Maoshan Taoists

China's Hoodoo Doctors

There are numerous different sects of Taoism, including the Celestial Masters sect with its Taoist Pope and its network of temples, the Dragon Gate sect with its emphasis on alchemy and immortality, and the Complete Reality sect which combines Taoism with Confucianism and Buddhism. And then there's the much-feared sect of the Maoshan Taoists, sorcerers who can control the spirit world using special yellow talismans.

Maoshan Taoists are a staple of Chinese horror and vampire/kung fu movies, because a Maoshan Taoist is sort of a Chinese equivalent of a hoodoo doctor. They can curse people, fight vampires, do exorcisms and call up demons, so they're a natural choice for a spooky movie. The powers attributed to Maoshan Taoists in these movies are so over the top that one might be tempted to think they're totally fictional.

 

The Maoshan sect really does exist, and plenty of people in Taiwan or Hong Kong are pretty scared of them, even if they can't really control the legions of the undead. Maoshan talismans are commands to the spirits, signed with the seals and symbols of the Taoist celestial hierarchy, so people believe they can actually command spirits for good or for ill. There are even rumors of Triad crime bosses studying Maoshan Taoism in order to gain mental control over the prostitutes who work for them. Maoshan itself, though, is not an evil practice- it's just that some people believe the powers it gives you can be used for evil if you so choose. It's like the “dark side” of the Force!

 

The Unique Science Of A Competitive Eater's Stomachs

New research shows the unique biology inside a competitive eater, and why they're so good at what they do.

People are different. No one can deny that, but sometimes our differences give us an unfair advantage within a certain kind of activity. For instance, Michael Phelps was born with an incredibly long torso and arms and short, powerful legs: the ideal speedboat-human. The same can be said of the stomachs of competitive eaters that, as Marc Levine of the University of Pennsylvania told Popular Science, function, “more like an expanding balloon than a squeezing sac.”

Levine, the chief director of gastrointestinal radiology at UP Hospital, studied competitive eaters’ stomachs using fluoroscopy, a real-time x-ray technology, that allowed him to watch their gut as they ate. For the study, Levine recruited a hotdog eating champion (ranked in the top 10 at the time) against a man that was substantially bigger, about 4 inches taller and 45 lbs heavier. Challenging the two to a hotdog eating contest, Levine then watched their stomachs as they ate. What he noticed was a difference in the natural way that our stomachs and digestive systems’ musculature move food through from esophagus to anus.

Called peristalsis, or anal propagation, it’s a wave-like series of muscle contractions that moves the partially digested food through our systems. This means that as food enters one segment of our digestive tract, the previous one has contracted to push the material through. When our stomachs begin digesting, they contract to move some of that material into our large intestine, thereby controlling how much of the actual food can be held within our stomachs at any one time.

What Levine found is that competitive eaters exhibit almost no peristalsis at all. After seven hotdogs the regular hotdog eater felt full and had to stop. The competitive eater, after 10 minutes and 36 hotdogs, was asked to stop. He still did not feel full and so was exhibiting almost no peristalsis. By continually doing this over time, he had trained his stomach to expand to greater and greater lengths, without feeling full and contracting much. In fact, after 36 hotdogs his stomach had expanded to take up most of the space within his upper abdomen.

Just as Michael Phelps was born with the physiology of a natural swimmer, he then honed his body to be exceptional in the water. In the same way, competitive eaters are born with naturally low occurrences of the peristalsis that makes most of us feel full, they then train their stomachs to stretch to abnormal lengths. Make no mistake, however, the toll this takes on their bodies and the level of fitness can be just as taxing as that of an elite swimmer.

Jerusalem Syndrome: (Self-)Selection Bias

This psychiatric syndrome is specific to tourists in Jerusalem
This month's issue of Wired magazine has an interesting look at Jerusalem Syndrome, which is one of those fascinating, location-specific psychiatric conditions. In Jerusalem Syndrome, a tourist who visits Jerusalem is overcome by religious fervor. In advanced cases, the sufferer may actually believe themselves to be the Messiah.
 
Frequently, an in-patient stay at a psychiatric facility is able to repair this specific sort of psychotic break. But the most effective treatment is to send the patient back to their home country, to their everyday,  familiar and neutral turf. Needless to say, psychiatrists and therapists in Jerusalem are all highly trained and experienced in spotting and treating cases of Jerusalem Syndrome.

Jerusalem Syndrome may seem strange, even uncanny or bizarre. But one thing I came to realize, from reading this particular article, was that these sufferers self-select. After all, virtually all of the tourists to Jerusalem are religious people who are there for religious reasons. People travel all over the world all the time, but what might lead someone to visit Jerusalem specifically? 
 
