Wednesday, April 20, 2005
NBC ENTERS THE PROPHECY GAME
A reader sent in the link to a story at NCR about an upcoming program based on a girl who has been hit by lightning, is now brain dead, and is being used by a disembodied entity to communicate through automatic writing. The communications are being guarded by a group of Sisters of Mercy who have taken the girl into their convent to protect her from those who would harvest her organs. She is writing about the end of the world, of course. What else? Is this one destined to captivate America?
Meanwhile I've been reading through the ninth chapter of John Dee's writings online at the John Dee Society website. If NBC wanted a program on spirit communication, they should have checked into this one. I think it would be a lot more entertaining that making a program based on our foolish nuns.
With John Dee they could get a proclaimed "coming establishment of the universal church and the single government of the world, associatd with this" that was based on the predictions of Joachim of Flora "whose prophecies Dee had cited in the Preface as 'good profe,' of the wonders that could be done by the understanding of 'Numbers Formall'." The fact that Dee thought it would occur in the seventeenth century would need a little tweaking, of course.
They could get the "age of the Spirit, in which man would know God without mediation of earthly institution or intellectually received dogma, and every man would become a priest and conscious vessel of the holy spirit." Through the premises of Joachim and his conception that the spiritual man of the third age would know the truth without veil, and receive directly from the spirit all the charismatic gifts necessary to perfection, [which] implied the abolition of the church as an organisation for the guidance of the soul..."
They could get Dee's "spiritual conferences" that led to his "spiritual science" (which presumably Rudolf Steiner got from Dee) that is nothing more than conversations with angels accessed through a skryer. Prior to Edward Kelly, Dee used other skriers.
They could get "the third and greatest cycle...of four complete trigons (the entire Zodiac), each of which represented one of the four elements, and which commenced with the fiery trigons (the recurrence of which, including the effects of the other two, also implied the appearance of a new religion that would thereafter dominate the world in the ensuing great period." This cycle was to last 960 years and would fit "well with the rise of Mahommedanism." (This is reminiscent of the manvantaras that occultist turned Sufi Rene Guenon wrote about. In fact, the text even mentions "There is nothing but Quantity.")
They could get the Philosopher's stone made popular by Harry Potter.
They could get Dee's constant desire "to do God some service for his glory" and to "pass forth [his] daies on earth with God's favour and assurance of enjoying here his merciful mighty blessings, to understand his mysteries, mete for the performing of some actions, such, as might set forth his glory, so as it might be evident and confessed that such things were done, Dextera Domini." Dee considered this "The chief and finall power of Naturall and Mathematicall Artes" because "Wordes, and Argumentes, are no sensible certifying: nor the full and finall frute of sciences practisable". Dee thought what he was pursuing was "natural philosophy."
One would think that on the occasion that Dee asked the entity for some much needed funds to keep body and soul together and got the response that he was a worldling and that "the earth's treasures were being saved for antichrist" that he would have realized what he was into, but apparently not.
The chapter is filled with descriptions of stuff the First Commandment forbids. It's a wealth of heresy. Kelly, at least, was at times sure he was channeling demons. Dee never wavered from his belief that the angels had come from God.
Once you've read this chapter, you will never see prophecy in the same light again, and will read it with a healthy dose of skepticism. The Arch Deceiver likes nothing better than to counterfeit the real thing.
Catholics who are caught up in apparitions, though, are very susceptible to enthusiasm for NBC's latest production effort.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
