thinking_turtle

We are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; public health authorities government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; new revelations are leaking out about just how bad the Covid vaccines are for human health; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button. 

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion. 

Once again I'd like to turn to my commentariat for a bit of technical assistance. I need an item of sheet iron or sheet steel, about six inches wide, a foot long, and thick enough not to wobble, cut to a particular shape and with certain words and symbols engraved or otherwise marked on one side. I am of course more than willing to cover all costs plus a reasonable sum for labor. If this is something you can do, dear reader, let me know and I'll be in touch promptly. 

Yes, it has to do with occult practices, which is why I'm being a little cagy about the details. (Those who are familiar with two books of mine will know instantly what it is, though of course I'm not going to say which two books.) No, nobody will be harmed in the use of this item, nor (I trust!) will anybody be harmed in the making of it. 

Thank you in advance for your help! 

 I'm in New York City right now, having attended a conference on occultism and the humanities, and will be going to the afterparty shortly. It's by no means certain I'll be back before midnight and by no means impossible that I'll be too tired (and possibly too inebriated as well) to post Magic Monday as soon as I get back. Have no fear, it'll go up as soon as I can manage it. 

You may be interested to know, dear reader, that there are places online where Freemasons like me get together to giggle at the latest conspiracy theories about Freemasonry.  Most of them are pretty bland -- cue that song from The Simpsons:

"Who supports the British Crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!"

Actually, we don't, but most of the claims being flung around by conspiracy theorists who are obsessed with Masons (rather than, say, the Catholic church, or the CIA, or the Bilderbergers, or that perennial favorite, the Jews) aren't much more imaginative. Every so often you get something more interesting...

...and then there's the piece I've posted on the left. 

Yes, it was meant seriously. It appeared in a conspiracy-theory forum on Facebook and was picked up from there by a fan of what a friend of mine calls the "schizophrenic samizdat," the endless stream of odd publications on the fringes of society generated by the walking wounded of today's reality wars. From there it came to the attention of one of my fellow Masons, who posted it to one of the online locations I mentioned above. 

I'm really not sure what to make of it. If Freemasons vanquished the dragons, doesn't that mean we're the good guys? Here's the lineup of great dragon slaying heroes from history: St. George, Sigurd the Volsung, Beowulf, and Brother Ben Franklin -- or  kindly old Brother Fred from the lodge down the street? Is the relentless presence of chicken in Masonic banquets a fading memory of the dragon-meat feasts of that distant time? And in that case, why are there always green beans? 

(Seriously, there are always green beans. Their presence in Masonic dinners is so relentless that at one of the lodges I belong to, it's become a standard joke that the G in the Masonic emblem stands for green beans.) 

In a slightly more serious vein, I've been mentioning for some time now that our civilization's age of reason is winding down in the usual way, as too many people become aware of just how fallible the official spokesflacks of reason are, and just how bad an idea it is to trust The Science™ without doing a little due diligence first. The return of mythological thinking is part and parcel of that process -- and I think what we have here is a fine example of mythological thinking on the hoof. 

Or, as the case may be, claw.