Back in 2006, the film The Wicker Man was released starring Nicolas Cage and Ellen Burstyn. The story is about a policeman who after a traumatic and very mysterious experience, is summoned to a remote island in the Pacific Northwest called Summersisle to search for a supposed missing child. Once he arrives, he realizes that behavior on the island is odd and the suspense unfolds.
The island is a farming commune run by women in a matriarchal system that venerates “the goddess”. Men are subservient and the commune engages in pagan nature worship which includes several rituals and rites for fertility and success for their crops. They subsist by exporting their organic honey to the mainland.
Asserting what he believes is his authority, as an officer of law and order, he presents himself to conduct his search, he takes lodging and begins to do some detective work. With each investigative effort, he is told some mixed messages and through deception and trickery, he grows confused and agitated.
The women, particularly the elder or crones, rather acerbically are making him into a fool, which is an important symbol for this storyline. The story involves three generations of women, the maiden, the mother, and the elder crone. The triple goddess, three aspects of one deity symbolizing the three seasons of the female life cycle. She is essentially one deity sometimes referred to as the Mother Goddess. Incidentally, the triple goddess’ consort is the horned god Cernunnos from Celtic or Pan from Greek paganism and sometimes called The Green Man. He is the male aspect of this deity and is always represented, not only with horns or antlers but also as a hybrid of both man and animal.
Bees and honey are an interesting choice as it’s a Freemasonic symbol, giving a nod to whom this message might be coming from. The ‘Encyclopedia of Freemasonry’ provides many references to the Bee with honey being used to illustrate moral teachings.
The Masonic initiate is instructed to;
‘Go to the bee, and learn how diligent she is, and what a noble work she produces; whose labour kings and private men use for their health. She is desired and honoured by all, and, though weak in strength, yet since she values wisdom she prevails.’”
Manly P. Hall (1901-1990), occultist, self-proclaimed mystic, and freemason, from his book The Secret Teachings of All Ages writes:
“The beehive is found in Masonry as a reminder that in diligence and labor for a common good true happiness and prosperity are found. The bee is a symbol of wisdom, for as this tiny insect collects pollen from the flowers, so men may extract wisdom from the experiences of daily life. The bee is sacred to the goddess Venus and, according to mystics, it is one of several forms of life which came to the earth from the planet Venus millions of years ago. This is why the origin of bees cannot be traced. The fact that bees are ruled by queens is one reason why this insect is considered a sacred feminine symbol.”
Oliver Day Street (1866-1944), Attorney, Politician, and Freemason, in his book Symbolism of the Three Degrees writes:
‘To the operative mason could anything be more important than industry? By it, he lives, and by it were reared those dreams of architectural beauty which excite our wonder and please our fancy. A place of great industry we call a hive, no symbol of labour could be more appropriate than a beehive.’
While searching to and fro all over the island and growing increasingly distressed, he takes the bear costume of Sister Beach, a hint offered at the start of the film, joins the pageantry parading through the honeycomb with the others in ritual procession as he unknowingly makes his appointment with The Wicker Man.
In Norse mythology, the bear, considered the most powerful and ferocious animal, is a symbol for prominent Nordic god, Odin, but it is also a symbol for strength and masculinity. In Norse mythology, the bear is the ultimate symbol of manliness. So, it seems fitting that our officer of law and order would be sacrificed in the bearskin to effectively represent the utter failure of his manhood.
Other points of interest throughout the film: Leelee Sobieski’s character, appears in each scene holding a significant prop. In one scene, she appears with a broomstick, a nod to a witch. In the next, she holds an ax or a Labrys. The Labrys is a ritual ax that is one of their holiest religious symbols and is connected to the Mother Goddess, representative of its authority.
The Labrys, which root word comes from the Latin word “labia” or the part of the female genitalia that is the entrance to the womb. The Labrys is also a symbol of the Labyrinth representing human consciousness. A circle and a spiral, this symbol is most certainly not a maze. It has only one path that leads one on a journey to the center of one’s deepest self and back out into the world with a greater understanding of who they are.
