“There will be undoubtedly more crimes in the sense that the Satanic Bible tells you to take no more shit.“ – Anton LaVey
After he crept into their Diamond Bar home at night fatally shooting her husband in the head as he slept, Richard Ramirez forced his wife, Sakina Abowath to “Swear on Satan” before he raped her.
In San Francisco, Bay Area, he killed an accountant named Peter Pan and raped his wife Barbara, ate everything in the fridge, threw up on the kitchen floor and masturbated on the living room floor — and then scribed an upside-down (inverted) pentagram written with lipstick on the wall and on the leg of a victim – the symbol of Satanists onto the wall.
It wasn’t until Ramirez left these Satanic pentagrams as his calling card that investigators drew the connection to Satanic worship.
In the following years, he would leave more of these pentagrams behind, and would also tell his victims to “swear to Satan” instead of God.
Ramirez not only killed adults in cold blood, but he also didn’t spare the children who he came across, often raping, torturing, and killing them as well.
During the first stages of his Satanic killing spree, several young children were forcibly taken from their beds while they slept, sexually assaulted, and then left for dead like little 9 year old Mei Leung. Yes, he was one of the sickest and most depraved criminals to ever walk the planet.
Soon thereafter, one of the 6-year-old victims who survived would be crucial in identifying Ramirez that lead to his capture.
It was evil crimes like in the name of Satan that would make Richard Ramirez go down in history as one of the most ruthless and notorious serial killers, the so-called Night Stalker. Ramirez was introduced to Satanism through the Satanic Bible and even visited the author and Church of Satan’s founder, Anton LaVey at his infamous Black House in San Francisco. Ramirez was on some sort of anti-Christian pilgrimage from Los Angeles to meet his hero, LaVey.
Richard Ramirez just wanted to “shake the hand of the great Dr. LaVey,” said Lavey’s grandson, Stanton Lavey who was a young child and eyewitness to the event. Because of shady people like Ramirez coming by the Black House House unannounced, Lavey and his wife installed a security fence, video cameras and employed full-time security guards.
“By 1983, business and life had slowed down quite a bit for my grandfather. And that’s when Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, started coming to the Black House on some sort of anti-Christian pilgrimage to meet my grandfather.
The house had become the subject of a lot of vandalism and frequent trespassing, so my grandfather had a high fence with razor wire installed. Wooden slats were slid between the folds of the fence for more privacy — we could see who was outside without being seen ourselves. I was 5 when the 23-year-old Ramirez made his presence known to us,” Stanton said.
“He’d come up to San Francisco from Los Angeles, to “shake the hand of the great Dr. LaVey.” Tony, the house security guard, my grandfather’s driver and my occasional babysitter, confronted Ramirez after he noticed someone standing on the sidewalk and staring at the house.
The stranger told Tony that his name was Richie and he just wanted to meet “Dr. LaVey,” and would take only a minute of his time. Tony told him to scram. Ramirez then started walking in slow circles around the block, pausing whenever he reached our fence.
After this had gone on for a couple of hours, Tony went back outside to get rid of him, bringing a pistol with him in case Ramirez tried anything. But Ramirez was around the corner and halfway down the block by the time Tony reached the gate.
Some hours passed and everyone forgot about him. But then he was back. This time my grandfather went outside, tucking one of his many handguns in the pocket of his long black trench coat. As he approached Ramirez, he asked, “What are you doing out here?”
“I just wanted to meet you, Dr. LaVey,” Ramirez said nervously, and stuck out his hand. My grandfather ignored it, Stanton said.
“Well, now you have, so now you can go, I don’t take unexpected visitors. Next time make an appointment.”
Ramirez said, “Thank you for everything you’re doing for us Satanists,” as my grandfather walked back up the steps, he said.
Stanton concluded, “What my grandfather actually said was that Ramirez seemed like a kook. He would usually add that Satanism doesn’t condone murder of any kind. This was my childhood. I don’t know if it’s more or less amazing that I turned out fine, but I did.”
It was a good thing that Anton Lavey had turned away the kook Richard Ramirez because shortly after that, he would make headlines worldwide after being captured for the brutal sexual assaults and murders of several men, women, and children.
People who he had claimed were killed in the name of Satan.
Writing in his autobiography years later, Anton LaVey had written about how accusations of murder in the name of Satan do not concern him. But, Lavey said, “There will be undoubtedly more crimes in the sense that the Satanic Bibles tells you to “take no more shit.”
You see, even hardcore Satanists and High Priests like Anton LaVey knew that within the ranks of his religion, there were people who were abused, angry, crazy, and some were criminals on the fringe. But, on the other hand, people like Ramirez, who were not only magnetized to his teachings in the Satanic Bible, saw them as the new Bible of their wayward generation in a world of hypocritical Christians and as a testament to their alternative and sometimes evil lifestyle.
True crime author Philip Carlo spoke to Ramirez about the crimes and Satanism in numerous interviews.
CARLO: Speaking of spirituality, let’s talk about Satanism. There’s been a lot in the press, Richard, about your devotion to and your affiliation with Satan. Can you tell a bit about what Satan means to you?
RAMIREZ: What Satan means to me…Satan is a stabilizing force in my life. It gives me a reason to be; it gives me…an excuse to rationalize. There is a part of me that believes he really does exist. I have my doubts, but we all do, about many things.
CARLO: When did you first turn away from—as I know you were brought up a—and turn to Satan?
RAMIREZ: From 1970—well, throughout my childhood and up to the time I was eighteen years old, I believed in God. Seventeen, eighteen years old. Then, for two or three years, I became sort of like an—I didn’t believe in anything.
When I reached the age of twenty, twenty-one thereabouts, I met a guy in jail and, uh…he told me about Satan and I picked it up from there. I read books and I studied and I examined who I was and what my feelings were.
Also, my actions. Just like the Hezbollah and different terrorist religious organizations around the—it is a driving force that motivates them to do things and they believe in it whole-heartedly. It had the same effect on my life.
CARLO: In other words, their spirituality was what was the driving force in their life, and Satan became, in a sense, your spirituality and the driving force behind you.
RAMIREZ: Yeah.
CARLO: Richard, do you believe that Satan helps people to be able to do things they wouldn’t normally do? For instance, in Matamoras, Mexico, Adolfo Constanzo killed many people and he was committing human sacrifices to protect the drug cartel down there from the police, and he feverently believed that Satan would protect him and so therefore made human sacrifices. Do you feel that kind of reasoning has any place—
RAMIREZ:— place in Satanism?
CARLO: Yeah.
