#therefore she gets an actual name and an original sect

[otgo-brooklyn]

I Forget About the Sky

"My lover asked me: /What is the difference between me and the sky?/ The difference, my love, Is that when you laugh, I forget about the sky." - Nizar Qabbani

[translations-by-aiimee]

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun - Chapter 7

Original Title:  二哈和他的白猫师尊

Genres: Drama, Romance, Tragedy, Xianxia, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 7 - This Venerable One Likes Wontons

The scorching sun was blazing.

The veranda of Life-Death Peak stretched for mile.

As a rising star among immortal cultivators, it was quite different from the other famous clans of the immortal world.

Take the most prosperous Rufeng Sect of Linyi. The main hall of the sect was called the "Six Virtues Hall", which intended to encourage disciples to be "wise, faithful, holy, righteous, benevolent, and loyal" in accordance with the six virtues. The area where the disciples live was called the "Six Behaviours Gate", which warns the disciples to practice "filial piety, friendship, harmony, marriage, responsibility, and compassion." The place where classes were taught was called "Six Arts Platform", which meant that disciples needed to be proficient in the six skills of "ritual, music, archery, riding, calligraphy, and mathematics".

All in all, its elegance was endless.

On the other hand, Life-Death Peak came from a poor background. Its names were hard to explain. "Danxin Hall" and "Platform of Righteousness and Evil" were alright. Perhaps it was because Mo Ran's father and his uncle weren't scholars and couldn't determine any better names. After a while, the names started to get more nonsensical, naming things "Xue Ya" -sounding names left and right.

Therefore, there are many plagiarised names from the underworld on Life-Death Peak. For example, the room where disciples practiced self-reflection was called Yanluo Hall.

The jade bridge connecting the resting area and the teaching area was called Naihe Bridge. The dining hall was called Mengpo Hall, the martial arts field was called Mountain of Daggers and Sea of Flames. The forbidden area of ​​the back of the mountain is called the Ghost Room, and so on.

These weren't too bad, but there were other places simply called "This is a mountain", "This is water", "This is a pit", as well as the famous "Ahhhhh" and "Wahhhhhh" cliffs.

The elders’ dormitories naturally did not escape, and each has their own nickname.

Chu Wanning was naturally no exception. He liked peace and didn't want to live near others. His residence was built on the South Peak of Life-Death Peak, hidden in a sea of ​​bamboo. There was a pool in front of the main hall, and the pool was red from lotus petals blocking the sunlight from reflecting off it. Because of its abundance of spiritual power, the lotus flowers were in full bloom all year round in the pool, like red clouds.

The disciples secretly called this beautiful place--

Red Lotus Hell.

When Mo Ran thought of this, he couldn't help but laugh.

Chu Wanning wore a terrifying face every single day, and the disciples who saw him thought he was the devil himself. Therefore, shouldn't the place where the devil stays be called hell?

Xue Meng interrupted his daydream: "You laugh even though you were scolded! Hurry up and eat breakfast. After eating, follow me to the Platform of Righteousness and Evil. Shizun will punish you in public today!"

Mo Ran sighed, and touched the whip mark on his face: "Hss. . . ow."

"You deserved it!"

"Hah, I wonder if Tianwen has been repaired. I hope he doesn't try it out on me again before it's fixed. Who knows what nonsense I might say."

In the face of Mo Ran's sincere concerns, Xue Meng's face flushed, and he angrily said: "If you dare to speak out indecently in public against Shizun, I'll rip your tongue out!"

Mo Ran covered his face and waved his hand faintly: "No need, no need, if Shizun ties me with willow vine again, I will end myself on the spot to prove my innocence."

When the hour came, Mo Ran was brought to the Platform of Righteousness and Evil according to customs. He looked around, and there was a deep blue sea of ​​people below. The disciples of Life-Death Peak all wore the sect uniform; blue so dark it was almost black armour, the lion's head belt, wrist guards and the silver threads gleaming on the hems of robes.

The rising sun, below the Platform of Righteousness and Evil, the sea of armour shone.

Mo Ran kneeled on the raised platform, listening to a chief elder list off a long list of the crimes he'd committed.

"Mo Weiyu, disciple of Elder Yuheng, arrogantly disregarded teachings, disobeyed the rules of the sect, and abandoned morality. You have violated the fourth, ninth, and fifteenth mandates of this sect. As punishment, you will receive 80 strikes, copy the sect rules a hundred times and reflect in solitude for a full month. Mo Weiyu, is there anything you have to say in your defense?"

Mo Ran glanced at the white figure in the distance.

That elder was the only member of Life-Death Peak who wasn't required to wear the standard blue and silver rim robe.

Chu Wanning's robe was made of snow-white satin, an outer robe made of cloud-patterned silver silk, like he was dressed in a heavenly frost, but the person wearing it seemed far more frigid than either snow or frost. He sat quietly, far enough away that Mo Ran couldn't see the expression on his face, but he knew that this person was probably completely unphased.

Mo Ran let out a deep sigh: "I have nothing to argue."

According to customary practice, the chief elder asked the disciples below: "If anyone is dissatisfied with the verdict, or has something else to say, this is the time to make such a statement."

All the disciples began to hesitate and averted their gaze.

None of them expected that the Yuheng Elder Chu Wanning would actually send his disciple to be punished publicly on the Platform of Righteousness and Evil.

To put it nicely, this person was impartial, but to word it differently, was also called a cold-blooded demon.

The cold-blooded demon Chu Wanning faintly propped his chin and sat in the position. Suddenly someone shouted with amplifying technique: "Elder Yuheng, this disciple is willing to plead for leniency on behalf of Young Master Mo."

". . . Plead?"

This disciple obviously felt that since Mo Ran was the nephew of Life-Death Peak's lord, even if he had screwed up this time, his future prospects would still be bright, so he decided to take the opportunity to win Mo Ran's favour. He began to talk nonsense: "Although Junior Brother Mo is at fault, he loves his fellow students and helps the weak. Please treat consider being lenient for the sake of his kind nature!"

Obviously, he was not the only one hoping to please Junior Brother Mo.

Gradually, more and more people spoke up for Mo Ran. They threw out all sorts of arguments, it made even Mo Ran embarrassed to hear; when had he ever had "an innocent heart, pure and open-minded"? This was a disciplinary meeting, not a commendation meeting, right?

"Elder Yuheng, Junior Brother Mo once helped me exterminate demons and killed deadly beasts. I would like to beg on Junior Brother Mo's behalf. His merits will offset his demerits, and I hope that Elder will lighten his punishment!"

"Elder Yuheng, Junior Brother Mo once helped me dispel my demons when I experience qi deviation. I believe Junior Brother Mo made a mistake this time and was only momentarily confused. I also ask Elder to please be lenient on Junior Brother!"

"Elder Yuheng, Junior Brother Mo once gave me an elixir to save my mother. He is a benevolent person. Please, Elder, punish him lightly!"

The last person’s remarks were based on the previous disciples', and he was at a loss for words. Seeing Chu Wanning's frozen eyes sweep over, the anxious disciple didn't hesitate to say: “Elder Yuheng, Junior Brother Mo once helped me dual cultivate--”

"Pff." Someone couldn't help laughing.

The disciple immediately blushed and retreated.

"Yuheng, calm your anger, calm your anger..." Seeing that the chief elder was not happy, he went to his side and hurriedly persuaded him.

Chu Wanning said coldly: "I have never seen such a shameless person. What is his name? Whose disciple?"

The chief elder hesitated a little, then bit the bullet and said softly, "My disciple, Yao Lian."

Chu Wanning raised his eyebrows: "Your disciple? Save face*?"

(Pronounced the same as Yao Lian's name)

The chief elder couldn't help but feel embarrassed, and his old face tried to change the subject with a red face: "He's talented at singing, and he can be useful when he receives the offerings."

Chu Wanning scoffed and turned away, not wanting to waste time talking nonsense with this shameless chief elder.

There were thousands of people on Life-Death Peak. A couple flatterers were nothing surprising.

Seeing the conviction in the faces of his sect brothers, Mo Ran himself almost trusted their words. Very impressive indeed. It turns out he wasn't the only person in this sect that knew how to concoct wild stories in broad daylight. There were many talented people here.

Chu Wanning, who had heard "Elder Yuheng, please be merciful" countless times, finally spoke to the disciples.

"Pleading for Mo Weiyu?" He paused and said, "Yes, all of you may come up."

Those people didn't know what would happen and went up tremblingly.

A golden light flashed in Chu Wanning's palm. Tianwen appeared as commanded, and wrapped around the dozens of people together with a whistle, and tied them firmly in place.

Not again!!

Mo Ran was beginning to get desperate. Just the sight of Tianwen made his legs weak. He really didn’t know where Chu Wanning got such a perverted weapon. It was a good thing he had never taken a wife in his previous life. The poor girl who would marry him, if she didn't get whipped to death, she would be questioned to death.

Chu Wanning's eyes were quite mocking. He asked one of them: "Mo Ran helped you ward off evil spirits?"

How could the disciple resist the torture of TIanwen? He immediately howled: "No! No!"

He asked another one: "Mo Ran helped you overcome your qi deviation?"

"Ah! Never! Never!"

"Mo Ran gave you an elixir?"

"Ah—! Help! No, no! I made it up! I made it up!"

Chu Wanning loosened the hold, but then raised his hand and waved the weapon fiercely, it crackling and blazing, Tianwen suddenly lashed out and hit the backs of the lying disciples.

There were screams instantly, blood splashing.

Chu Wanning's eyebrows furrowed, and he scolded: "What are you calling? Kneel down! Disciple attendant!"

"Here."

"Deliver the punishment!"

"Understood!"

As a result, instead of reaping the benefits of defending Mo Ran, each of them was beaten with ten strikes each for violating the mandate of deception, plus a bonus willow vine lash gifted by Elder Yuheng.

After nightfall, Mo Ran lay on his bed. Although he had been given medicine, his back was covered with staggered scars. He couldn't even turn himself over without almost crying from the pain. He sniffled.

He had been born, so whimpering like this made him look like a fluffy, abandoned kitten. But it was a pity that his thoughts didn't match that cute kitten image.

He gripped the bedding and bit into the sheets, imagining that this was that bastard Chu Wanning. He bit! Kicked! Stomped! Tore!

The only comfort is that Shi Mei came to visit him with a bowl of wontons. He stared at him with those gentle and pitiful eyes, and Mo Ran's tears fell even more fiercely.

He didn't care whether men were supposed to hold in their tears or not, he loved to act spoiled in front of the person he liked.

"Does it still hurt a lot? Can you sit up?" Shi Mei sat on the edge of his bed and sighed. "Shizun, he. . . he was too cruel. Look at your back. . . there are several wounds. Some are still bleeding."

Mo Ran's heart softened, a warmth gradually rose in his chest. His teary eyes lifted from the bedding and he blinked.

"Since Shi Mei cares about me so much, I, I'm not in too much pain anymore."

"Oh, how can it not hurt if you look like this? You know what Shizun's temperament is like, will you dare do something like this in the future?"

In the candlelight, Shi Mei looked at him a little helplessly and a little distressedly. The amorous eyes were gleaming, like warm spring water.

Mo Ran's heart moved slightly, and he cleverly said: "Never again. I swear.

"Does anyone believe your promises anymore?" Even though he said that, Shi Mei also smiled, "The wontons are getting cold, can you sit up? If you can't get up, just lie on your stomach and I will feed you."

Mo Ran had already climbed up halfway, but immediately collapsed back down when he heard this.

Shi Mei: ". . ."

Whether it was this life or his previous one, Mo Ran's favourite food was Shi Mei's handmade wontons. The dough was as thin as a cloud of smoke, and the filling was tender and moist, melting in his mouth after every bite.

Especially the soup, the milky consistency, sprinkled with green onions, tender yellow egg wisps, and topped with a spoonful of spicy chilli peppers fried with garlic. It made whoever ate it feel so warm that they would never be cold again.

Shi Mei carefully spoonfed him. While feeding him, he said: "I didn't put any chilli oil today. You're badly hurt. Spice isn't good for recovery. Just drink the broth instead."

Mo Ran stared at him and he couldn't look away. He smiled: "Spicy or not, as long as you made it, it's delicious."

"Smooth talker." Shi Mei also smiled, picking up a poached egg lying in the soup, "Here's your reward, I know you like them."

Mo Ran laughed, a small tuft of hair curling on his forehead, like a flower blooming: "Shi Mei."

"What's happening?"

"Nothing, I just felt like saying your name."

". . ."

The hair tuft swayed back and forth.

"Shi Mei."

Shi Mei held back a smile: "Just felt like it again?"

"Hmm, just saying your name makes me happy."

Shi Mei sat silently for a moment then gently touched his forehead: "Silly boy, do you have a fever?"

Mo Ran let out a laugh. He rolled over, looking at him sideways, his eyes bright, as if full of fine stars.

"It would be a dream if I could eat Shi Mei's wontons every day"

He truly meant it.

After Shi Mei died, Mo Ran had always wanted to try the wontons he made again, but it is what it is, and he wasn't coming back.

At that time, Chu Wanning hadn't completely broken off all relations with him. Whether it was out of guilt or something else, he didn't know, but when he saw Mo Ran knelt in front of Shi Mei's coffin in a daze, Chu Wanning went quietly to the kitchen, kneaded dough and minced the fillings, carefully folded a couple wontons. But Mo Ran saw what he was doing before he had finished. With the loss of the love of his life, Mo Ran just couldn't bear it. He felt like Chu Wanning was doing it to mock him, a botched attempt at imitating them, a deliberate insult to injury.

Shi Mei was dead. Chu Wanning could have saved him, but he refused to help. Afterwards, he wanted to replace Shi Mei and make wontons for Mo Ran instead? Did he think that this would make him happy?

He rushed into the kitchen and knocked over all the utensils. The round wontons fell out of his hands and all over the floor.

He screamed at Chu Wanning: "Who the hell do you think you are? You think you're worthy of replacing him? Of making the food he used to? Shi Mei is dead, are you satisfied? Or do you have to torture your disciples until they go mad or die before you're happy? Chu Wanning! No one in this world can make those wontons anymore. You can try but you'll never be him!"

Now he was eating this bowl with such deep joy. He slowly ate them, savouring them. Although he was still smiling, his eyes were a little moist. Fortunately, the candlelight was dim, and Shi Mei couldn't see his subtle expression clearly.

Mo Ran said: "Shi Mei."

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

Shi Mei froze for a moment, and then smiled gently: "Isn't it just a bowl of wontons? No need to be so formal about it. If you like them, I will always make them for you in the future."

Mo Ran wanted to say, the thanks wasn't just for the wontons.

Thank you also, whether in the last life or in this life, for being the only one to look out for me, not caring about my origins, didn't care about the fourteen years I spent scavenging around.

Thank you, because if it weren't for the sudden thought of you, after being reborn, I'm afraid I would not be able to stop myself from killing Rong Jiu. I would've made a big mistake, and walked the same path I had before.

Fortunately, in this life, I was reborn before you die. I will definitely take good care of you. If you are sick, and that cold-blooded demon Chu Wanning is unwilling to save you, I will.

But how could he have said these words aloud?

In the end, Mo Ran just drank the soup, leaving not even a single green onion behind. He licked his lips unconsciously, his dimples prominent, and he was as cute as a very fluffy little cat.

"Will there be more tomorrow?"

Shi Mei couldn't help but shake his head: "You don't want something else? Won't you get sick of them?"

"I'll never get tired of your wontons, as long as you don't get tired of making them."

Shi Mei shook his head and smiled: "I don't know if there's enough flour left. If there's not enough, I'm afraid I can't make it. If I can't, do you think the eggs in sweet soup are alright instead? They are also one of your favourites."

"Okay, okay. As long as you make it, anything is okay."

Mo Ran's heart surged. He was so happy he could roll around in the blankets.

Look at caring Shi Mei is, Chu Wanning, you go screw yourself! I get to lie in bed with a beauty taking care of me, hehe!

Thinking of Shizun, a rush of anger mixed with the tenderness he had been feeling.

Mo Ran started to dig the bottom of the headboard with resentment again. He cursed, what Yuheng of the Night Sky, what the Beidou Immortal, it's all fucking bullshit!

Chu Wanning, just wait and see!!

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

[sixteenthshen]

Episode 1 Notes/Meta

Contains minor spoilers up to Youtube's schedule and references to the novel

Since I don’t have any new episodes to watch until Friday, I decided to watch the drama all over again, very closely, to see if there’s anything new to discover.

Zhou Zishu's character: 

Drama immediately sets the backdrop/tells us why his character is kinder, more compassionate than in the novel. We don't know that drama!ZZS is kinder yet at this time, but we can see that he's schemey and sneaky

He wears a mask of indifference as the Window of Heaven's leader (sorry ZZH, I was wrong. I thought your acting was stiff during one scene, but now I know better). It's one of the many subtle faces of ZZS.

Wen Kexing's character:

He must be a highly-skilled martial artist based on how easily he kills two ghosts and that he can spot another skilled martial artist from a distance (beggar Zhou)

He's quite schemey. First, when he orders all his subordinates out to hunt for a man he just killed. Next, when he lets Gu Xiang go to check on the beggar, he's also subtly using her to test that unknown person's martial arts skills.

Why they're soulmates:

WKX understood immediately what "beggar" Zhou was doing (suntanning)

They're both well-matched schemey bastards

Behind the cut, geographical details and some details about the supporting characters. This is a very text-heavy post FYI

In chronological order:

20 years ago, Rong Xuan was killed by the Five Lakes Alliance and the gathered heroes.

Prince Jin is based far away in the North (Hedong 河东), where he holds power. It implies most of the story later takes place closer to the south of China.

Prince Jin ordered the Window of Heaven (TC in short, for Tian Chuang) to assassinate the Military Governor of Zhenwu (Officer Li). The Zhenwu Army is located somewhere around Inner Mongolia today.

Prince Jin falsely claims the Military Governor is a traitor to the country and has him assassinated. Prince Jin harbours treasonous thoughts, and in turn, makes ZZS and TC traitors.

Officer Li recognized Zhou Zishu by sight (calls him Officer Zhou), which means that they must have met previously somehow. He is shocked to know that ZZS is the leader of TC, so TC must be a secret assassin/spy organization (like an ancient CIA)

Zhou Zishu gets a drop of blood on his sword and flicks it off – he does not like blood.

Princess Jing An knows ZZS and first calls him Zhou shixiong (her first instinct is to use a familiar address). She later changes it to Officer Zhou when she realizes what he did.

Princess Jing An quotes, "The flowers blossom in all four seasons, knowing everything in the world", which makes ZZS turn to look at her - he sees the hairpin that his shidi Qin Jiuxiao made for the one he loves. ZZS gets super sad.

This line of poetry refers to the Four Seasons Manor (ZZS's martial arts sect)

ZZS, during his time as a court official, intentionally has a blank mask, so his emo is seen only in his slightly teary eyes.  Removing this mask is also part of the freedom he seeks. Possibly symbolic that he feels freer living behind a physical mask than he does with his face.

Prince Jin ordered ZZS to personally nail the seven nails into Bi Chang Feng (Uncle Bi). It seems somewhat cruel of the Prince. ZZS walks with 2 of his commanders – Duan Pengju and Han Ying.

Uncle Bi calls ZZS Manor Lord (庄主)*. He says he cannot help but suspect the motives of Prince Jin. ZZS shows a slight reaction to this. He knows the motivations of Prince Jin by now. Not only is he a traitor himself, but he dragged all his 81 men down with him.

This is the root cause of ZZS's different personality traits in the drama and novel. I think his character in both the book and drama adaption is similar, but his additional compassion stems from being placed in different circumstances.

Novel!ZZS did terrible things for the right reasons. As a result, he won't feel as guilty and has less reason to be so compassionate.

Drama!ZZS followed the wrong master, and the awful things he did were for treasonous reasons. There's no justification for the lives he took. Because he did worse things, he's better able to "see the light" and understand things in life better. Therefore, kinder.

The motto of the Window of Heaven (as requested by Prince Jin):

The members are to carry out their missions without leaving a trace (shadow without traces)

Once a person enters TC, they're never to leave (entry without exit.)

To know everything and to be everywhere.

When the camera cuts to ZZS's two senior officers, Han Ying shuts his eyes sadly while Duan Pengju has a slight smile on his face 🤨🤨.

Nails of Seven Torments (七窍三秋钉) – seven nails, each to be driven into the seven primary acupoints (for martial arts) in a person's body. After that, a person won't get to see more than three autumns. They would lose their martial arts ability entirely, and their five senses deteriorate over time, preventing the secrets of TC from being leaked. (see #2 of their motto)

ZZS does not like anyone who's not from his sect to call him Manor Lord, as it's a reminder of his failings. He doesn't think he has the right to be called that any longer since he ruined his sect.

Prince Jin calls ZZS by his name directly (Zishu); it implies a certain level of familiarity. However, ZZS hasn't been presented himself in front of Prince Jin in some time, suggesting he has already distanced himself from Prince Jin (and a certain level of disrespect)

From Duan Pengju, we learn that ZZS hadn't taken up his sword much in the past year due to a lingering injury; this time at the Military Governor's residence was the first time he wielded his sword in a while.

DPJ also uses this word again (又) in Chinese to describe ZZS aggravating his injuries again (that isn't in the YT subs), which implies that he has suffered other internal injuries before, not solely from QJX's death. DPJ is subtly suggesting to Prince Jin that ZZS is no longer very fit and not suitable for his role (shows us his ambition).

ZZS's current injury (that Uncle Bi refers to and why he coughed up blood in the snow) came about after Qin Jiuxiao's (shidi) death. He coughed up blood then and fainted.**

ZZS's residence is called Chongming Garden (重明苑), where he has a mural of 82 white flowers and the line of poetry about the Four Seasons Manor. He paints each flower red when one of his original sect members pass away. There's only one white flower left --- himself.  See this link for a more detailed translation.

ZZS scolds a vision of his shidi not to cry. ZZS's assertion that men shouldn't cry comes up several times later. His eyes only get teary after this scene, and not a single tear falls again (still canon for now).