In another scene, she is seen biting an apple, perhaps another nod to witchery, or even to Eve, the first mother, who took the bite of the forbidden fruit. In Luciferianism, this bite was the gateway to enlightenment as Lucifer was the “light bearer” or the rebel angel who brought to humanity the gift of intellect, knowledge, and a path to their own godlike status. Nicolas Cage’s character is named Edward Malus. Edward meaning prosperous, wealthy, and also protector or guard. Malus meaning apple, so essentially, rich guard of the apple, a nod perhaps to Adam.
On the door of the schoolhouse is a symbol of a serpent coiled around an egg. The Orphic Egg, or cosmic egg, coming from the Orphic reformation of the Dionysian mythos of ancient Greece. The myth revolves around the suffering and death of the god Dionysus at the hands of the Titans of which Zeus strikes the Titans in retribution, turning them to ash, and from these ashes, humanity is born. In Orphism, a parallel to Pythagoreanism, humanity is described as having a dual nature: the physical body and the divine spark or soul. Orphics believed that after death, they would spend eternity with Orpheus and other heroes. The uninitiated, however, would be destined to indefinite reincarnation.
The Orphic Egg, or Solar Egg to the ancient Egyptians, is the cosmic egg that hatched the primordial hermaphroditic deity Phanes or Protogonus, also equated to Zeus, Pan, and Eros, who in turn created other gods. The idea of the symbol is that of a new creation, a new man, one illumined with the divinity and knowledge of the ancient mysteries.
On the blackboard is an excerpt of a poem by Theosophist and Luciferian, William Blake, titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: The Argument. The verse reads:
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
The poem is an argument between an angry, frustrated character named Rintrah and the part of humanity he calls the “just man.” He rages as the “just man” keeps walking along a path toward death.
The villain, however, chooses to walk a more dangerous path. In doing so, he pushes the just man into desolation, and once there, the just man begins to rage. With this, a new heaven is beginning, a brand new start. The idea being that being good means passively obeying which leads to desolation and annihilation, while being evil means being energetically creative and bringing forth a new creation, and the entrance of the new Adam to utopia, words Blake inscribes as being spoken by the devil himself.
Notorious theosophists, occultists, and counter-culturalists have interpreted this poem as speaking of socialist revolution and the emerging utopia once it comes to fruition, a transformation that can only come if one rejects God and takes the path of the evil one. William Blake’s philosophies were deeply rooted in the Orphic and Pythagorean traditions, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Gnosticism.
The Argument kind of reminds me of Bowie’s song and video, Blackstar, released in January of 2016 just days before he died. The lyrics appear to be a similar exchange between either man and serpent or serpent and God. The video is rich with Luciferian symbols, in particular, a specific sect of Luciferianism known as the Cult of the Black Sun. The sun representing Lucifer the “light-bearer” and bringer of knowledge and intellect to humanity. The black sun representing using that knowledge for what Luciferian’s believe is a necessary evil, much like what William Blake describes as the perilous path on which the hero-villain will walk driving the just man into desolation so the serpent can roam free.
What’s interesting about the video is that the skull is jeweled, which will be part of a ritual as the video progresses. The jeweled skull reminds me of Ezekiel 28:12-14 where God speaks through the prophet to Satan who has either possessed the king of Tyre or is clearly working through him. There is no human king who was an anointed cherub, in Eden, or stood on the holy mountain of God.
‘You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every kind of precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald.
Your mountings and settings were crafted in gold, prepared on the day of your creation.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for I had ordained you. You were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the fiery stones. From the day you were created you were blameless in your ways—until wickedness was found in you.
Ezekiel 28:12-14
Bowie, who is playing some sort of blind guide appears to be speaking in the first four verses, paying homage to the solitary source of light in the Villa of Ormen which means “house of the serpent.” The day of execution, to me, speaks of Christ’s death on the cross. "Only women kneel and smile and at the center of it all", the serpent’s eyes are watching.
