young Earth Creationist and founder and president of Answers In Genesis has become one of the most powerful and polarising religious leaders in America’s Bible Belt. And his life-size Ark Encounter in Kentucky is a monolithic physical reminder of that. As Thursday’s opening day looms, a renewed wave of protest and support for Ham’s Ark Encounter project has built.

Atheist group Tri-State Freethinkers is planning to hold a protest against outside the Ark Encounter on opening day. It tried to place billboards on the highway approaching Ark Encounter, calling it the “Genocide and Incest Park”, but was rebuffed by billboard companies, Christian news website Christian Today reported.

Ham believes evolution is a fraud, the world is only 6000 years old and was created in six days, the Book of Genesis is historical fact, homosexuality is a sin, and, yes, Noah really did march animals onto an ark to save them from a great flood. Ham’s ark is built according to the dimensions given in the Bible.

I'm going to repeat this because I love harping on it. Ham's interpretation of the Book of Genesis does not match the literal text. It's based on a messy piece of scriptural interpretation called the Ussher Chronology that doesn't even line up with the Genesis narrative. So if Ham is a literalist Christian, he's just wrong, period. His assertion that to be a real Christian you have to believe everything that he does is ridiculous in that regard.

Maybe it's silly to keep bringing that up, since a world that's 6000 or 10,000 years old, or even in that ballpark, is pretty much impossible based on all available scientific evidence. But the fact that Ham can't even keep his theology straight continues to amuse me long after it probably should. The bottom line is that he's a hypocrite just like many fundamentalists, reading the Bible as literal when it supports what they want to believe and otherwise interpreting the text to match.

The Elemental Work - Fire

This article is Part Four of a series. Part One can be found here, Part Two can be found here, and Part Three can be found here.

This article is the fourth entry in my Elemental Work series, covering the element of Fire. The basic symbol set of the Western Magical Tradition consists of the elements, planets, and signs of the zodiac, and realistically an effective magician should be familiar with how to work with all of them. This is the final entry of the series, wrapping it up with the element of Fire. As an aside, it seems appropriate to be posting this on Independence Day, which is celebrated with fireworks here in the United States.

The elemental schema used in the Thelemic and Golden Dawn systems involves five elements, adding Spirit to the classical arrangement. I will probably put together a ritual for Spirit at some point, but as there are only four traditional elemental Kings, the ritual will be significantly different in a number of respects from these four traditional operations. In effect, it will constitute its own ritual form, rather than partaking of the one used here.

If you've already read through the last three posts, you will probably find parts of this one repetitive. That's intentional, as I want each of these posts to be able to stand on its own without reference to the others. Incidentally, this has been one of the biggest challenges for me with respect to my Enochian books. I want each book to stand on its own, but at the same time I want to make sure that I re-hash as little as I can get away with.

According to the ancient Greek system, each element arises from the interaction of the Powers, which many modern magicians do not work with or even know about. The four powers are Warm/Cool and Moist/Dry. The Warm power separates things, while the Cool power merges them together. The Moist power breaks down structure, while the Dry power reinforces it.

I will not be going into a full discourse on the Powers and how they relate to the elements, but if you would like to delve deeper into the symbolism I recommend that you check out The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements by John Opsopaus. The links from that main page will allow you to explore these aspects of the classical elements, along with a lot of other related symbolism.

Not the Loch Ness Monster

Longtime readers of this blog know that I've been pushing my hypothesis (note: not "theory") regarding the identity of the Loch Ness Monster for years. I think that the monster is a sturgeon, based on a number of recent pieces of evidence. Monster hunter Steve Feltham, who I covered about a year ago, likewise believes that the monster is a fish, but he has a different candidate in mind - the Wels Catfish, a large fish that was introduced into the loch as a sport fish during the Victorian era.

This last week, it seemed as if the discovery of a mysterious set of remains on the shore of the loch might shatter both of those explanations. They appeared to be those of a dinosaur-like creature that clearly was no fish. But the discovery turned out to be not quite what anyone expected.

An animal rescue charity posted the images on its Facebook page saying that a dog walker had found the remains next to Loch Ness.

People across the globe were this morning mourning the apparent loss of the once-mythical beast.

Some, however, have called into question the veracity of the image saying it is strange that the skeletal remains still had the internal organs intact.

Surely they would have been eaten/rotted away with the rest of the flesh?

Help2Rehome Scotland later poured water on all and any theories saying it was actually set out for a TV show.

So the catfish versus sturgeon debate is still alive and well. While the Wels Catfish is a good candidate on the grounds that it is known to live in the loch and sturgeons are not, a number of the photos I have seen suggest a longer fish. The Wels Catfish grows to about nine feet, whereas the European Sea Sturgeon can grow to more than twice that long. At the same time, European Sea Sturgeons are critically endangered, while Wels Catfish are relatively common.

So until somebody comes across a real specimen as opposed to a fake one, the debate will go on over the monster's identity.