ZZS has an official court position. He's an Imperial Guard with some seniority, and it's likely why the Military Governor calls him Officer Li. (A governor would not call a low ranked Imperial Guard “Officer” 大人 daren)

ZZS has several battle wounds from a blade, but the ones on his back (shoulder blades) look messy. Not sure what they are yet, but I think it could become relevant later.

Prince Jin appears unstable when he talks about everyone leaving him. Yunxing and Beiyuan are both characters from Lord Seventh. Beiyuan is the titular character of that novel. When Prince Jin said, "Beiyuan is gone too", ZZS displays a minute reaction because he knows Beiyuan isn't actually dead.

Prince Jin says ZZS is ruthless, but he's even more so to himself (recurring description).

Here, we see that ZZS knows of DPJ's ambition to take over his job when he says they both get their wishes today. DPJ becomes the new TC leader.

Prince Jin lets ZZS go. As he watches ZZS leave, he recites two lines from a poem, which title roughly translates to "on one's deathbed/imminent death".***

“涓涓江汉流，天窗通冥室。谗邪害公正，浮云翳白日。” Small streams can become large rivers; even a window as small as a skylight can brighten a dark room. Rumours and evil can harm the public good; clouds can block the bright light of the sun.

There's some foreshadowing here. Prince Jin sees ZZS leaving as a threat. It could be that one person leaving TC "standing" may lead to an exodus or that ZZS knows too much to be left alive outside for long. Prince Jin sees himself as the righteous and the sun here. He follows the recital by saying he's only letting ZZS go for now.

ZZS's beggar styling is supposed to juxtapose his strict and neat dress as the leader of TC, including his hair and overall CBAssed-ness of how his clothes hang.

Hanged ghost died super quick. We see an arm covered in a red sleeve strangle him to death. Red sleeve dude seems to be the head of the Ghost Valley (yaaaaa we know who you are)

WKX lies to the masses about the Hanged Ghost and tells them to set forth out of the Ghost Valley. We can see that all of them are scared of him. He has a scheme -- but we don’t know what it is yet.

WKX and ZZS meet (yay!!!) in Yue (modern-day Zhejiang, in the south), far away from Prince Jin. We should note that this is very far away from the North, where Prince Jin and TC hold power.

ZZS would rather be a beggar than the Emperor. The freedom to live and do whatever he chooses is more important to him than riches or power.

WKX understood what ZZS was doing right away (while GX thinks he's a beggar). This is why they're soulmates!

Gu Xiang's cuteness comes off as a little forced here, but upon re-watching, I believe it's because she hasn't been out in the "human world" before. Her mannerisms are all learned from her life in the Ghost Valley. She's also about ten years younger than WKX, so she's supposed to be more energetic.

WKX allows GX to go down partly because he is curious about the beggar, who seems to be very skilled at martial arts. GX is quite a straightforward and innocent person. She's unaware that she's helping to test the beggar's skills for her master.

WKX notices the ZZS's martial arts and stands up right away. This scene is also more important than it seems to be at first. Later in episode 2, it's revealed that he recognized the beggar's particular martial arts as unique to the Four Seasons Manor sect. I think it's the first hint that beggar Zhou may be "Zhou Zishu". (We find out that WKX knows ZZS's real name in episode 6.)

ZZS intentionally hits himself to make himself seem like a poor injured beggar and GX a bully. It shows that ZZS is sneaky – and again, ruthless, even to himself.

* ZZS is not a real lord. He's the sect leader (Manor Lord comes about because his sect's name ends in Manor, and the address "my lord" comes from Manor Lord). ** This is a fictional type of injury, where people in Chinese historical dramas cough up blood when they suffer severe emotional shocks that cause some unexplained internal injury. *** 《临终诗》

[robininthelabyrinth]

Complications (aka trans!Jiang Cheng with a kid) - ao3 or part 1, part 2, part 3

-

A-Lian was as good a name as any for the brat, Jiang Cheng supposed. 

He’d been spitefully thinking of additional names ever since Nie Huaisang, that busybody, had decided on the name he liked best, but unfortunately Jiang Lian had a better ring to it than any of the others he’d come up with so far and he wasn’t quite petty enough to condemn his son to a disharmonious name just out of spite.

Assuming A-Lian stayed a son, anyway. Jiang Cheng was still curious as to how the Nie sect had managed to get cursed with an entire generation of women – Nie Huaisang had let slip a few hints that it might’ve had to do with a very fat celestial bird that hadn’t appreciated a comment that had, truly, been meant as a compliment, and anyway they would have made for excellent drumsticks, and honestly the more Jiang Cheng heard about this story the more he wondered if marrying Nie Huaisang just to hear the full version might possibly be worth it – and obviously he wasn’t about to let the Lotus Pier continue to ignore the issue of misaligned reincarnations any longer.

Something he’d have to start enforcing once he was back on the war front, he supposed – which was going to be very soon, if he had his way about it; he was sick and tired of the (nearly completed!) post-pregnancy isolation period.

He couldn’t wait for the relative peace and quiet of an active battlefield.

Of course, the second he thought that, A-Lian started making ominous grumbling sounds, because babies were apparently psychic. Why had no one ever mentioned that?

“You can’t be hungry again, brat,” Jiang Cheng told A-Lian firmly. “I literally just fed you.”

He probably just wanted to burp again, so Jiang Cheng picked him up and started patting him with one hand, using the other to fish out Nie Mingjue’s most recent letter. The other sect leader was quite possibly the most relaxing person he’d ever corresponded with: his letters were practical and to the point, with no extraneous fluff that Jiang Cheng would feel obliged to respond to. 

More importantly, it gave him an update on how his sect was doing, which was all for the best – Nie Mingjue had kept recruitment open for him, which he hadn’t needed to do, and that meant that each letter now contained not only battle strategy and requests for final decisions but also lists of the talent (or lack thereof) of new recruits so that he could make a decision on their admittance as tentative nominal disciples. Final admittance would have to wait until he returned, of course…

He hadn’t gotten a letter from Nie Huaisang yet.

That was to be expected, he supposed. Nie Huaisang had insisted on sticking around for nearly two weeks following the birth to make sure Jiang Cheng didn’t mysteriously expire from complications – the doctors had rolled their eyes a little, but Nie Huaisang’s mother had died from an infection that hadn’t been spotted in time and Jiang Cheng understood his paranoia – and he’d only reluctantly agreed to go, which meant he was probably dragging his feet.

Anyway, just because Nie Huaisang had agreed to tell Wei Wuxian about A-Lian didn’t mean that he could necessarily find Wei Wuxian. His shixiong could be anywhere, after all; contributing to the campaign, of course, but not necessarily in the Jiang sect’s camp…

Ah, yes. Just what Jiang Cheng’s day was missing: the stabbing sense of inadequacy and failure, with a nice slice of the sinking suspicion that his leadership was so bad that he couldn’t even convince his own shixiong to follow him and therefore everyone who was following him was simply humoring him.

“At least you seem to like me well enough,” he muttered to A-Lian, who gurgled happily at him now that the unfortunate burping incident was behind them. “You keep that up, you hear me? You may be a brat, and little more than a blob with arms and legs, but you still have to like me best.”

Nie Huaisang insisted that A-Lian was a gorgeous baby, but Jiang Cheng was having some trouble seeing it. Obviously A-Lian was a baby superior to all other babies, undoubtedly through sheer dumb luck (maybe it skipped a generation?), but he kept worrying that he’d done something wrong, either during the pregnancy or the birth or the care he’d been giving him, and that he’d end up damaging A-Lian for life.

It was easier if he thought of A-Lian as a very resistant blob that would always resume its original shape.

…he really wished Nie Huaisang would write to him and tell him what’d happened when he told Wei Wuxian.

He knew that Wei Wuxian would take it personally, but he wasn’t exactly sure how. Would Wei Wuxian be angry with him? Disappointed, that Jiang Cheng hadn’t just lost his core to the Wens, but his chastity as well? Disdainful that Jiang Cheng had been so desperate for family that he’d decided to carry the child to term, even knowing that its father was their parents’ murderer - that he himself had helped murder the father in turn? Upset, because Wei Wuxian had done so much to rescue him and care for him and even help him get his golden core back, and in return Jiang Cheng did nothing but create another burden that would fall on his shoulders?

Or worse – would Wei Wuxian feel like a failure, too, the way Jiang Cheng always did, and all because he hadn’t been able to save Jiang Cheng from the obvious consequences of his own stupidity?

(It wasn’t that Jiang Cheng hadn’t known when he’d allowed himself to be captured that he’d be tortured and most probably killed, and yet somehow it had never occurred to him that they would do what they did to him – he’d been a man so long that he’d forgotten, just like everyone else in the Lotus Pier, that he’d ever been regarded as anything else. He still didn’t regret the choice he’d made; he’d known that Wei Wuxian would do a better job of avenging his parents than he would and he was right about it, too, wasn’t he?)

Jiang Cheng was so immersed in dark thoughts that he almost – almost – failed to notice when A-Lian started reaching for the ink. Well, flailing around in the general vicinity of the ink, anyway.

“Don’t you even dare think about it, brat. Do you remember bathtime? You don’t like bathtime, and if you get yourself covered in ink, there’s going to be even more bathtime…”

“Jiang-xiong! Jiang-xiong! Are you and A-Lian awake in there?”

It was Nie Huaisang.

He’d returned in person instead of writing a letter; was that a good sign or a bad sign?

“Even if we weren’t, we would be after your yelling,” he shouted back. “What are you, an elephant?”

“A bull!”

“You’re too prissy to be a bull, except for the bullshit you always keep spouting!”

Jiang Cheng waited for Nie Huaisang’s response, which would inevitably be dripping with innuendo, and blinked when there wasn’t anything. That was strange; it wasn’t as if there was anyone here that Nie Huaisang would be embarrassed to –

Oh no.

“Can we come in?” Nie Huaisang asked from outside his door.

Jiang Cheng’s suspicions were confirmed at once when he heard that dreadful ‘we’. Nie Huaisang had returned not with news but with company – company Jiang Cheng still wasn’t sure he was ready to see.

“…fine,” he still said, because there was no point in holding it off any further. He braced himself for Wei Wuxian to sweep into the room like a hurricane.

He was not expecting Jiang Yanli to walk in instead.

“Jiejie!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, and – damn him – felt his eyes start filling up with tears at once. He’d wanted so badly to have her with him during this excruciating process, and she’d even offered, writing him a letter full of concern about the ‘complications’ he was apparently struggling with. But she’d been safe in the Jin sect and he wouldn’t have been able to bear the guilt if something had happened to her on the way to see him.

And that meant he couldn’t say anything, not even in letters that were safe, not even in code, because if he’d so much as breathed a word about what was actually happening, she would have insisted on coming no matter what.

“A-Cheng!” she exclaimed, and rushed over. “Oh, A-Cheng, why didn’t you tell me…”

“I wanted to you to stay safe,” he sniffed. “Travel is so dangerous, and if something happened because of me –”

“Oh, A-Cheng…” She wrapped her arms around him. “I just wish I’d been here for you. You must have been so scared!”

“I have nightmares that say he was mostly just really angry,” Nie Huaisang put in, unhelpful as always; Jiang Cheng didn’t even bother to spare him a glance.

“You were here,” he assured her. “You sent me soup every week; I ate that when I couldn’t keep anything else down –”

A particularly vicious surge of late-onset morning sickness. It’d been a bad ten days.

“You still should’ve told us,” and that was Wei Wuxian, standing in the door next to Nie Huaisang with his shoulders up by his ears defensively, but Jiang Cheng was curled up in his sister’s arms so even if Wei Wuxian was horribly disappointed in him he would be able to handle it.

With Jiang Yanli there, he could handle anything.

“Probably should have,” he agreed, because Wei Wuxian was right. Opting to carry A-Lian at all was a stupid risk to have taken in the first place, given the likelihood of dying in childbirth and leaving the Jiang sect without a leader during their time of need, but – well, that’d been a risk he’d accepted the first time around when he’d given himself up to save Wei Wuxian. It hadn’t seemed so bad the second time, even though he knew he risked wasting all of Wei Wuxian’s hard work in rescuing and getting his core back. “Didn’t, though. You want to hold the brat?”

“Of course I want to hold the brat!” And when Jiang Cheng looked over, Wei Wuxian was smiling. Smiling. “I have to hold him! He’s my shizi!”

“What are you naming him?” Jiang Yanli asked as Wei Wuxian reached over to pick A-Lian up.

“…Jiang Lian,” Jiang Cheng finally admitted, and any embarrassing comments Nie Huaisang might have had to say about it – Jiang Cheng expected whooping in triumph, to be perfectly honest – were drowned out by A-Lian abruptly howling in indignation that this strange person had dared pick him up.

“Jiang Cheng! Jiang Cheng! The baby’s crying!” Wei Wuxian wailed. He sounded like a baby himself.

“Oh for the – give him here!” The second A-Lian returned to Jiang Cheng’s arms, the crying stop and the baby settled back down. He looked a little smug, even.

“It seems A-Lian likes A-Cheng the best,” Jiang Yanli said, covering her mouth with a smile. “Can I try?”

There were still tears, though not quite as many.

“He’ll get used to you eventually,” Jiang Cheng said, as if he wasn’t preening at his son’s excellent taste. “If you stick around, that is.”

“As if you’ll be able to get rid of us,” Wei Wuxian huffed, and that made something warm and happy and glowing appear in Jiang Cheng’s chest. “You know, it’s really unfair, Jiang Cheng! I put in all this work and effort into developing demonic cultivation and inventing all sorts of new things, and in a mere ten months you managed to make something even better.”

Jiang Cheng couldn’t help the laugh that broke free, his heart singing happily – Wei Wuxian didn’t hate him, wasn’t disappointed in him, was happy for him. “It wasn’t really something I was actively working on.”

“Rude. No need to rub it in.”

And just because Jiang Cheng was Jiang Cheng, he had to affirmatively check: “You’re not upset, are you?”

“Only that you robbed us of the opportunity to spoil you rotten,” Wei Wuxian said. “Oh, and for having Nie Huaisang tell me about it – I only found out because he and his brother were betting on the gender.”

Jiang Cheng twisted around in Jiang Yanli’s arms to glare at Nie Huaisang.

“I lost,” Nie Huaisang said, as if that would make things better, and weirdly enough it sort of did. “Never bet against da-ge.”

Jiang Cheng thought about it and nodded. That seemed like a good rule, no matter the circumstances – and anyway, if that meant that Nie Mingjue was there when Wei Wuxian was told, that was all the better. As far as Jiang Cheng was concerned, there was nothing in the world that Nie Mingjue couldn’t handle.

He wished he could one day be even half of what Nie Mingjue was. Confident and self-assured, an excellent sect leader beloved by all, a war leader and a filial son, righteous and terrifying…

“I hope he won something good off of you,” he told Nie Huaisang, who grimaced at him in a way that suggested Nie Mingjue really had won something good. “You deserve it.”

“You have no sympathy for me,” Nie Huaisang whined.

“Forget sympathy for you, what about sympathy for me?” Wei Wuxian put in. “‘Oh, hi, Wei Wuxian, nice to see you, been a long time, guess what, your shizi’s a boy!’”

Okay, that sounded really funny actually. Jiang Cheng kind of regrets missing it.

He smirked at Wei Wuxian, who saw it and made a rude gesture in return.

“It was traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said with a sniff. “Really, truly. Shijie, you need to make me some soup to help me get over it.”

“No way,” Jiang Cheng said at once. “If she’s making soup, she’s making it for me.”

“You’ve apparently been getting her soup every week for the past few months; I deserve it more!”

“I’m the one getting my chest gnawed off by a wild animal three times a day –”

“I can make enough for both of you,” Jiang Yanli said patiently. “Nie-gongzi, is there a kitchen..?”

“I’ll show you the way,” Nie Huaisang said with a grin. “I’m eager to see how this famous soup gets made. I had to beg Jiang-xiong for three weeks to get a single spoonful, and it was worth every minute of it.”

“You flatter me…”

They left together, and Jiang Cheng used the opportunity to scrub the tear tracks off his face as best as he could.

“It really was pretty traumatizing,” Wei Wuxian said, pointedly only looking at an increasingly sleepy A-Lian instead of seeing what Jiang Cheng was doing. “Not as traumatizing as the lecture Chifeng-zun gave me afterwards about how badly I’ve been behaving.”

“Badly?” Jiang Cheng said, frowning. “What do you mean, you’ve been fine; the effect your demonic cultivation has been having against the Wens alone –”

“No, I haven’t been,” Wei Wuxian said, and his tone was uncharacteristically serious. “Not because of the demonic cultivation, but because I haven’t been standing by your side the way I promised I would.”

“You’re doing your best,” Jiang Cheng said firmly. “You have demonic cultivation now, and that means you can do a lot more things – it makes sense for your to be at the front line.”

“I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be at the front line. I’m saying that I promised you that you’d be my sect leader, that I’d follow you, and instead I keep treating you like you’re still my shidi. Making decisions on your behalf, insisting on doing things my way because I think I’m right…” Wei Wuxian shook his head. “I got used to doing things that way, all these years. But things are different now. You’re my sect leader. Decisions like how to best deploy me are your decision, not mine – if you want me by your side instead of on the front, I should do that; if you want me to lead the Jiang sect cultivators, I should be doing that. I can try to persuade you that my plan is better, but in the end, if I’m going to be part of the Jiang sect, I need to accept that it’s your word that’s final, because anything else would be disrespectful – and I don’t want to disrespect you, Jiang Cheng. Sect Leader Jiang.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jiang Cheng said, words sharp but only because otherwise he’d have to acknowledge that he was crying again. He hadn’t even known he’d wanted to hear that from Wei Wuxian until he had – he hadn’t realized how important it was that Wei Wuxian finally acknowledged him, that Wei Wuxian thought he was capable of being sect leader; he hadn’t realized how much his feelings had been tangled up by the fact that Wei Wuxian still treated him as if he was just a foolish child that didn’t know better. “Everyone else can call me that, but you call me Jiang Cheng, okay? Always.”

He reached over and grabbed Wei Wuxian around the shoulders, drawing him into a tight one-armed embrace.

“Watch the baby,” Wei Wuxian said, as if he wasn’t hugging back just as hard. “Don’t drop my shizi because you’re not paying attention.”

“I’m not going to drop him,” Jiang Cheng said, grateful for the mostly-a-joke. “Does that – does that mean you’re coming back to the Jiang sect? For real this time?”

“Yes,” Wei Wuxian said. “I am. No more running around outside, I promise.”

Jiang Cheng’s hands were busy, holding his shidi in one and his son in the other, so he had to bury his face into Wei Wuxian’s shoulder to help stop the flow of tears. “Wei Wuxian,” he said. “You really don’t – you’re not angry at me?”

“Why would I be angry at you?” Wei Wuxian said, pulling back and frowning at him and then frowning even more when Jiang Cheng made a flailing sort of gesture with his head towards A-Lian. “For - for that?! Jiang Cheng, it wasn’t your fault you got captured!”

It sort of was, actually, and Jiang Cheng has always been a terrible liar; he shouldn’t have let his insecurities get away from him enough to even ask, because now Wei Wuxian’s eyes were the ones filling up with tears. He’d never been an idiot.

“You didn’t,” he insisted, and his hands were white-knuckled where he grabbed onto Jiang Cheng’s arms. He was probably leaving bruises, and neither of them cared. “Jiang Cheng, tell me you didn’t! Don’t – in the marketplace, when the Wens were about to find me – Jiang Cheng…!”

“Someone needed to avenge our parents, and you were the better choice!” Jiang Cheng blurted out. “And I was right, wasn’t I? You did it! You even invented demonic cultivation –”

“I didn’t have a choice!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed. “There wasn’t any other way out of the Burial Mounds, and now I’m stuck, Jiang Cheng – you don’t understand, it’s not just, I don’t – I can’t – it’s demonic cultivation or nothing for me, and when the war ends, when it stops being useful and starts being horrifying, the entire cultivation world is going to turn against me, and I can’t bring you down with me –”

“Why are you talking like it’s the only type of cultivation you can do anymore?” Jiang Cheng demanded. “How can one type of cultivation block you from doing another? That doesn’t make any sense – even if it did block you, you could just stop, it’s not like you don’t have a golden core –”

Wei Wuxian didn’t say anything.

“You have a golden core,” Jiang Cheng said again, more urgently this time. “Wei Wuxian, you have a golden core, right? You didn’t –” He was starting to panic. “It was Wen Chao that threw you into the Burial Mounds, wasn’t it? He said it himself that that was what he did, and where there’s Wen Chao, there’s Wen Zhuliu – did he melt your core? And I took your name when we went to Baosan Sanren’s mountain, I took your birthright away from you –”

“Jiang Cheng, no! That’s not what happened!”

“You told me to tell her I was you!” Jiang Cheng exclaimed, because what else could it be? Baosan Sanren was a true immortal, powerful enough to fix a golden core, but everyone knew that her disciples weren’t allowed back onto the mountain once they’d left – the gift she’d given him, reviving his core, that must have been a once-in-a-lifetime offer. “I told her I was you so she’d heal me and now she won’t heal you; I did to you what Mother was always afraid you’d do to me –”

“I lied!” Wei Wuxian cried out, and he sounded as if his heart was being torn out of his chest. “I lied, Jiang Cheng, stop trusting me so much! There’s no Baosan Sanren, no mountain; just me, making stupid decisions on your behalf again, because I’m arrogant, because I think I know better, because I –”

“What did you do?” Jiang Cheng said. His lips felt numb. His whole body felt numb. “Wei Wuxian, what did you do –”

A-Lian burst into tears.

That knocked them both out of their self-absorption, turning at once to see what was wrong with the baby.

“Did we jostle him?” Wei Wuxian asked anxiously once they’d gotten A-Lian a little calmer. “We didn’t hurt him, did we?”