RAMIREZ: I don’t know the structure of Hell itself, or demons or demonology, but I do know where you tamper with witchcraft, when you tamper with Satanism, be it voodoo—
CARLO: —Santeria—
RAMIREZ: Yeah, any type of sacrifices or contacting the spirits, you’re dealing with things that are very delicate—and dangerous. I myself am no warlock, I’m not a wizard. I’m not one of these types of individuals that knows his witchcraft from A to Z.
But, I have read of instances where people end up getting killed and arrested for tampering with the wrong demons and not using the right types of…uh…the right process of sacrifices and the right types of rituals. You have to know what you’re doing. Everything from ropes to chalices—
CARLO: Everything has to be done right.
RAMIREZ: Exactly. From what I know, certain symbols—like Pentagrams—are supposed to protect you from the demons themselves.
CARLO: Yeah. You were seen in court once with a Pentagram inside your hand and you held it up and showed it to the press and the audience. Why did you do that? Did you feel that it would protect you, or were you just making a statement that you were in alliance with the Devil?
RAMIREZ: Yes, it was a statement that I was in alliance with…the evil that is inherent in human nature.”
Carlo also says that after Ramirez was caught, Anton Lavey’s daughter, Zeena LaVey, had visited him in jail, making him an honorary member of the Church of Satan, and told him they were praying for him.
After Richard Ramirez was apprehended, Lavey’s daughter, Zeena LaVey, went to the jail to visit Richard wearing a long, skin-tight Black dress over her intense hourglass figure and had bright Blood-Red lipstick on her full lips and long fingernails.
She was with her then-boyfriend, a tall man named Nicholas Shreck, who had cut off his left ear as a token of his devotion to Satan. Nicholas also wore all Black and sported an ankle-length Black leather coat.
Zeena told Richard that her Father and the Church sent their blessings and were praying to Satan for him. They were making him an honorary member of the Church. That made Richard’s spirits soar. He held LaVey in high esteem, and Zeena’s visit made him feel the forces of Darkness were being marshaled behind him. (The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez by Philip Carlo)
DISCLAIMER: You must understand that Richard Ramirez and most other ritualistic murderers had committed these killings independently. Even though he was a Satanist who visited Anton Lavey and had allegedly read the Satanic Bible, I contend that he was not part of “an organized Satanic cult.” Nor do I believe did the Church of Satan order these murders.
I contend that Richard Ramirez was influenced by the writings of Lavey and his daughter, Zeena, who visited him in jail after the murders. It was more of a Church of Satan’s endorsement of his murders for black magic marketing purposes and cultural shock value which the CoS has never been shy to capitalize upon.
SATANIC SYMBOLISM
When the Ramirez murders first started, legal authorities had called them part of a “Satanic Cult,” and these were “Satanic murders.” At the time, some Police investigators came out into the media and claimed that these brutal killers were taking part in “Satanic and ritualistic killings.” A person who not only kills people but takes it to a whole new cruel and spiritual level by sacrificing innocent victims in an ancient horrid rite.
I would understand this fact much more apparent when I was older and researched the occult to become truly knowledgeable. I found a quote that would always ring true regarding symbols was the famous words by the Chinese philosopher Confucious who once said Signs and Symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.
I remember what stood out in my mind to this very day is what the police called the Satanic symbols Ramioriez used as his calling card written in the victim’s blood on the walls or on the bodies that he left behind. It’s truly the script that many Hollywood horror movies are based upon but this was real life.
Heinous acts of violence done in such a brutal way put these killers on a whole new level of brutality that most people cannot even understand, let alone imagine that any person can be so evil.
This religious fear and serial killers like Richard Ramirez, who openly profess they are Satanists as they ritually sacrifice people in horrific murders is what leads to the “Satanic Panic.” This is why when the words Satan and serial killer are used together, it strikes fear deep into the hearts of most reasonable people and especially devout Christians who are taught to fear and fight Satan.
This is where the true Satanic Panic originated, spreading from here in the early 1980s.
Unfortunately, when referring to the Satanic Panic, some Satanists will instead focus on other alleged crimes, such as the McMartin preschool debacle, where there were never convictions to deflect attention away from the real Satanic crimes.
But please DO NOT believe them.
It has been well documented, like the crimes of Richard Ramirez and many other murderers who have done so in the name of Satan and or under the influence of demonic worship.
Now that I have gone over the facts regarding Richard Ramirezes’ ties to Satanism and Satanic symbolism let’s quickly go over the short history of his murder spree and capture.
Growing up in the early 1980s in Orange County, California, I can clearly remember when my innocent sun-bleached summer of little league baseball, surfing, and fun was suddenly interrupted with news of a Satanic serial killer on the loose.
A cold-blooded murderer who terrorized local communities with a string of home invasion robberies, rapes, and murders.
As some of you know or could imagine, there is nothing that strikes more fear in someone than a killer on the loose near your home who breaks into people’s houses when they sleep to terrorize, rape, torture, and brutally kill them.
The demon’s name was Richard Ramirez, and he would go down in history to be known as the Night Stalker. As you can see from the picture above left shortly after his arrest, his face had morphed into a demonic creature of sorts.
A man portrayed in the media as making some of his victims pray to Satan before he ruthlessly butchered them and would flash the upside-down (inverted) Satanic pentagrams on his hand in court.
The Night Stalker was a name that in itself sends chills down the sweaty neck of any reasonable person on a hot summer’s night.
Ramirez, then 25 at the time of his arrest, hew was initially charged in Los Angeles County with 14 counts of murder, five attempted murders, 19 burglaries, six robberies, seven rapes, five acts of forced oral copulation, seven of sodomy, three lewd acts with children and two kidnappings.
You probably know how vicious his crimes were — but the true-crime series delves deeply into how bloody and gory they really were. He had a pattern — he killed the man in the house, sexually assaulted a woman, and always made sure he could see the fear in his victim’s eyes. For example, in the early days of his crimes, he knocked on the car hood of Maria Hernandez so she would see him before the attack, and he yanked Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu out of her car as opposed to shooting her through the window.
In Whittier, he cut out Maxine Zazzara’s eyes and took them with him. Investigators identified him as an “enraged killer” because of how viciously his victims had been killed: in one case, the victim, Patty Higgins, was slashed and stabbed in the throat. Another victim, Florence “Nettie” Lang, 81, was beaten to death with a hammer.
In a docuseries on the Ramirez murders, detective Frank Salerno says, “he got comfortable after killing someone — he would take the time to have a snack. That’s a pretty sick individual.” Indeed, he would help himself with food and drinks in the kitchen after his crime.
