The more things Improve

Our society has a propensity for indulging itself in a constant crusade of improvement. From the way we look to the way we perform our jobs to how the world perceives us. But in our vigil for amelioration we tend to lose sight of something so important, that our very souls may depend on it. I'm talking about the need for the spiritual world to re tighten it's grasp on the esoteric sciences that have gone the way of the traditional rain dance, or fertility ceremony. In our society of science and facts, hard evidence is paramount to any foundation of belief. Is it so wrong to pursue alternate avenues of thought? Or is it considered taboo to dabble in the esoteric? Perhaps beyond the ranting of present day doomsayers such as Zachariah Sitchin, Alex Jones,and David Wilcocks, there are some authentic researchers who have stumbled upon a truth so profound that it will shake the very foundations of the modern paradigms.
In his book, Underworld, Graham Hancock speaks of the spiritual world that resides simultaneously with ours. This world is generally inaccessible to us except by shaman or the occasional savant that may stumble upon it by accident. The indigenous peoples of South America, Africa and the ancient seats of Syria, known as present day Iraq train their whole entire lives to attain the ability to perceive this world, albeit in a limited fashion. In all cultures this training inevitably requires great physical pain to the shaman in training, and a lifetime of strict self control and constraint in all things. But as a caveat they have developed what some have called ESP or a 7th sense. (with the 5 physical senses and intuition being the 6th) This 7th sense has been attained with such activities such as days of chanting or dancing, but more commonly by the shamans ingesting brews of plants containing Dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. This chemical is found common to many different cultural shamanic rituals and is found naturally is several species of plants naturally growing world wide. Criminalized by most countries, this hallucinogenic chemical has a unified experience that science cannot or will not explain. Unrelated people all over the world have experienced by what can only be described as the spiritual world. Claims have been made that the dead walk freely in this realm and are under the same constraints as we are in our world, unable to perceive or interact with our our physical world except by the rare instances that we are able to pop in this realm. DMT experiences are ALL very similar, and require no preconceived notions of what to expect. The typical user reports that the physical world quite quickly metamorphisizes into a spiritual world free of the constraints of our physical world. The ability to see beyond our world, to travel into what has been described as hyperspace or the realm of God. More controlled study needs to be done, and yes this studying goes against the scope of this article, but modern man will not accept anything that doesn't have hard firm evidence of being real. More information about the shamanic rituals and DMT can be found by following the work of Hancock or the late Terrence Mckenna.
Astrology has long been a dominate force in the lives of society, but the term should be modified to be Astrotheology. Simply put, astrotheolgy means the religion of the stars. All past societies have relied on the gnosis that "the gods" had descended from heaven to the earth, bringing together the celestial and the terestial spheres. As Michael Tsarion has said the reason most people have not lent credence to this ideology is because it uncovers the truth behind today's modern paradigm of religion and big business.What would the catholic church say when presented with text and stories of Eden, Noah's deluge,and even Christ that were THOUSANDS of years older than our biblical tales? These references point to a stellar religion that has been retold in a humanized way. Astrotheolgy has one unified theme:Worship of celestial bodies. One example is the (and I know i will piss off a lot of people) story of Christ. Ancient people in their observations, have noted that on December 21'st the sun seems to "die" for three days. It fails to attain its apex that is common throughout the rest of the year. This is caused by the tilt that the earth goes through like a spinning top called the ecliptic path or procession. And low and behold, on the third day the sun, the giver of life, the light of the world or the "son" rises from the seemingly dead and is reborn on the 25Th of December. This was common knowledge throughout all of history and, being a "pagan" idea, was adopted by the Romans who were seeking to save their failing empire by embracing this new idea of Christ and warping and perverting it to their own use. The birth of the figure Christ was moved from sometime in mid October as the Hebrew story goes, to a more acceptable date coinciding with the more popular (at the time) winter solstice. During this time, the sun rises in the constellation Virgo, hence we have born of a virgin. Add in the fact that for thousands of years the main symbol for the zodiac was the cross of the four archetypes of astrology and we have dying on the cross. Why has this knowledge been suppressed? Power and control of the masses. What would happen to a society that was allowed to run rampant without religious dogmas to guide us in a civilized manner? Without the threat of the loss of our very souls, life on earth could become chaotic to say the least. Religion is nothing more than the glue that holds the ill informed and uneducated in the position of the servant. For more on Astrotheology see the works of Jorden Maxwell or Michael Tsarion. You WILL be astonished by the parallels between modern religion and this age old divination tradition.