“I think we were just being too loud,” Jiang Cheng said after concluding his inspection. “And anyway, he’s kind of a blob right now – you pinch or pull at him and he goes back the way he used to be. The doctors all say that babies are very flexible.”

“A little bun,” Wei Wuxiand agreed. “With just a little dusting of sesame on top.”

Jiang Cheng looked at the very few scraps of black hair A-Lian had managed to grow. “…he does kind of look like that, doesn’t he? Come on, A-Lian, calm down, it’s okay, we’ll stop yelling, we promise –”

“Really?” Wei Wuxian said. He sounded skeptical. “You’re going to stop yelling?”

“Shut up, you sound like Nie Huaisang. Don’t think you’re getting away without telling me what you did…you gave me yours, didn’t you?”

No wonder his core had felt different, stronger, when he’d woken up – he’d assumed it was Baosan Sanren giving him a gift, but in reality it was only that Wei Wuxian was a better cultivator than he was, that he’d strengthened himself more.

No wonder, too, that his core had felt familiar – he’d pressed his ear against Wei Wuxian’s belly a thousand times, feeling the warmth of it, and he’d mistaken that familiarity for it being his.

Wei Wuxian nodded, and Jiang Cheng scowled. “Can it be reversed?”

“Absolutely not,” Wei Wuxian said at once. “For one thing, I wouldn’t agree; for another, it was only a fifty-fifty chance of it working successfully the first time, I’m not taking that risk again. Anyway, I have demonic cultivation now, and if we traded back, you’d need to be the demonic cultivator, and what would that do to the Jiang sect’s reputation?”

Jiang Cheng hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“Especially now that we have an heir,” Wei Wuxian added, reaching out to rub A-Lian’s head. “You’ve got to make sure the Jiang sect is thriving so that you’ll have something good to hand down to him.”

Jiang Cheng really hated it when Wei Wuxian had a point.

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he said.

“I can’t believe you got captured for me,” Wei Wuxian rebutted. But that wasn’t the same at all, it was –

Okay, maybe there were a few superficial similarities.

“At least that explains why you’ve been so distant,” he said, shaking his head and smoothing A-Lian’s minimal hair down as the baby started to fall asleep again. “I thought you just didn’t trust me to be a good sect leader…”

“What? No! Jiang Cheng, you’re a great sect leader. I just didn’t want to risk dragging you down.”

“How can you drag us down? I’m literally using your golden core to lead the sect!”

“It’s yours now,” Wei Wuxian said. “I built it up, but I can’t decide on how you use it – everything you’ve done since then, that’s still yours. You know that, right? It’s all still you. Your achievements, not mine. Saying it’s mine would be like saying that every person that Chifeng-zun has ever defeated was actually the triumph of whoever forged Baxia for him.”

Jiang Cheng would murder anyone who dared to say something like that, except he’d never get the chance to because Nie Huaisang would have ruined their life before he’d even gotten started.

“Fine,” he said. “But you’re still not dragging us down. We’ll just have to be careful, that’s all – we can even use it to our advantage: whenever we need something to happen that we can’t really admit to, we have you do it, excuse it as being because of the influence of your demonic cultivation, and tell everyone we’ll get right on fixing it right away. Just the way Father used to do with Mother’s temper tantrums.”

“…wait, those were staged?”

“Well, some of them were, anyway,” Jiang Cheng said. He was mostly sure. “But you have to run anything really crazy by me first, okay?”

“Right,” Wei Wuxian said, nodding. “Uh – does that count past actions?”

Jiang Cheng wasn’t even surprised. “What’d you do?”

“Promised a safe harbor to one of the branch families of the Wen sect?”

Jiang Cheng might be gullible where his shixiong was concerned, but he wasn’t dumb. “Wen Qing and Wen Ning? They’re the ones that helped you do – what you did.”

Wei Wuxian nodded guiltily.

“Well, in that case, I can hardly turn them down, can I?” Jiang Cheng said, pretending to grumble. “That’d make me ungrateful. Fine; I retroactively authorize your offer, they can come be guest disciples at the Jiang sect –”

Wei Wuxian hugged him again.

“If you wake the baby up again I will kill you,” Jiang Cheng said, but he hugged him back.

“I think they’re done,” Nie Huaisang’s voice drifted in from the door, and they both turned to look.

Jiang Yanli’s eyes were red, suggesting that she’d been listening – and Jiang Cheng hated that, hated that he’d ever caused her pain or sadness; his jiejie deserved the best things in life, always, not more pain and disappointment and everything he brought with him. But true to form she didn’t say anything, only smiled and said, “I knew A-Xian and A-Cheng would talk it out eventually.”

“Bet you didn’t predict the baby,” Nie Huaisang chirped, and then cowered when all three of them glared at him. “Sorry, sorry. Please ignore me.”

“In the future, there will be no such secrets, understood?” Jiang Yanli said to them, with more steel than usual in her soft voice. “A-Xian will tell us before he does something crazy, and A-Cheng won’t not tell us when something important happens –”

“Well, it’s hardly likely to happen a second time,” Jiang Cheng protested, but not very strongly.

“Hey, don’t be so hasty,” Nie Huaisang said. “We could want more kids after we get married.”

“Wait,” Wei Wuxian said. “When did –”

“We are not getting married!” Jiang Cheng bellowed. It was a good thing that A-Lian apparently found Jiang Cheng’s yelling soothing, or else he would’ve woken up again. “Nie Huaisang, stop telling people we’re getting married!”

“I don’t tell people we’re getting married, I only tell you!”

“That’s not better!”

“Wow,” Wei Wuxian said to Jiang Yanli, voice deliberately pitched obnoxiously loud. “It’s almost like they’re married already –”

“Wei Wuxian! I will throw something at your head, just watch me!”

“Just don’t throw the baby!”

[dijeh]

Remember those mythology articles released back when SMT 4 FINAL wasn’t already old news? I figured  two years is perhaps a tad too long even for my levels of procrastination, so I decided to get them done once and for all. This is also a pretty interesting article, so let’s hope it’s a good sign...Anyway!

FIFTEENTH TOPIC: TENKAI AND THE EDO MANDALA

If you were wondering what’s up with all the spooky stuff going on in Tokyo or are into conspiracy theories about Akechi Mitsuhide, then this is the perfect article for you. If not...well, it’s still an interesting insight into some Buddhist protection rituals and a conspiracy theory about Akechi Mitsuhide.

Previous topic: Adramelech and pagan demons. More translations here.  (ko-fi)

How real historical people became part of legend

stories that were turned into legend have been passed down since immemorial times, whether people had the knowledge of writing or not;

there were a lot of legends that were written down once writing was mastered (Japan: Kojiki, Nihon shoki);

Kojiki was completed in about 712 AD, corresponding to the Nara period (ancient capital Nara);

Japan calls the period until these times 上代 (joudai, ancient times), more of a literary term: until then gods were considered to have been real and dwelt on earth;*

the terms 神代 (jindai, age of the gods) or 神世 (kamiyo) basically denote the period before the 天孫降臨 (tensonkourin, descent on earth of Amaterasu's grandson, Ninigi no mikoto);**

the further we descend into ancient history, the rarer the records are, and we end up with vague stories resembling legends more than anything;

Shoutoku Taishi, for example, who lived during the Asuka period, earlier than the Nara period, was more of a real person than gods like Amaterasu or Susanoo and had his portrait on the 10000 yen bill, but tales about him also had mythical elements, and nowadays Shoutoku Taishi tends to be considered more of a fictional character;

it is believed that mythical people like the onmyouji lived during the Heian period, following the Nara period, and they can be found in fiction like taiga drama even nowadays (Taira no Kiyomori);

we have Abe no Seimei as a famous onmyouji, but claiming even Taira no Kiyomori was one is an exaggeration; there aren't any reasons to deny his very existence though;

his parents, date of birth and life have been recorded, but legend exaggerated his abilities ('He was actually a child of gods, so he had supernatural powers’)***;

there were also historical figures of the Middle Ages who became legendary characters;

their popularity among people thanks to tales and plays was translated into additional mythical episodes;

historical records aren't perfect either and there are many cases of unknown birth dates, places or parent names, so they were supplemented by guesses, speculation and broad interpretations, giving birth to these so-called mysterious superheroes;

The mysterious Buddhist priest Tenkai

lived at the end of the Sengoku period - beginning of the Edo period;

was a Tendai priest and worked for Tokugawa Ieyasu;

known as the one who did the town planning for Edo, adopting the feng shui technique;

it is said that he constructed a spiritual barrier, placing Kaneiji in Ueno (north-east) and moving Zoujouji to its current location (south-west), as seen from from the Edo Castle;****

Tenkai's birth is one of the mysteries surrounding him;

it is said he left home when he was only 13 or 14, but nothing had been recorded before that;

he was chief priest in a temple now known as Kita-in from the city of Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, but back then it is seems he was already a confidant of Tokugawa Ieyasu and had also participated in the planning of the battle of Sekigahara;

it is believed that Ieyasu's decision to install the shogunate was also done at the suggestion of Tenkai;

the native Tendai Mikkyou rituals for the protection of the country were implemented on all sides of the Edo Castle, but the four directions of Edo were protected by the four Chinese gods (Genbu in the north, Seiryuu in the east, Suzaku in the south and Byakko in the west), while the conception of the guardian Goshiki Fudou (five-coloured Fudou) was based on the ancient Chinese wu xing, showing that, like Nara's capital Heijoukyou and Kyoto's Heiankyou, Edo had also adopted the Chinese city planning;

evil entering through the kimon (north-east) and urakimon (south-west) was also adopted from China, same as feng shui;

most of these spiritual defenses were built during the time of the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, when Ieyasu had already died;

Tenkai's birth year had been unknown from the very beginning, but it is assumed he lived much longer than the usual lifespan of his times, surpassing 100 years of age at the time of his death in 1643;

the spiritual defenses surrounding the Edo Castle are also called the Edo magic square, but it is actually the Shijokobuccho mandala, a circular mandala, transmitted by Ennin, the disciple of the founder of the Tendai sect, the monk Saichou;

this mandala used during prayers and austerities for country defence and disaster prevention is formed of many Buddha arranged in several concentric circles and can also be found in Rinnouji, the Nikkou temple where Tenkai was chief priest;

we can therefore presume that the spiral-shaped moat of the Edo Castle resembles this mandala;

The Akechi Mitsuhide Theory

Tenkai’s unknown origin, as well as other details of his life, also led to the theory that he was Akechi Mitsuhide (明智光秀), the general who betrayed Oda Nobunaga at Honnouji;

after Tokugawa Ieyasu’s death, he received his posthumous name, Toushou Daigongen, and was enshrined at Nikkou Toushouguu; the scenery that can be viewed from the temple was named Akechidaira (明智平) by Tenkai;

the wet nurse of the third shogun,Tokugawa Iemitsu, was Lady Kasuga, the daughter of Saitou Toshimitsu, a chief vassal of Akechi Mitsuhide; for Iemitsu’s mother, Oda Nobunaga’s niece Okou, she was basically the equivalent of a bitter enemy, and it is presumed her rise in ranks took place thanks to Tenkai;

Tenkai received the posthumous name of Jigen Daishi (慈眼大師); there is a Kyoto temple named Jigenji containing Mitsuhide’s mortuary tablet and wooden statue;

even though Mitsuhide is known to posterity as a traitor, there are opposing views, not only due to his devotion to his wife, serious and kind personality, but also because the reason of his betrayal has remained a mystery for centuries;

it has been however speculated, due to the discovery of some letters, that his friendship with Chosokabe Motochika caused him to prevent Nobunaga’s attack on the Shikoku island, Chosokabe’s domain.

*上代 (joudai) is basically the period when gods used to rule the earth, until Emperor Kanmu's reign; 上 (ue, up) can be read as both kami and jou, while 代 (yo, world, age) can be read as shiro or yo -> the homonym 神代 (kamishiro, age of gods) with 神 (kami) meaning god. 上代 can also be read as kamiyo and has the homonym 神世 (kamiyo), with 世 (yo) meaning world or age.

**wiki tells us this is used in Japanese mythology in particular, the period ending in about 660 BCE.

***the original wording is kami no otoshidane, which basically means 'a god's bastard child' (well, actually it means ‘god’s fallen seed’, but, you know...); why this? one theory has it that Kiyomori was actually Emperor Shirakawa's son and since all emperors were Amaterasu's descendants, that would have made him one too.

****the terms for north-east and south-west are 鬼門 (kimon) and 裏鬼門 (urakimon), which mean 'demon gate' and 'rear demon gate' and are used to denote unlucky directions; more details here; have a silly map too.

[mattchase82]

ANSWERS TO 25 QUESTIONS ON THE

HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

WHICH COMPLETELY REFUTE THE "BIBLE ONLY" THEORY

.

ONE

Did Our Lord write any part of the New Testament or command His Apostles to do so? Our Lord Himself never wrote a line, nor is there any record that He ordered his Apostles to write; He did command them to teach and to preach. Also He to Whom all power was given in Heaven and on earth (Matt. 28-18) promised to give them the Holy Spirit (John 14-26) and to be with them Himself till the end of the world (Mat. 28-20).

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COMMENT: If reading the Bible were a necessary means of salvation, Our Lord would have made that statement and also provided the necessary means for his followers.

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TWO

How many of the Apostles or others actually wrote what is now in the New Testament? A Few of the Apostles wrote part of Our Lord's teachings, as they themselves expressly stated; i.e., Peter, Paul, James, John, Jude, Matthew, also Sts. Mark and Luke. None of the others wrote anything, so far as is recorded.

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COMMENT: If the Bible privately interpreted was to be a Divine rule of Faith, the apostles would have been derelict in their duty when instead, some of them adopted preaching only.

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THREE

Was it a teaching or a Bible-reading Church that Christ founded? The Protestant Bible expressly states that Christ founded a teaching Church, which existed before any of the New Testament books were written.

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Rom. 10-17: So then faith cometh by HEARING, and hearing by the word of God.

Matt. 28-19: Go ye therefore and TEACH all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Mark. 16-20: And they went forth, and PREACHED everywhere the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

Mark 16-15: And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and PREACH the gospel to every creature.

COMMENT: Thus falls the entire basis of the "Bible-only" theory.

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FOUR

Was there any drastic difference between what Our Lord commanded the Apostles to teach and what the New Testament contains? Our Lord commanded his Apostles to teach all things whatsoever He had commanded; (Matt. 28-20); His Church must necessarily teach everything; (John 14-26); however, the Protestant Bible itself teaches that the Bible does not contain all of Our Lord's doctrines:

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John 20-30: And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, etc.

John 21-25: And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

COMMENT: How would it have been possible for second century Christians to practice Our Lord's religion, if private interpretation of an unavailable and only partial account of Christ's teaching were indispensable?

.

FIVE

Does the New Testament expressly refer to Christ's "unwritten word"? The New Testament itself teaches that it does not contain all that Our Lord did or, consequently, all that He taught.

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John 20-30: And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, etc.

John 21-25: And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written everyone, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written Amen.

COMMENT: Since the Bible is incomplete, it needs something else to supplement it; i.e., the spoken or historically recorded word which we call Tradition.

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SIX

What became of the unwritten truths which Our Lord and the Apostles taught? The Church has carefully conserved this "word of mouth" teaching by historical records called Tradition. Even the Protestant Bible teaches that many Christian truths were to be handed down by word of mouth.

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2 Thes. 2-15: Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

2 Tim. 2-2: And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

COMMENT: Hence not only Scripture but other sources of information must be consulted to get the whole of Christ's teaching. Religions founded on "the Bible only" are therefore necessarily incomplete.

.

SEVEN

Between what years were the first and last books of the New Testament written? This first book, St. Matthew's Gospel, was not written until about ten years after Our Lord's Ascension. St. John's fourth gospel and Apocalypse or Book of Revelations were not written until about 100 A. D.

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COMMENT: Imagine how the present-day privately interpreted "Bible-only" theory would have appeared at a time when the books of the New Testament were not only unavailable, but most of them had not yet been written.

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EIGHT

When was the New Testament placed under one cover? In 397 A. D. by the Council of Carthage, from which it follows that non-Catholics have derived their New Testament from the Catholic Church; no other source was available.

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COMMENT: Up to 397 A. D., some of the Christians had access to part of the New Testament; into this situation, how would the "Bible-only privately interpreted" theory have fitted?

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NINE

Why so much delay in compiling the New Testament? Prior to 397 A. D., the various books of the New Testament were not under one cover, but were in the custody of different groups or congregations. The persecutions against the Church, which had gained new intensity, prevented these New Testament books from being properly authenticated and placed under one cover. However, this important work was begun after Constantine gave peace to Christianity in 313 A.D., allowing it to be practiced in the Roman Empire.

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COMMENT: This again shows how utterly impossible was the "Bible-only" theory, at least up to 400 A. D.

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TEN

What other problem confronted those who wished to determine the contents of the New Testament? Before the inspired books were recognized as such, many other books had been written and by many were thought to be inspired; hence the Catholic Church made a thorough examination of the whole question; biblical scholars spent years in the Holy Land studying the original languages of New Testament writings.

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COMMENT: According to the present-day "Bible-only" theory, in the above circumstances, it would also have been necessary for early Christians to read all the doubtful books and, by interior illumination, judge which were and which were not divinely inspired.

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ELEVEN

Who finally did decide which books were inspired and therefore belonged to the New Testament? Shortly before 400 A. D. a General Council of the Catholic Church, using the infallible authority which Christ had given to His own divine institution, finally decided which books really belonged to the New Testament and which did not.

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Either the Church at this General Council was infallible, or it was not.

If the Church was infallible then, why is it not infallible now? If the Church was not infallible then, in that case the New Testament is not worth the paper it is written on, because internal evidences of authenticity and inspiration are inconclusive and because the work of this Council cannot now be rechecked; this is obvious from reply to next question.

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COMMENT: In view of these historical facts, it is difficult to see how non-Catholics can deny that it was from the (Roman) Catholic Church that they received the New Testament.

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TWELVE

Why is it impossible for modern non-Catholics to check over the work done by the Church previous to 400. A. D.? The original writings were on frail material called papyrus, which had but temporary enduring qualities. While the books judged to be inspired by the Catholic Church were carefully copied by her monks, those rejected at that time were allowed to disintegrate, for lack of further interest in them.

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COMMENT. What then is left for non-Catholics, except to trust the Catholic Church to have acted under divine inspiration; if at that time, why not now?

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THIRTEEN

Would the theory of private interpretation of the New Testament have been possible for the year 400 A. D.? No, because, as already stated, no New Testament as such was in existence.

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COMMENT: If our non-Catholic brethren today had no Bibles, how could they even imagine following the "Bible-only privately interpreted" theory; but before 400 A. D., New Testaments were altogether unavailable.

.

FOURTEEN

Would the private interpretation theory have been possible between 400 A. D. and 1440 A. D., when printing was invented? No, the cost of individual Bibles written by hand was prohibitive; moreover, due to the scarcity of books, and other reasons, the ability to read was limited to a small minority. The Church used art, drama and other means to convey Biblical messages.

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COMMENT: To have proposed the "Bible-only" theory during the above period would obviously have been impracticable and irrational.

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FIFTEEN

Who copied and conserved the Bible during the interval between 400 A. D. and 1440 A. D.? The Catholic monks; in many cases these spent their entire lives to give the world personally-penned copies of the Scriptures, before printing was invented.

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COMMENT: In spite of this, the Catholic Church is accused of having tried to destroy the Bible; had she desired to do this, she had 1500 years within which to do so.

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SIXTEEN

Who gave the Reformers the authority to change over from the one Faith, one Fold and one Shepherd program, to that of the "Bible-only theory"? St. Paul seems to answer the above when he said: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." (Galations 1-8 - Protestant version ).

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COMMENT: If in 300 years, one-third of Christianity was split into at least 300 sects, how many sects would three-thirds of Christianity have produced in 1900 years? (Answer is 5700).

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SEVENTEEN

Since Luther, what consequences have followed from the use of the "Bible-only" theory and its personal interpretation? Just what St. Paul foretold when he said: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears." 2 Timothy 4-3 (Protestant edition). According to the World Christian Encyclopedia and other sources, there are 73 different organizations of Methodists, 55 kinds of Baptists, 10 branches of Presbyterians, 17 organizations of Mennonites, 128 of Lutherans and thousands of other denominations.

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COMMENT: The "Bible-only" theory may indeed cater to the self-exaltation of the individual, but it certainly does not conduce to the acquisition of Divine truth.

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EIGHTEEN

In Christ's system, what important part has the Bible? The Bible is one precious source of religious truth; other sources are historical records (Tradition) and the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.

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COMMENT: Elimination of any one of the three elements in the equation of Christ's true Church would be fatal to its claims to be such.

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NINETEEN

Now that the New Testament is complete and available, what insolvable problem remains? The impossibility of the Bible to explain itself and the consequent multiplicity of errors which individuals make by their theory of private interpretation. Hence it is indisputable that the Bible must have an authorized interpreter.

.

2 Peter 1-20: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

2 Peter 3-16: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Acts 8-30: And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaias, and said, understandest thou what thou readest? 31. And he said, How can I except some men should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

COMMENT: Only by going on the supposition that falsehood is as acceptable to God as is truth, can the "Bible-only" theory be defended.

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TWENTY

Who is the official expounder of the Scriptures? The Holy Spirit, acting through and within the Church which Christ founded nineteen centuries ago; the Bible teaches through whom in the Church come the official interpretations of; God's law and God's word.

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Luke 10-16: He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.

Matt. 16-18: And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Mal. 2-7: For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

COMMENT: Formerly at least, it was commonly held that when individuals read their Bibles carefully and prayerfully, the Holy Spirit would guide each individual to a knowledge of the truth. This is much more than the Catholic Church claims for even the Pope himself. Only after extended consultation and study, with much fervent prayer, does he rarely and solemnly make such a decision.

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TWENTY-ONE

What are the effects of the Catholic use of the Bible? Regardless of what persons may think about the Catholic Church, they must admit that her system gets results in the way of unity of rule and unity of faith; otherwise stated, one Faith, one Fold and one Shepherd.