The next verse speaks of "on the day he died, spirit rose a meter then stepped aside, somebody else took his place and bravely cried, ‘I'm a Blackstar.’" In Luciferianism, the belief is that Lucifer will take Christ’s place, just move right in there and be the world’s new messiah. The next verse makes it clear with the nod to a fallen angel who dared to trod on sacred ground. Luciferians believe Satan was the villain-hero who got unjustly punished for bringing intellect to primitive man, so look at it through that lens.
The next verse seems to be God talking to man and it’s in a very mocking tone portraying God as some sinister tyrant who wants to trap people into going with him:
I'ma take you home (I'm a blackstar) Take your passport and shoes (I'm not a popstar) And your sedatives, boo (I'm a blackstar) You're a flash in the pan (I'm not a marvel star) I'm the great I Am (I'm a blackstar)
Then back to Lucifer again playing the honest, open-hearted, unsung hero:
I'm a blackstar, way up, oh honey, I've got game I see right, so wide, so open-hearted it's pain I want eagles in my daydreams, diamonds in my eyes (I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar)
And further into the video, we see a ritual with women venerating the skull of Lucifer. A point of interest and a nod to the cult of the black sun is that the women move counter-clockwise, or widdershins in the circle. Moving widdershins, meaning “to walk against” is a binding and banishing spell. If clockwise, or Deosil, means moving with the sun or the “holy round”, Widdershins refers to walking against the sun and generally represents the unnatural and negative. It is for the casting of a black magic spell or curse.
Bowie incorporates a very blasphemous message portraying Christ as a dirty, perverted and tattered, strawman gyrating upon the cross. And for a bonus, these women seemed to have conjured some kind of creature that looks like something from the mind of HP Lovecraft.
In the 2006 version of The Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage, the message is to smash the patriarchy and through pagan witchcraft and eugenics, create a pure bloodline of dominant females schooled only in the magic arts who refuse to return to “normal society.” But, the original film tells a very different tale. Based on the book, Ritual, by British actor and author David Pinner, first published in 1967, the story is about an Scottish police officer, a puritanical Christian, who is asked to investigate the possible murder of a child from a reclusive farming commune on a remote Scottish island called Summerilse.
The film, retitled The Wicker Man, released at the height of the counter-culture in 1973, opens with the police officer exercising his authority to visit Summerisle and begin his investigation. On his first night there, the landlord of the Inn presents his daughter who attempts, with a seductive dance and song, to lure him to her bed. He fights the temptation and explains in the morning that he is not only engaged to be married but doesn’t believe in sex before marriage.
The story ensues in much the same way as the newer version except in the original, the isle is headed by a man, Lord Summerisle. In a pivotal scene, he explains how their community came to be. He explains that in 1868, his grandfather, a distinguished Victorian scientist, agronomist, and free thinker bought the island to grow several strains of genetically modified fruits and vegetables that he had already developed.
“With typical mid-Victorian zeal, he set to work. The best way of accomplishing this, it seemed to him, was to rouse the people from their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods, and as a result of this worship, the barren island would burgeon and bring forth fruit in great abundance.”
Is Lord Summerisle suggesting that a strategy that incorporated an ancient pagan worldview would ensure devoted laborers for their scientific experiment? Is he hinting that their former apathy was caused by Christianity? It’s never explained what happened exactly that caused the ministers and church to abandon the island.
“What my grandfather started out of expediency, my father continued out of love. He brought me up the same way, to reverence the music, the drama and the rituals of the old gods, to love nature, and to fear it, to rely on it and to appease it where necessary.”
A generational move further away from God, interesting.
The policeman replies, “He brought you up to be a pagan!”
Lord Summerisle responds, “A heathen considerably, but not, I hope an unenlightened one.”
The story resolves in much the same way as the newer version with the policeman being led to and fro by lies, mixed messages, and trickery until it is time for him to make his appointment with The Wicker Man. The difference in this version is that the policeman is dressed not as a bear, but as the fool as he was made into a fool through this entire process.