One of the more, in this writers opinion, sceptical divination arts, is the Tarot. Today's Gypsy fortune tellers and modern phycics use of this ancient science has been twisted and tuned into a giant financial opportunity. But in ancient times the tarot was used for everything from family planning to societical ideologies. The true art of reading has been lost for millennial and is only mentioned as an alternate form of divination.
I may have been a bit hasty in grouping Zachariah Sitchin with David Wilcocks and Alex Jones. While he did have some dark ideas of what we are about to face in the coming years, he was above all else, an educated man who graduated from the University of London with a degree in economics. He was among the few dozen people in the world who was trained in deciphering ancient Sumerian texts. While his rendition of the translations is accurate, it weaves a story that in many ways parallels the Torah, if not giving a "scientific" explanation of Genesis. As the deciphered texts read, an ancient space going race known as the Annunaki crash landed on the earth thousands of years before any written history. This group needed to rebuild their civilisation on earth to repair their craft. The needed raw materials such as gold and diamonds to replace/repair their ship. After several hundred years( these guys did live considerably longer than us) they grew tired of toiling in mines and doing the general physical work required to procure these things. So, being well versed in genetics as any such race with space exploration would be, they decided to change the highest form of indigenous life on earth, known today as cromagnon man to a more intelligent creature that could be controlled , but at the same time would be intelligent enough to make decisions themselves to do the work for them. "And the Elohim created man in their image, after their likeness" should read with a good translation " then the gods RE-created man after their likeness" This idea is supported by the very book that theologians cite. 1st Corinthians 15:45 speaks of the first Adam or original man and the second Adam, or post creation man. Could this be a reference to an even more ancient theme? The story of the serpent (the serpent race opens up a whole other idea that is beyond the scope of this article) helping man rebel against his creators is retold from Sumerian texts that describe one of the annunaki giving the slave race created by them knowledge, either genetically or via education that they were slaves.The Sumerian texts also speak of man rebelling against the annunaki, their creators and that the annunaki needed to befuddle their language. Genisis 11: 7 "come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other" This could be construed as evidence of further genetic manipulation and the reasoning to create a second race, or the second Adam. This man would not have the intelligence to rebel, being quite dumbed down from the original genetically tweaked cromagnon man. The texts also speak of these annunaki waring with themselves, possible because of the idea of what they were considering doing as being a morally rehensible act, and one sect breaking off and becoming Mose's Jehovah, this being the group that wanted mankind to be servants. The very first commandment alone speaks of Jehovah's fear of his servants learning the truth "though shall put no other god before me and shall love me with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind" it is written that "you shall worship the lord you god and him only will thou serve" This commandment was way more important, thus comes before the 6th commandment "thou shall not kill" Many more such similarities exist between these ancient texts and our modern bible and may be discussed in a further article.
All things being said, I urge all my readers to explore these alternate ideas and ways of thinking and not to take mainstream history and religion as the end all truth. To quote Graham Hancock I will end with this: "We are a race with amnesia" and we need to embrace the idea that we have forgotten our past and we need to explore these ideas and old ways of thinking to recapture our true history and perhaps move onto a future free from tyrannical world wide religions dictating their version or moral right and wrong and allow us to express ourselves as the intelligent creature that we are.