When he continued his killing spree in San Francisco, Bay Area police said in the docuseries that he killed an accountant named Peter Pan and raped his wife Barbara, ate everything in the fridge, threw up on the kitchen floor, and masturbated on the living room floor — and then wrote a satanic symbol on the wall.
After Ramirez was caught, he had flaunted his allegiance to Satan like when he flashed an upside-down pentagram on his hand, he proudly proclaimed in the courtroom, “HAIL SATAN.”
In one of his few interviews, speaking from prison to 3TV reporter Mike Wattkiss, Richard Ramirez said he had studied Satanism. But when asked if he was a “devil worshipper,” he said, “No comment”.
When he was questioned if he was evil, Ramirez said;
“We are all evil. Aren’t we not?” He then said, ‘Yes, I am evil. Not 100% but I am evil.”
In another interview from Death Row after his conviction, Ramirez said he believed in a malevolent being and that he has felt its power.
This force that Ramirez speaks of is what many Satanists who understand what they are doing aspire to become one with. A dark force that they feed upon is the “Satanic force” or what Christians call the Devil and is evil.
“In the summer of 1985, the city of Los Angeles was held in a grip of terror by an elusive killer. He came at night entering through unlocked doors and windows, targeting houses at random, blending in with the shadows, as silent and deadly as cyanide gas. Brutalizing and robbing his victims, forcing them to swear to Satan, driven by heavy metal music and narcotics and what he believed was the power of Satan himself. It seemed no one was safe from who the press dubbed “The Night Stalker.”
It is important you understand that a common theme among criminals, especially serial murderers, is that they were severely abused as children, just like Richard Ramirez, who was forced to endure and witness horrible trauma. For example, when he was young, his father had abused him and had once tied him to a cross as punishment in the backyard.
According to author Philip Carlo’s book, ‘The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez’, Richard was scared of his father. Carlo claims Richard’s dad had been beaten as a child by both his father and grandfather. Despite vowing not to abuse his five children the same way he was, things did turn violent when his kids got into trouble.
When he was 13 years old, his cousin Miguel ‘Mike’ Ramirez murdered his wife by shooting her in the face at point-blank range with a 38-revolver. It was the first time Richard had ever witnessed a killing of a human being. His cousin Mike warned him never to talk to anyone about what he saw, which Richard didn’t. After the murder, they back to the apartment to clean up the blood and evidence.
The sight of a human being murdered and cleaning the blood was like a mystical experience to the young Ramirez. He said: “That day I went back to that apartment, it was like some kind of mystical experience. You could smell the dried blood. I looked at the place where Jessie had fallen and died, and I got this kind of tingly feeling.”
Maybe this is why after he was caught, Ramirez posed the question of whether serial killers were born or bred?
The book, The Night Stalker Killer: Life of Serial Killer Richard Ramirez, By Jack Smith, describes his troubled upbringing and his exposure to violence at an early age. Smith helps us understand what might lead someone like Ramirez to brutally rape and kill his victims with such hate in cold blood after an abused childhood and later using drugs, satanic worship, and violence.
The perfect recipe for a human to become a Killer Hell-bent on causing mayhem to the Satanic world that abused and created him demon.
In the end, an alert and brave 13-year-old boy named James Romero would witness Richard Ramirez attempting to break into his Orange County home. No even knowing it was a serial killer and his life in danger, he avoided being his next victim and took down the license plate of the Toyota station wagon that Ramirez was driving and called 911.
An all-points bulletin went out on the car and he was captured shortly thereafter when he attempted to carjack a woman in Los Angeles. Neighbors who thought he was just a car jacker, chased him, beat him down, and kept him until the police arrived.
Orange County Sheriff Officer Jim Kaiser was the person who drove Ramirez to the station after he was arrested on August 31, 1985. Upon arriving, an officer opened the patrol car door and Ramirez stepped out immediately vomiting a “green” vomit in the parking lot that he had likened to the horror movie The Exorcist.
Speaking to news reporters, he said, “It was green, like The Exorcist. This guy is really evil.”
Kaiser tightened Ramirez’s handcuffs over and over again.
“I didn’t know what he was capable of,” Officer Kaiser said. “I looked straight in the eye of absolute evil. He had cold, black eyes. He was the ultimate manifestation of absolute evil.”
Before he was sentenced to death row, Richard Ramirez proclaimed to the court: “I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all. That’s it.
Before Ramirez, 53, died of natural causes in Marin General Hospital, he was seen moving around in his hospital bed — with a shocking green hue to his skin. A witness told the New York Post that he looked like the Jolly Green Giant in the end.
The cause of death was chronic liver failure.
“He was the color green,” said the source. “He looked like a green highlighter pen. He was sitting up in his bed doing stretches.”
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
In the Scripture, we are introduced to a powerful part of the human body and also a force or spirit that works through the flesh. What is called “sarka.” A form of Christian dualism that teaches us there are two spirits controlling humankind’s destiny.
The Spiritual is called the Mind from the Holy Spirit and the Sarka is the Mind of the Flesh and they appear to work against one another. The Mind is from the Holy Spirit is good and allows us to connect to God while the other is the Mind of the Flesh, which is the Law of Sin and causes us to lose self-control and to be bad.
Sarka is variously described as a bodily organ related to our flesh or the soft tissue that acts as a supernatural conduit that can shape and mold us via our thoughts and actions, often resulting in sin, disease, death, and even our genetics.
Think of it as the actual machine under your skin controlling your destiny by pronouncing judgments upon you via your actions. The real you. The skin on the outside with your good looks, lovely eyes, and hair, that’s just part of your ego – a temporary facade. One in which the very machine lurking below your exterior veneer can command its kill switch upon your very being, causing illness, cancer, and death for your transgressions/sins.
The scripture informs us that it is related to the human body, 2 Cor. 7:5; flesh, human nature, human frame, Jn. 1:13, 14; 1 Pet. 4:1; 1 Jn. 4:2; kindred, Rom. 11:14; lineage, Rom. 1:3; 9:3; flesh, humanity, human beings, Mt. 24:22; Lk. 3:6; Jn. 17:2; the circumstances of the body, material condition, 1 Cor. 5:5; 7:28; materiality, material circumstance, as opposed to the spiritual, Phil. 3:3, 4.
We read in Matthew 26:41, “Stay alert and pray lest you enter a time of trial. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh (sarx) is weak.” Then we learn that there is something called “the one” who feeds upon John’s flesh (sarka) and drinks his blood dwells within him and John in him. Through our flesh, we serve the law of sin but with our minds via the Holy Spirit, we serve God.