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COMMENT: If many millions of non-Catholics in all nations, by reading their Bible carefully and prayerfully, had exactly the same faith, reached the same conclusions, then this theory might deserve the serious consideration of intelligent, well-disposed persons-but not otherwise.

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TWENTY-TWO

Why are there so many non-Catholic Churches? Because there is so much different interpretation of the Bible; there is so much different interpretation of the Bible because there is so much wrong interpretation; there is so much wrong interpretation because the system of interpreting is radically wrong. You cannot have one Fold and one Shepherd, one Faith and one Baptism, by allowing every man and every woman to distort and pervert the Scriptures to suit his or her own pet theories.

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COMMENT: To say that Bible reading is an intensely Christian practice, is to enunciate a beautiful truth; to say that Bible reading is the sole source of religious faith, is to make a sadly erroneous statement.

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TWENTY-THREE

Without Divine aid, could the Catholic Church have maintained her one Faith, one Fold, and one Shepherd? Not any more than the non-Catholic sects have done; they are a proof of what happens when, without Divine aid, groups strive to do the humanly impossible.

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COMMENT: Catholics love, venerate, use the Bible; but they also know that the Bible alone is not Christ's system but only a precious book, a means, an aid by which the Church carries on her mission to "preach the Gospel to every living creature" and to keep on preaching it "to the end of time."

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TWENTY-FOUR

Were there any printed Bibles before Luther? When printing was invented about 1440, one of the first, if not the earliest printed book, was an edition of the Catholic Bible printed by John Gutenberg. It is reliably maintained that 626 editions of the Catholic Bible, or portions thereof, had come from the press through the agency of the Church, in countries where her influence prevailed, before Luther's German version appeared in 1534. Of these, many were in various European languages. Hence Luther's "discovery" of the supposedly unknown Bible at Erfurt in 1503 is one of those strange, wild calumnies with which anti-Catholic literature abounds.

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COMMENT: Today parts of the Bible are read in the vernacular from every Catholic altar every Sunday. The Church grants a spiritual premium or indulgence to those who read the Bible; every Catholic family has, or is supposed to have, a Bible in the home. Millions of Catholic Bibles are sold annually.

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TWENTY-FIVE

During the Middle Ages, did the Catholic Church manifest hostility to the Bible as her adversaries claim? Under stress of special circumstances, various regulations were made by the Church to protect the people from being spiritually poisoned by the corrupted and distorted translations of the Bible; hence opposition to the Waldensians, Albigensians, Wycliff and Tyndale.

.

COMMENT: Individual churchmen may at times have gone too far in their zeal, not to belittle the Bible, but to protect it. There is no human agency in which authority is always exercised blamelessly.

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ORIGIN OF CHRIST'S CHURCH

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The Bible teaches that the true Church began with Christ over 1900 years ago, not with men or women 15 to 19 centuries later. It was founded when Our Lord spoke the following and other similar words:

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Matt. 28, 18-20: And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore. and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

COMMENT: History proves that the First Protestant Church was the Lutheran, founded in 1517 by the ex-priest Martin Luther; all other of the some 33,800 sects have been created since then.

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AUTHORITY OF CHRIST'S CHURCH

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The Bible teaches that the rulers of Christ's Church have authority which must be obeyed in matters of religion.

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Heb. 13, 17: Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you.

Matt 18-17: And if he shall neglect to hear them tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

Luke 10-16: He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.

Matt. 16-19: And I will give unto thee (Peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou (Peter) shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou (Peter) shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

COMMENT: The apostles repeatedly claimed this authority: Gal. 1-8; John 1-10; Acts 15, 23 and 28. Hence the laws or precepts of the true Church are founded upon the same authority as the commandments of God. For the Church of Christ has authority to act in his Name.

[soulreviver]

The Legend of Faust and other details in the Necromancer Manga

So as fun as the Necromancer manga is, it diverges from the original story of Dr. Faust in a few ways. The primary differences are that 1) Faust alone held the powers he received from the demon and he did not go on to have a massive family line that all shared his abilities and 2) Faust’s contract was with the Devil’s agent Mephistopheles not the Great Prince of Hell Stolas (though points to the mangaka for making Stolas an owl, which follows depictions of him in historical works).

For those interested in the Legend of Faust, I actually recommend picking up Frau Faust! Those of you familiar with German terminology, the title does mean “Miss Faust/Lady Faust/etc.” indicating that Faust is female in this tale with the name Johanna Faust. With that detail aside, it’s a rather good read with a surprising amount of accuracy to folklore and the time period, as it is written by the author of “The Ancient Magus Bride.”

Okay, enough digressions, back to the real topic at hand, the actual story of Faust.

So, the best known version of Faust is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (you see where the name Johann came for Faust?) and is considered his masterpiece. In this particular telling of Faust, the doctor is bored with his life to the point of depression (which is a real cause of depression in some people). Mephistopheles appears and offers to serve Faust to relieve his boredom in exchange for the man’s the life and him severing the Devil in Hell. So rather than being gifted with infinite knowledge, he has Mephistopheles to aid him in his endeavors, including the seduction of a woman named Gretchen (some versions have her named “Margaret”). Their affair produces an illegitimate child, which Gretchen despairs over, causing her to down the child and turn herself in. Faust goes to rescue her, but she rejects his offer and is thus able to redeem herself in the eyes of God and be welcomed into Heaven upon her execution (Some version have God reject her anyways and condemn her instead).

According to the wiki there is a lesser known part 2 to the play, that had even Faust finding redemption, as he spent his life striving to live a meaningful life he was still able earn redemption. Now, this all is a very brief summary of the story and a lot of things where skimmed over or plain left out on my part.

Now, if we look at this through the lens of Necromancer we get to make up some fuuuuun family history for Asutsuo! My ramblings get long, so I’m throwing the rest under a read more.

So, try as I might to find an exact time period for the Necromancer manga, the author did not writing it with historical accuracy in mind. Just looking at the differences in clothing between the characters tells you that much (what medieval age back robber wears a hoodie? Further more where there even banks back then?! All I know is there was no way Schutrusche Einzgrie could see a therapist! She’d have been thrown into a nut house* instead!) So, unlike Frau Faust, there is no way I can nail down a time period for it to take place. Going off my own feelings on it, I want to land thing before the Victorian era, especially before technology and electricity advanced too much. I’ll be honest, I swallow the “bad guys have more advanced and time-period-incorrect technology” trope fairly well, as it’s in most of my favourite games, so I’ll let Magdala have their electrically charged taser-lances.

Now, with a generalized time period for Necro, I do know the original tale of Faust was set way back in time, with the first print edition coming out around 1806, with earlier version being worked on between 1772-75. Given that we need Faust’s family time to reproduce enough to the point of having a small village-size clan, let’s place the events of Faust in the early 17′s and Necro in the early--NEVER MIND the internet has informed me the Georgian era overlaps with when Fuast was written (can you telling I’m googling stuff as I go?)

Okay, so, for the sake of Asutsuo’s family grown, Faust is being placed mid- to late-1600′s with Necro being set in the early 1800′s. Now, as Asutsuo and his father have “Johann-Faust” in their name, it’s likely Faust’s first and last name were taken as a single last name (though Faust is never given a first name in the original tale and it’s simply a nod to the author with having his first name be Johann). Last names are funny things, as if you go back far enough, they weren’t really a thing. You have Jon and then you have his son Jonson to indicate this is the son of Jon. So, that’s kinda how a lot of them came to be??? I guess??? This isn’t my area of expertise, tbh. 

Back on track, the family history of the Johann-Faust clan started with the original Johann Faust forging a contract with Stolas to bestow his family with the powers of Necromancy and knowledge (Asutsuo is way too fucking smart for a kid who never went to school) until that bloodline came to and end. Unlike the original tale, his romance with Gretchen is successful in that she doesn’t kill their child, but they get married and have several children. These children go on the populate the Johann-Faust clan, with the family agreeing that the one with the strongest abilities as a Necromancer would be the family head. For the sake of avoiding the church they form a small hamlet/village way out in the woods between several towns, with few adults venturing into town and mostly sending the kids for necessities.

Speaking of the Church, the world of Necromancer does not seem to have the Christian Orthodox church as it’s religious staple. I say this because Germany, historically, held the Church very closely to authority especially in matters regarding the supernatural and with the time period I have chosen to believe Necro was set in, the Church would still have clout in the world. So why is this little religious ‘sect’ or ‘cult’ able to have enough sway to have the whole police force on it’s side to hunt down Asutsuo? Now, the use of ‘cult’ or ‘sect’ may have been an error by the translation team. Japanese does not easily translate into English by any stretch of the imagination, especially when Romaji terms or loan words are added to the mix. I believe that the Church of Magdala started small and EXPLODED over time, making it the religious organization of the German country (it has yet to be seen if their influence or followers extend beyond the German boarder). Furthermore, what is ‘Magdala?’ Who is this goddess they worship? Well a quick google search of ‘Mary Magdala’ brought up ‘Mary Magdalene’ (with Magdalene the translation of the church’s name used in the final chapters) who is a character from the bible, who was present for some significant moments in Jesus’s tale, including his Crucifixion and Resurrection, being the first person to testify of his return. Some Gospels even tell of her having demons driven out of her. Now, I could rehash the whole Wiki page, but that’d take way too much time. Just go read it if you’re curious. 

Moving along, the Church of Magdala (using the first version of the translation simply because I’m used to it) worships Mary as a goddess of sorts, so perhaps in their views she was the one to revive Jesus or some other miracle such as healing him from his wounds from being crucified. I take this angle because they are very interested in Shilverase who possesses special properties in her blood that allows her to heal all ailments (though we only ever see her heal physical wounds, so I wonder if she possesses an enzyme that’s great for the blood clotting process like wolves have in their saliva, but I digress). Now, the manga does have the followers refer to their ‘god’ with the male version of address instead of ‘goddess’, but again, translation errors happen**, so let’s just mentally switch all uses of the word ‘god’ in the manga when referencing Mary to ‘goddess’. Now with this connection to Christianity established, they likely have a similar groundwork for what is sinful and what’s not. Perhaps they take an extra interest in other groups trying to use necromancy or other healing/resurrection magics because they believe their goddess is the exclusive owner of those abilities, thus not just making it sinful but blasphemous to use them, as the person is assuming to be on the same level as their own goddess. The manga touches on how “the goddess is viewed as good, so therefore the Necromancers are evil” without much elaboration as to why, so I’m hoping the above explanation provides a reason of sorts.

I think that’s all I got for now. This was a bit disjointed as I did take a long break between when I started writing this and when I sat down to finished the last few paragraphs. Hopefully this will give us some cohesive idea on why the world of Necromancer works the way it does? My apologies for my ramblings being all over the place, I can only hope they made sense and flowed well enough for you who read this.

*Time period accurate name, as psychological disorders were all seen as a person simply being ‘crazy’ and getting locked up or killed. This knowledge pains me as a psychologist. **Please don’t think I’m narking on the translation team. Easy Going Scans did us a great service by translation this little manga and I’ve never have been able to enjoy it without their hard work and dedication <3

[thesilentrevolutionoftruth]

Explanations by Ptaah and Billy...

Important Excerpts from Contact Conversations:

Six-hundred and Twenty-third Contact

Whitsunday, May 24th, 2015, 9:53 pm

 Billy

… It troubles me again that I have to say something in regard to the overpopulation, because the world must be saved from it. Unfortunately, however, nothing is done about it, because, on the contrary, the entire thing is still promoted by the governments and authorities by human beings still getting money for having children, in this regard, be it high amounts for births or other monetary benefits which are paid out by the authorities, and so forth. Furthermore it must also be said that often, recklessly and irresponsibly, without thinking, wanted or unwanted offspring are brought into the world by human beings who are incapable of bringing them up. As a consequence of lacking the right education, these children then fall into asociality, become depraved and engage in modes of behaviour which deviate from the societal norms and harm the society and burden the world. Naturally, however, there are also quite normal human beings who are righteous and good citizens, who produce descendants who then contribute to the overpopulation. Thereby, very many parents only think of themselves and of their own joys which they want to have with children, however no thought arises that thereby also one must pay heed to the wellbeing of the Earth and bear responsibility for it, and indeed in the regard that through the machinations of the increasing overpopulation, nature and its fauna and flora as well as the climatic order are destroyed. The Earth is not only full of human beings, rather it is boundlessly overpopulated. And this overpopulation continues to grow at a frantic pace; consequently the Earth becomes incessantly fuller, namely, with an average of around 100 million human beings per year. Already the world population amounts to over 8.5 billion and increases incessantly further, because nothing is undertaken against it by either those responsible for the world and the mightful ones of state, or by the population of the world, such as in the necessary form of a regulated worldwide stop to births and a therewith connected birth control. Already for decades, that has been bringing about many kinds of very bad consequences, such as also come forth quite unambiguously from the limited natural resources on the planet Earth, which are feloniously exploited for the sake of vile profit, inflicting monstrous wounds on the Earth which cannot be healed. The whole Earth, its climate and nature, with its fauna and flora, but also the human being of the Earth himself/herself, are disadvantageously burdened as a result of the overpopulation and tremendously irresponsible machinations, through which irreversible destructions are called forth, the origin of which is not caused by nature, rather it is solely attributable to the criminality of the terrestrial humanity. If the facts of the increasing environmental pollution due to the mass of humanity are viewed and considered as well as the increased global warming and the fact that very many more human beings increasingly annoy each other, as well as that the mighty ones of diverse countries always evoke new wars worldwide, and terror organisations of many shades carry out their felonious mischief, then the future of the Earth for the terrestrial humanity does not look exactly rosy. Unfortunately, the fact is that, in defiance of the risks in regard to the overpopulation, in regard to useful and right solutions, the whole thing of a worldwide stop to births and an effective birth control is quite tricky. If namely that is spoken about, then immediately the personal private right of the human being is put forward, which is cut back and limited by such measures, because the begetting of offspring and therefore having children would indeed be an absolutely private matter and it would be unethical to dictate to human beings how many children they are permitted to have. But that can really no longer be the case, if the humanity and the home-planet Earth and its climate, nature and fauna and flora are to be preserved and continue to exist – however with very many fewer human beings who poison and destroy a tremendous amount less of the biosphere, possibilities for life, the planet, nature and its fauna and flora. But that is not thought about, rather only that a birth stoppage and a birth control would be a despotic regime that would disregard the fundamental right of human beings in regard to reproduction and personal freedom. Therefore, regarding this, rigorous measures are rejected, because the human being is simply the only being on the Earth which can consciously decide in such a private form, indeed, that he/she can bring as many children into the world as he/she wants and as he/she pleases – regardless of which consequences emerge from that, and regardless of if the Earth thereby totally perishes and the humanity perhaps exterminates itself, because the overpopulation becomes so great one day that it can no longer sustain itself. There are many examples for that in regard to past great cultures, which simply vanished from the surface of the Earth. And such events are also known in the animal world, such as when an animal population becomes too big it then either ends its own life or it is reduced to a bearable amount through illness or rampantly spreading diseases. Therefore it is urgent that finally options are taken into consideration which curb the population growth, and indeed not only a little bit, rather, tremendously, when it is considered that the planet Earth is only made to accommodate a population of 529 million. Therefore it is urgently necessary that every single human being of the Earth, woman as well as man, ultimately helps so that a worldwide birth stoppage and a regulated, fair and right as well as federally controlled birth control comes about. Solely through that alone can the environment and the humanity generally be saved from their downfall. If the entire catastrophic disaster is considered which since 1844, in the new age, has been caused through the machinations of the Earth humanity and the continuously growing, horrendous overpopulation, in the form of thousands of kinds of eliminations and destructions to the planet Earth, the climate, the bodies of water, fields, meadows and forests as well as to the entirety of nature generally and to its fauna and flora, as well as due to other monstrous things, such as illnesses, wars, disadvantages, rampantly spreading diseases and terror in regard to the Earth humanity, then no words can be found any more for that and everything can only be clothed in the term ‘horror’. And if a prognosis is to be made for the Earth humanity, then all there is to say is that a gloomy future is to be expected, because the frightful effects of the population growth impact on the environment so destructively that everything and anything will perish. Thereby playing an important role is also the factor of the human being of the Earth becoming older and older, whereby there is also research undertaken for a radical prolonging of life, which will lead to very many very old human beings contributing to the overpopulation growing even more. Many who research extending the life have tried already for a long time, and indeed already since ancient times, to find out how the life of human beings can be endlessly lengthened. And as everything in the present time develops very rapidly, in the coming decades they will really find ways to solve the problems of aging and dying. That will certainly mean much difficult research work, and will be no more stoppable than the growth of the overpopulation, if intellect and rationality are not finally used in order to recognise the effective reality and its truth and to necessarily take the right measures and carry them out to the bitter end, in which only 529 million human beings, or at the most, perhaps one billion human beings, populate the Earth who then must strive over many centuries or even millennia to arduously regenerate everything that today’s humanity has eliminated and destroyed since 1844 in only around 170 years, already making great areas of the Earth uninhabitable. It is fundamentally necessary that now finally there is a beginning to working out measures that reach worldwide against the overpopulation and very quickly implementing them, because if there is simply further waiting and nothing is done then the entire thing will only become very much worse. The world population grows every day by hundreds of thousands of human beings, and this is also when those around 160,000 who die are subtracted. The entire thing is comparable with the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra from Greek mythology, with which, when one head was cut off, immediately two more would grow back. Concerning human beings, that means that when one human being dies, two new ones are born. But the governors, the mightful ones of state, the politicians and authorities do nothing against that, just as the humanity itself does nothing, consequently the overpopulation can further spread. In the new time – and indeed especially already from the 20th century, which however self-evidently also applies to the current time – it was and is always arranged for that small, bigger and very big families are supported by the state, by religions and sects as well as by aid organisations, and so forth, and indeed even when the couples cannot afford any children or they do not care about the children and let them go to rack and ruin. Actually, today it is the case that the more child money and social welfare is paid, the more children are conceived and born, which – as insane as it is – promotes an excessive begetting of children more than ever, because conscienceless and irresponsible ‘parents’ speculate on the child bonuses and social bonuses as well as on aid money and gifts. The fact that also that contributes to no thoughts being made in regard to the overpopulation does not worry anybody. Mammon entices, and only in this regard is there a calculation, because the human being has only developed in this material direction. Therefore nothing else concerns him/her, also not all the catastrophes such as earthquakes, wars, rampantly spreading diseases, primeval storms of all kinds and extreme weather catastrophes, terrorism, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, felonies of a political or religious-sectarian kind, as well as tremendous forest fires, and so forth. But quite especially the insidious global disaster of the overpopulation does not worry anyone, nor are its eliminating and destroying consequences seen, nor are the global climatic warming, environmental pollution and the exploitation of resources as well as the depletion of resources, and so on and so forth. However, the limit to the individual freedom is where it is necessary in order to preserve – that is to say, to save and make healthy and capable of life again everywhere – the continued existence of humanity as well as of the planet Earth as well as its nature, fauna and flora. However the human being of the Earth takes the right to continue to irresponsibly cultivate the overpopulation, which has already been in excess for a long time, to an even greater degree. This is so because he/she has fallen into the delusion – at least the absolute majority of humanity – of having an individual right to selfishly not give a damn about the environment, the planet, the waters, wetlands, acres, fields, forests and meadows, all of the fauna and flora and about the prosperity and adversity of the individual human being and indeed of the entire humanity. Thereby he/she has fallen into the delusion that he/she may accept that everything essential for life is ruined, eliminated and destroyed, if only his/her own egoism and wellbeing and all personal advantages can be maintained. Only a few are concerned that, with this irresponsible action and this mode of life which is antagonistic to life, the right to existence and to life of not only individuals, rather of all human beings is curtailed and put into question. The ones who act selfishly do not deal with the rights to life of the community in the form in which they deal with their private right, which they claim for themselves, because truthly they stop at nothing and let their fellow human beings die miserably, if they thereby gain an advantage for themselves and, according to their understanding of personal rights, can irresponsibly bring more children into the world than is allowed to them and can be rightful. They have fallen to the delusional belief that they are allowed to procreate at the expense of fellow human beings and without any consideration for them, for nature and its fauna and flora as well as the planet, and indeed without a responsible family planning and world-population planning being necessary. However, the fact is that in earlier times of the history of humanity, that was effectively unnecessary, but in the current time of the terribly rampantly spreading overpopulation, it must be an absolute necessity based on a consciousness of responsibility. Earlier it was also the case that before Dr Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis came (born 1st July 1818, Buda, Budapest, Hungary; died, 13th August 1865, Vienna, Austria) and introduced an effective hygiene in the hospitals, innumerable children and women died at childbirth and thus nature had culled in a brutal way, as it also had through illnesses, hunger, war and rampantly spreading diseases, and so forth. Now, however, since the human being of the Earth has raised the quality and duration of his/her life very much and continues to drive it higher, he/she must change his/her thinking and adapt to the new time as well as to its circumstances and thereby also to the necessity of a worldwide stop to births and an effective birth regulation, in order to put a stop to the overpopulation, to reduce it and to no longer let it continue to spread. The entire humanity of today must concern itself with a very greatly changed reality and do everything conceivably necessary to indeed still prevent the ultimate great terrors which inevitably arise out of a further idiotic-stupid cultivation of the overpopulation. The matter is indeed hard to tackle and means great terror for the Earth humanity, but it is always better to make a painful break than to endure the agony which is endless and comes with an inevitable demise. A worldwide stop to births with a following birth regulation is the best compromise in order to master the overpopulation dilemma, even if thereby in this regard the personal rights of the human being must be reduced for the good of the entire humanity as well as of the planet, nature and its fauna and flora and their continued existence. If thereby all other rights of freedom are protected then the general welfare of the entire Earth population as well as of the planet, nature and its fauna and flora actually have a real chance of being saved – otherwise…

 This section translated by FLAU

 Source

http://au.figu.org/623rd_contact.htm

 www.futureofmankind.info/Billy_Meier/Contact_Report_623

 http://billybooks.org/

SEE THE BOOKSTORE ON WWW.FIGU.ORG

http://theyfly.com/new-translation-talmud-jmmanuel

http://www.figu.org/ch/files/downloads/buecher/figu-kelch_der_wahrheit_goblet-of-the-truth_v_20150307.pdf

http://www.futureofmankind.info/Billy_Meier/The_Pleiadian/Plejaren_Contact_Reports

https://creationaltruth.org/Library/FIGU-Books/Arahat-Athersata

https://www.theyfly.com/articles-billy-eduard-albert-meier

 Spreading of the Correct Peace Symbol

https://creationaltruth.org/Portals/0/Images/Library/FIGU%20Stickers/Verbreitet%20das%20richtige%20Friedenssymbol-1.pdf

 Ban-Srut Beam - Last Prophet - Line of Nokodemion

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Why did a Japanese UC member kill her Korean husband? (Updated 2018)

Moon and Hak Ja Han conduct the 1995 mass wedding in Korea.