The first aspect is that of the Prometheus who brings knowledge and creativity to mankind. He is the Culture Hero who serves as a savior to mankind. The second is the clown, the geeky nerd, the jackass who teaches lessons by his own innocent buffoonery. The third is the darker side, representing the psychopath, the petulant child, the narcissist. He is chaos, he is the devil or Satan. This aspect of the fool is closely represented by the Joker in the Batman story and brilliantly portrayed by Joaquin Pheonix in its newest rendition of the character.
When it is his time, the policeman, who, remember, represents law and order, the puritanical Christian, living obediently as biblically ordained, is brought to his appointment dressed as Satan himself. Much like the bear being the ultimate irony for masculinity in the newer version, such is so for the policeman in the original. He makes his divine appointment with the wicker man to bring death and annihilation to Christianity itself.
Lord Summerisle continues, “It’s most important that each new generation born on Summerisle be made aware that here, the old gods aren’t dead.”
The policeman asks, “And what of the true God to whose glory churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past?”
“He’s dead.” Lord Summerisle answers. “He can’t complain. He had His chance and, in modern parlance, he blew it.”
At the time of his sacrifice to appease their solar god and goddess of the orchards, his fool costume is removed, he is ceremonially washed and placed in a white robe. The crops have failed, but not because of grandfather’s error with his genetic experiments, of course. Lord Summerisle believes, or at least this is what he teaches his folk, that the best way to prevent this from happening again is to offer a human sacrifice to their sun god and goddess of the orchards. He explains that animals are acceptable but only limited in their power. A little child is even better, but not nearly as effective as the right kind of adult.
"No matter what you do, you can't change the fact that I believe in the life eternal as promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ!"
Lord Summerisle says it's good that he has these beliefs and offers him a martyr’s death. “You will not only have life eternal, but you will sit with the saints among the elect.” For Lord Summerisle, the perfect human sacrifice is an obedient Christian.
A few points of interest in the film include the boat. Notice the eye, a Luciferian and Freemasonic symbol. At the start of their pageantry, Lord Summerisle wears women’s clothes to lead the march to the sacrifice. This is a ceremonial rite to celebrate the hermaphroditic union of the masculine and feminine, depicted as the Baphomet, the pagan and gnostic idol once illustrated by occultist Eliphas Levi recognized by occultists and freemasons the world over. I found the cake interesting, sort of reminded me of the cadaver cakes used in this ritual…
In one scene, Lord Summerisle mentions allowing oneself to be “open to the influences” which sounds a lot like opening your mind, your consciousness to accept and enjoy these suggestions, or even more like opening oneself to demonic possession. Being “open to the influence” reminds me of this…
Nobody brings a high art aesthetic to a barbaric pagan death cult quite like writer and director Ari Aster and his 2019 film, Midsommar. The film is about an exchange student who invites a group of anthropology students to visit his farming commune in Sweden to participate in their 9-day midsummer festival. The idea was conceived by corporate advertising and marketing firm, B-Reel Films, who commissioned Aster to write and direct the film.
B-Reel Films with locations in Stockholm, Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, and Berlin, proclaim a hip, earth-conscious, diverse collective of creatives from designers, marketing experts, filmmakers, producers, and more. From their website, they claim they are an “independent strategy, creative and technology agency.”
They have established a robust global presence, film being only one division of the company, and have incorporated Hollywood into the fold. B-Reel’s area of focus and expertise is branded content and commercials, but, with feature films, TV shows, and documentaries, they plan to utilize cross-discipline directors to create visual and digital media that makes an impactful mark on the world. They claim to be a “team of storytellers and technologists creating new ways to connect brands and audiences.” Among their clientele are Nike, Google, Facebook, and Netflix.
They do several projects for this chick, by the way…
Sounds a lot like sophisticated corporate propaganda to me.