At the same time, there are a lot of people in the world who are hovering at the edge of a psychotic break or fugue state. It may be due to stress, genetics, pre-existing but sub-clinical schizophrenia, drug abuse, or childhood trauma. Sadly, slipping into a delusional state - whether violent or not - is something that happens to people every day.
 
Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that a certain sub-set of religious people interested in travel are also, shall we say, in a psychiatrically delicate condition. And if there is one thing that Chris Nashawaty's article amply illustrates, it's that visiting Jerusalem is an incredibly intense experience. 
 
Even if you aren't religious, Jerusalem's history, the fervor of the faith of everyone else there, it's twisty turning unmarked alleyways all alike, its unfamiliar sights and smells, the effects of jetlag and exhaustion, all press weightily upon the traveler. It holds this in common with other grand cities and sights - and as Nashawaty points out, many of those other grand cities and sights have their own forms of "Jerusalem Syndrome." Visitors to Florence may find that city's artworks trigger Stendahl Syndrome, and Japanese tourists in Paris are evidently particularly susceptible to Paris Syndrome.
 
Jerusalem is a powerful trigger, and many people suffering from Jerusalem Syndrome "have some psychiatric history" in the words of Yoram Bilu, an Israeli psychological anthropologist who is interviewed for the article. 
 

The Golden Dawn

Occult Secret Society

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a secret society, attracting many of the most prominent artists and intellectuals of Britain and Ireland, for the purpose of studying and practicing ceremonial magic. The emphasis here is on “ceremonial”- based on the surviving rituals of the Golden Dawn, the members were at least as interested in performing elaborately choreographed rituals as they were in pursuing the spiritual/mystical work of the order.

Some of the members were originally Freemasons, and they brought with them the masonic emphasis on initiatory degrees. While the purpose of Golden Dawn membership was ostensibly the spiritual development of the members through participation in symbolic rituals and the study of occult skills such as astral travel, the members seem to have put a lot of emphasis on earning ever-higher degrees of initiation and giving themselves impressive-sounding titles and pseudonyms.

 

However, they also created some interesting and beautiful, things, such as the Rider-Waite tarot deck with its Kabbalistic symbolism. Like most secret societies, the Golden Dawn eventually broke down in factional infighting, although a handful of branch temples continued the tradition into the 1970s before it finally died out. Current Golden Dawn organizations use versions of the original structure and rituals, but have no direct connection to the original order.

 

The Golden Dawn also had a big influence on Wicca. Most of the ritual structure of this modern pagan religion derives from Golden Dawn occultism, and not from ancient pagan religion as many of its adherents believe.

 

 

 

Government-Mandated RFID Tags For Every Citizen?

Nope.
Will President Obama's stormtroopers pound on your door in the middle of the night and insist that you have an RFID chip implanted in your hand under penalty of death? Some people would have you believe so. This has been a persistent rumor for hundreds of years, thanks to some particularly lurid and bizarre bits in the Book of Revelation. 
 
Most recently, a government bill titled HR3200 has been the focus of the intersecting sets of paranoid conspiracy theorists, Biblical literalists, and ultra-Libertarian survivalist fanatics. However, there are two things that these groups overlook, in their overheated panic at the thought of having a government mandated hand chip linked to their bank accounts.
 
The first thing is, THIS BILL IS OBSOLETE. 

 
It's dead, Jim. It's not pining for the fjords. It has long since been superseded by two other bills. In the House, H3962, the "Affordable Health Care for America Act." And in the Senate, H3590, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." And guess what? Neither of these bills requires that citizens be imprinted with the digital Mark of the Beast.
 
The second thing is, pretty much anyone can add anything to a bill as it winds its way through the House. And there are a lot of reasons why they might do so. This is where the phrase "pork barrel politics" comes into play. 
 
Let's say someone proposes a bill whereby kittens shall be granted "Super Cute Forever" status. No one would argue with that, right? So I'll just tack on some fine print about how "Also, Erika shall receive a $50,000 grant to study the adorableness of kittens." The guy to my left adds on a rider that "$4 million shall be allocated to the state of Oregon for highway repairs." 
 
Meanwhile, the person at the far end of the aisle is getting annoyed at this. Seeing this perfectly innocent bill getting weighed down with all these pet projects, she decides to ensure that the bill fails. She adds an amendment that "All women who become pregnant in the month of January shall receive mandatory abortions and forced sterilization." Obviously that's a deal-killer. And so the bill is dead.
 
Is that what happened to HR3200? I honestly don't know. But I have my suspicions. How better to attempt to scuttle Obama's promised health care reform bill, than by playing to the fears of the right-wing Christians in the audience? 
 
In other words, with this bill, consider yourself trolled. And remember, it's dead anyway, so it doesn't really matter!

