Bhairava as the guru of Shani. A bit disturbing, maybe...?
Saturday, October 17, 2026
The next fad?
Is Eastern Orthodoxy the next quasi-spiritual fad in America? Good grief & heaven forfend. This can´t end well. Jesus, have mercy on us sinners!
Insolence
Brother Nathanael again. A Jew who converted to the Russian Orthodox Church stands somewhere in Idaho complaining about multi-culturalism and immigration, oooookay...
The insolence.
The Brother Nathanael situation
Here is a short clip (just nine minutes) featuring Brother Nathanael, the religious sasquatch mentioned in my previous blog post. He sounds surprisingly sober here, LOL. Well, kind of.
Religious sasquatch
If you like quasi-religious gossip (mostly about Orthodox and Catholic sectarian splinter groups), the first two hours (or so) of this video might rock your world.
"Brother Nathanael" is apparently a local profile & kook extraordinaire in northern Idaho and Spokane. Many people there refer to him as a "religious sasquatch" and jokingly call his visits into town "Brother Nathanael sightings". His latest contretemps are detailed in this podcast, hosted by an Orthobro. The guest is presumably affiliated with the SSPX, which Nathanael recently tried to join. Nathanael´s obsession with a Belarusian honeypot is especially funny.
Less entertaining is the guy´s anti-Semitism...since he´s really ethnically Jewish?! At one point, an SSPX-affiliated priest jokingly asked an Orthodox Jewish rabbi if they could *please* take Nathanael back. The rabbi refused...
Mostly linked for the hell of it. Pun intended.
Fatima is so over
A long but interesting skeptical discussion about Fatima, the Miracle of the Sun in particular. I was on the fence about Fatima for a while (I mean, it could have been paranormal *somehow*...or a UFO perhaps?) but this tends to tip the scales in a skeptical direction. It certainly raises awkward questions concerning the "official" Catholic position.
Many of the prophecies supposedly uttered by the Virgin Mary in 1917 were unknown at the time. Lucia never reported them to the priests interviewing her. She did so only later, in her various memoires. For instance, the prediction that her cousins would soon die.
"Mary´s" words about World War I don´t add up either. In 1917, Lucia said that the war would end in October that year and the Portuguese soldiers return home. The war didn´t end until over a year later, of course. A later version of the prophecy said that a new world war would break out under the pontificate of Pius XI (1922-1939), implying that "Mary" knew the name of the next pope already in 1917! But of course, this version was written down by Lucia *during the actual pontificate of Pius XI* and turned out to be wrong anyway, since World War II didn´t start until the pontificate of Pius XII...
The Miracle of the Sun (October 13, 1917) also turns out to be problematic. For instance, several people returned to the site in the following days and saw exactly the same phenomena as had occured on October 13. Yet, that had been the date indicated by Mary as *the* day for the miracle. While this does suggest that something "objective" was taking place, it might as well be something entirely natural. Perhaps the sun looked strange because of a sand storm which lasted for several days?
The skeptics in the video (Kevin and Derek) are more inclined towards a psychological explanation. People simply see whatever they want to see. Kevin shows a weird recording of a recent "sun miracle" at Medjugorje in Croatia which literally shows *nothing strange at all* happening, yet some pilgrims nevertheless "see" the sun spinning, change colors, et cetera. Kevin also points out the strange fact that no photos of the actual miracle in the sky over Fatima seem to exist, yet photographers were present at the site and took pictures of the crowds?!
There are other problems with the Fatima story too, not mentioned in this video, for instance that Mary wore a dress deemed "inappropriate" by the Catholic clergy (it was too short at the legs!). Official images of Our Lady of Fatima therefore don´t conform with the actual apparition as originally reported by the children.
With that little observation, I end this blog post.
Friday, October 16, 2026
Linje 3 forever
Den här har jag undrat över ett tag, med anledning av situationen i Frankrike (där större delen av elen kommer från just kärnkraft). Det vore ju lite...ironiskt om klimatförändringarna slår ut kärnkraften, alltså precis den energikälla som ska rädda oss från dem!
Vad var det jag sa
USA:s mer "nationalistiska" eller "isolationistiska" linje kan fortsätta även efter Trump. Av ekonomiska orsaker? Vad var det jag sade...
Ett ljus i tunneln
"Du läste det här först". Oisín Cantwell tror sig veta hur den pågående politiska turbulensen kommer att sluta. En koalitionsregering mellan SAP, V och MP understödd av Centern i riksdagen via ett slags rödgrönt "Tidöavtal". På fjärde försöket.
Sparad under favoriter. Ska bli intressant att se om han gissar rätt. Eller har inside information...
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