“BRF is a creative hub for great storytellers of all sorts,” says Pelle Nilsson, co-founder and global CEO of B-Reel Films’ Los Angeles office. “We feel that we have a great position in Scandinavia and now it’s time to strengthen the team in the U.S.” with producers from Hollywood.” (Read more here)
Announced in 2017, B-Reel revealed then-upcoming socio-political films that were in the pipeline including “Midsommar” which they called an esoteric folk horror film based on Swedish Midsummer traditions. It was their idea and they hired Aster to bring it to life.
It was Aster’s short film from 2011, The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, that put him on B-Reel’s radar. Written and directed by Aster, the story is a disturbing, incestuous tale of a son who molests his father over the course of several years. He went on to direct several short films, among them Munchausen, a Pixar-inspired montage film that depicts a mother who makes her son sick because she doesn't want him to leave her and go off to college.
It was Aster’s 2018 film Hereditary, a spiritually foul psychological horror that put him on the map for general audiences. Hereditary is about a woman named Annie who comes to realize that her recently deceased mother, a pagan witch, who along with her coven conjured an ancient demon which they intended to possess Annie’s son. This dominion or king demon is found in the Keys of Solomon named Paimon and one known to be very obedient to Lucifer. The film includes generational witchcraft, the conjuring of demons, seances and necromancy, and demon possession of their own grandchildren to gain riches and worldly favor.
Aster holds a Master of Fine Art in directing from a graduate film school in Hollywood, California. In an interview about Midsommar with The Hollywood Reporter, Aster was asked which artists influenced him for tone, color, and story for the film.
“There were a lot of artists who I was thinking about when we were working on the production design of this film, and many were theosophical artists, just because I saw a lot of ties between theosophy and the world we were building here.”
Frantisek Kupka was one. Hilma Af Klint was another. (Read more here)
Frantisek Kupka (23 September 1871 – 24 - June 1957), was a painter and graphic artist from the Czech Republic and the pioneer of abstract and cubism art movements that emerged from their communist political ideology. “[Kupka] found inspiration in Theosophy and the occult, and promoted a subjective-intuitive approach to art. He was interested in the Theosophical theory of color as well as a scientific one.”
Hilma Af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were among the first Western abstract art. She belonged to a group called "The Five", a coven of women who would make contact with the "High Ascended Masters"—often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of these complex spiritual ideas. She was a Theosophist and also a Rosicrucian.
Aster continues… “I mentioned Witkin earlier; he’s a photographer who’s very married to the macabre and works a lot with real corpses. Sometimes actors pose as corpses, but very often he works with [actual] dead bodies. He marries the beautiful with the grotesque in a really striking way.” (Read more here)
Points of interest in the film…
The story incorporates a predominantly Germanic pagan belief system but weaves threads of an eclectic blend of occultism from the mystery schools. The story begins with a traumatic event, the death of Dani’s family which later becomes the catalyst for her transformation. Aster cerebrally creates a clear divide between two distinct worlds.
There are several symbols and nods baked into the visuals, an undercurrent of narration in itself. The use of Runes, a Proto-Germanic alphabet system dating from about the 2nd century AD. Runes were often used for divination and magic. Psychedelics are a prominent feature creating an altered state of consciousness and “opening one to the influences.” Sounds to me a lot like programming, powerful suggestion through derangement of the senses.
As the guests enter the commune, they pass through a solar gate. The sun is a prominent presence in this story. The ultimate mixed message is to portray human behavior so dark, so satanic, in almost blinding sunlight while wearing pretty white clothes. One of the main features of their midsummer ritual procession is the Maypole dance. The origin of the maypole is the Asherah pole for moon-goddess, Asherah, Ashtoreth, or Ishtar who was the name of the chief female deity worshiped in ancient Syria, Phoenicia, and Canaan. The Philistines had a temple of Asherah (1 Samuel 31:10). At the time of Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan which was not yet complete, Asherah-worship survived and plagued Israel, starting the instant Joshua was dead (Judges 2:13). Asherah was often presented as a consort of Ba’al, the sun god (Judges 3:7, 6:28, 10:6; 1 Samuel 7:4, 12:10). The worship of Asherah involved ritual prostitution, divination, and fortune-telling. The Lord God, through Moses, forbade the worship of Asherah. It’s all heathenry and expressly forbidden by God.
