Forget Scientology: Introducing the Satanic Sex Cult Even More Sinister ‘Religion’ Celebs are now falling for

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Okay, so Peaches Geldof isn't exactly the most stable of people and hardly any kind of a role model. But Jimmy Page?  Jay-Z?
OTO--Ordo Templi Orientis--is a "belief system" that followers use in day-to-day life to "attain peacefulness."  Sounds fine, right?
Well, not really.  Its founding "prophet" was Aleister Crowley, the infamous occultist who was once named "the wickedest man in the world."  He was fond of sadomasochistic sex rituals with both sexes and use of heroin, cocaine, mescaline and other drugs.  Oh, and he liked to throw up spells that he said conjured some pretty dangerous demons.
His motto was "do what thou will," which is basically a license to be immoral in whatever ways you choose--and this is perpetuated by cult of OTO.

Taken at face value it was an innocent enough remark, encouraging friends to explore 'a belief system to apply to day-to-day life to attain peacefulness'.
But when Peaches Geldof chose to share her 'religious' convictions with her 148,000 followers on Twitter, it lifted the lid on a much more sinister world than first impressions would suggest.

The socialite, 24, is a devotee of Ordo Templi Orientis, known as OTO, and even has the initials tattooed on her left forearm.

 

Given her tendency to flit between fads and fashions (at one point she was a Scientologist, more recently she has wandered into Judaism), this could be dismissed as another harmless flirtation

But a closer look at OTO — and Aleister Crowley, its founding 'prophet' — gives the lie to that assumption.

Crowley, who was born into an upper-class British family in 1875, styled himself as 'the Great Beast 666'. He was an unabashed occultist who, prior to his death in 1947, revelled in his infamy as 'the wickedest man in the world'.
His form of worship involved sadomasochistic sex rituals with men and women, spells which he claimed could raise malevolent gods and the use of hard drugs, including opium, cocaine, heroin and mescaline.
Crowley’s motto — perpetuated by OTO — was 'do what thou wilt'. And it is this individualistic approach that has led to a lasting fascination among artists and celebrities, of whom Peaches is the latest in a long line.
Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, for example, routinely took part in occult magical rituals and was so intrigued by Crowley he bought his former home, Boleskine House, on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland.
And there are now OTO lodges scattered around the country, practising the same ceremonial rituals and spreading the word of Crowley.
While membership is secret, Peaches is said to have been initiated into it, raising the prospect that many of her impressionable fans could try to do the same.

 

 

Indeed, when one of her Twitter followers asked how she could find out more about Thelema, another word for Crowley’s teachings, Peaches directed her to read his books, which she described as 'super interesting'.
Other celebrities linked to OTO include the rapper Jay-Z, who has repeatedly purloined imagery and quotations from Crowley’s work.

Whether wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with 'Do what thou wilt' or hiring Rihanna to hold aloft a flaming torch in his music videos (a reference to the Illuminati, an outlawed secret society whose name supposedly derives from Lucifer, or 'light bringer'), he has given the sect priceless publicity.
His clothing line, Rocawear, is shot through with OTO imagery such as the 'all seeing eye' in a triangle, the 'eye of Horus' (an ancient Egyptian symbol frequently referenced in occult texts) and the head of Baphomet (the horned, androgynous idol of Western occultism).
Some conspiracy theorists have seized on this as evidence that he is a member of a secret Masonic movement which they believe permeates the highest levels of business and government.
Others take a more pragmatic view: that it is commercial opportunism, cashing in on impressionable teens’ attraction to the 'edginess' of occult symbolism.
Yet OTO is much more than a marketing opportunity for attention-seeking celebs. It is a living religion, with adherents still practising occult rituals set out by Crowley in his books.
This week I tracked down John Bonner, 62, the head of OTO in the UK, to his home in East Sussex. He told me: 'We are not a mass-appeal sort of organisation  — in the UK we number in our hundreds. Worldwide it’s thousands.

Celebrities are not always a boon or a benefit. 'We are used to being misunderstood. Many stories about Crowley, like people saying he filed his teeth down into fangs, are nonsense.

'You could call us a sex cult in a way, because we recognise, accept and adore the whole process which goes towards making tangible the previously intangible.'
According to adherents of OTO it takes years of study before you can begin to understand what the religion is about — much like the equally controversial Church of Scientology.

Bonner takes issue with the comparison, saying it is 'extremely expensive' to study Scientology, yet  OTO demands no financial contributions.
Given her own dabbling in heroin and casual sex, particularly during a rootless period when she lived in Los Angeles a few years ago, it is perhaps natural that the troubled offspring of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates should be attracted to such a liberal school of thought.
And if Peaches’ own interest is so shallow, heaven knows what her impressionable — and mostly very young — fans will take from it.
A former FBI agent, Ted Gundersen, who investigated Satanic circles in LA, found that Crowley’s teachings about 'raising demons to do one’s bidding' suggested human sacrifice, preferably of 'an intelligent young boy'.
John Bonner is dismissive of any idea that he and his fellow believers would even begin to countenance such excesses, pointing out that his is the only religion that sends people a letter of congratulations when they decide to leave ('because they are exercising free will, which is what we’re all about').