In John 6:54, we are told, “The one who feeds on my flesh (sarka) and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, and John 6:55, “for my flesh (sarx) is real food and my blood is real drink or in John 6:56;
“The one who eats my flesh (sarka) and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him.”
This sarka is not only part of our flesh, it also has the ability to control our minds so we are hostile towards God and we lose self-control.
We read in Romans 8:7, “because the mind set on the flesh (sarkos) is hostile to God; it does not submit to the law of God; in fact, it cannot and in Romans 8:8, “Those controlled by the flesh (sarki) cannot please God.”
These are the people who commit various moral and legal crimes, which Paul calls the ‘works of the sarkos’.
“Now the works of the sarkos are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Gal 5:19-21)
It also has the ability to punish us and deem us for the destruction of our flesh by giving us to Satan as we read in Corinthians 5:5, “hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh (sarkos), so that the spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.”
Later we learn that this sarka and the Holy Spirit will become one flesh and this is a good thing for all humankind.
Meaning the duality that we face and fight against will no longer be.
As it relates to sarka, it is my belief that it is not our skin, but a special organ that is part of our flesh called the interstitium.
It is through this organ that I believe our flesh and bodies interact with the outer or material world. Hence, it is what I contend as the scientific explanation of Sarka of the Scripture.
The interstitium is the connective tissue containing various bodily chemical and fluid-filled spaces existing between the skin and the body organs, including every part of our body such as the organs, brain, muscles and the circulatory system.
That means that the interstitium covers the whole body from head to toe which lies right below the skin’s surface; lining the digestive tract, lungs, and urinary systems; and surrounding muscles, according to a study published today on March 27, 2020, in the journal Scientific Reports.
Interstitial tissue is composed of cells, and what is called cerebral interstitial fluid (ISF) – water and electrolytes, ground substance, and fibrillary elements. (Figure 2-1)
It has been called an anatomical “highway” that provides a route for cell signal-carrying and may potentially explain everything from tumor growth to how cells move within our bodies.
The ‘ground substance’ of the extracellular matrix is an amorphous gelatinous material of the cerebral interstitial fluid (ISF). It fills the spaces between fibers and cells consisting of large molecules called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) which link together to form even larger molecules called proteoglycans. Glycosaminoglycans are native components of the extracellular matrix that drive cell behavior and control the cell’s microenvironment.
I contend this microenvironment works through the Sarka ie the interstitium to function as a barrier from attackers via the outside world and the very microorganisms that live symbiotically on our skin and within our blood. When we are properly balanced in homeostasis, it protects against external aggressions, including colonization and infection by these organisms that can turn into pathogens ie our undertakers.
This is accomplished through the degradation of glycosaminoglycans which appears to be very important for fungi to become pathogenic and also increase skin adhesion such as the genus, Candida Albicans.
They became pathogenic when we become unhealthy ie, sin, due to our thoughts, actions, and environment. Then, by default, our natural barrier is weakened, and by an act of judgment from God or the laws of nature, they are allowed to punish us, sinners, with illness, disease, and death.
This is why I believe that antifungal drugs are largely unsuccessful in treating these various illnesses and diseases. To treat a person who has not changed their ways of being and the very actions that caused their illness or disease are temporary band-aids because the very microorganisms that caused the pathogenesis are still present both within the patient’s body and also on the exterior.
The use of antifungal agents may temporarily sever this connection and fungal adhesion, but like flies in search of rotting meat or a pile of feces, the fungi will naturally find their way back to decomposing that which they have been tasked by nature to do. This causes long-term antifungal resistance.
In regards to the central nervous system and brain via cerebral interstitial fluid (ISF) homeostasis and neuronal regulation with the help of the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) which helps with the circulation of metabolic products, hormones, and neurotransmitters. It helps maintain the homeostatic balance of the central nervous system, protecting the brain against mechanical injuries, preventing direct contact of the brain with the extracellular region.
The extracellular matrix region is the space external to the outermost structure of a host cell environment outside an intracellular parasite.
Researchers have found that various chronic diseases that deal with the interstitium AKA our flesh and our blood and the “Prince of the Power of the Air” such as interstitial lung disease and diabetes. For example, scientists are finding that interstitium could act as a superhighway signal or code carrier for cancers and other diseases to travel throughout the body, according to research published on March 31, 2018, in Communications Biology.
The study suggested that the interstitium carries cancer codes and other disease factors that travel throughout its tissue through the natural movements of the body like the pulsing of our blood, the pumping of our heart, and even the rhythmic squeezing that moves food through the digestive tract, and the flexing of muscles.
This explanation of the interstitium would align with the Scriptural Sarka in several passages as will many of the scientific explanations of this mysterious organ.
To examine the interstitium’s connectivity, Neil Theise, a liver pathologist at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, and colleagues injected tattoo ink into three human skin samples and five colon biopsies from colon cancer patients. In every case, the pigment traveled through many layers of skin or colon tissue. The team also saw evidence that various tumor types had traveled along the interstitium to different tissue layers in the samples from people with cancer.
“Our experiments suggest that interstitial spaces are continuous, creating a potential superhighway through the body, distinct from blood and lymphatic vessels, though which cells and molecules circulate,” says lead study author Odise Cenaj, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at NYU Langone Health.
“This finding may have significant implications for how the body signals to itself across long distances to maintain health, as well as for the spread of certain cancers,” he said.
Before I finish this essay, I would like to ask you a couple of questions.
Did you know the noun ‘sarcasm’ is derived from the Greek noun σάρξ, which is transliterated as sarka (sarx, sarki, sarca, sarkinos, etc.) and means to rip the flesh off a person?
When you are sarcastic towards someone, you mock their insecurities and sins and make fun of their ego with a sneering or cutting remark. However, the ego of a person is all part of the flesh or, more appropriately, the mind of the flesh. Hence, you expose their true selves by attacking, AKA ripping their fleshly or egotistical shortfalls.
While today, in the West, we have a common saying, “sticks and stones can’t break our bones,” but even the ancient Greeks understood sarcastic words that attack our ego is akin to someone ripping off our flesh and exposing our frailties that are often caused by our sins.
Sins that cause illnesses, cancer, and even death.
Alcohol is associated with 2.8 million deaths each year worldwide. Globally, one in three people drink alcohol (equivalent to 2.4 billion people), and 2.2% of women and 6.8% of men die from alcohol-related health problems each year.Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
Traveling through our flesh via the biblical sarka, or what today we may call the interstitium, our microscopic legislators issue their judgments upon humanity for all of our sins.