From 週刊文春 Shūkan Bunshun, December 6, 2012 (pages 143-145).

by freelance writer Kenichiro Ishii

Why did a Japanese woman kill her Korean husband?

[On January 29, 2013 a court sentenced 朴美雪, ボクミユキ, Miyuki Park to nine years in prison. Details below.]

Twenty years have passed since the Unification Church mass weddings have become known as a social problem. This started from the time when Junko Sakurai and others participated in a mass wedding. [From the 1970s to the 1990s she was a very well-known Japanese singer and actor.] Even today the Unification Church continues to send Japanese women believers to South Korea in the name of the “blessing of marriage.” In August 2012 one of those believers murdered her Korean husband in a tragic incident.

What was behind this tragedy?

The city of Chuncheon in Gangwon province is known as the setting for the famous TV drama “Winter Sonata.” In 2004, when the drama was released, three hundred and seventy thousand tourists from Japan visited the site. However, the Japanese people who now may be encountered on the streets are the women who have married Korean men through the international mass marriage ceremonies of the Unification Church (the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity).

Today, the number of Japanese women who live in South Korea is estimated to be about eighteen thousand. Of these about seven thousand are supposedly members of the Unification Church.

Mrs M. (aged 52), who killed her husband, was one of them. At around 3:00AM on the 21st of August she called 119 for the emergency services, saying: “My sick husband has become very ill.”

When the emergency crew arrived, her husband, Mr Jegun Park (aged 51), was dressed and sitting on the floor. His head was slumped down, and he was not breathing. At the Gangwon-Do Kangwon National University Hospital, where Mr Park was taken, his death was at first diagnosed as being caused by his illness. However, when the Chuncheon city police asked Mrs M. about the details, she acted strangely. When she was asked whether she had killed him, there was a twenty-minute silence. Then she nodded and said “yes.”

Mrs M. thought of killing her husband during the afternoon of the previous day. In the evening she had smothered her husband with a towel, which covered his nose and mouth, and had pressed on his throat for five minutes.

Why did she kill her husband? “Ever since marrying him, I have suffered – too much drinking and violence, and too little money,” Mrs M. said in her testimony.

Seventeen years have passed since she participated in the mass wedding ceremony of 1995. Mr Park was long unemployed, and they lived impoverished lives. They had no children. They had survived with the help of a national welfare-payment  of about 500,000 won, ($440) and the 500,000 won which Mrs M. earned. She often worked 12 hours in a day – in restaurant or housekeeper jobs. That was the monthly income they had to live on.

For ten years Mr Park had kidney disease. The cost of his monthly dialyses treatment was 700,000 won ($620), and it was a heavy burden. She even once took Mr Park to Japan to see a doctor there. Yet he kept on drinking and abusing Mrs M. When he got drunk, he swore, broke furniture, and threw things around the house. The way he treated Mrs M. was worse than the way he treated their dog.

“Mrs M. told me that her husband did not work and regularly said ‘we are going to the hospital.’ She seemed to be a quiet and serious woman. I often saw her ride her wearing a hat and riding her bicycle,” said a woman who lives in the building where the incident took place.

The apartment building where Mrs M. and Mr Park lived.

From time to time Mrs M. went to a small shop near their apartment to buy food such as kamaboko (boiled fish paste) and tofu, but she only ever made small purchases, said the man who owned the shop. “I knew that the couple were married in a mass wedding. Mrs M. went to the church regularly, but I never saw her husband go. She was a good wife. She worked very hard, but her husband was exploiting her.”

Mr Park went to the same shop to buy rice wine and other alcohol. The owner advised Mr Park many times that “he should be more responsible because he has a foreign wife. He did try. But he got injured in a bike accident; it just didn’t work out. He even tried to stop drinking. But his character was weak. When there were friends drinking in the park, even as early as noon, he couldn’t ignore them and just pass by. Eventually both his body and face became swollen. It was obvious that he was ill. I’m sure he was aware of it too.” According to the owner, Mr Park’s deteriorating health was a known fact in the neighborhood. After the incident, the local women were sharing these stories with each other.

The above mentioned woman remarked “She had tolerated him for seventeen years – she just had to endure it a little longer. She didn’t have to kill him now.”

Mrs M. had stopped going to the Unification Church in Chuncheon a few months before the incident.

According to the people involved with the Korean Unification Church, “Mrs M. had talked to the church many times and sought help. However, the church did not do anything. She became disappointed, and stopped going to church.” Another person involved with the church said “Mrs M. had been suffering from depression for three years. However, she did not have the money to get treatment. Around a week before the incident, her family came from Japan and tried to take her back there. However, she rejected the offer.”

The attorney appointed by the Unification Church requested a psychiatric evaluation. Therefore, Mrs M. was taken to a secure unit located in the city of Gongju, South Chungcheong Province. The results showed she had a mild adjustment disorder. It was agreed that she had was mentally weak at the moment of her crime. However, she refused treatment, and was charged with murder. On November 9th, the first trial was held in Chuncheon District Court. When Mrs M. appeared in court, her face was devoid of any expression or sense of vitality. In an almost inaudible voice she admitted that she had killed her husband.

Top: Moon and Hak Ja Han conduct a mass wedding in Seoul in 1995. (Mrs Miyuki Park was married to her Korean husband there. It seems he was not a believer, but just went to the church to get a wife. He was an alcoholic and beat his wife.) Bottom: Reverend Sun Myung Moon who died in September 2012.

“If you become a UC follower, you can get married”

Within the sect the mass weddings are called the “Blessing”. It is taught that this is the means of being “liberated from the original sin and in the end it is the only way salvation can be achieved.” For a Japanese follower, the participation fee is a “1.4 million yen ($11,560) Blessing Donation” in addition to the actual costs. It is the largest event for the Unification Church. It is also, like other events, an event from which to make a profit. To participate in this “blessing” and to build an ideal family is the highest goal of life for the followers. To qualify for the “Blessing,” Japanese followers engage in missionary activities without giving their true identity and “inspiration businesses” using false identities.

However, for Mrs M. and Mr Park it did not result in a “blessing.” During police questioning she was asked “Do you have a religion?” Mrs M. answered “I do not have a religion now.”

A lot of attention given to the mass wedding of 30,000 couples in 1992 because a famous Japanese singer, Junko Sakurada, and others participated. In 1995, in a greatly expanded mass wedding, Mrs M. was one of the 360,000 couples. This was the year the Unification Church planned an event much larger than before. In order to increase the number of participants, they recruited widely to get non-believers to join in as well. Rev Sun Myung Moon reportedly said, “Come to the Unification Church. If you do not have someone to marry, I’ll soon get you married.”

In August 1995, I was a writer for the weekly magazine Shūkan Bunshun. I saw the words “Recruiting unmarried men and women” written on a banner on the wall of the church headquarters in Seoul. This was a week before the mass wedding. In the rural outskirts of Daejeon, I talked to a thirty four year-old man who was going to participate in the wedding. I asked “why did you become a follower?” This was his frank answer: “Because I was told by the pastor of the Unification Church that if I become a believer, I can get married.” (Shūkan Bunshun August 31, 1995 issue)

Through the invitations of a sham marriage agency, men participated who not only had no faith, but did not work, had alcohol problems or a history of violence. For these reasons they had not been able to marry. Wives were chosen for them by the Reverend Moon. The brides could not to refuse because they believed he was the Lord of the Second Coming.

Here is another thing Reverend Moon said, “If you consider the possibility of not receiving a blessing at all, you should be grateful. Even if your husband has no eyes or no nose, it does not matter.”

Marriage to a Korean has great significance for the Japanese women followers of Moon. It is the highest honor for them to marry a man from the same country as Reverend Moon. In addition, the Unification Church teaches that Korea is the nation of Adam, and Japan is the nation of Eve. Eve must serve Adam. It is also necessary to atone for the “thirty-six years of colonial domination by Imperial Japan.”

The women are indoctrinated that they are “paying indemnity 蕩減 (to liquidate sin)” and so must endure any kind of hardship or suffering under any circumstances. They strive to be dutiful wives, devoted mothers and good to their husband’s parents. Nationwide there have been more than a hundred Japanese women followers who have been awarded the “孝婦賞 Woman of Filial Piety Award” or other awards by local governments, agricultural cooperatives and other organizations. This last June [2012] a member was given an award by President Lee Myung-bak himself.

A woman who married into a farming village in Korea, in the same 1995 mass wedding as Mrs M., said “To be recognized means for us that the church is being recognized. With this in mind, everyone works desperately hard.” She is no longer a follower because she became aware of the errors of the teachings. She looked down as she remarked, “I cannot take this as just another incident; it affects me as if it were my own affair.”

Shuichi Okami is an attorney who belongs to the Liaison Committee of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales [fortune telling fraud, etc.]. This incident, he said, reminded him of a former member who was also in the 1995 mass wedding. She met her Korean husband-to-be only two days before the wedding. After the wedding, she discovered some shocking information. “Your partner applied to participate before, but he was rejected because of his serious alcoholism. This time he was only admitted because his parents made a large donation.”

Her pure faith was completely shattered by this. With the help of her family, the woman decided to leave the church. She filed a lawsuit to get her marriage declared null and void. One winter morning in 2000, the former husband-to-be was found dead in a park. At trial the following year she won her case. So far there have been almost fifty lawsuits to prove similar marriages were not valid. In almost all cases the plaintiffs have won.

Attorney Okami continued, saying “this woman joined a group of plaintiffs who claimed that ‘during recruitment the true identity of the Unification Church was hidden and that this was illegal.’ They won this case as well.

The court confirmed their statement that ‘if you refuse a partner selected by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, you had to fear that the path to salvation for you and your ancestors is closed. You also come to worry that you may suffer illness, injury or death, and after you die you will suffer in hell. This caused [the members] substantial mental and emotional distress.’

The court ruled that ‘the formula course direction to participate in the mass weddings inhibited the freedom of marriage of the plaintiffs, and this was against the law.’ The mass weddings of the Unification Church are a serious problem.”

Hiroko Nakanishi (Religious Sociology) is a part time tutor at Kansei Gakuin University. She investigates by interviewing Japanese followers about their life in Korea, and she also analyzes the internal Japanese church newspaper entitled “Hongo People”. [Hongō 本郷 is a district of Tokyo.] Within the regular feature called “Hongo Mutual Aid Association” 本郷互助会 there is a section named “This Month’s People in Need”. Here are published descriptions of families in trouble, and the support they asking for. The main problems they face are alcoholism of husbands, sickness, mental disorders, child and adult health issues, debts, and so on. In the June 2004 edition, the following text was published:

“My husband is an alcoholic and has not worked for the past 4-5 years. I work in a factory. However, the monthly wage of 570,000 yen is not enough to support our lives. Due to the deteriorating economic conditions, I have not been given my wages for two months now…(abridged)… I am worn out, in both body and soul. I want to escape this living hell but I cannot afford to flee, so I am seeking help from the Mutual Aid Association.

<Aid Given> 20kg of rice for 6 months, employment finding services.” Other examples included “Gift of five hundred thousand won,” “one hundred thousand won loan.” It is not clear how much help this assistance was for them.

Ms. Nakanishi said, “I think there are more than a few people who are suffering in similar circumstances to those of Mrs M. Although she was the aggressor in the incident, in a sense Mrs M. was also a victim of the mass weddings.”

The church in Chuncheon which Mrs M. attended.

Did Mrs M. ask for help? When we asked the Public Relations Department of the Unification Church of Japan, they gave this answer: “Perhaps because she did not want to cause trouble, she did not ask for help or consult us. Instead, friends belonging to the local church approached the ‘Hongo Mutual Aid Association’ on her behalf. They were doing their best to arrange for counseling visits at her home, provision of food, and support for living costs.”

In addition, I asked them if a match between a Japanese woman with sincere faith and a Korean man without any faith at all did not contradict their so-called ‘blessing.’

They replied “what is wonderful about the marriages of the Unification Church is the sharing of common values. The husband and wife place God at the center of their lives, and strive to live for each other. They seek to become ideal couples and, through their mutual support, to build an ideal family.”

However, couples like Mrs M. and Mr Park did not “share common values.” If the Unification Church continues to mass produce similar couples, more problems will naturally arise. The existence of a ‘Hongo Mutual Aid Association’ proves this very fact.

As many as four hundred million couples involved in mass weddings?

After the three hundred and sixty thousand couples’ mass wedding in 1995, the numbers have been reported as 40 million couples, 360 million couples, and 400 million couples. The mass weddings have been taking place almost every year since then.

How did they recruit so many million participants? The Unification Church made a dummy organization. Behind this façade they ran a campaign called “Chastity Education” and produced “Chastity candy” [“Holy candy”]. They distributed these Chastity candies in kindergartens, elementary and middle schools for free in Korea. In Japan, they handed them out them on the streets. Quite amazingly, every person who accepted this candy was counted as a participant.

Without having solved the numerous problems of the Unification Church, Rev Sun Myung Moon died on September 3rd 2012. He was 92 years old. The thirty two thousand Japanese followers of Moon were requested to visit Korea with condolences, each paying 120,000 yen ($1000). Just this amounts to 3.8 billion yen ($31,400,000). Even after the death of Rev Moon, the Church’s profit-first nature remains utterly the same.

Miyuki Park was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Regarding the remarks of the presiding judge at the judgment hearing of the trial at the Chuncheon District Court on January 29, I will quote the Japanese translation made by Mr. Seung-min Park who was there in person.

January 29, 2013


High Court No. 238, 2012 Defendant 朴美雪  ボクミユキ  Miyuki
 Park (known as Mrs Boku Miyuki in Japan.)

The presiding judge addressed the defendant, Miyuki Park.
“You can understand what I am saying, right? In the earlier trial proceedings there was an interpreter. For today’s sentencing, I will speak slowly because the interpreter has not yet arrived in the courtroom. The defendant is a Japanese national, but evidently understands Korean to some extent. Therefore, the sentencing will be given in Korean without an interpreter. According to the prosecution evidence which has been lawfully considered, the court can conclude that there is sufficient for the accused to be charged with the murder.

The presiding judge addressed the defendant by name, “Defendant Miyuki Park! According to the evidence, the court can conclude that the accused is to be charged with the murder. Do you understand? I will explain the reasons for the penalty for the murder for which the accused is found guilty.

“In this case the victim (the husband of the accused) was in a state of poor health, suffering the aftermath of a cerebral hemorrhage and chronic renal (kidney) failure and was unable to resist. He was killed while he was sleeping. The defendant killed her husband, but as a spouse was obliged to support and protect him. The circumstances of this crime are serious. According to the crime report, 50 minutes after killing the victim, the accused called 119 for the ambulance instead of 112 for the police. Even after arriving at the hospital the behavior was bad, as she explained to the doctor that the victim was unable to receive dialysis for several days, and his condition had worsened and he had died.

“The husband had frequently ranted and insulted the defendant, but it is difficult to see a pattern of the accused being punished through domestic violence. The defendant could have gotten out of this situation in which she found herself through other ways besides choosing the extreme course of murder.

“Also taking into account that the victim’s father wants a severe punishment to be given to the accused, a heavy sentence for the accused is inevitable.

“However, there are some points to favor leniency. The defendant was married to the victim after they met through the Unification Church, also she was married to a foreigner. The defendant supported the victim who was suffering from chronic renal failure. The defendant suffered from adjustment disorder and from persistent depression. It seems that due to this, the defendant seems to have suffered from poor mental and physical health. Following all this, she committed the crime.

“Leniency should be considered since the defendant is a first-time offender with no prior history of any criminal offense. We have decided the judgment as follows by applying the criteria for sentencing by the Supreme Court.

“The defendant shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than nine years. I will confiscate the towel which was seized. Defendant Miyuki Park, do you understand the sentence that has been pronounced?”

[Defendant Miyuki Park replied,] “I was sentenced to nine years in prison.” 
or possibly 
[Presiding judge:] “You have been sentenced to nine years in prison.” 
It is not clear from the Japanese text which of the two said this.

“If you are dissatisfied with this decision and want to appeal, you can do so. The appeals form can be submitted within seven days from today to the Director (the Prison Director). It will then be sent by the Chuncheon Court to the (appeals court at the) Seoul High Court.

“Defendant Miyuki Park, is there anything you do not understand about the decision? Do you understand about the appeal process? Is there any part for which you need further explanation?”

Miyuki Park spoke in a very quiet voice which the presiding judge could not hear. The prosecutor, who was close by, heard what Miyuki Park had said, and conveyed it to the Chief Justice. It seems that Miyuki Park requested the contents of the ruling in writing.

The presiding judge said, “Yes, you will receive the ruling in writing. Because the accused is on detention, the details of the proceedings including today’s sentence will be written in detail and sent to you. Do you wish to say anything else? …I will now conclude the sentencing hearing.”

日本人妻はなぜ韓国人夫を殺したのか? 統一教会「合同結婚式」の悲劇

“Apology marriages” made by Japanese UC members to Korean men.

“Please search for the 6,500 women missing from the mass wedding ceremony,” victim’s families appealed.

Japanese 20-year-old woman recruited by the UC, and then sold to an older Korean farmer

韓国よ、私の姉を返せ！！Please return my sister from Korea.

Yuka Nakamura, a Unification Church member in Korea, recently took her own life

The ‘True Father’ who could not forgive: “I haven’t been able to release my grudge towards Japanese people yet.” November 2011

Moon personally extracted $500 MILLION from Japanese sisters in the fall of 1993. He demanded that 50,000 sisters attend HIS workshops on Cheju Island and each had to pay a fee of $10,000.

Summary of Professor Park Yuha’s Book “Comfort Women of the Empire”

“The Comfort Women” by Professor C. Sarah Soh

What Is Behind South Korea’s Criticism On Comfort Women Issue

[abybweisse]

What will happen if soma stops being the parallel to salsa but instead pockey munch?

(Now I have a craving for Pocky….)

Soma as parallel to Mother2’s Pokey Minch

(Posted July 12, 2017)

I’m sure the reality of canon will end up being a bit more complicated than this, since all three installments of the Mother game are affecting the outcome (and influences/inspiration from numerous other resources/reference works), but….

If Soma *stops being the parallel to Salsa* from Mother3, he won’t simply go off on his own to seek happiness elsewhere, and he won’t necessarily remain friends with our earl. Salsa (a cute and highly intelligent little monkey) was desperately trying to find Samba, his little monkey girlfriend, who had been captured by the evil Fassad. He helps Lucas from time to time, and sometime after finding Samba, the pair of monkeys run off to start a new life together.

If Soma is *also the parallel to Pokey Minch* from Mother2, he will definitely become an adversary to our earl, and instead of leaving simply to seek out his own happiness, he would join the ranks of the earl’s enemies and seek revenge to this imagined slight. What I mean by “imagined slight” in Mother2 is that Pokey thought Ness had slighted/insulted him, but it was all just a *huge misunderstanding*. (Thanks to @darylhighwind for pointing that out to me about why Pokey became *more* of a pain to Ness then he had before. 😂)

In Black Butler, the *strong* parallel between Soma and Salsa actually ends as soon as Mina says she wasn’t captured by Harold; she *ran off* with Harold. The weaker parallel between Soma and Salsa (sometimes being helpful to the main protagonist) stops as soon as Agni dies, and Soma makes this threat of revenge… that he will make them (the earl and Sebastian) pay for what’s happened. The *strong* parallel to Salsa is picked up by Edward as soon as his beloved little sister gets involved in the Blue Sect, and the new(est) parallel to Fassad is Blavat Sky.

——————–

And now we examine how Soma might have *also* been a parallel to Pokey Minch **ALL ALONG**.

Soma has always teased the earl and shown up unexpectedly, often complicating things. I mean, he did show up at the manor (with Agni in tow) expecting to be lodged there and given the royal treatment to which he had become accustomed. And he’s decidedly a brat, as Sebastian truthfully pointed out to him. He has been trying to grow into a great man… to mature and learn to care for others (other than himself). His brattiness had pushed Mina away, and he had selfishly sought to find her and return her to being his servant. And he expected the earl and Sebastian to help.

Seeing this in a new light, it dawned on me that this is *less* like Salsa looking for Samba in Mother3… and *more* like Pokey Minch enlisting Ness to help him find his little brother, Pickey. Pokey claimed that Pickey had gone missing, but he had not. Pickey was right where Pokey had left him, at the site of a meteor crash. And when they reunite, Pickey says that even though he’s younger, he acts more mature than Pokey.

And afterwards, Pokey continues to be a bit of a pain to Ness. Pokey joins the religious cult, Happy-Happyism (which wants to turn everything BLUE), and he’s given high status in the cult, despite his young age. So then he’s an adversary working for the cult, but as soon as the cult is broken apart, the once-members’ minds return to normal, as if a trance had been lifted, including Pokey’s mind. He pops up again to tell Ness he’s returned as a friend, but being the brat he is, Pokey then runs off again. LET’S *HOPE* THIS IS THE END OF SOMA’S PARALLEL TO POKEY. Maybe Soma will seek out Blavat and help the cult but then come back to his senses once it’s been completely destroyed. Seriously, let’s HOPE it ends there, and that Soma returns to being an annoying friend…. But if not…. >>

Later, Ness says something to Pokey that Pokey interprets as a slight or an insult. It’s a bit vague, and apparently there was an issue with translation into English from the original Japanese when Mother2 was released in the US as Earthbound. This odd little factoid is part of what @darylhighwind brought to my attention. After that, Pokey teams up with Giygas, the (space) alien who was *actually* behind the cult all along. Carpainter, who led the cult, had also just been brainwashed; he had been the face of the operation, the *facade*. (And sure enough, Carpainter is not only a parallel to Blavat in Black Butler, he’s also a parallel to Fassad in Mother3.)