Just before the competition, the women are given a drink that looks to be a mixture of spring water, psychedelics, and human poop. Amid the competition, she peaks and appears to become possessed by their solar deity, which is then evidenced by her ability to speak and understand a foreign language, Swedish. This, a rather blasphemous nod to Acts 2:4-11, in which the apostles, on the day of Pentecost, were indwelt with the Holy Spirit, and as they spoke, the listeners, who scholars believe was numbered anywhere from 100,000 to 2.5 million of devout Jews from every foreign nation on the earth were able to understand in their own language. The curse of confusing languages at Babel, found in the book of Genesis, would not stop the spreading of the gospel to every nation on earth.
The character of Christian in this story is contrived. It’s like Captain Obvious that his character is used to portray false and unsavory notions of Christianity coming from a pagan perspective. Christian is portrayed as this lack-luster, uncreative, unoriginal, self-absorbed, emotionally unavailable jerk who not only treats his girlfriend like an annoyance but, at one point in the story, decides to steal his thesis idea from one of his fellow students. Of course, it is Christian who willingly mates with one of the members of the cult, bringing his offspring into their world. It is Christian who will wear the bear suit in the final human sacrifice, seated at the center of their pyramid-shaped “temple.” Remember, the bear represents ferocity, strength, and masculinity. Christianity, which for them represents toxic masculinity and a stolen, obscene, weak cultural symbol, will burn as the ultimate sacrifice to “purge their most unholy Affekts” (meaning strong emotions).
Other points of interest are the frock the elder wears to honor the Baphomet, the hermaphroditic idol of pagans and gnostics and worshipped by various occultists and mystics since centuries past. In his book Dogme et ritual de la Haute Magie (1861:Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual) influential French occultist, Eliphas Levi created and illustrated the Baphomet that has become the widely-recognized occult symbol.
For the members of this cult community, the rituals are like games. Skin the Fool is one game in which one visitor gets skinned and used as part of the final sacrificial ritual. Pelle tells Dani before their travels that it’s a lot of costumes and pageantry. “It’s like theater.” The rituals give the members purpose and meaning. To me, this is the creation of a one-world religion that will serve the goals of global governance and the industrial environmental agenda. It’s a polar inversion of the promise of eternal life with the Creator God of the Bible to one that teaches that when you die you become part of nature and the elements, to become one with the material world.
If you think this is only happening in movies, remember the Gotthard tunnel opening ceremony in Switzerland? This was an all-day pagan ritual presented to a special, hand-selected audience of dignitaries and ruling elite. Through a bizarre and theatrical series of interpretive dance and visual imagery, the story goes pretty much like this: A giant mechanical worm bores deep into the bowels of the underworld to the delight of a hybrid demonic angel, and Lucifer, pagans, their goat, and orchard gods, a variety of demons, and a collective of strangely detached worker drones working to their deaths as they open the gates of hell, all presented in front of the New World Order elite.
This brings me to the Burning Man Festival, a nine-day festival held every year, this year from August 26th through September 3rd. What began as a bonfire party on the summer solstice back in 1986 on a San Francisco beach with a few friends has grown into its own little city that is built and deconstructed each year and attended by “burners” from all over the world. 2019 brought in almost 80,000 attendees.
Founded by artist and political activist Larry Harvey and a small group of anarchist artists from San Francisco, the idea was to create an “environment.” While Harvey insists he did not see the 1973 film The Wicker Man, which isn’t the official instruction book for modern Heathenry anyway, they most certainly adhere to its rites, rituals, and philosophy and apply it to the modern world. Burning Man is a conceptual experiment, a microcosm of what they hope the entire world will one day soon become.
In an interview with founder Larry Harvey and former 8-term Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, at the 2015 Global Leadership Conference, they discuss this very idea (see video here).