Whether we drink alcohol in excess, thus ruing our livers, smoke too much bad Western tobacco to contract cancer, maintain unhealthy diets, and get diabetes. When we abuse anything, our ancestors would have called sins – gluttony and lack of self-control.
The sins bring illness, disease, and death, as we see now with a global epidemic in 2021.
Scripturally speaking, I believe these are natural law legal pronouncements under God for what Paul had called the ‘works of the sarkos’.
As John said so pointedly well over 2,000 years ago, “The one who eats my flesh (sarka) and drinks my blood dwells in me, and I in him.”
Perhaps today if John were alive he might add, “The one who rots my flesh (sarka), causing cancer, diabetes, and death, rots my blood dwells in me, and I in him.”
In the video below, Gil Hedley, Ph.D. demonstrates with on-camera dissection of the interstitium, which he calls “perifascia.”
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
Being a sinner or what some people would simply call a juvenile delinquent for most of my early life, the darkness of my acts has always shrouded my ability to see the light and goodness in the world. This inability to see the good made me hate that which I didn’t understand.
Figure emerges from the comos
The English word sin means to “miss the mark.”
It is derived from the Biblical Greek New Testament ἁμαρτία hamartia “sin”, missing the mark (failure or error) which is derived from the Hebrew hata – “sin”. A word that originates in archery and literally refers to missing the “gold” at the “center of a target,” but hitting the target – i.e. “to miss the mark”
So when we sin, humans are missing the mark. We are not getting the whole point of life which is to treat people how we want to be treated, to be blessed, and to love and live a good life.
Looking back on those years, I can honestly say that I was missing the mark and my sins caused me to have broken relationships and multiple trips to jail and prison. Obviously, the drugs, parties, music, violence, and girls were just part of the scene that constituted my sins.
Sins that almost killed me on multiple occasions and have killed countless peers.
But even in my darkest hours, I dreamed about the light and breaking the chains that bound me to my evil ways. I often thought, what does it take to make things right and what steps must I take to stop sinning in order to begin the road of redemption to recover my lost and tattered soul.
To many people outside of religion, a supernatural conversion of a bad person or even a former criminal or Satanist is ludicrous. Some people would even say that recent converts to the Faith are mentally deranged. However, my research into the subject and my own journey into the Valley of the Shadows of Darkness ie Hell, and back to the Light ie Heaven has shown me that there is something metaphysical happening when a person truly makes a conscious decision to change their evil ways.
A modern example of a high-profile famous person who has done this Great Work of Justification in redeeming his soul is Brian “Head” Welch from Bakersfield, California who plays bass in the iconic Nu Metal Rock Band, Korn. From finding God and quitting Korn, to going solo and then back to rejoining Korn, this man has traveled the dark labyrinths of Hell back to the Light of God to bring testimony to as many people as possible.
Like Brian Welch, I had a similar journey but less public and with a lot less money. My research into his story and his path over the last decade proved to me that he walks the talk. He is a shining example of someone famous who has redeemed his soul. A man who appears to be humble while still playing in the band Korn and testifying of his conversion. In a future article, I will speak more about his story and hope to interview him for a new book I’m writing.
So how does a real-life sinner like Brian Welch or myself make a miraculous conversion? How do we stop doing drugs, sex, and a debauched lifestyle to become a good man who no longer does those things ie sins, and give his life to a higher power ie God?
As the Scripture informs us, sinners can go from darkness to light to be saved from death to life via the Christian concept of Justification.
The Fathers of the Church, both Greek, and Latin, unanimously teach that justification effects the forgiveness of sins. Justification is described in the Bible not only as a remission of sins, but likewise as the beginning of a new life, a renewal of the Spirit, a new creation, a regeneration, a supernatural likeness of God, etc.
The concept of Justification renews the sinner inwardly and makes of him a new person.
This remission event first occurs in a person’s mind when they truly imagine and want to stop their sinful or bad ways. Then through their thoughts and actions, they do the work that is necessary to, for example, stay clean from drugs or stop watching porn to help with their sex addictions.
This new mindset to live clean followed by real-life action put to Death or Crucify the old Ego or old self/creature and the figurative rebirth of a new person occurs. Like Christ, we can rise to live again from our Tombs. This is the whole point of these Christian teachings.
They have sloughed off sin and become just and holy in the sight of God. Cfr.2 Cor. V, 17: “If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away, behold all things are made new.”
As we read in John: “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren; he that loveth not, abideth in death. (1 John III, 14)” In Colossians: “And you, when you were dead in your sins, … he hath quickened together with him, forgiving you all offenses, (Col. II, 13),” and Ephesians. V, 8: “For you were heretofore darkness, but now light in the Lord.”
The word “justification” also occurs in two other meanings in the Bible. Ps. CXVIII, 8 and 26 for the “law”: “I will keep thy justifications;” and “Teach me thy justifications.” Apoc. XXII, 11 and other passages it signifies “growth in interior holiness,” which theologians call Justificatio secunda.
The earliest Church Father to write about this concept comes to us from Clement of Rome: The Letter of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth (Clement’s First Letter) who was familiar with St. Paul’s Epistles, and he certainly believed and taught that we are justified by faith and also via self-control, being humble and this is not in word only, it is “justified by deeds.”
Clement had written:
And we, therefore…are not justified of ourselves or by our wisdom or insight or religious devotion or the holy deeds we have done from the heart, but by that faith by which almighty God has justified all men from the very beginning (ch. 32:4).
We should clothe ourselves with concord, being humble, self-controlled, far removed from all gossiping and slandering, and justified by our deeds, not by words (ch. 30:3).
These quotes by Clement really hit home for me.
I always hated gossip and myself when I partook in it. Self-control is something I have battled with since being a little chubby kid who was picked on by my peers or to my alcohol and drug addictions. Today, the art of self-control plays a big part in all that I do.
I have never been a man who thought by Faith only we are redeemed or saved. To me, these people who walk by Faith only are hypocrites who do not walk the talk. They give Christianity a bad name. The very people Godless Atheists and Satanists poke fun at all day long.
The Eastern Father St. Justin Martyr (AD 100-165) makes it clear that it is not those who “merely profess” Christ on their lips, but by the values of their actions through those who “do the works” the Saviour commanded that will be saved:
Those who are found not living as he taught should know that they are not really Christians, even if his teachings are on their lips, for he said that not those who merely profess but those who also do the works will be saved (cf. Matt. 13:42, 43; 7:15,16,19)” (The First Apology of Justin, ch.16).
Each man goes to everlasting punishment or salvation according to the value of his actions (The First Apology of Justin, ch. 7).