Germany's "Cancer Village"

Residents of this small town are demanding answers
The otherwise peaceful German village of Wewelsfleth, with a population of 1,500, has recorded a whopping 142 cases of cancer in a ten year span - a rate that is twice as high as that of the general population. Worse yet, the cancers are seemingly unrelated, even though it certainly qualifies as an epidemic.
 
Onlookers note that Wewelsfleth is only a few miles from three nuclear power stations, that it is situated near an industrial shipyard "where vessels were once sprayed with highly toxic paint," and that many residents' garages are roofed with asbestos. And in the words of The Sun, England's finest tabloid news source, the town also suffers from "electro-smog from power lines."

None of these single factors, taken on its own, would be enough to account for such a shockingly high cancer rate. Could all of them together do the trick? Or is there something the German government isn't telling this sleepy country village?
 
In reading this article, I found myself wondering questions which the article doesn't ask. The most obvious question is, what about Wewelsfleth's neighbors? This charming little town is only a few miles from several neighboring villages, including Beldenfleth, Borsfleth, and Blomesche Wildness. Is Wewelsfleth's cancer rate 50% higher than that of those villages, too? Or is this cancer cluster spread across the area as a whole?
 
The answer to this question - basically drawing the boundary map on this cancer cluster - is the real curiosity. Even though many authorities have dismissed the idea of "cancer clusters" as being statistical anomalies or works of the human mind's need to establish patterns, there are a number of perfectly scientific reasons why a cancer cluster could occur. 
 
I am put in mind of the fellow who was recently detained by the police in Sweden because he had obtained his own uranium, and had made his own countertop nuclear reactor. I imagine in time, a cancer cluster could show up among his immediate neighbors. How many goofballs are out there right now, handling nuclear materials sloppily, who aren't being caught by the police?
 
Not too sure about that claim of "electro-smog," though. Wewelsfleth looks like a charmingly pastoral sort of town. If "electro-smog" is going to cause cancer, you would think it would be a problem in big cities like Berlin, where electrical lines are everywhere. Wewelsfleth looks more like the sort of town where you're likely to encounter a really good ham dinner or slice of torte than a slow death by cancer. I hope they find the cause soon.

Nigerians Outraged By "Sheep/Human Hybrid"

Deformed lambs are sometimes born with human-like faces
A truly horrifying lamb was born to a sheep in Nigeria recently, and it has locals in an uproar. The lamb was delivered at a veterinary clinic in Sokoto, a city in northeast Nigera with a population of about 47,000, on January 22nd. The lamb's unusual appearance has led many spectators and religious leaders to believe it is a sheep/human hybrid. So many people thronged to the veterinary clinic to see the "monster" that the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) had to be deployed to manage and disperse the crowds.
 
Belief in witchcraft is alive and well in Nigeria, and many Nigerians have made the seemingly logical conclusion that this deformed lamb is the result of the sheep's owner having had sexual relations with his sheep. Religious leaders have called for the man to be put on trial, and some are even calling for his execution. I guess you don't want your sheep to give birth to a lamb with birth defects in Nigeria.

 
The scientific explanation for the lamb's appearance, as given by the veterinarian who had to remove the fetus by caesarian section, is that it was simply the victim of deformation. The sheep had been brought to the clinic after having been in labor for two days without being able to pass the lamb, which was no doubt due at least in part to the lamb's deformities. And the lamb's appearance certainly would have suffered from the process. (Most sheep give birth to their lambs within a few minutes, or an hour or two at most.)
 
Truthfully, I don't think this lamb looks all that bad, comparatively speaking. It appears to be bloated, as you might expect. Although the reports don't specify, I assume that the lamb was stillborn, and was no doubt somewhat decomposed. I also assume that its skin color is due to coat color, and that if it had survived it would have been a black and white sheep - not terribly unusual. It's hard to see the lamb's face in the photograph, though.
 
If this birth defect is convincing enough that the townspeople are calling for the shepherd's execution, then it makes me think that this may be where we get our other half-man-half-animal legends. Other lambs with human faces have been born in the past - in recent history, one was born in Zimbabwe, and another found in Turkey. A stillborn mutant lamb like this could easily have been the source of the legends of Pan, who is depicted as a hairy man with goat's legs. 
 

Hoodoo

Different From Voodoo

What's the difference between hoodoo and voodoo? Quite a lot, actually. “Hoodoo,” also known as “conjure” or “root work,” is a unique American tradition of folk magic based on a mixture of African practices with Protestant beliefs and European sorcery. Hoodoo is an intensely eclectic tradition, but it is mostly African-American. It is a system of magic, not a religion, although there are elements of African religious ideas in the hoodoo system. For instance, the West African crossroads god was supposed to be able to grant skill at any craft or trade. This combined with European legends of “meeting the Devil at the crossroads” to become a belief that you could meet the Devil at the crossroads to gain special skills of various kinds- such as the ability to be a great musician.