The New Laws Against Smoking

There is a deadly poison being given to millions of people every day in the United States. This poison, which is publicly available worldwide, highly addictive, and kills millions of people every year, is tobacco. Tobacco contains up to 6 percent of its dry weight as pure nicotine, and the Center for Disease Control, or CDC, suggests that nicotine may be just as addictive as heroin and cocaine. Add in the one hundred and fifty billion dollars spent annually by the United States on medical costs to treat tobacco related illness and the fact that one in every five deaths is a result of smoking and we should see the importance of changing the law to making tobacco a schedule A controlled substance. This would in effect criminalize the sale, manufacture, or possession of tobacco. This change is necessary.

Opium addiction ran rampant in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and nicotine addiction runs rampant today. Once the destructive properties of opium were widely known, it became criminalized in most of the world. Clearly these earlier leaders, who recognized that if the people are addicted to something that is killing them, they need to be protected from it, were far smarter than the ones who are allowing the big tobacco companies to become filthy rich at the public’s expense. Perhaps the large amount of revenue is more important than our nation’s health. Big tobacco has become the neighborhood pusher and our society has become addicted to their wares. This drug has such powerfully addictive properties that I personally have seen people rummage in public ashtrays outside the local supermarket for the little bit of tobacco that remains in an extinguished cigarette. I am a nicotine addict and I have tried unsuccessfully several times to quit. I panic at the thought of not having my cigarettes in my pocket at any given time. When I park my car and before I enter any building, I light up a cigarette because I may not have one for a while. After an hour or so I become real nervous and it becomes hard to concentrate or even be still and I have to sneak off and get another “hit”. This is a terrible way to live and should not happen to anybody.

The medical cost figures vary from one source to another but all agree that tobacco related medical expenses are the single biggest contributor to the high cost of insurance premiums. The medical costs incurred by treating these collective effects of smoking and chewing tobacco are estimated to be $150 billion (Parish pg2) annually for the United States alone. This expense drives up the cost of health insurance so fewer people can afford private insurance and the burden of the medical treatment falls on the state. The lost work and man hours due to tobacco related illnesses further strains our economy.

Smokers have become a pariah in our society and are often ostracized in designated areas if they are allowed at all. All 50 states have smoke free air provisions (“Fact Sheet” pg1) that have been enacted and most ban smoking in any public building. Even private clubs are more often prohibiting smoking on their premises. Public awareness has been increased through government and related health agencies in the last 50 years. Between 1965 and 1990 there was a national decrease in the number of smokers from 65% in 1965 to 23% in 1990. Some major companies will not even hire an otherwise fully competent prospective employee if they smoke. The financial effects of loss of productivity due to sickness and increased medical insurance costs are no secret to them. The bottom line is about money and if an employee costs more money to maintain, they are replaced as any aging inefficient machine would be. Some studies have been done on the behavioral effect that smoking has on us and the habit has even been labeled a gateway to harder drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. Smoking has even been linked to anti social behavioral patterns by altering the brains chemistry and our perceptions. The most likely reason for this is the way nicotine raises our blood pressure. That may cause an increase in long term anxiety that in turn is the root for a lot of most anti social behavioral patterns.

Nicotine attacks the membrane inside the blood vessels (Parish pg 1) by making little pits in the surface of the lining. This lining then begins to gather little bits of cholesterol and starts a chain reaction dam like effect that eventually leads to complete blockage. High blood pressure is the inevitable next step and this leads to heart attack and stroke. The most known effect on our bodies however, is the effect smoking tobacco products have on our respiratory system. The very act of burning the material heats up the organic matter to a state that turns it into a superheated gas (Brodish pg2) that scorches the delicate mucous membrane that our lungs and related organs are comprised of. Oddly enough, nicotine is more concentrated and thus more toxic in a colder state, but the way it is absorbed immediately into the blood via oxygen contaminated in the lungs its effect is compounded by its sudden rush into our systems. Tar is a byproduct of the process of smoking that has further respiratory damaging traits. Tar collects in our alveoli and reduces their oxygen retaining properties by clogging the path the oxygen enters. There are several compelling reasons to start to change the law and eventually outlaw tobacco. I see my children as a few of those reasons. I see a lower health care and general better health overall as another. I see a more productive society that isn’t hampered by the cost to treat the monkey that lives on the backs of a quarter of its population another. I see it happening soon.