Ignatius of Antioch (AD 35-107), Apostolic Father from the East, informs us that along with baptism, faith, and charity, our works will be our deposits to receive what is our due:
“Let your baptism be ever your shield, your faith a helmet, your charity a spear, your patience a panoply. Let your works be deposits, so that you may receive the sum that is due you” (Letter to St. Polycarp, 6).
Most Christians fail to understand that when you are “dead in your sins” and when you move from being a sinner who lives in darkness to the Light of the Lord, it is a form of Baptism by Fire.
A self-initiation in which you consciously make the decision to stop living a selfish life by the mind of the flesh and to no longer be ruled by your material things, money, and the world. This does not mean that you no longer have a need for material necessities such as money, a house, and or a car, but they no longer define who you are and or take precedence over the most important things in life like family, love, and our spiritual life such as God.
When a person has genuinely made this decision to stop consciously sinning by living in Mind of the Flesh, and their thoughts and actions validate this fact, it is called Justification that their sins be forgiven. They now walk in the Light of the Lord ie Spiritus Principalis ie, the directing or Governing Spirit of God as Jesus had done.
Unfortunately, many people deceive themselves and continue to sin, so you must understand that this cannot be done in words only. They miss the mark.
There is also the misconception that our sins are caused by one man and also have been forgiven by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Having faith and just merely believing this will cause you to be saved. As we read in Romans, “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19), and to overcome this alienation from God by sin, Jesus died on the cross, thereby reconciling us to our Creator, insisting that “when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10).
But this interpretation is wrong because if we are to examine the Greek and Hebrew Scripture, we would find that
The Scripture is emphatic that Forgiveness is imparted via penance from God. NOT by Jesus dying on the cross, a preacher, or some outside authority. It comes from both within and God, which is Natural Law.
Another Eastern Father, Basil the Great (AD 329-379), tells us of being “acceptable to God” through obeying the gospel, purging sins, and being active in good works:
He who would obey the gospel must first be purged of all defilement of the flesh and the spirit that so he may be acceptable to God in the good works of holiness (The Morals, 2, 1).
Basil believed that simply renouncing sins was not enough for salvation; rather, an act of penance was necessary as well:
Mere renouncement of sin is not sufficient for the salvation of penitents, but fruits worthy of penance are also required of them (The Morals, 1, 3).
The people who are saved ie break free via the values of their actions are Redeemed, which is the Christian concept of Redemption.
The word Redemption comes from the Latin redemptio which is originally rendered from the Hebrew kopher and Greek lytron which, in the Old Testament, redemption (Hebrewge’ulah) referred to the ransom price of slaves (Exodus 21:8). In the New Testament, it is designated as the “great price” (1 Corinthians 6:20) which the Redeemer paid for our liberation.
GreekFathers, like St. Athanasius (De incarnatione, in P.G., XXV, 105), St. Cyril of Alexandria (Contra Julianum in P.G., LXXV, 925) and St. John Damascene (De fide orthodoxa, in P. G, XCIV, 983), emphasized that Redemption is a remedy for original sin as almost to make it appear the sole and necessary means of rehabilitation.
In this regard, Gregory of Nyssa introduced the concept of Satan and souls on a fishing hook. Just as in fishing, Satan clamped down on this hook (i.e. Christ), and found a surprise. This surprise was the claims of all the souls taken from the devil.
This concept of redemption has been extended to the law for example of human chattel or slaves: an Israelite slave, an Israelite captive, and the firstborn son, pidyon haben, (Hebrew: פדיון הבן) or redemption of the first-born son. Firstborn’ derived from Jacob, who are God’s slaves forever, but are currently held captive, even while residing in the modern state of Israel.
Redemption is extended from the person to material possessions like real estate for foreclosed properties. Before a bank can cease or take back the property from a delinquent owner, they are given a Right of redemption, which is a right to reclaim the foreclosed property.
The right of redemption to transform individual persons one mind, heart, and soul at a time.
Through Justification, they have been saved from the jaws of Leviathon, the Devil, or the earth’s biosphere which controls the mind of the flesh.
Their souls Redeemed by thoughts, words, and actions.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
In early August 1988, former Blondie bassist and author Gary Lachman attended an event held by some leading members of the Church of Satan calling it “a quartet of modern satanic masters, hosting an unholy celebration.”
“We are gathered here tonight to celebrate this day in history,” the event begins. “This has historically been Satan’s Day, a day of purification, a day of truth.”
It was held on the date of 8-8-88, which was purposely chosen due to the marketing power of 88 “Heil Hitler” to their fellow neo-Nazis.
Their goal was to celebrate a new film for their hero, Charles Manson, and the cold-blooded murders in Los Angeles, California, of actress Sharon Tate, couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, and three others just two decades prior by the Charles Manson family.
To the Satanic Revolutionaries in attendance, the murders represented the symbolic death of free love and hippie culture and a violent return to order. What we may call the emergence of their Satanic New World Order onto the world stage with Geraldo Rivera’s TV crew there to record everything.
The public ritual was called 8-8-88 and took place at the Strand Theater in San Francisco. It was hosted by the Church of Satan’s founder’s (Anton LaVey’s) daughter Zeena Schreck (LaVey), her then-husband, Nikolas Schreck, and the notorious Neo-Nazi Satanist, Boyd Rice, and the late publisher Adam Parfrey. Please keep in mind the creative adjectives I choose to use to describe these people are based on their own historical admissions and or symbols they proudly adorn themselves with.
The 8-8-88 ritual was conducted right at the heart of the Satanic Panic.
The goal, further exploit and feed upon the energies produced by the fears of the ignorant general public and media. It was shown to a sold-out crowd of degenerates promising them, “A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief,” “A Nightmare of TERROR!” and “An Evening of Apocalyptic Delight!”
Awful Satanic music with organ drones and militant drumbeats devolving into a chaotic mess of noises were cooked up for the attendees by Shreck’s band, Radio Werewolf. A quasi-Satanic music event using Nazi and dark imagery meant to provoke fear in people and propagandize the nation’s youth in front of Geraldo Rivera’s TV crew.
It was the perfect black magic marketing opportunity of a lifetime.
These Satanic Masters would not let it slip by without capitalizing on the dark energies surrounding their movement.
As organs blared in the background, the hosts clad in all black and naziesque styled military uniforms recited bad poetry as they espoused their ghastly and predominantly racial extremist worldviews.
When a reporter questioned Boyd Rice about the date’s evocations of Nazi Germany, Rice explained, “What appeals to us about the SS or the Nazis and what we feel we have in common with it is order, bringing things back to order.”
