brighid

Ohhhhhhhhh, by Her Grace, THE IPU - what on Earth are you talking about Amos?

Funny, how Seneca influenced the writers of the Malleus and he is one of your favorites!

Nice of you to try and dress up that misogynist clap-trap by attempting to make our love/hate nature more virtuous if the right strings are pulled. I suppose men do the pulling don't they and without the artificial animation of men women are simply hateful, vile beings... or something else wonderful and glowing?

Someone call this man a doctor. And please do everyone a favor and stop smoking crack!

Brighid

Ab_Normal

Amos and ManM:

Thank you for validating my decision to leave the Catholic Church 17 years ago.

Amos

Well may the force be with you.

Amos

Brighid,
I like the line you cited by Seneca and know him well enough to understand why he wrote that. Seneca is much more eclectic than the bible. To know Seneca you need to first understand the bible. Go figure.

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Bible Humper

Hello Amos,

No, Amos, charismatic evangelists were not what they were talking about when they were denouncing sorcerers and witches.

Amos, to say that someone "saw the light" like a "flash of lightning", meaning a sudden overwhelming epiphany, is not in any way, shape or form talking about a literal lightning bolt. The writers of the Malleus were not talking in parable and metaphor, they believed that a witch could actually summon a bolt of electricity from the sky to strike you down.

Your idea of what was "really meant" by the belief that witches could fly around on broomsticks also has no relationship with what was actually believed by the writers of the Malleus.

You have a poet's imagination, Amos, but you perceive symbols and metaphors in words that were never meant to be perceived that way, and which totally transform what it was talking about into some profound theological concept.

The Malleus was a legal document, not a philosophical work.

If you read the Malleus where it deals with this, you will find that the authors were not in any way, shape or form talking about the "illusion of masculinity and it's opposite", they were talking about the dick between our legs disintegrating because of a witch's incantation.

By looking at this legal document as symbolic and metaphorical poetry, you have demonstrated how anything can be made to look profoundly philosophical if you think of each word abstractly enough. You can also make it say anything you want this way, each of the concepts you have attributed poetic truth to could easily be made to symbolise just about anything you could think of because "no word is saying what it says".

I mean come on, Bert and Ernie could symbolize the duality of light and darkness, good and evil, birth and death. Neither can be without the other, as all things that are must always have an opposite.

Their friendship with Big Bird is our innate longing to soar above our earthly existence, a futile dream because of Big Bird's inability to actually fly, and our own inability to return to the ground of our spirituality in life. Their own internalized dream of flight is a pulling at the bars of the cage that holds us within our lower consciousness away from the transcendant.

Oscar The Grouch is our egos, wallowing in the trash heap of our lower consciousness only to hide away once more when it's foulness is revealed to itself by itself.

Mr Snuffalufagus is our deepest untold secrets that we keep from ourselves, only glimpsed sidelong from the periphery of our material perceptions, our secret guilty wishes manifest, and only known to those who can understand the eternal longing to soar above the vulgar but who are barely unable with their inadequate wings and yellow mental feathers.

Kermit the frog is our base amphibious spirituality, our rising from the subconscious waters of our dreams, unto the dry land of existential truth, with always a desire to return to the water.

Amos

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Splashing Colours Of Whimsy:

Well that was a nice analogy of Bert and Ernie and maybe that subliminal message is what made it popular at the time. I really don't know it.

With regard to the Malleus, they probably were to be taken as metaphors but used in the literal way as an alternative because the witches were fundies themselves. The bible was never meant to be taken literally and look what they did with it? The Church does this often and can always hide behind the wrong interpretation when things go wrong and so it does not surprise me that it was used in a literal sense which I now call the wrong interpretaion.

Anyway, I haven't read it so I can't really defend it but I find the symbolism very striking and effective.

Thanks and I will look it up.

Amos

brighid

Amos,

I think in order to understand the Bible the way you do one must smoke or induce the same sorts of hallucinogenic drugs you appear to be taking. I mean ... fundie Christians women who fly on broomsticks and are able to make your illussionary penis disappear. Now if ONLY I could have those powers

Maybe the belief in such things was the medevial equivalent to driving and Iroc or a Mustang today - insy, winsy penis syndrome.

Brighid

Amos

Hi Brighid, I use no drugs and I drive no mustang but present a rational argument with perhaps a little too much induction for you to accept the conclusion. I love the witch imagery and find it very fitting. Actually, I love witches and know lots of them (you don't really believe that they physically fly on brooms do you?).

Do you realize that boys births are an alarming minority these days and among those even the sperm count is declining. The vanishing penis is a matter of fact and the illusory penis is why boy children are prized the world over.

The bible is easy but should never be read until midlife and then without preconceived ideas. Remember here that as a good old Catholic I am in favor of literary censorship because that is the first step in the prevention of witches.

BTW I read some of the Malleus and found it to be true but forcefully slanted towards behavior modification. It is no wonder that the glorious period of the Church followed right after that, which is a period of time that we still admire and adore. In other words, get rid of the witches and civilization will prosper and bloom.

brighid

A little too much induction ... I see sarcasm is lost on you. You find the Malleus to be true! Well, perhaps you provide some factual evidence to support that theory. Didn't you know that all people started off as females in the womb? Are you trying to say that there is some sort of world wide witch... ehm I mean woman conspiracy to wipe out the penis because through the random act of procreation more female children are being born then males? Perhaps some evidence would be nice! Oh, but isn't your God in charge of who gets born, what gender they are, etc?

Really dear, I KNOW witches don't fly on brooms Remember, as an atheist I don't believe in fairy tales!

You really are a piece of work Amos. It simply amazes me that any modern human being is capable of reading the Malleus and believing a word of it. I suppose logic and reason are lost on you!

Good day,
Brighid

daemon

Meanwhile, pigs wheel over the arctic landscape of hell.