The city is guided from a set of principles all rooted in communist, anti-capitalist ideology, including what they call “radical inclusion.” However, not everyone comes to participate in the actual work of building, running, and deconstructing the city and its interactive art. Of course, the cost of tickets is in the hundreds with part of that money going to expand the reach of the Burning Man ethos all over the world.
Burning Man has attracted a number of billionaires and celebrities, many of them from Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Elon Musk once said, “Burning Man is Silicon Valley.” (Read more here)
However, their 9-day annual utopian experiment has a myriad of problems.
What was once a grass-roots, organic experiment, Burning Man had become a corporation forming Black Rock City LLC. They have since transformed themselves into Burning Man Project, a non-profit organization that gives them the 501c3 tax-exempt status with the IRS. To align with the parameters of the rules that apply, they’re working to extend their reach globally with organizations like Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and Global Arts Grants.
What they work tirelessly to keep under wraps is the number of sexual assaults, the incredibly high suicide rate among their workers and attendees, numerous labor disputes, injuries, and death that takes place on the Playa.
In an article from Salon:
“The anarchic party with more than 50,000 attendees constitutes a pilgrimage for many attendees, lured by the promise of leaving the “default world” behind in exchange for a transformative or even spiritual experience.”
Two Salon investigations in the past two years have revealed that the supposedly liberating environment and their “self-policing” system has also provided cover for predators of all kinds, including some who work for and even run the event. It has also fostered exploitation of its most vulnerable workers, in a manner that rivals any corporate machine in the “default world.”
Nicole Karlis, a news writer at Salon, has led two investigations into the culture at Burning Man, and how it fosters this kind of behavior. ‘What I found is that sexual assault on the playa at Burning Man is definitely more common than what people think, and that is in part due to the self-policing system that they have. If someone is sexually assaulted on the playa, it's up to them to find a ranger to report it to. And from there they report it to their supervisor. And from there, it's determined if that can go to law enforcement or not.’
She says some women told her they were sexually assaulted at Burning Man, then were ignored or dismissed by festival officials. Karlis believes that the feel-good, free-spirited branding of Burning Man is directly responsible for the attacks and silencing of survivors.”
In another article from Salon:
“Salon spoke to several former and current employees and volunteers for Burning Man, who painted a picture of a dangerous and stressful work environment and a toxic management culture that contributed to a number of suicides of seasonal employees, at a rate far greater than the national average. Those who spoke exclusively to Salon recalled tales of labor abuse, unequal wages, on-the-job injuries including permanent blindness and a management that manipulated workers who were hurt or who tried to fight for improved conditions.”
All of this doesn’t look so good for this microcosmic utopian experiment. But, that doesn’t dampen their determination, their mission, or their philosophy.
Erich Fromm, German socio-psychologist, humanist philosopher, and considered one of the most influential academic Marxist revisionists of the 20th century, in his book You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and It’s Tradition writes:
“Both the sadistic and masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship (some external authority over him) to overcome this aloneness.” Fromm believed that man could transition from “not taking the last logical step, to give up ‘God’ and to establish a concept of man as a being who is alone in the world, but who can feel at home in it if he achieves union with his fellow man and with nature.”
“In the process of history, man gives birth to himself. He becomes what he potentially is, and he attains what the serpent, the symbol of wisdom and rebellion promised, and what the patriarchal, jealous God of Adam did not wish: that man would become like God himself.”
Resurrecting ancient religions is about the attempt to blot out Christianity from mind and earth forever. It’s a complete worldview transformation, a counterfeit reality, one where God is rendered essentially, dead. Trying to rewind and reset the world to the time before Christ in the hopes to restructure humanity in the old way and apply it to modern culture using an eclectic mix of ancient occult traditions is an attempt to create a new world religion. One that worships nature, includes empty games and rituals that condition minds and ensure devoted laborers for the cause, and the ever-evolving elite class of man into human godlike status. Remember, Satan is the counterfeiter. He works to create a world system that appears like a utopia on earth but is on a path to destruction. In his world, God is simply erased from the hearts and minds of humanity forever.