Nicholas Schreck said later that evening, “is designed to awaken primordial instincts” and take control of the masses through the “dominant frequency.” During a bad Satanic remix of the religious song, “Silent Night,” lyrics speaking of blood and rebirth were purposefully added into the song.
“We need to bring power back to the powerful,” Nickolas Shreck proudly stated. “We need the slaves to be enslaved again, and not be slaving over us, not be ruling over us.”
As you can quickly tell, Lachman’s description of Satanic Masters holding an unholy celebration was spot on.
These guys weres not shy in clarifying their murderous and racist Neo-Nazi Satanic mission on Geraldo Rivera’s video recording of the event.
For example, Boyd Rice said on camera that Sharon Tate’s death was a “symbolic representation of the end of the entire way of thought, of compassion for the weak, peace for its own sake, pacifism that breeds stagnation.”
“That whole way of thinking was destroyed on Aug. 8, 1969, a ritual of cleansing and purification.”
“For us, the ’60s were a decade of corruption, a final culmination of Judeo-Christian rottenness,” says Rice. “The ’60s were murdered, but its vestiges remained. We must annihilate its traces, branch, and root, we must purge them from our life, and purge them from life itself. This is our sacred duty.”
“The entire world is rotten and corrupt … to us they’re dead people who refuse to lay down, they’re cadavers,” said Rice on camera.
He further reveals their murderous intentions and the so-called creation of a Master Race to the world;
“We would like to see most of the human race killed off because it is unworthy of the gift of life,” he said. “We’re working with natural law, and nature has decreed that most of man must die. We are forming an elite, a master race. That’s the only term I can use.”
Toward the end of the interview, Nikolas Schreck makes the common rhetoric decrying the Satanic Panic. He says, “These middle-class housewives that are worried that we want to groom abduct their children are barking up the wrong tree because we wouldn’t want to do anything with their mediocre and corrupt lifestyle.”
Both Zeena and Nikolas Schreck later expressed regret for the event due to the controversy it generated and the backlash they endured after Geraldo Rivera aired it on television.
A few years later, in 1990, they renounced the Church of Satan. Zeena had gone on record calling her father Anton Lavey a charlatan who did not have actual knowledge of Satanism. The Church of Satan even renounced her. Shortly thereafter, Zeena and Nikolas Schreck joined Michale Aquino’s Temple of Set but later left that organization as well.
Today, Zeena refuses to be called by her former last name of Lavey and still goes by the name Shreck even though the two have been divorced since 2015. Both Nickolas and Zeena have claimed to have transitioned into a life of Buddhism.
Zeena offers merch for sale in her online store like a t-shirt of Manson’s face next to a Christian Cross in mocking fashion and images of her in front of an inverted pentagram calling her “The Original,” which she may be 100% right in her marketing claims.
According to Zeena’s website, “Kaliyuga Clearing House is happy to present the Retro-Zeena Collection. This 1989 photo of Zeena was her last, personally commissioned and stylistically designed, publicity shoot while still serving as High Priestess of the Church of Satan. A year after that, due to ideological and personal conflicts with her father and his new retinue of parasites, she renounced satanism to pursue her own spiritual journey.
Nikolas Shreck now lives in Germany where he is an author who it seems could never get enough of Charles Manson befriending and visiting him in prison up until his death and I would contend, his #1 apologetic. His Instagram page is also ripe with Satanic imagery and photos from his heyday.
Hell, I get it, we all have to make money in this damn “rotten world,” and you can’t blame them.
Modern Satanism with all the magic, controversy, marketing power, and cult heroes like Manson and “The Original” sells much better to wayward youth and parasites than plastic Buddha statues in this Satanic New World Order.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
“I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emmerson
During his Harvard commencement speech in 1837, Ralph Waldo Emmerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) took the podium to address the top students in the graduating class marking the capstone in a week of ceremony and tradition. In his speech, titled “The American Scholar,” Emerson commanded that our young country must develop a national intellectual life distinct from the colonial influences of the past. He condemned the academic scholarship of the time for its reliance on historical and institutional wisdom.
Emmerson argued that the scholar had become “decent, indolent, complaisant.” To become more than “a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking,” a scholar must begin to engage with the world for oneself.
Emmerson is a famous American author and poet who grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, famously known as the home of both Minutemen and Transcendentalists. A place where “embattled farmers” fired “the shot heard ’round the world,” starting the war for political independence on the 19th of April 1775. The place where I contend that the traditional landscape of Freemasonry and philosophy were officially changed to what was we see today in the West.
Emmerson’s “The American Scholar” would give a new voice to the movement’s individualism: envisioning an independent American intellectual culture premised not on any kind of nationalist pride—nor any particular doctrine or political system—but on a dedication to independence itself. He would later define the “American idea” he sought to promote through his work simply as “Emancipation.”
Emerson’s speech left a particular impression on two members of the Harvard community, a troublemaking undergraduate named James Russell Lowell and a recent alumnus named Oliver Wendell Holmes.
“The Puritan revolt had made us ecclesiastically and the Revolution politically independent, but we were still socially and intellectually moored to English thought,” Lowell later wrote, “till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and the glories of blue water.”
Holmes called the speech America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence.”
The world-famous Freemason and author Emmerson first preached the doctrine of “self-reliance” and Transcendental individualism, which directly conflicted with the tenets of Masonic fraternalism. After all, Freemasonry follows an ancient tradition reaching back to Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and King Solomon’s Temple. Masons are expected to absorb these lessons dictated by our tradition and authority because, since ancient times, local lodges were governed by rules and constitutions tightly regulating the conduct of individuals.
However, Transcendentalists Freemasons like Emmerson urged Americans to free themselves from the dead hand of the past. As Emerson directed in his essay “Nature,” the transcendentalists sought freedom from the “poetry and philosophy of … tradition” and “religion by … history.”
This is where the idea of how to live much more liberally and do not honor our ancient traditions is sown like a seed by Emmerson into the American mind and Freemasonry. The Ancient Charge from the Records of Lodges of FreeMasons had stated their precepts emphatically, “A Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral Law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine.”
Masonic historian and 33rd Degree Freemason Albert Mckay had written that a stupid Atheist is, “the fool who has said in his heart there is no God,” while an “irreligious libertine” designated “the man who, with a degree, less of unbelief, denies the distinctive doctrines of revealed religion.” McKay says that “a stupid Atheist” denoted, to use the language of the Psalmist, “the fool who has said in his heart there is no God,” while an “irreligious libertine” designated the man who, with a degree less of unbelief denies the distinctive doctrines of revealed religion. (Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)
I contend that Emerson’s ideas were also not in line with the original American Founders who believed in progress, enlightenment, and “a new order of the ages” but they also honored the ancient Greek and Roman traditions, philosophies of the religious basis of morals, and common law. Most of the Founders also came from conservative and orthodox (or “right-believing”) Christian religious traditions. For example, in the cases of John Jay, George Washington, Edward Rutledge, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Charles Carroll, and Daniel Carroll, and Thomas Fitzsimmons.