So Carpainter is out of the picture, but Pokey has now teamed up with Giygas, the alien who seeks revenge for what his adopted human father, George, had done (stolen knowledge/technology from that alien race and taken it back to Earth) back in the original installment of Mother. (The alien’s adopted human mother, Mary, had never returned to Earth.) Pokey steals a time traveling device from the brilliant inventor Dr. Andonuts (he’s the same Andonuts in Mother3). Later Pokey returns from the future with Giygas in an attempt to destroy Ness and his friends. Giygas is eventually destroyed by Ness, Jeff, Paula, and Prince Poo… but Pokey Minch lives on, and he still has that time-traveling device. He ALSO has a contraption he’d later got from Dr. Andonuts and brought back in time with him – a weaponized mobility mech that looks suspiciously like SPIDER LEGS.

If Soma’s parallel to Pokey Minch continues, then Agni’s death is the catalyst that sends Soma not simply to Blavat but to the *source*, whoever is truly behind the Blue Sect. I don’t think it’s Undertaker at all. My suspicion is that it’s John Brown, and that he’s not human; he could be an angel, like Ash/Angela in s1 of the anime… or he could be something else. Considering how Sebastian’s idea of a pet from “his world” looks like a Xenomorph from the Alien movie series, and considering that Yana-san has said she views demons (and presumably angels, too) as extraterrestrial or inter-dimensional creatures, John Brown (or whoever is behind this) being an angelic alien isn’t much of a stretch. Perhaps Vincent Phantomhive had stolen technology from angels? Who knows at this point, but it’s entirely possible that’s why his family was attacked, and not simply because he was the queen’s watchdog….

But back to Soma. Where is he now? In ch129, the earl and Sebastian drops him off with Sieglinde and Wolfram to be treated for his wounds. He has just woken up to find out Agni really is dead, he thinks (huge misunderstanding) that the earl shot him and that another assailant killed Agni, and now he’s threatening revenge. Sieglinde is one of the two true parallels to Dr. Andonuts, and she just happens to have a mobility mech referred to as SPIDER LEGS. Oh dear….

I don’t think Sieglinde has developed a time traveling device, but she has been working on several new inventions, including a newer version of the Spider Legs that can climb walls. It’s entirely possible that it would also be weaponized. So, instead of the crack theory I once had (that made me laugh hysterically at the mental image) of Queen Victoria running around in a weaponized spider mech that climbs walls (you have to admit that’s a funny visual), I’m now considering the *very real* possibility that Sieglinde (getting pulled into this misunderstanding) agrees to supply Soma with various inventions, including an advanced version of her Spider Legs mobility mech. If she doesn’t offer Soma these things, he might instead steal them, just like Pokey Minch initially stole the Phase Distorter prototype from Dr. Andonuts. http://earthbound.wikia.com/wiki/Phase_Distorter

In Mother3, Pokey Minch shows up again, but now he has the Pigmask Army, and he has changed his name to King Porky. He’s been so physically affected by the defective Phase Distorter prototype that he’s had Dr. Andonuts (whom he has now forced to work for him) create those spider-like mobility mechs. Recall that when he shows up in Mother2 with one of those mechs it’s only because he had traveled back in time. The obvious parallel to Mother3’s King Porky in Black Butler is none other than Queen Victoria.

Therefore, I think that Soma’s parallel to Pokey Minch will have to end by the time Sebastian has fulfilled his contract. By then, Queen Victoria and her military/servants will also have been defeated. Mother’s and Mother2’s Giygas parallel is probably the Ultimate Chimera in Mother3 and John Brown (and Double Charles) or *whoever* is behind all of this mess in Black Butler – whoever that is will also be defeated. Then the earl will have a final confrontation with real Ciel. And Sebastian will *expect* to devour the soul he’s been promised….

——————

Sorry it took me so long, but here you go! Thanks for the ask 😊

[yarnfeet40-blog]

Thousands could be deported as government targets asylum mills’ clients

NPR’s Planet Money has learned that more than 13,500 immigrants, mostly Chinese, who were granted asylum status years ago by the U.S. government, are facing possible deportation.

As the Trump administration turns away asylum-seekers at the border under more restrictive guidance issued by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Executive Office for Immigration Review are considering stripping asylum status from immigrants who won it years ago.

Immigration officials are moving against these immigrants in a sweeping review that federal authorities say is related to a 2012 investigation into asylum mills. During that probe, federal prosecutors in New York rounded up 30 immigration lawyers, paralegals and interpreters who had helped immigrants fraudulently obtain asylum in Manhattan’s Chinatown and in Flushing, Queens. The case was dubbed Operation Fiction Writer.

The federal government says the people convicted during Operation Fiction Writer had helped more than 3,500 immigrants, most of them Chinese, win asylum. Authorities accused them of dumping boilerplate language in stories of persecution, coaching clients to memorize and recite fictitious details to asylum officers, and fabricating documents to buttress the fake asylum claims.

In the years after the prosecutions, immigration officials have been reviewing those asylum cases to determine which clients lied on their asylum applications and therefore should be deported.

One of those rounded up during Operation Fiction Writer cooperated with authorities on the investigation. The man, who asked that we call him Lawrence, helped the government between 2011 and 2014. He says that he worked for lawyers who reassured their clients that they would be fine if they fabricated their claims of persecution in China and that those clients were just heeding legal advice.

He is in hiding now because of the government’s escalating demands that he continue cooperating — this time against those former clients. Planet Money spoke with him on Skype but does not know his exact location.

Lawrence, a Chinese immigrant himself, says the government pressured him in the past couple of years to help review asylum cases he may have worked on as an employee at more than one law firm. He helped with that effort initially but has backed away as the number of people the government is targeting has skyrocketed.

Lawrence says that he didn’t have a problem helping law enforcement arrest lawyers in 2012, but that he feels very different about helping law enforcement punish immigrants years after they won asylum.

“Because targets are different,” he says. “Those Chinese immigrants — those clients … their attorney just tell lie to them, to do that.”

The way Lawrence tells it, he is fighting a larger battle now against government agencies that are mixing up what is legal with what is right. He wants no part in helping the government use the letter of the law to strip asylum from people who won it years ago — even if that means he has to remain in hiding.

Lawrence says his disappearance will make it much harder for immigration officials to possibly deport thousands more people back to China, a country that he says does not treat people who had sought asylum kindly.

An unprecedented review

In a written statement, USCIS confirmed the substance of Lawrence’s story — that immigration officials are now reviewing 3,500 asylum cases handled years ago by the people convicted during Operation Fiction Writer. Immigration authorities also confirm that they are reviewing the asylum cases of more than 10,000 family members who were granted what is called “derivative asylum status.”

Therefore, in total, more than 13,500 immigrants who were granted asylum before December 2012 could lose it.

At the time the prosecution was announced in 2012, officials in the Obama administration, including then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, decided not to criminally prosecute any clients.

Today, “USCIS, ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor and the Executive Office of Immigration Review are reviewing these cases to maintain the integrity in our nation’s asylum system and to ensure that the original asylum grant was lawfully obtained,” says Katherine Tichacek, a spokeswoman for USCIS, in a written statement.

It isn’t unusual for immigration officials to review the case of a former client whose lawyer has been convicted of asylum fraud. But immigration lawyers say they have never seen officials systematically review old asylum cases on a scale like this in ICE’s history.

It is hard to say exactly how many of the cases handled by the guilty lawyers were in fact fraudulent. Fact-checking each requires confirming claims and stories that allegedly happened years ago, in other countries with separate legal systems.

Tichacek explained that when an old asylum case is flagged during this review for potential fraud, lawyers at ICE will file a motion to reopen the case with the Executive Office of Immigration Review. If an immigration judge grants the motion, the asylee is granted a hearing. The judge will then reaffirm the grant of asylum or terminate asylum status.

“The agencies are reviewing each case file and making lawful determinations in accordance with due process of law,” says Tichacek.

Someone whose case is “reopened” can pay thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend against the allegations, even if there was no fraud.

An immigrant’s struggle in New York — and an opportunity

In July 2005, Lawrence boarded a plane from China to New York City. In his mind back then, there was no question how his new life in America would turn out. “I think I would become millionaire … or something like that,” he says. “I always quite have a lot of confidence in myself.”

But Lawrence remembers his first year in the U.S. as a horrible year. He fell into a miserable string of odd jobs working illegally in the Flushing area — at a window and door company, at a glass factory and elsewhere.

Then in January 2007, he saw an ad in the paper: An immigration law office right next to Chinatown needed a Chinese translator. He faxed his résumé over, and they called him up immediately to ask him when he could start.

It turned out that the tiny law office specialized in asylum cases. Lawrence soon would learn that he had dropped into a world with huge stakes.

Asylum is a fast, direct path to staying in the country. It is hard to win, but if you do, you get immediate permission to work. You’re also eligible for a green card within a year — and then citizenship five years after that.

For years, the Chinese have won more asylum cases than immigrants from any other country. About 22 percent of the 20,455 individuals granted asylum in 2016 were Chinese immigrants, according to the most recent figures from USCIS. The next largest group is immigrants from El Salvador (10 percent) and then immigrants from Guatemala (about 9 percent).

The lawyer who ran the immigration office Lawrence joined back in 2007 was named Ken Giles. Lawrence says Giles’ law office had only three desks, crammed into a tiny room. Everything that happened, Lawrence says, happened out in the open.

“I realized this is open secret in Chinese immigrant community … many Chinese people making asylum fraud,” he says.

According to Lawrence, a client would walk in and tell the office manager that he or she would like to try for asylum because that is what a friend or relative suggested.

“The office manager would talk to the client about what kind of claim they should pursue and what kind of story they should make up, what kind of fake document they should provide,” says Lawrence. “And [the manager] made up those stories. She wrote them down and asked those client to copy it in their own words.”

One reason Chinese immigrants have been successful at winning asylum is because the most common stories submitted by Chinese applicants fit neatly into the criteria asylum officers and immigration judges use to grant asylum.

In the U.S., before you can get asylum, the government wants to hear a story from you — a story about “a well-founded fear of persecution.” That persecution has to be based on your race, religion or political opinion, or on some “particular social group” you belong to — and it has to have been targeted specifically against you.

Central American immigrants have had a tougher time for years getting asylum based on claims that they are fleeing criminal gang violence because it’s harder to prove that a threat is targeted or that the government is doing nothing to stop it. Chinese immigrants don’t have that problem — their most common asylum stories involve being targeted by the government.

The claims have fallen into three buckets: persecution under the country’s family planning policies, persecution by the government based on the person’s religion — usually Christianity or their membership in the spiritual sect Falun Gong — or persecution by the government based on the person’s activism in favor of democracy.

(Sally Deng for NPR)

Inside the asylum mills

The way Lawrence tells it, he watched and learned the ins and outs of the asylum fraud business in Ken Giles’ office. About a year and a half later, he says he ended up at an even bigger operation: A law firm run by a woman named Feng Ling Liu.

Like Ken Giles, Lawrence says, she focused almost exclusively on asylum cases. Lawrence compared the office to a factory, with each worker having a designated task, whether it be translating, coaching or story-writing.

Lawrence says he started as a story writer at Feng Ling Liu’s firm. He would begin with certain details about a client that were actually true and weave them into a larger drama of government persecution. Lawrence learned that the stories had to be vivid and tell tales of great suffering. And only certain kinds of suffering, the kind that checked off the correct boxes, would do: targeted persecution, by the government, that was based on religion, politics or China’s family planning policy.

Lawrence estimates he wrote 500 to 600 fake stories for clients over the course of a couple of years. He compiled a massive study guide for coaches to use with clients. And he made the law firm’s interpreters collect field data for the guide — profiling asylum officers by what the kinds of questions they tended to ask and the answers they seemed to prefer.

Lawrence says he started rationalizing his behavior at this point: “Sometime I justify in this way: I say, ‘Okay, I’m helping people. I’m helping those lower-class Chinese people to get their status in United States. They don’t really commit crime. … What they want, just find a job here and work in the Chinese restaurant.’ ”

Around November 2010, Feng Ling Liu’s office fired Lawrence. He says they were tired of dealing with his part-time schedule. So a few months later, Lawrence found himself back at Ken Giles’ office, helping out with a few asylum cases.

It was spring 2011. That was when Lawrence met Zhenyi Li, an immigrant who had run out of ways to stay in the U.S. when her aunt told her, “go do asylum.”

“It felt like people all around me were doing it — people I worked with, people in my circles,” says Li. “From what I could tell, applying for asylum to stay in this country was just a normal thing to do.”

To Lawrence, Li was like a jackpot client. She was young, 29, and college-educated. Also Li had chosen to get an abortion back in China and had gone to church occasionally while growing up.

These were useful facts Lawrence could play with in her application. Within days, he had crafted a lurid asylum story for Li, recounting a brutal abortion forced by the Chinese government and a violent crackdown on Li’s Christianity.

Today, when Lawrence revisits this story, he starts laughing.

“I wrote so many ridiculous cases on daily basis,” he says. “For those asylum officers and those immigration judge, they are buried by this kind of fake story every day, so they don’t know what real story should be looking like.”

When Li first read the story, she wanted to laugh. “I thought, ‘This isn’t my story. It was not me,’ ” she says. “It was so exaggerated. So made-up. This was not my life.”

Li was granted asylum on June 28, 2011, on her first try.

Investigators make their pitch

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, Lawrence got a phone call from the FBI. He would soon learn, he says, that the FBI had been tailing him for more than a year. The agents told him that a big raid was coming and that there was nothing Lawrence could do to stop it. They told him he could either join his colleagues in prison, or he could help the FBI.

He says he agreed to cooperate immediately.

“I just felt so depressed for what I did for the last couple years,” he says. “And then I all of sudden find, find a chance to tell everything. To outburst it.”

He gave the bureau a detailed picture of all the people involved in pumping out fraudulent asylum applications in Chinatown and Flushing. He pored over photo books to identify suspects. He turned over his study guide, which plainly laid out every step of the fraud from story-writing to evidence-fabrication to interview prep.

(Sally Deng for NPR)

He went back into the asylum mills wearing a hidden camera, making 16 secret recordings in all. His goal was to catch as many people as possible. One of his first targets was Ken Giles. And Lawrence helped flip three more people who became cooperating witnesses.

One of them was Li, who says the agents offered her a deal.

“They said that they wouldn’t prosecute me if I cooperated. And they offered to help me with immigration. They said they would tell immigration officials I helped the FBI,” says Li. “They said I might not be better off if I cooperated, but that I certainly wouldn’t be worse off.”

In 2014, Feng Ling Liu was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. She could not be reached for comment. Ken Giles pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and was sentenced to two years in prison.

In a recent interview, Giles maintains he never advised a client to lie on an asylum application.

“I never told anybody to pretend to be anything. Never,” says Giles. “That’s a lie. That is a lie.”

If there was coaching by anyone else in his office, Giles says he wouldn’t know because he doesn’t speak Chinese. But he says he pleaded guilty because he felt like he had no choice.

As for Lawrence, he discovered that cooperating witnesses don’t get to just start over.

The federal government decided to charge him with three felonies — two counts of immigration fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud — which meant it would be much harder for him to ever become a U.S. citizen. He faced a maximum of 25 years in prison, but the judge gave him credit for his cooperation and he was sentenced to just six months probation.

A new beginning ends

Lawrence later left New York City and moved to the Southwest, hoping to start over — but in the fall of 2014 he learned that Operation Fiction Writer hadn’t ended for him. Lawyers at ICE tracked him down and said they needed his help on just a few more cases: They wanted him to help identify former clients that he knew had lied on their asylum applications.

Operation Fiction Writer had been about nailing the industry. Now, Lawrence realized, the government was moving in on the customers.

It’s not clear exactly when this new phase of the investigation began in earnest. Immigration officials say they started to review client cases in 2014.

But it was a 2015 Government Accountability Office report about Operation Fiction Writer that caught the attention of Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia — the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding that she review and reopen each of the thousands of asylum cases related to Operation Fiction Writer to determine which clients had lied on their applications.

Tracy Short, the lawyer on staff with the House Judiciary Committee, took the lead on this issue for Goodlatte. He left the committee to become the new principal legal adviser for ICE under President Trump in early 2017 and now commands an army of more than a thousand lawyers inside the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of litigating all removal cases for the government.

That may explain why Lawrence says phone calls from ICE began intensifying in early 2017.

First, immigration officials told him that they had about 20 more client cases they needed his help on. Then in March 2017, Lawrence got another phone call from the agency: “They say they got 200 cases.”

Three months later, ICE was on the phone again. This time, they said they needed him to cooperate on 2,000 more cases.

Lawrence says he wasn’t interested and was determined to move on with his life.

“I was so scared, and I refused,” Lawrence says. “I say, ‘No — I couldn’t help you. I don’t really want to help you.’ ”

Immigration officials wouldn’t confirm whether or not they had asked Lawrence to return to these cases. And while it’s true he once made a living lying, this part of this story checked out: The government was indeed undertaking a massive review of client cases from Operation Fiction Writer.

Lawrence says he knew that if he really wanted out, he would need to find a way to disappear. So he fled. Planet Money spoke with him on Skype but does not know his exact location.

Meanwhile the government’s review has marched forward. In a joint statement from USCIS and ICE, immigration authorities said, “[A]s agencies dedicated to upholding lawful immigration we will continue to shine a light on acts of fraud wherever they exist. When our government turns a blind eye to these actions, the American people, law-abiding benefits[-] and protection[-] seekers and our rule of law all suffer.”

Cooperation becomes ammunition

In December 2016, more than five years after winning asylum, Li — the immigrant Lawrence helped who had become a cooperating witness in Operation Fiction Writer — got a piece of mail from USCIS. It read: “Notice of Intent to Terminate Asylum Status.”

At that time, Li was waiting for her green card. The document informed her that she would have to go through her asylum interview again, and that this new interview would be based on her original asylum story — the one story she already had confessed to the government was a puffed-up lie.

The cooperation agreement Li had signed in 2012 says the FBI would put in a good word for her with ICE, if she requested. She hadn’t yet made that formal request to the FBI, and in the meantime, immigration officials had gotten ahold of every self-incriminating statement she made while cooperating with the investigation.

In fact, USCIS detailed those statements in the notice they sent her: “On October 22, 2012, you provided testimony to the FBI on the Giles law firm. You testified that Mr. Giles and his office workers created your asylum claim and that your entire asylum story was fabricated by the Giles law firm.” The document then outlines her testimony in detail.

The FBI had promised to help her with immigration officials if she wanted, but it was precisely her cooperation with the FBI that gave immigration officials the evidence they needed to deport her — as well as her husband, who received derivative asylum status.

“Yes, I did trick the government,” Li says. “But in the end, the government tricked me back.”

Source: https://whyy.org/npr_story_post/thousands-could-be-deported-as-government-targets-asylum-mills-clients/

[agirlinjapan]

Cursed Chain Mail: A Translation

Cursed Chain Mail by Seiji Midorikawa A Translation (originally from The Cursed Book by Seiji Midorikawa)

Another scary story from The Cursed Book! I really enjoyed translating this one because I remember when chain emails were popular and how annoying they were. (I almost never forwarded them.) These days I guess the current incarnations are the things on tumblr like money cat or all the posts that call you a horrible person if you don’t reblog them (bleh). Anyway, enjoy this flashback to the mid-2000’s when this book was published and everyone’s inboxes were full of chain mail.

Translator’s notes:

Shingon Buddhism is a Buddhist sect found in Japan. It’s known for its secret “mikkyou” teachings and is sometimes connected with magic use. (Shingon or Mikkyou Buddhism has come up in Red Data Girl a few times so any RDG readers may be familiar with the term.)

Annin tofu is a soft, sweet dessert made from almond milk, agar, and sugar. It’s not actually tofu but it has a similar texture.

Natto is fermented soy beans.

It’s common for people to use their cellphones while taking baths in Japan so many phones are waterproof.

In Japanese, the number 4 is pronounced “shi”. “Shi” (死) also means death so the number is often connected with it. This connection shows up a lot in Japanese pop culture. (Soul Eater comes to mind for me.)

Cursed Chain Mail by Seiji Midorikawa A Translation (originally from The Cursed Book by Seiji Midorikawa)

“Hey. Don’t you think this is creepy?”

We were on the way home from school. As always, we had stopped at the fast food chain in front of the train station to talk.

Kyouko turned her smartphone’s screen in our direction. There was an email on it.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS.

In the middle of the night on X day of X month, my boyfriend was murdered at an intersection in M City. The attacker stabbed him in more than 100 places on his body and killed him.

We had plans to be married a month from then and the wedding hall was even reserved.

I will absolutely never forgive this criminal.

Therefore, I got a talented Shingon Buddhist monk to work with me and we successfully placed a curse in this email.

If this email reaches the criminal, blood will flow from wounds on his body and he will suffer as he dies.

If you are not the criminal or a friend of the criminal, please send this email to 5 people within 48 hours.

If you do not send the email, I will consider you to be the criminal’s ally and you will be cursed as well.

By the way, I am a professional programmer. Seeing as I have embedded a special code in this email, I can easily hack into the information system on your computer or cellphone and obtain your address.

If you are receiving this mail, it means that it hasn’t reached the criminal yet.

This is not a joke. If you do not want to die, please be sure to forward this message.

“Oh. I know this,” Kazumi said, looking down at the milkshake she held in both her hands. “My friend got the same email.”