Despite these elements of religious concepts, hoodoo is fundamentally a system of spell-craft. Voodoo, on the other hand, is the name of a religion. It also goes by the names Vodun, Vodou and various other spellings. Voodoo in Africa is a traditional set of religious traditions with an emphasis on spirit possession. In the Caribbean, these traditions combined with Catholicism to form several distinct Afro-Caribbean religions: Haitian Vodou, Santeria, Candomble, and Louisiana Voodoo.

 

Louisiana Voodoo flourishes in some of the same areas as hoodoo, so there is a certain amount of overlap. Nevertheless, Louisiana Voodoo is a religion based on spirit possession, just like all of the other branches of the voodoo tradition. Hoodoo is not.

 

 

"Sky Hum" Speculation Just Won't Die

Sky Hum 3: The Hummining
As I predicted earlier, "sky hums" are well on their way to becoming this decade's crop circles or chemtrails: thoroughly debunked, believed by almost no one, and yet there is always someone around to passionately argue in their defense.
 
In the case of sky hums - those seemingly mysterious electronic groaning sounds which have been faked on many Youtube videos, and which sound a great deal like a known musical instrument called a waterphone - now a "respected geophysicist" is stepping forth to promote two of the main theories. 
 
(Do note: this respected geophysicist is a professor at a university in… Azerbaijan.)

 
Theory 1: Particles striking the atmosphere
You know, with solar flares? And stuff? "Destabilizing the magnetosphere" is the phrase used by Dr. Elchin Khalilo. This is one of the most popular explanations, because the sounds seem to come from the sky, and no one really knows what "magnetic particles" are, or how to either prove or disprove them. And they sound so science-y!
 
The main problem with any theory involving our electrically charged atmosphere is that no one can really explain how the noises would happen. The best you can usually hope for, noise-wise, when disrupting an electrical field is a crackle or zap. There is no precedent that I'm aware of for electrical fields creating these slow, low-frequency groaning sounds.
 
And if there was enough activity to cause it, I'm pretty sure the sky would be on fire.
 
Theory 2: Movement in the earth's core
I like this theory a little better, in that it at least is a plausible source for low groaning noises. Granted, we have seen plenty of earthquake and lava activity over the millennia, and no one has yet reported it making sounds like this. 
 
Then again, humanity has yet to experience a pole shift. Which - ring the bell, clang clang clang! - Dr. Khalilo is stumping for. 
 
Sure, these noises COULD be the early warning signals of an impending pole shift. Or they could be bored kids playing hijinks with the free iMovie software that came with their Macbooks. It's hard to tell!
 
One thing is for sure: the idea of a pole shift is as terrifying as it is unlikely. I wish people would stop with the scaremongering, especially now that we're in a scary year. It doesn't help anyone to bring on these assertions of nameless dread, and it will no doubt only add to everyone's sense of generalized anxiety.
 
Thanks for nothing, "Dr." Khalilo!

Does Bob Ross Make Your Scalp Tingle?

The internet calls this strange phenomena “ASMR”
I recently learned about an odd phenomena that I had experienced before, but never really noticed. It has been described as "a pleasurable tingling that typically begins in the head and scalp, and often moves down the spine and through the limbs." Common triggers include people whispering, light scratchy noises, clicking, watching other people perform simple tasks with their hands, and close personal attention as from an eye exam, hair cut, make-over, etc. 
 
In fact, the most common trigger people cite for ASMR is the videos of famed NPR instructional painter Bob Ross.

The internet has coined the term "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR)" for this feeling, although I must note that this is not a scientific name or classification. ASMR has not been officially recognized by science or defined in a clinical sense. This is why you won't find ASMR on Wikipedia - it had an article, but it was deleted by editors for its complete lack of any cites or source material.
 
ASMR is defined as separate from frisson, which is the tingly chill that people experience when encountering an amazing piece of artwork or music. Frisson is described as a "cold chill," which ASMR is not. Similarly, it is not the same thing as the sudden shuddery goosebump-y feeling called "someone walked over my grave" (or its variations). 
 
People have identified roughly half a billion types of videos that you can find on YouTube which can trigger ASMR in many people, including:
 
It's convenient that people have given a name to this feeling. But I can't help but wish that the name wasn't trying so hard to seem science-y, because it only has the opposite effect. I also wish it didn't include the word "meridians," which is one of those red flag bogus terms like "toxins" or "energy."
 
ASMR seems to be one of those things that you either get or you don't, and it's almost impossible to bridge the gap between the two. As someone who has never, not once, in her whole entire life been able to get one of those Magic Eye paintings to work, I can commiserate with the frustration felt by non-ASMR folks in trying to understand what is happening.

Pages