They were all baptized, listed on church rolls, and married to practicing Christians. In public statements, they invoked divine assistance. Many of them were Freemasons.
Robert P. Kraynak, professor of political science at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, describes them as “enlightened traditionalists. Kraynak writes;
“The American Founders were unusual as eighteenth-century leaders because they were shaped by both the old world of aristocracy and the new world of democracy. They believed in progress, enlightenment, and “a new order of the ages”; but they also revered the ancient Romans, English traditions of the gentleman statesman and common law, the religious basis of morals, and practical experience.”
Kraynak stated, “The fourth element, cultural traditions, extends the idea of moral order to social practices. The American Founders believed that liberty required natural law (an objective standard of justice) and customs, habits, and manners derived from the heritage of Western civilization and English and American history.
I use the phrase “cultural traditions” as a catch-all phrase to refer to the values and beliefs handed down over centuries from several ancient sources—from classical Greek and Roman ideals of republican virtue and patriotic citizen-soldiers; from the English heritage of common law jurisprudence; from the ideal of gentlemen statesmen (possessing the gentleman’s code of honor); from Protestant Christianity and its biblical beliefs about America as a “city on a hill” charged with moral duties, such as the work ethic, the struggle against sin, and charity for the poor; and from the historical experience of local self-government in colonial assemblies and the harsh self-reliance of frontier life.
The implication is that liberty was embedded in cultural traditions that gave it higher and nobler purposes than mere self-expression or the values of a consumer-entertainment society. The American Founders assumed that such customs and traditions would provide a set of moral virtues for the exercise of responsible liberty by citizens and leaders.”
As you can see, Emerson’s demands that people free themselves from the dead hand of the past is not at all in line with the original ethos of the American founders. However, his ideas and influence would spread around America and the world.
Emmerson had many connections through his family and his Masonic membership. He was a member of the Corinthian Lodge, which played an essential role in starting the liberal revolution. He lectured there for many years, finding a very influential audience for his ideas. Quickly, his liberalist doctrines infected other people, lodges, and eventually, I contend, changing the very laws in our court systems to be pro-liberal.
“Well over 150 men passed through the Corinthian Lodge between 1797 and 1832; spiritual rebels like Thoreau can be counted on two hands. But, even more to the point, Freemasonry was the faith of the Transcendentalists’ fathers. The Rev. Ezra Ripley, member of both the Corinthian Lodge and the Royal Chapter and forceful defender of the fraternity in its time of woe, was the step-grandfather of Emerson.
His generational counterpart was the erstwhile minister and clergyman Asa Dunbar, the maternal grandfather of Thoreau. Tracing the lineage from Freemason to Transcendentalist is indeed as crucial to our intellectual history as following the path from Jonathan Edwards to Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
Emmerson was not only well connected in the states, but he also had some serious connections all over the world. In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson moved to a warmer client in St. Augustine, Florida, where he took long walks on the beach and began writing poetry.
While in St. Augustine, he made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat, the nephew of the former French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who had renounced his European titles (after his father had already been overthrown) and immigrated to the United States. Murat was also a writer, and the two young men reportedly discussed religion, politics, and philosophy.
In 1833, Emerson turned his love of writing into a career as a frequent lecturer. He traveled around New England, reading his essays and speaking to audiences about his views on nature, the role of religion, and his travels. In 1838, Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School, to deliver the school’s graduation address, which came to be known as the “Divinity School Address“.
Emerson discounted biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a “demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo”.
His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. He was denounced as an atheist and a poisoner of young men’s minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years.
In 1841 Emerson published Essays, his second book, which included the famous essay “Self-Reliance.” His aunt called it a “strange medley of atheism and false independence,” but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris. More than any of Emerson’s contributions to date, this book, and its popular reception laid the groundwork for his international fame.
At the time, Emerson made a left turn from his contemporaries’ religious and social beliefs, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay “Nature“. In 1837, he detailed this new doctrine in a speech entitled “The American Scholar“, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America’s “intellectual Declaration of Independence.”
Emerson’s family was well connected to other Liberal transcendentalists such as the family of Henry James Sr. and one of the most famous liberal justices to ever to sit in the U.S. Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was generally associated with the liberal wing of the Court on most issues as I will discuss in the next chapter.
Holmes once said that he wanted to be a man of letters like Emerson. While he was a student at Harvard, he had written various papers on philosophy and even an attack on Plato’s idealist philosophy, which he asked Emerson to read. Emerson famously replied, “If you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
In the following decades, until the modern-day, Freemasonry would suffer significantly for abandoning its founding principles based on Ancient Traditions for a more liberal and Transcendentalist Masonry. Rather than honoring tradition, following the idea of Emerson’s famous saying, “an institution” is not merely “the lengthened shadow of one man.”
No longer is a Masonic initiate subject to an extreme examination of his character by a special committee. Once admitted to a lodge, the Mason remained subject to collective discipline for immoral or criminal conduct. It was not about individualism but shared beliefs creating mutual bonds and loyalties to a more significant cause.
The new ethos was of a piece with the individualistic world of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Emerson was a well-paid and famous lecturer touring locations across the northern United States and in Canada. He was delivering up to 70-80 lectures a year in his prime, attracting the attention of Herman Melville, who attended his speaking engagements in New York City. In addition, he would go on walks with Nathaniel Hawthorne and captured the attention of leading theologian and intellectual Henry James Sr., father to William and Henry.
Many authors like Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost embraced and incorporated Emerson’s ideas furthering their spread.
In May 1857, he met at the Parker House Hotel in Boston with Francis Henry Underwood, Oliver Holmes Sr., and the poet and fellow Freemason, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Together they founded a magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, which was dedicated to advocating abolitionism and promoting new American ideas and voices.
In their words, they sought to advance American writing and the “American idea” “wherever the English tongue is spoken or read”—a reflection of Emerson’s desire for a national intellectual identity that could transcend the country’s institutions and borders.
In this year 2021, we can say they succeeded in spreading their Neo-Liberal ideas globally through their influence, media, and Freemasonry.
Emerson’s seed he had sown in the world well over 100 years ago is now a mighty oak tree.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