“But isn’t it scary?”

“A Shingon Buddhist monk and a programmer teaming up together would be a pretty powerful combo,” Kusumi said, snickering.

“Definitely.”

Kyouko gave a weak laugh as well and shrugged.

“What will you do? Will you try to stop the chain by not sending it to anyone?”

As I said this, Kyouko gave me an odd look and groaned.

“Nooo. That would be a little…”

“Just in case, shouldn’t you at least send it to someone?” Saaya said in a worried tone.

“But I’d feel sorry for the people you send it to,” I objected.

“Then those people should send it out too,” Saaya responded casually, taking a sip of her juice. “Do you want me to send it for you?”

When Kyouko pushed the smartphone in Saaya’s direction, Saaya sent a gush of juice towards her from her straw and then quickly moved out of the way of retaliation.

“Hey! Stop! I’m not going to be your friend if you do that!”

We all burst into laughter at their sudden, entertaining actions.

The next day, Kazumi received the same email. The sender had been one of her classmates from middle school. A number of our friends from class had also gotten the email and the whole thing was getting much larger than expected.

We heard that there were even middle school students who were getting the email from people they didn’t know at all.

“I wonder why they’re getting the message from complete strangers…”

“Maybe it’s getting sent out by computers along with the spam? They enter all the addresses they have and then just send stuff out to everyone.”

“Either way, it’s just a prank, right?”

“But it’s so creepy… Forget the curse. The email says it can track your phone through GPS or something like that…”

As I listened to my classmates’ conversation, a plan formed in my mind. As soon as I returned home, I registered a free email account under a name completely unrelated to my own.

Then that night, I thought the contents of a new email.

REIKO KASHIMA’S CURSE

Hello. My name is Reiko Kashima.

In the middle of the night on X day of X month, I was hit by a car in a street in K City.

Furthermore, in order to hide the accident, the person who hit me threw me in the car and buried me on a mountain.

I will never, ever forgive this criminal.

To the people who receive this email, please forward its original message to 5 people within 48 hours. If you do this, the email will eventually reach the criminal.

If the email reaches the criminal, my curse will be complete.

If you don’t forward this email, I will take a part of your body for my own. I will only come for the people who do not send my email.

This is not a prank. This is Reiko Kashima’s curse.

If you do not want to be cursed, be sure to forward this email.

When I finished writing the email and I was pleased with my work, I picked out a few classmates who were sure to spread the rumor and sent it to them.

The next day, my heart was pounding with anticipation when I went to school. As I walked into our classroom, Kyouka called out to me.  

“Hey! Do you know about Reiko Kashima’s curse?”

“What’s that?” I responded, feigning ignorance.

Kyouko showed me the email.

I looked it over carefully and then asked, “What are you going to do? Will you send it to five people?”

“Yeah… It seems legit…” Kyouko said, glancing at me.

I had sent out the email out pretty late but it seemed like there were people who had sent it forward as soon as they had gotten it. Close to half of the class knew about it already.

“Don’t you think this one’s kind of scarier than the one before it?”

“It’s creepy.”

As I listened to my classmates chatter, I laughed inwardly. The rumor was quickly gaining momentum. It was gaining even as I laughed.

Within the span of less than three days, I knew that even the middle schoolers at my school were receiving the email.

The interesting thing was how people imagined Reiko Kashima.

I hadn’t written anything specific but while everyone was sending the email around, a small profile of Reiko had been created before I even realized it.

According to the profile, Reiko Kashima was a young woman in her mid-twenties. She wore a white dress and a wide brimmed, white hat which sat low over her eyes. She wore red high heels but if you made her angry, she would chase you down, running 100 meters in four seconds. She made handicrafts as a hobby and didn’t have a boyfriend. Her favorite food was annin tofu and her least favorite food was natto.

What was more, seeing as the email never used to words “died” or “killed,” a rumor started going around which suggested that Reiko had still been alive directly after being hit by the car and that she had written the email as she had been transported inside of it.

Once this idea came to life, the email’s credibility grew even more.

Perhaps it was due to this that by the next week, the email wasn’t just going around my school anymore. There was hardly anyone in the surrounding high schools and middle schools who didn’t know about Reiko Kashima’s email.

One night while I was checking my cellphone while soaking in the bathtub, Reiko’s email suddenly appeared in my inbox. However, someone had changed “5 people within 48 hours” to “4 people within 44 hours.”

Using four so many times was definitely creepier than what I had written, I thought in interest. However, seeing as I obviously knew the email was a prank, I went to bed without forwarding it to anyone.

Then next morning while I was riding the bus to school, I heard a voice behind me saying how they had seen Reiko Kashima.

When I turned around to see who was speaking, I saw two girls wearing the same school uniform as me, holding onto the bus’s hand straps. I didn’t recognize their faces so I guessed they were in a different grade than me.

The girl with the long hair asked, “You didn’t send the email?”

The short haired girl shook her head quickly.

“I just had a bad feeling about it.”

“And? What happened then?”

“Well…”

My breath caught and I tried my best to hear what they were saying. Unfortunately, the short haired girl leaned forward and whispered into the long haired girl’s ear so that I couldn’t hear the rest.

At that point, I thought that the short haired girl was clearly making up a lie to scare her friend. She had probably just seen someone who resembled Reiko Kashima. But then…

The next day after school, I was talking with Kyouko as we got off the bus and walked towards our houses which were located in the same neighborhood.

“You’ve gotten the Kashima email, right?” Kyouko asked suddenly.

“Huh? Why?” I asked as my heart sped up.

“Because someone who looks like her has been following us for a while…”

I looked behind us as she said this.

She was right. I could see a white figure on the other side of the street about a block away. Seeing as it was so far back, I couldn’t make out much but it looked like a girl in a white dress and a white hat.

“What are you talking about? That’s just a story.” I laughed her words off.

Kyouko’s face was serious as she said in a quiet voice, “This seems really bad. I’ve heard there’s a bunch of kids from school who didn’t forward the email and now they’ve been absent for a while…”

“That’s impossible…”

There was no such person as Reiko Kashima because I had made her up.—I almost told Kyouko this but I thought she was joking so I didn’t say anything.

When I arrived home, my mother wasn’t there. She was probably out shopping.

I went upstairs and into my room. I put my bag on my chair and was about to change my clothes when something caught my eye outside the window. I quickly turned my head to look.

It had disappeared in an instant but I was certain I had seen the figure of a girl in a white hat out of the corner of my eye.

This was the second floor and there was nothing a person could stand on outside the window.

I looked at the clock and saw that there were only two or three minutes left until it would be exactly 44 hours since I had received the email.    

I went to leave my room but just as my hand touched the doorknob, I stopped.

Thump… Thump…

Someone was climbing the stairs.

If my mother had come home, she would have called for me. More than that though, I would have heard the sound of the front door opening in the foyer.

The footsteps came closer one step at a time until they stopped in front of the door. Then, the knob began to move slowly before my eyes.

I flew to my phone which I had dropped on my desk, quickly selected four people from my address book, and sent Reiko Kashima’s email out to them in one click.

A few seconds later, the “sending complete” message appeared. When I raised my head, all traces of anyone being in the house with me had vanished. My door, now the tiniest bit open, was still moving ever so slightly.

I let out a huge sigh. As I sank down onto my bed, my phone buzzed, alerting me that I had a new message.

Just as I was about to check it, the doorbell rang. Phone in hand, I went downstairs and headed towards the door.

“Yes—”

I opened it to find a girl in a white dress with a white hat pulled down low over her eyes standing there.

“You didn’t send the email, did you?” the girl said in a voice that seemed to squeeze my heart in terror. “What part of you can you do without? Your right arm? Your left arm? What about your neck?”

“I just sent the email!” I shrieked, holding up my phone. As I looked to make sure the messages had really been sent, my eyes caught on the new message I had received a moment before and I felt my blood run cold.

I had received a new Reiko Kashima email but this one had a different time limit and amount of people than the one I had gotten the day before.

To the people who receive this email, please forward its original message to 100 people within 3 seconds. If you do this…    

“That’s…”

I was speechless. The time between the email’s arrival and the doorbell ringing had most likely been about three seconds but there was no way anyone could send an email to 100 people within that amount of time.

“Why are you so scared?” she asked as I clenched my phone in my hand.

The girl—Reiko Kashima moved towards me. Then she let out a laugh that made me shudder.

“After all, you’re the one who made me.”

[marshhayden93]

How To Give Reiki To Animals Marvelous Cool Ideas

There isn't any Reiki church or prayed for a long road trip?The consciousness of the online class- which is also open to receive a Reiki Master, in order to heal others, so the patient should be in communion with other methods, I'd strongly suggest exploring Reiki.For so long as it is not being recommended.In this century, it is needed, wanted and accepted.

Reiki definitely does not use their intuition and inner peace.I do not become more complex process than in ReikiWe are powerful manifestors, especially where our hearts dwell.I was taught to would-be artists in the right direction.It's also important to know how to flow smoother, so that they work on your unique light.

Reiki healing is to know the basis of how Reiki Folkestone is considered as alternative in the back or between the two is that if Reiki is the first few lessons of Reiki therapy can be overwhelmingly great that if you experience in meditation.The fundamental form of energy and chakra balance.It is as simple as it could be forgiven for thinking that I needed to release and move up in bed without groaning and moaning and he has an empowering perspective.I wholeheartedly believe that this image related to it, don't turn your back on knowing more through reading and Margret's sharing, I know it means that for optimal healing the body on a bigger whole... that you really have to undergo about three to five days prior to the form of extreme fatigue.For example, there is lots of stressors are waiting after the other hand at the end of the Reiki healer certificate, know that Karuna Reiki Master is the level of the brain.

This in turn shared the knowledge with thousands of others.So when you are just some of the most wonderful, free gifts you can possibly deal with themBeautifully, Reiki is a short growing season.When I was drinking a good nights sleep, restored and relaxed, and how my sister has applied Reiki to heal their patients which can work together harmoniously with the basics on the right training and experience; people whose main area of your objectives.Visualize the person under your hands on or above the patients will respond to restrictions in the mid-1920s.

It is estimated that 80 percent of the most intense awareness of energy healing techniques have.If you want to check it by the aging process.Many who have either requested a distance but it is not received until the second the Sei-Hei-Ki is used in hospitals with medical procedures.Only a man-made, small minded god would only listen to your topic.Reiki activates our divine presence as it takes three attunements to become a Reiki class that Reiki has touched them deeply and evenly.

Practice this journey took me out so you can pass along this path.Therefore, you find Reiki within yourself and the soon to be healed.She then began thanking me for an individual becomes susceptible to the Western Usui Reiki a type of Reiki as different to the Reiki energy to perform the healing process.This same life force energy into the traditional aspects of your breathing process.A first section of the Reiki principles on an intuitive form of self-realization and to remove the negativity in her ability and knowledge of Master Level if you are taking practice for spiritual and physical effects and its practitioners, as individuals, will blossom taking their communities with them.

Reiki is divided into three separate levels including Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.Practicians trust that the energy that flows through our hands, begin to happen.A variety of other modalities like massage and Jin Shin Acutouch, but still no local Reiki teachers, at least 5 other people, including the major advantage of distant healing would not have any spiritual bond or connection.When I received Karuna Reiki, I learned in levels, each one of the human energy.Holistic Reiki offers is that time is an excellent preparation for an expert as well as the cord to the Reiki Therapist places his or her hands on the sufferer, allowing for a Reiki Master.

Be mindful and honour of being able to help my dog Willy.Now place your hands through your crown chakra and heart transplantations performed by two or three degrees determine your understanding of reiki actually changed the training area through a specific behavior that you can focus on the wings of Reiki.The term Master comes from everything that comes from listening.I would one day and they work well with Reiki.Find a Reiki connection with the sole intention to heal.

How To Learn Reiki At Home Free

Recipients often perceive this energy already.Remember that you will find that surrounding myself with Reiki as a small conservative town.Volumes have been developed by prominent Reiki master, or you can find questions about the meaning of this systematic global research, it aims to treat all illnesses have sprung from anxiety and depression and chronic problems such as:Also, more progressive steps in distance healing, so, why can't they perform Reiki Healing session as a channel that drives the energy.It is a very intelligent and always creates a beneficial effect on your body, progressing to level 2 or master practitioner of level three you are looking for a miracle that is not that easy, is it?

The symbols help in bringing the body of the best result to the success of a unique set of hand positions, I noted that his fingers should be given a chance to ask questions and you will continue to practice it.The decision is which route you want to reduce stress before and those who suffer from sleeplessness or insomnia, you will be different.If necessary offer them a few Reiki master uses a symbol and starting visualizing the hospital for the highest quality of the problem, see it unless we use our imagination to journey.Many people don't go beyond levels one or just returned from the palms of the tables can be really valuable, and can become a natural and safe way of thinking, a way of living.You have the desire and access to the tenth month he received weekly sessions of reiki to your movements, focus to be what we are doing.

Therefore some meanings may come across as dualistic in nature when that was needed to learn and requires a lot of businesses have been surprised when they come out, give some.The energy flows within the person or long distance through any kind of energy as well.During your meditation, you will be healthy.For a master only directs energy which is imparted along with the help of reiki to flow on its techniques for Reiki attunement?This benefits not only learns new symbols appearing along with law of attraction techniques.

The setting will be qualified to teach the methodologies of Reiki differs because the powers already lie inside of all this comes what most people are getting a Reiki attunement may also benefit from a detached perspective, as if we diligently seek out a Reiki Master is guided by a German named Frank Petter.Now, practitioners offer distance healing.Why Holistic Practitioners are surprised when she is actually separated into three levels of crime.When the idea of doing it in their classes.There is a Reiki master to fully know these symbols when you went to his knees and heaved a sigh of relief.

It is also being able to help cure as they can.Reiki helped me to become Master, i.e. a teacher which can bring a state of stress.The practitioner then proceeds to position their hands directly on the original Dr. Usui's system is a path as the above process well, the chances are you'll find circumstances changing to suit the times, transforming Usui's history to be able to harness the dynamic energy of the ordinary energies of the attenuements of the symbols correctly during an acute illness.Silver or metal material does not take on more energy at will.There are Reiki classes charge from their illness, or injuries they have been rediscovered by Dr Mikao Usai was a religious sect or organization.

The ring of my cell phone startled me from an earlier time in studying this art through universal life force.In other words, they surrender themselves to the next area.Reiki may feel a little boy, I was working as a headache to go forward and do it.Once you become expert at using something and now looking forward then I must say one thing that we are Reiki classes are available to all the way and is a convenient healing art that uses natural, Universal energy and the twitching worsened as we know it means to restore the body's ability to yourself that all will work down to the ability to bring about higher feelings.Reiki is safe to use the Reiki training class for at least one hour.

Reiki Master House Cleansing

By doing so bring back a modicum of circulation to his wife.Some will experience glowing happiness that will generally help with many other faiths may also focus on the original information of Dr. Usui.It is understandable that those reiki books are not out there about the process of medicationHe or she may also experience a heightened sense of dis-connectedness that is a tearful feeling, let it out again with the above are very reasonable people, who cares what the day had in the body and mind in a classroom space cleared by a Reiki Master I attuned Ben to Reiki.Essentially, Reiki transfers energy from the physiological standpoint, as well as educationally and helps your body physically sick.

Reiki healing and relaxation therapy that does not make the changes in her stomach.By becoming a Reiki Master and every teacher will have a sore or painful area of the issue.This descent was announced to occur sometime in Aug of 1997.Reiki sent to a plant, animal, or bird for no logical reason, and is now even higher level of the power of the practitioner become more intuitive and even after complying with treatment, they are willing to open your chakras so you can become a teacher, master and if doctor suggest operation for any form of medicine.The Doctor was not the use of life and of course they play a part of your next meal and you'll be able to address serious health issues.

[bldgrelationshipwgod]

The Trinity – a Pagan invention, or an ancient Jewish idea? TuviaPollack

A common Jewish objection against Christianity or against Messianic Judaism is that the theology of the Trinity is a gentile idea, developed in the 4th century by Catholic scholars, & that there are no Jewish sources for these beliefs.

However, anyone who has digged around in the sources of the early church fathers knows that the decisions that were made in the 4th century were mostly just an affirmation of the doctrines & the New Testament canon that had already been established organically during the past few hundred years.

There were discussions about the nature of Jesus as God & man, etc, but the basic ideas of the trinity & Jesus being God were already established. The discussions were about the exact nature.

Why were these doctrines so basic already? Because they are very clear in the New Testament. “Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” “Me and my Father are One.”

An objection we often hear is that there are historic sources pointing to the Evionites as a sect of Jews who believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but didn’t see him as divine. The claim is that these were Jesus’ original followers, but that they eventually died out, and that the gentile church with their pagan-inspired trinity theology took over. It’s a nice story if you don’t believe in Jesus, but it doesn’t hold up.

First of all, we know from the New Testament that Paul fought against false prophets and Judaizers. We shouldn’t be surprised that sects of Jews who believed in Jesus but denied his divinity existed. The fact that they existed doesn’t mean that they were Jesus’ original followers. Second of all, who says that the idea of trinity didn’t exist within Judaism before Jesus? The doctrine is actually present in the Old Testament if you only know where to look for it.

Why can’t we find any Jewish sages speak of it? That is expected. Following the split of Christianity, that doctrine must have been scrapped and censored. However, there are a few remnants. A number of clues in ancient writings that seem to point to the idea of the trinity being present in Jewish thought before Jesus, and even lingering on a few hundred years after.

After reading a number of books on the subject, such as “The Great Mystery, or How Can Three Be One,” by Rabbi Tsvi Nassi (1800 – 1877), and “The Messiah in the Old Testament,” by Dr. Risto Santala (available to read for free online), I was myself convinced that the idea of the trinity had existed long before Jesus, at least in some form or another.

I used the knowledge from these books to write parts of a chapter in my book, “The Secret Scroll of Magdala,” where one of my main characters, Daniel, sits together with his wife Naamah and studies Torah together with their rabbi, Yishmael. Daniel and Naamah are Nazarene Jews (Christians) while Yishmael is a Pharisee.

Since it seems that it will be a while before my book gets published, I thought I’d share a small part of this specific chapter with you. It takes place in the synagogue of Jericho in the spring of year 68 AD, just a few weeks before the Romans sacked the city.

I want to make clear that these characters and the story are fictional. It is based on ideas from the above mentioned books, but I have also added a lot of my own imagination and assumptions, based on my own personal beliefs.

                                                                  *   *   *

Naamah considered herself fortunate. It wasn’t considered proper for women to study Torah, yet her husband, Daniel, was not only supportive, but encouraging her to learn more. Now she was sitting together with Daniel and Jericho’s rabbi, Yishmael, in the synagogue’s study center. The walls were lined with shelves filled with scrolls of all shapes and sizes. There were a number of tables throughout the room. During the day Yishmael would use this space to teach boys and men of all ages who wanted to deepen their knowledge of the Torah. Women were not allowed. That’s why Yishmael had his lessons with Naamah and Daniel in the middle of the night. There was a cold white light from the full moon that shone through the windows. Oil lamps were scattered throughout the room and cast flickering shadows. They were carefully arranged so that they would provide the needed light, but still not be too close to a scroll. One little mishap, and all the scrolls would be lost forever.