But he accepts many people may not be able to deal with Crowley’s complex teachings.
'You’re not supposed to just jump straight in to it. It takes time and study, but our rituals are not for public consumption. You need to join us and go through the initiation process before you can begin to understand.
'But according to our beliefs we can’t turn anyone away. So if you are over 18, are passably sane and are free to attend initiations, then you have an undeniable right of membership.'
Peaches Geldof is playing with fire. One can only hope her fans treat this latest pose with the scorn it deserves.
Source:
www.dailymail.co.uk
http://worldtruth.tv


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How Rich Is the Catholic Church?

How Rich Is the Catholic Church?

Nobody really knows, because religious groups don’t need to follow regular accounting and disclosure rules

Pope Francis is not just the spiritual leader of one of the world’s major religions: He’s also the head of what’s probably the wealthiest institution in the entire world.   The Catholic Church’s global spending matches the annual revenues of the planet’s largest firms, and its assets—huge amounts of real estate, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Vatican City, some of the world’s greatest art—surely exceed those of any corporation by an order of magnitude.

But it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to understand exactly how rich the church is. That’s in part because church finances are complicated. But it’s also because, in the United States at least, churches in general are exempted from the financial reporting and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to nonprofit groups. And it turns out, that exemption may have undesirable consequences.

The main thing we know about Catholic Church finance is that in cash flow terms, the United States is by far the most important branch. America is a rich country with a large population of Catholics. What’s more, America’s Catholic population is a religious minority. That’s meant that, rather than using political clout to influence the shape of mainstream government institutions, as in an overwhelmingly Catholic country such as Brazil, the Catholic Church in the United States has created a parallel state: a vast web of schools, hospitals, universities, and charities that serve millions of clients.

Our best window into the overall financial picture of American Catholicism comes from a 2012 investigation by the Economist, which offered a rough-and-ready estimate of $170 billion in annual spending, of which almost $150 billion is associated with church-affiliated hospitals and institutions of higher education. The operating budget for ordinary parishes, at around $11 billion a year, is a relatively small share, and Catholic Charities is a smaller share still.

Apple and General Motors, by way of comparison, each had revenue of about $150 billion worldwide in Fiscal Year 2012. Legally speaking, there is no such thing as “the Catholic Church,” which is why these finances get so complicated. As far as the law is concerned, each diocese is a separate legal entity, incorporated in the states where it operates. Generally speaking, they are organized as what’s known as a corporation sole—a legal corporation wholly controlled by the individual bishop rather than a board of directors—and not officially part of any larger transnational spiritual organization. This has led to conflicts during the sex abuse scandals. Lawsuits have caused disputes about how deep the church’s pockets go and who should pay.
 

On several occasions, abuse-related litigation has inspired dioceses to declare bankruptcy, which offers a rare window into the internal financial organization of the institution. Individual parishes, though operating under the umbrella of the relevant bishop, have a fair degree of financial autonomy. They conduct separate fundraising and maintain separate expenses. That way, parish donors can feel they’re bolstering their particular community and not an impersonal bureaucracy. But it’s common for parish investment funds within a single diocese to be pooled. When a diocese declares bankruptcy, this raises the question of whether pooled parish investment funds are available to be seized by the bishop’s creditors or whether they exist separately.

As a fascinating article in  American Bankruptcy Institute Journal explains, the status of parish investment funds depends on some very subtle details. Both the Diocese of Milwaukee and the Diocese of Wilmington ran pooled investment funds in which a single account simply noted how much each parish had contributed. The difference is that in Wilmington, Del., operating funds were also mingled into the pooled account, whereas in Milwaukee they were kept separate. That small difference ended up costing Wilmington parishes $74 million in exposure to Episcopal creditors. At the same time, as a matter of Canon Law individual parishes can be wholly “suppressed,” merged into other parishes, or otherwise divided up, essentially at the discretion of the bishop—notwithstanding the existence of separate bank accounts. This authority suggests that the diocese does indeed wholly own and control its parishes, but church officials take advantage of the ambiguity, sometimes claiming to fully control its parishes, sometimes—for legal reasons—arguing that the parishes are wholly independent entities.

Given America’s diverse religious landscape, the Catholic Church is hardly unique in taking advantage of the First Amendment to engage in some opaque accounting. It’s simply the largest player in this game. Lawrence Wright’s recent Scientology exposé, Going Clear, reveals egregious exploitation of religious privileges for the personal financial benefit of church leaders. Or consider the case of the Tennessee pastor arrested on money laundering and drug charges only because a local TV news investigation revealed that he was using donations to pay off what amounted to personal debts.

The legal framework that allows for this funny business has been constructed in the name of religious freedom but hardly seems required by that important principle. America has a robust ecology of secular nonprofit groups that manage to abide by fairly stringent accounting and disclosure standards. These help donors know where their money is going and reassure residual claimants that there’s some consistent theory of whose assets are whose. Religion is big business—the Catholic Church the biggest of all—and it deserves to be treated as such in the relevant ways.

Source:

www.slate.com

worldtruth.tv