25 October, LV A.S.

9sense Episode List, Year LV A.S. Episode List / / 9sense, Abarat, Absolute Midnight, COVID-19, Creature Feature, Infernal Informant, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Lincoln Project, Reverend Campbell, Summon The Devil, The Devil's Advocate, Wearing Masks

1. The Devil’s Advocate

Time Stamp: 15:52

  • I Summon The Devil
    • Asmodeus, Satan, Kali, Lucifer, Balial, Lilith and Leviathan are real, and I receive gifts from them in the ritual chamber
    • There seems to be some confusion over Greater Magic, even to this day, and the true magic is how each Satanist that chooses to practice Greater Magic interprets it differently.
    • When I am in the chamber, I am literally opening the gates of hell. Calling out to my infernal brothers and sisters to join me in the chamber.
    • To me it is very much like when the cenobites are summoned in Hellraiser. I call them, they come.
      • Though they are not at my back and call.
    • I know them to have an existence separate from my desires. When and IF they decide to assist me, they do. When they are unable, they do not. It’s that simple. Like a friend who may be able to help one day and not another.
    • I have a reciprocal relationship with them. I give them strength through my real world achievements as a Satanist, and they grant me power to manipulate the world.
    • Calling the Infernal Names is not a step in a ritual. It’s the reconnection of friends I made a pact with.Friends that accepted me as one of their own, just as much as I accepted them as one of my own.
    • I am part of a tradition that goes back to time immemorial of man connecting with ancient wisdom. 
    • They grant me their secrets so that they can hold sway over this world through my actions. I do, hence, they do.
    • That is Greater Magic to me. That is what it means to be a Satanist to me.
      • I didn’t have to sell my soul, they wanted me to stand with them at the altar, not be a sacrifice upon it.
        • Because of my real world actions, because of my successes, because of who I am. A man of value. A Satanist.

2. Infernal Informant

Time Stamp: 27:30

  • ‘Sue if you must’: Lincoln Project rejects threat over Kushner and Ivanka billboards
    • https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/25/lincoln-project-jared-kushner-ivanka-trump-billboards
    • The Lincoln Project “will not be intimidated by empty bluster”, a lawyer for the group wrote late on Saturday, in response to a threat from an attorney for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner over two billboards put up in Times Square.
    • “Sue if you must,” Matthew Sanderson said.
    • The New York City billboards show the president’s daughter and her husband, both senior White House advisers, displaying apparent indifference to public suffering under Covid-19.
    • Kushner is shown next to the quote “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem”, above a line of body bags. Trump is shown gesturing, with a smile, to statistics for how many New Yorkers and Americans as a whole have died.
    • According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 8.5m coronavirus cases have been recorded across the US and more than 224,000 have died. Case numbers are at record daily levels and one study has predicted 500,000 deaths by February. New York was hit hard at the pandemic’s outset.
    • The Lincoln Project is a group of former Republican consultants who have made it their mission to attack Donald Trump and support Joe Biden.
    • On Friday, Marc Kasowitz, an attorney who has represented the president against allegations of fraud and sexual assault, wrote to the Lincoln Project, demanding the “false, malicious and defamatory” ads be removed, or “we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages”.
    • The Lincoln Project responded that they would not remove the billboards, citing first amendment rights of free speech and the “reckless mismanagement of Covid-19” by the Trump White House.
    • In a legal response on Saturday night, attorney Matthew Sanderson told Kasowitz: “Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster … your clients are no longer Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.”
    • Due to a “gross act of nepotism”, Sanderson wrote, citing supreme court precedent and “substantial constitutional protections for those who speak out”, Trump and Kushner have become public officials whom Americans “have the right to discuss and criticise freely”.
  • Protest against mask requirements held at Utah Capitol
    • https://www.fox13now.com/news/coronavirus/local-coronavirus-news/protest-against-mask-requirements-held-at-utah-capitol
    • Protesters gathered Saturday at the Utah State Capitol building to voice their opposition to recent changes to coronavirus guidelines from Gov. Gary Herbert and the state health department. Specifically, the guidelines surrounding mask requirements.
    • “We’re just against the mask mandate,” said Jed Burnham. “Maybe not anti-mask, but against mandating them.”
    • The new guidelines require masks in counties around the state that are considered to have high levels of coronavirus transmission. Burnham said he thinks it’s not the government’s job to issue such requirements.
    • “What’s the governments job?” He asked. “It’s to preserve life, liberty and property.”
    • One of the groups at the protest, the Proud Boys of Utah — who are listed as one of five active hate groups in the state by the Southern Poverty Law Center — compared mask requirements to the government taking a person’s guns away, among other things.
    • “Those are things that happen in other countries,” Burnham said. He is a self-described “chaplain” of the Proud Boys Salt Lake City chapter. “They happen in socialist countries, but they don’t happen here. This is a free country,” he added.
    • For some, mask requirements are seen as an effective way to prevent the spread of the virus, especially as Utah sees record high case counts and hospitalizations. But others, like Jacob Isbell, said the mask requirements simply aren’t legal.
    • “It’s completely illegal,” Isbell said. “Governor Herbert, or even different counties, who have made lockdown orders and tried to make it enforceable by fines, that’s illegal. Let people choose for themselves.”
    • However, some legal scholars point to several Supreme Court decisions — like the 1905 case Jacobsen v. Massachusetts — that uphold a state’s authority to issue public health mandates.
    • In a recent press conference, Governor Herbert pointed out the fact that the guidelines are public health orders rather than state issued mandates.
    • “It’s a matter of an ordinance,” Herbert said. “It’s an order from our Utah health department to help us all be safe and to keep our economy going. There’s nothing bad about this. It’s a good thing.”
    • Proud Boys members, like Burnham, say the government should focus on balancing life and liberty when it comes to public health guidelines and requirements.
    • “You can’t preserve life and get rid of liberty and property,” he said. “So, if to preserve life they needed a big facility, they can’t come and take your home even if you have a big house, right? They can’t do that. Well, I suppose [with] eminent domain they could,” he said, clarifying his statement.
    • There were several different groups gathered at the Capitol on Saturday, but they all shared a similar message. They felt that the new guidelines represent government overreach into people’s lives.

3. Creature Feature

Time Stamp: 45:11

  • Abarat: Absolute Midnight
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Midnight
    • the third book in the New York Times best-selling Abarat[1] series by Clive Barker.
    •  more than 125 full color illustrations
    • Candy Quackenbush, her allies, and her enemies are back in Abarat: Absolute Midnight, the third book in Clive Barker’s New York Times bestselling Abarat series.
    • “The waiting is over. Tomorrow there will be no dawn. Only midnight, absolute and eternal.” Mater Motley, the Old Mother of Darkness herself—following the events of Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War—has crafted a scheme that may destroy the Abarat, a vast archipelago where every hour is an island in one eternal day.
    • When Candy discovers Mater Motley’s secret plot, she realizes that only she can bring an end to the destruction. Only she can stop the complete darkness threatening to abolish all hope and happiness from the Abarat.
    • Gina Mcintyre of the Los Angeles Times thus identified protagonist Candy Quackenbush, after reading Absolute Midnight:
      • “Like Dorothy or Alice before her, 16-year-old Candy is an innocent plucked from the mundanity of her everyday life and thrust into a mystical place filled with untold wonders and horrors. Barker acknowledges his heroine’s literary lineage, but he also crafts a wonderfully contemporary girl who is brave, resourceful, loyal and willing to sacrifice herself for the betterment of the world.”
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