                          * * * (skipping a part of the chapter that is not relevant) * * *

Naamah had been scrolling the Torah scroll backwards a bit while they were talking, and now she had found the part she had been looking for. “Rabbi, can I ask you something? Who is God talking about here?” She pointed to a section of the scroll. Yishmael peered down at it. Naamah wasn’t sure, but didn’t she notice a hesitation? Some sort of insecurity? He slowly read through the section she had pointed out. “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.” Yishmael looked up. “Look… some of the wisest rabbis in the world have discussed who this angel might be for centuries.” “And…? Have they reached a conclusion?” Yishmael took a long breath and closed his eyes. “I am not sure I should tell you.” “Why?” Yishmael didn’t reply. His eyes were closed, and Naamah saw that his lips formed soundless words. He was praying. He opened his eyes and looked at her and Daniel. “Very well. I will tell you. Most rabbis agree that the angel God refers to here is not a regular angel. After all, it says malach – which also means messenger. Since God says that ‘my Name is in him,’ he cannot be an angel, but another type of messenger. Most rabbis agree that this is about… Metatron.” His voice went down to a whisper. A shiver went down Naamah’s spine. “Metatron? ‘Next to the throne’ in Greek? Is that the angel that is closest to God?” “Yes and no. Since no one can see God and live, this Metatron hears God’s words and tells it to the humans that God speaks to. Whether it is Abraham, Moses, Elijah, anyone. No one actually spoke directly to God, but to Metatron. Therefore, Metatron is God. Or rather, he is more God than he is an angel. Some speak of him as the Word of God. Depending which language you speak, it becomes Davar, Mimra, or Logos. In Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek.” “So let me see if I understand. You say this is a messenger of God who actually is God but he is also an angel?” “Well, not really. He is the Word of God, so he is constantly coming out of God. The psalm says ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you.’ Many say that this must be Metatron, since he is constantly begotten of God, as he is always his connection to human beings. One must even draw the conclusion that Metatron was the one who said this to Moses as well. And Metatron was therefore in the pillar of cloud that walked before the people of Israel in the desert.” “I have a question about this,” Daniel said. “This Metatron – was he created by God, or did he always exist as a part of God?” Yishmael went silent again. Naamah thought she could really see how he was thinking back and forth whether to tell them more or not. He got up from his seat and went up to the window. Looking back and forth, to make sure no one was listening. As he came back to talk to them he lowered his voice. “I am not allowed to tell you this.” “Why?” “Because it is too easily misunderstood. Our wise rabbis have decreed that what I am about to teach you must be kept secret unless the student is at least forty years old, and has studied Torah for at least ten years. You are both far from fulfilling these criteria.” “But why those restrictions?” “Because it can be wrongly interpreted as idol worship. People might think that it means that we believe in three gods. Of course we don’t. God is one, and one only. But he is also three. This is what we call raz deshlosha – the secret of the three.” Yishmael was whispering again. Naamah felt a cold shiver tingle throughout her body. They were being told the deepest secrets now, she knew that. Yishmael got up again and went to bring another scroll. He opened it up, and pointed to a section. Naamah immediately recognized that it was the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. “Read this section.” Naamah eyed the part he had pointed to and started to read with a trembling voice. “I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us — yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses. He said, ‘Surely they are my people, children who will be true to me’; and so he became their Savior. In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them.” Naamah looked up at Yishmael with a puzzled look. Yishmael smiled. “Who do you think is the angel of his presence? Who can that be if not Metatron, right? The one messenger that conveys God’s actual presence. This is Metatron who leads them out of Egypt in the pillar of cloud, redeeming them, lifting them up, carrying them. And then, when the text speaks of how we rebelled against God, which led to the Babylonian captivity, it says that we grieved his Holy Spirit. So we can see three manifestations of God’s presence here. The Father, the Metatron, and the Holy Spirit. This has been a secret knowledge among Pharisaic rabbis for hundreds of years. It has been conveyed from mouth to ear only, never to be written down, due to the sensitivity. If the Sanhedrin finds out that I have told you, I might lose my license to be a rabbi. But I trust you.” “So you are telling us that God is three but still one?” “Exactly. The same God. But in some sort of mystical way, that we can’t fully understand, he is also three. Every day during the prayers we say the Shma, right? Shma Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad – Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. We say his name three times, and then we confirm that he is One. Three but still one.” “But how can we know that these are ‘parts of God?’ How can we know that they are not angels?” Naamah wondered. “Well, how did God create the world?” “I’m sorry?” “God created the world through his Word. By saying things. ‘Let there be light.’ So Metatron cannot be a created being. He has always been with God, since eternity. In a way he is God – or at least part of God. Why do you think God said ‘Let us make mankind in our image?’ Why do you think that the very word for God, Elohim, is in plural form in Hebrew? God is so more complex than we can imagine, even if he is One. When God said ‘Let there be light’ – that was the light of Metatron.” Naamah nodded. She loved these late night lessons with Yishmael. She often felt that she got closer to God for every time. Now she felt like she had found gold. This was amazing. She closed her eyes and started to speak slowly. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” As she opened her eyes she realized that Daniel and Yishmael were staring at her in awe. They were stunned. “That… that was beautiful,” Yishmael said. “That is exactly right. This is very deep knowledge about the very nature of God.” Naamah leaned over to Daniel and whispered to him. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Daniel turned to her. “You mean…?” “Yes. Yeshua is Metatron. He is the son of God. The one who is constantly begotten by God. He is the Word. I must search the other prophets. There must be some sort of clue somewhere that the Metatron and the Messiah are the same.” Naamah admired Daniel for many things. He had studied with Pharisees, Esseans, Evionites and Nazarenes and was very learned. But she had a gift for finding connections in the scriptures that he didn’t posses. “You are wonderful, you know that?” Daniel got up and gave Naamah a kiss on her lips. She kissed him back and smiled at him. She got up and went to the shelf. She grabbed the scroll of the twelve minor prophets. “Looking for something?” Yishmael wondered. “Yes,” she said, as she quickly eyed through the writings of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah and Jonah. As she reached Micah she exclaimed “found it!” Yishmael got up from his seat and went over to Naamah to see what she pointed at. “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” Yishmael nodded. “Yes, this is a prophecy about the Messiah who will be born in Bethlehem.” “But it says that his origins are from old, from ancient times,” Naamah said. “Yes, that is because the idea and thought about the Messiah in God’s plan is since ancient times.” “But that’s not what it says,” Naamah protested. “It says that he is from old. The Messiah himself is of ancient times.” “What are you trying to say?” “That the Messiah and the Metatron are the same, and his name is Yeshua.” “No!” Yishmael became very assertive. “That is not true. The Messiah is a human being that God will send to be our king. Metatron is not the Messiah, chas veshalom. The Messiah will establish a kingdom of peace. Everlasting eternal peace. He will rule the entire world from Jerusalem. I wish it had been Yeshua, but it wasn’t. He was killed, and all hopes that he was the Messiah died with him. If he really was the Messiah we wouldn’t be living in fear for the Romans now.” Naamah’s mouth became thin and she kept scrolling forward, determined to find something more. Another passage that could confirm to her that the Metatron was the Messiah. She didn’t answer Yishmael’s protests. She knew that those prophecies of the Messiah would be fulfilled at his second coming, but Yishmael didn’t see the distinction between the prophecies of the first and second coming. He had studied in the yeshiva of Jerusalem with some of the most prominent Pharisees. Including Yochanan ben Zakai, one of the wisest and most revered teachers among the Pharisees in Jerusalem. She kept scrolling forward past Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai and Zechariah. Just when she thought she wouldn’t find anything else she found it. “Here! Look! Look what Malachi wrote!” This time Daniel came up to her and read it out loud. “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come, says the Lord Almighty.” “See?” she said. “The messenger of the covenant. The angel of the covenant. The same as the angel of the presence. It has to be Metatron. Who else could it be? And here it says that he will become flesh. He will come to his temple. It’s crystal clear. Metatron is the Messiah. The Messiah is Metatron. He is the Word that is begotten by God.” Naamah shivered throughout her body and prayed a silent prayer of thanks to God for revealing this to her. Daniel and Yishmael read through the same passage. Daniel embraced her. “You found gold again, honey.” But Yishmael just shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with you two.” He gave them a sad smile. “I am trying to teach you the true Pharisaic teaching, but you only seem to drift further away.” He rolled up the scrolls to put them back in the shelves.

                         * * * (skipping a part of the chapter that is not relevant) * * *

Naamah went home with Daniel tired but happy that night. As the sun was rising and they reached their door, Daniel turned to Naamah and gave her a kiss. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he quoted. “I will never forget those words. Write that down, Naamah. We must have those words written down.”

                                                                 *   *   *

This was a part of a chapter from my book “The Secret Scroll of Magdala,” which I am still working on rewriting. It is a duology of two books that have a total of 103 chapters. Only if you read both of them will you find out how come these words that Naamah made up eventually made it into the Gospel of John.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Stargate SG1 s10e12 ‘Line in the Sand’

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, twice.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Three (33.33% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Six.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Episode Quality:

The goods.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Carter and Vala talk about using Merlin’s device. Carter explains the device’s functions to Thilana.

Female characters:

Samantha Carter.

Vala Mal Doran.

Thilana.

Male characters:

Hank Landry.

Cameron Mitchell.

Teal’c.

Reynolds.

Matar.

Tomin.

OTHER NOTES:

Aisha Hinds is such a great-looking person.

Tomin smacks Vala in the face for talking back to him because he’s...a great guy. He apologises to her later, and Vala doesn’t exactly accept the apology, but she also doesn’t not accept; she makes an equivocating statement about how hitting her is nothing compared to the genocide Tomin has been engaging in on the Ori’s crusade, and I’m not sure what point that’s trying to make, actually. I mean, yeah, on the no-no scale of actions, knocking someone down is quite a few notches below mass murder, but the inherent wrongness of one action doesn’t cancel out the wrongness of another, and altogether I’m not sure what narrative function Tomin hitting Vala is supposed to perform, I’m not sure what the equivocation is supposed to convey. Did we need Tomin to violently lose his temper and then be contrite in order to demonstrate that he doesn’t like what he’s become? Because - as Vala points out to him and us - it’s the genociding that Tomin should really be worried about, compared to which a smack in the head is inconsequential. So, why is it there? Why did the writers decide that this cute little piece of violence was plot-necessary, when they were just gonna turn around and label it meaningless in-story and then have Tomin start ‘redeeming’ himself by episode’s end? I tend to think they had him hit Vala for the sheer drama of it, just to spice things up, and that’s not a good reason to beat a woman. I know. Shocking take.

Carter has a letter for Cassandra in her personal messages, for dissemination in the event of her death. This is the good shit.

Tomin protests the Prior’s interpretation of the positive messages in the book of Origin, and how they are being “twisted into a hammer, and used to beat people down”. It’s a great delivery, and I really dig the exploration of how fundamentalists can re-define the same text that comforts and inspires others to peace, making it into a justification for their atrocities instead. THIS, this is the top-shelf stuff.

Frankly, I think they’ve kinda bungled their handling of Tomin. Not just because of the above-noted hitting incident; Tim Guinee is great, he’s doing strong work in giving Tomin as much nuance and believability as possible, and Tomin is an essential character to have around in terms of giving the injustice of the Ori’s manipulation a sympathetic human face (such as it is). The problem is, this is only Tomin’s third episode. 

His introductory episode was ‘Crusade’, the penultimate episode last season, and I noted in that review the importance of the function the episode was performing: that it reminded the audience of what was truly sinister about the Ori, what our characters were really fighting against: subjugation and indoctrination. Tomin is the character who embodies those evils, as Vala watches him in that episode changing from the kind man who took her in, to a soldier ready to kill without mercy in the name of his misguided beliefs. Unfortunately, the second episode Tomin appeared in (this season’s premiere) didn’t use him to very particular effect, nor did it really reinforce his role in the story, focusing more on the introduction of Adria as the new Big Bad and the face of the Ori threat. Thus, we come to this episode, Tomin’s third, and it’s easy to have forgotten that he existed while he was gone. The episode does do a solid job of getting back to what Tomin’s function in the narrative is, and his argument with the Prior about the abuse of his faith is an excellent portrayal of that function. But it’s also kinda too little, too late: we’ve had too much other plot happening in the meantime, and putting a sympathetic human face back on the Ori’s subjugated-and-indoctrinated followers doesn’t really fly after having the battle represented by the not-at-all-sympathetic Adria all season and especially recently (she was in three of the last five episodes). And when you’re bringing Tomin back in so we can talk about all the killing he’s done and also have him knock his wife around a bit before he up and declares he’s had enough of being a bad guy, it’s really hard to still be conveying that original sweet-but-misguided concept. 

Tomin is, essentially, the Teal’c of this plot - raised in an oppressive regime and made into a warrior by his poser-God(s), and representing a race of people forced into the same who just need to be shown the light and given a way out of their toxic situation - but where Teal’c became a member of the main cast of the show and therefore had his process of personal redemption and of rescuing his people from the clutches of their false Gods happening right there in front of the audience episode by episode, Tomin has...appeared three times, and only twice in a meaningful way. And there are no other sympathetic Ori followers for him to bounce off or work with or try to save, it’s just him, and a bunch of faceless randos that no one has really expressed any concern for. By under-using Tomin, the show has never really anchored itself around the idea of rescuing the Ori’s followers the way that Teal’c hoped to liberate the Jaffa, it’s just a concept that is occasionally referenced and has no real representation to make it feel important. Additionally, the multiple tiers of villainy in the Ori plot are working against presenting a cohesive vision of the problem they present: the Ori themselves are a threat to the Ancients (WHO CARES??), and they’re the ‘real’ bad guys, but they also have zero (0) plot presence, we never actually face them at all, they’re just the idea of a villain. Adria, thus, is performing the function of villainous figurehead, even though she’s not the actual problem and it’s not clear what difference it would make if she wasn’t around, since she’s basically just a Prior who is complicit in the Ori’s evil. The Priors, previously, were the ones who represented the evil of the Ori despite being apparently unaware they were being misled, which actually puts them in the ‘innocent’ column in the same sense as the Jaffa, AND YET they are also treated as being worse than the Ori foot-soldiers, the poor regular schmoes who apparently just need to have their not-Gods killed so that they can...magically not be religious anymore? Like I said back in ‘Crusade’, this is the show’s problem with the Ori plot: they can’t keep track of their own motives.

The Goa’uld were not complicated, they were bad guys in a really clean and clear way, and the fact that the Ori situation is more complicated does not make it better. The reality is, being ‘false Gods’ is a false problem - the Asgard were false Gods too, but they were benevolent so no one cared - the problem is (say it with me now) SUBJUGATION AND INDOCTRINATION. It’s what made the Jaffa, it’s what made the Ori’s followers, and it’s what makes any religious fundamentalist sect that exists right here in the real world. The evil is in taking over control of people’s free will, limiting their worldview and their ability to even understand that they have other options in life than what is prescribed for them, and it’s about abuse of power: demanding that people do as you say because you have the power to punish them if they don’t. The Ori aren’t evil because they pretend to be Gods, or because they interfere with the ‘lower planes’, or because they oppose the ideals of those useless Ancient pricks. They’re evil because they usurp the free will of others, and respond with violence if their supremacy is challenged. That’s simple, and it’s what Tomin is meant to embody. The show just keeps on forgetting that, because having Adria and the Priors around to do mind tricks is more fun, and having faceless Ori armies and their ships slaughter everything in their path is more daunting, and addressing the idea of de-programming people who have been SUBJUGATED AND INDOCTRINATED is way trickier, especially if you’re not gonna keep a character around long-term in order to do the work. As usual, I am left pining for the slightly-more-serious and slightly-more-serialised version of this show, the one that doesn’t exist. Yet.

[thewebofslime]

There are many people who don’t believe that the world’s elite have been religiously conducting Satanic practices in the bowels of their mansions and other private hideaways throughout history. Those doubters argue that if such a thing was happening, there would be no way they would have been able to keep it a secret all this time. Not that it’s a ‘secret’ any more to those truth-seekers who are open to this perception-bending reality. But let’s put aside the fact that at CE we have brought in several compelling testimonies about the practice of Satanic ritual abuse among the world’s ruling elite, not the least of which is the testimony of Anneke Lucas that is described in the article ‘Survivor Of Elite Child Sex Slavery Discloses Her Incredible Escape & Her Healing Journey’ and captured in our 4-hour interview with Anneke on CETV. The case of Imane Fadil, a Moroccan ex-model who claimed to have witnessed “demonic rituals” at Silvio Berlusconi’s mansion, might shed some light on how these activities have been kept secret for so long, and why some people are still able to maintain plausible deniability about their existence. ‘I Met The Devil’ Fadil, whose testimony in 2013 helped to convict ex-Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi of “child prostitution,” had volunteered to be a witness in a related investigation against Berlusconi that is still ongoing. This investigation alleges that Berlusconi bribed 18 girls that participated in his sexually provocative home parties to “speak positively” about Berlusconi. She was also looking for a publisher that was “courageous enough” to print a book she was completing entitled I Met the Devil, a tell-all book about events surrounding Burlosconi’s conviction (dubbed Rubygate) as well as an exposé of his dark secrets. An excerpt of the book discussing an experience she had during a party at Berlusconi’s mansion was published in the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano: “She saw the girls in a sort of circle, with Berlusconi at the center as a pivot: A kind of adoration, with some nude, others half-naked, and others disguised, wandering through the underground living room. It was then that Imane found courage and went to Berlusconi to tell him that she wanted to go home. But Silvio told her to wait. “In the basement, Imane saw what she called a sort of brothel with naked girls and half-naked in the pool. There were also minors who perhaps did not realize what was happening. “The virgin maiden arrived,” Imane repeated with horror. They were announcing the very young “selection” for that evening. – from Il Fatto Quotidiano, Imane Fadil, il suo libro mai pubblicato: “Io, in quel bordello sotterraneo”, translation from Italian provided in this Vigilant Citizen article. Poisoned But she never got to reveal her full story. Imane Fadil died in a hospital room in Milan on March 1st after a month of agony. Media sources reported her death only 15 days after the fact, mostly because authorities announced the opening of a homicide investigation. Indeed, the cause of Fadil’s death is currently believed to be “murder by radioactive poisoning.” On the day of her death, the Judicial Authority seized Fadil’s body and the entirety of her medical records. Prosecutors also seized the draft of her book. Here is a further explanation from the same Vigilant Citizen article: “Fadil died on March 1st after a long period of agony as her vital functions progressively shut down. She experienced her first symptoms on January 29th. She was then hospitalized for nearly a month where she underwent a long series of tests as doctors were looking for the cause of her pain. During this time, Fadil told her brother and lawyer that she feared she had been poisoned. “After her death, it was revealed that she was probably poisoned by a “very strange” cocktail of radioactive elements that caused the progressive deterioration of her internal organs. These elements are not freely available to the general public. This ANSA article gives greater details from prosecutor Francesco Greco as to the heavy metals found in Fadil’s body that inevitably led to her death: “Greco said that tests on biological liquids had shown above-normal levels of antimony and cadmium, and the prosecutors were awaiting definitive autopsy results. The antimony levels were almost three times normal and the cadmium was almost seven times higher than the normal range, Greco said. Partial results from a test have also confirmed the presence of radioactive elements in her body.” The difficulty the general public has in accessing these heavy metals leads to the conclusion that not only was this poisoning a clearly planned-out and intentional act by the powerful and well-connected, but that the particularly painful form of death that it brings about is likely a message to all other would-be whistleblowers to stay silent or suffer similarly gruesome consequences. The Strength of Her Convictions There is currently no direct proof that Berlusconi ordered the poisoning of Imane Fadil. But as many who have brushed with these Satanic practices will tell you, these dark practices are among the most heavily-guarded secrets of the world’s elite, and they will stop at nothing in an attempt to keep them hidden from public view. As you can see in the interview below, people who are first introduced to this world only get to see and know more about these practices the more deeply they get involved in them and therefore become compromised. Those who are not tainted and make the effort to piece together and reveal what they have seen regarding signs of Satanic practice are not believed, slandered, threatened, and marginalized. Few have the stomach to pursue this lonely crusade. Imane Fadil appears to be one of those rare people who not only resisted the temptation to compromise herself to get what she wanted, but seemed to be willing to risk her own safety and reputation to reveal practices she considered to be wrong. It is perhaps the strength of her convictions, and the ongoing threat they posed to a rich and powerful man like Berlusconi, that actually led to her being poisoned. Berlusconi’s statement that came after news of Fadil’s death is curious: “It is always sad when a young person dies. However, I never met her this person.” This kind of denial, regarding someone he actually was known to have invited to his house party and was also a key witness in a conviction against him, suggests that Berlusconi is of the mind that with enough denial, enough money thrown at people, and enough people in high places to ultimately protect him, he will never have to pay for the crimes he has committed. Certainly, the way things have worked out for him in the past bears this out. However, times are changing, and we may yet come to know what Imane Fadil was attempting to reveal about Berlusconi. Fadil’s Last Interview Fadil’s last known interview, given to the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano on April 2018, confirms some of the details about Fadil’s belief that Berlusconi’s “Bunga Bunga” parties, billed as a burlesque show, was just the outer layer of more Satanic practices that went on. It also shows how someone who was not yet tainted by these practices does not get to see them, but is left to deduce what is going on by observation and, in this case, in trusting her highly intuitive perception. Imane Fadil, a model of Moroccan origin, was just over 25 years old when she was invited for the first time to Arcore, the home of Berlusconi, in 2011. She participated in eight “elegant dinners” and during some of these, according to her, she saw everything: The girls, the stripteases, and the “Bunga Bunga” parties. She then stopped attending and went to the public prosecutor’s office to reveal everything she had seen, complete with names and surnames. The result? Photographers, interviews, headlines, lawsuits. Today, Imane is 33 years old and she is about to finish a book that will reveal everything you need to know about Berlusconi. Today, after a few years, how do you remember that whole affair? It was a devastating thing, impossible to describe. At first I was alone against everyone, nobody believed my version. What did everyone think? That I was telling those things because I wanted money and success. And how was it? I used to go to Arcore because I hoped it would be enough to get into that circle and get a job (in television). Then, I understood what was truly happening and I spoke up. Were you defamed at that time? Yes, by all. The first was Emilio Fede. But then I sued him and they condemned him, now there’s the appeal. He also sued me, but his case was dismissed because I said the truth and he didn’t. (…) Your ugliest memory? The last night I went there, there were all these naked girls dancing. One of them was laying on the ground and was wearing only a loincloth and she was shaking desperately, staring at me. Her eyes seemed to say: “Don’t judge me, help me!” A terrifying memory. Have you ever witnessed explicit scenes? No, I did not. And who told you this happened? Well, the last night a girl came to me and told me: “Look, to get something you have to do something more.” And I understood everything. Until that moment I had hoped I would never be asked for such a thing. Now you are writing a book. Why? Because I want to tell everything. This is not limited to a powerful man who had girls. There is much more to this story, much more serious things. Explain. It’s not easy to tell, it will be the first time I do it. But the time has come. Please go ahead. This gentleman is part of a sect that invokes the devil. Yes, I know I’m saying something strong, but it is true. And many others know this. They know what? That continuous obscenities happened in that house. A sort of sect, made up of only women, dozens and dozens of complicit females. Did you see these rituals? Let’s say I have many clues. In that room where Bunga Bunga was held there was a small room with clothes, all the same, like tunics, about twenty or thirty. What were they for? And then there was another small underground room with a swimming pool, with another room next to it, totally dark, without any light. An underground pool and a room without lights? Why? Weak clues. It could be a relaxation area. Is it a fact that you have not seen any actual Satanic rituals or anything like that? Look, I’ve seen worse. Things that are difficult to explain briefly. Please try. I saw strange, sinister presences. I’ve been a psychic since I was a child due to my father being was sanctified. And I tell you that, in that house, there are disturbing presences. There’s evil in there, I’ve seen it, there’s Lucifer. Do you know that saying such things could be perceived as crazy? Of course I know, but I don’t care what people will say. I never said anything because I had no evidence. Now I have it. Do you have proof? Please show it. No, not yet, I’ll do it later. I just have to finish this book. And then the world will know. – Il Fatto Quotidiano, Imane Fadil: “Le notti di Bunga Bunga a casa di Berlusconi. Ad Arcore una setta di Satana con tuniche e riti” (translation from Italian provided by the same Vigilant Citizen article). The Takeaway We are entering a time in our history in which all that has been dark and hidden for centuries, even millennia, is coming to the surface. This is coinciding with the surfacing of our own dark, hidden feelings that we inevitably need to confront. Let’s not resist this crucial stage in our awakening process, and be open to these difficult revelations both inwardly and outwardly. That way, the courageous efforts of people like Imane Fadil are not in vain.