blacksundae

Wait — is this BBC, or The Onion?

Health officials in the Philippines have issued a warning to people taking part in Easter crucifixion rituals.

They have urged them to get tetanus vaccinations before they flagellate themselves and are nailed to crosses, and to practise good hygiene….

The health department has strongly advised penitents to check the condition of the whips they plan to use to lash their backs….

From the BBC.

Cain turned into Sasquatch!

In 1835, as evening fell, missionary David W. Patten had spotted a figure walking near his mule in Tennessee. His tall, dark body was covered with hair, he wore no clothing, and…

…he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men.

I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight.

Yeah. Either that or he turned into black people!

There’s already been a controversy about the Mormon church’s teachings on Cain. Brigham Young believed that God punished Cain’s ancestors, and that “the mark of Cain” was: black skin. The same belief continued through a 1966 edition of the church reference book Mormon Doctrine, and black Mormons were banned from the church’s priesthood. But at that same time, church president David O. McKay announced that “It is a practice, not a doctrine, and the practice will some day be changed.” The position was ultimately reversed by church president Spencer W. Kimball, and the church ordained its first black priest in 1978. (Thomas S. Monson, the new Mormon President, conducted that priest’s marriage and sacred ordinances.)

Eugene England, a professor at Brigham Young University, addressed “the Cain legacy” in a 1998 article in Sunstone magazine.

This is a good time to remind ourselves that most Mormons are still in denial about the ban, unwilling to talk in Church settings about it, and that some Mormons still believe that blacks were cursed by descent from Cain through Ham…

I check occasionally in classes at BYU and find that still, twenty years after the revelation, a majority of bright, well-educated Mormon students say they believe that blacks are descendants of Cain and Ham and thereby cursed…

Read more at 10 Zen Monkeys.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Douglas Cootey’s response in the comments for this post.

AP:

A Roman Catholic school board in Ontario ordered the popular fantasy book “The Golden Compass” taken off library shelves at dozens of schools Thursday after receiving a complaint about the author referring to himself as an atheist.

Similar concerns prompted a Catholic organization in the U.S. to urge parents to boycott a movie version of the book starring Nicole Kidman.

The board for Catholic schools in Ontario’s Halton region said a complaint was lodged after British author Philip Pullman stated in an interview that he is an atheist.

Read on. Notice the book, which is at the very least dismissive of Christianity, doesn’t seem to be an issue here. Publically saying that you are an atheist is enough to get your book pulled from shelves. I expect better from the Canadians.

In the U.S., the Catholic League has criticized Pullman’s trilogy for bashing Christianity and promoting atheism.

Shocking! Disgusting! How dare a book advocate a philosphical position! Next I bet Pullman will invade foreign lands and force the people there to “convert” to atheism at the end of a sword.

The 5 Most Kick-Ass Apocalyptic Prophecies:

#2. Nahui Ollin – The End of the Fifth Era
What to watch for:
A total solar eclipse lasting forever. This happens because the Aztec nation was destroyed by Spanish invaders in the 1500s, and hasn’t been feeding Nanahuatzin, or the Sun, the human sacrifices he needs to stay healthy and strong. Good going, Spain.

What comes next:
According to most early Central American cultures, the world has already ended four to five times, by methods ranging from flood to armies of hungry jaguars. Our world will apparently get the terrifying Tzitzimime, depicted as either skeletons with rattlesnake penises, or a race of bony, female spider monsters from the stars.

The Aztecs believed the sun would have saved us from the Tzitzimime, had they been allowed to keep feeding it human hearts. But, of course, fucking Spain came along.

Read on.

The Prague Post:

Made of the skins of about 160 animals — some say donkeys, others say calves — the manuscript measures a king-size 90 x 50 x 22 centimeters (roughly 36 x 20 x 9 inches) and weighs 75 kilos (165 pounds), requiring two people to lift it.

According to the National Library’s Web site (www.nkp.cz), legend holds that a monk was sentenced to be buried alive for a breach in Benedictine conduct. In order to forgo his punishment, he agreed to make the most magnificent book the world had ever seen in honor of his brotherhood. The catch was that he was given just one night to complete this Herculean task.

Around midnight, the monk realized he would not be able to finish by daylight, so he invoked the devil to help him, selling his soul in the process. As a tribute to his helper, the monk included a quirky image of the devil within the manuscript, thus giving the book its nickname.

The real story of the Codex Gigas is not fully known, but no less intriguing.

Read on. This is via an excelent MetaFilter post that also includes a link to high-res images of the book in its entirety.

Some say donkey, some say calves… I say, “Bound in human flesh and inked in human blood.”

Fortean Times:

October 1853, on a hilltop in Lynn, Massachusetts, a group assembled to create the New Messiah. They had not come to pray or to praise God: they were actually going to build Him out of metal and wood under the supervision of spirits. When the body was complete, they believed it would be infused with life to revolutionise the world and raise mankind to an exalted level of spiritual development.

The spirits gave their instructions through John Murray Spear, a former minister of the Universalist church and recent convert to spiritualism. Born in Boston in 1804 and baptised by his namesake John Murray (the founder of the American branch of the Universalist church), Spear has been described as a “gentle, kindly, ingenuous” man who possessed a beautiful simplicity and an idiosyncratic mind 1.

Read on. He sounds like he was a really cool guy before he went bat shit.