Chronic Pain – My Constant Companion

 

Upcoming Satanic and Nazi holidays  
Please note that Satanic sects build the year around pagan holidays, adding Christian holidays and major secular holidays. It is the Neo-Nazi groups that defile Jewish holidays.
9/1 (Nazi) Start of WW2:  9/5 (Satanic) Labor Day (US and Canada):  9/5 – 9/7 (Satanic) Marriage to the Beast:  9/7 (Satanic) Feast of the Beast:  9/16 (Satanic) Full Moon:  9/17 (Nazi) Hitler’s alternate half-birthday:  9/20 – 9/21 (Satanic) Midnight Host:  9/22 (Satanic and Nazi) Fall Equinox
Fall Equinox https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/
Labor Day https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/labor-day/

 
 
The last post was about the probable connection of brain and body through inflammation. I was enraged, if you didn’t guess. I’ve calmed down quite a bit since then, at least on the surface. This post is about my feelings about stuff I have had to contend with throughout most of my adult life.

A few years ago, I tried to calculate how many years since the age of twenty I had been in chronic pain. I picked twenty because by then I was pretty much free of the cult and I didn’t want to count the childhood years of abuse. I wanted an estimate of how many years some physical condition created my pain, a condition that was not dependent on another human being to cause it or maintain it. In other words, the after-effects of the abuse. Does that make sense?

I recalculated it today and it came to fifty-five, allowing for a few pain-free years when I was in my low fifties. There were twenty-four years of fibromyalgic-type pain, then a break, then arthritis, first in my knees, then my back, and now also my hands and maybe my neck, too.

And all that time, I was either depressed or on antidepressants. So there was a lot of inflammation in my body, and in my brain, too, until I discovered Wellbutrin about ten years ago. I can just see the body and brain passing inflammation back and forth, like children playing hot potato. “It’s yours.” No, it’s yours. It’s your turn.” “You take it, my turn has been longer than yours.” On and on, for year after year.

The unidentified illness started shortly after I had my second child, followed by a bad case of the flu. I thought (hoped?) for many months that it was a late symptom of the flu and it would clear up rapidly. It came and went in waves, so I often thought I was done with it. The waves gradually got less intense and further apart until I realized, after twenty-five years, that they had disappeared. It was during this time that I was either coping with my depression without medications or using antidepressants that took away my suicidal thoughts but had horrible side effects.

The mystery disease caused what felt like aching pain in my arm, leg, and finger bones. Nothing in my torso, thank goodness. The pain in my hands gave me the worst problems. I had to buy an electric can opener. I had to ask people to open store doors for me — they were too heavy. And I could not type or hold a pen. I mean I could, but I would be crying after a few minutes. Made it hard to be a grownup.

It forced me to ask for help, which was mortifying. I felt exposed, vulnerable, incompetent. And afraid that the people I asked for help would mock me before walking away, leaving me in tears.

I had a few years between the end of that episode in my life and being diagnosed with arthritis. But, looking back, it had started five or ten years earlier, overlapping with the mystery disease. I remember being stiff, so stiff that I had to take a hot shower before going downstairs to have coffee. I remember doing back exercises during that period, too. There wasn’t a lot of pain, just the first warnings. I blossomed: started jogging and swimming – and dancing, too! It was a pretty happy period for me.

The arthritis pain stays steady for a while until there is a flare-up. The flare-up eventually dies down but the pain is more intense than before. I did have a knee replacement, which was a miracle until I tripped and fell on my walker. Still, that knee is not at all bad. The real problem is my back: paraphrasing the latest X-ray report: “Her back is a mess and it is going to get worse.” It is all steadily down-hill from here.

I cannot walk a half block without sitting down. I cannot stand more than a couple of minutes. It is painful to lie down, which makes sleep problematic. Thank goodness sitting is still comfortable.  I can sit all day in front of my computer and not feel a bit of pain. I can see sometime in the future having to sleep sitting up; it won’t be fun, but it will be manageable.

So I have lived for all those years with chronic pain. It’s been a constant companion, like depression, my oldest friend. I no longer have to use an electric can opener but there are days when I think of buying one. I can see it coming, as my fingers get bent and my knuckles enlarge so that I can no long wear my favorite rings.

I think many of us were trained to endure pain stoically. If you aren’t allowed to express it externally, you have to bear it internally. Sometimes alters take turns enduring the pain, sometimes there is a further split for the trainer to take advantage of.

For me, there is a “religious” component to living with pain. I was taught that Satan liked pain, and that my pain was a gift to him. If I tried to avoid the pain or complained, it was like a slap in Satan’s face. You absolutely do not ever want to do that.

I am long past believing that, but the habit is deeply ingrained. It is very, very difficult to ask for help and to take care of my body.  Making a doctor’s appointment means I am admitting there is something wrong . . . and asking for help. It took forever to use the walker in public and to allow people to open doors for me and let me to go first. I waited years before I got a handicap placard for my car. I know these behaviors are silly and counterproductive but I am bucking the habits of a lifetime. Each year I am getting a little better at not being so rigidly independent.

There are so many, many losses involved with chronic illnesses and chronic pain. I am very grateful that I have not been deprived of a sense of purpose, of being of use to my community. I think of this every day while writing blog posts, updating my web page, moderating support groups, or laughing and crying with friends. I am grateful, too, for discovering ideas that might be helpful to me personally and for learning of exciting work around the world that others in the field of ritual abuse are doing. I feel blessed that these connections have not been taken away from me.

PS Something else that I am wildly grateful for is that chronic pain still grants me some joy, unlike depression, which sucked all the color, pleasure, and meaning out of life.

Lynn Schirmer, Activist Artist

The fall equinox is on September 22 this year. There is an article on the equinox at https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/

Warning: the images in this essay are very graphic. They are used with permission, but Lynn asks that you not copy or reproduce them without contacting her at art@lynnschirmer.com.

Coming of age in the ’60’s, my initial idea of activism consisted of sit-ins, marches, demonstrations, and handing bouquets of roses to bemused policemen. It has broadened considerably since then.

Now it has expanded to include art, fiction, and poetry. I find that art is exceptionally well adapted to activism. It speaks to us through the eyes, the mind, and the heart simultaneously. And, unlike roses, most art is lasting and can reach out to future generations.

From time to time I’d like to introduce you to some amazing artists who are survivors of ritual abuse; some are survivors of military/government mind control as well. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to draw or paint or sculpt our experiences and a thousand times more courage to show our work publicly. If we make this choice, we expose ourselves to skepticism, ridicule, and rejection of our very souls, not just the particular piece of work we have offered as a gift to all who may see it.

Today I’m going to talk about Lynn Schirmer, who draws and paints her abuse and its effects, exhibits her work, and opens her studio to the general public. She also curates shows of others’ works, encouraging dozens of other artists to speak out in their own voices.

Lynn is completely open about her background. “I was born into a family active in organized group ritualistic and sadistic pedophilia. Along with profiting from child pornography and prostitution, the group was also networked to people involved with government medical and behavioral experimentation programs. . . . From earliest memory I was subjected to unspeakable acts of torture. It occurred within private settings, such as family/group gatherings, and at research facilities during experimentation sessions.” (http://lynnsart.net/index.php/about/)

She gets even more explicit in the pages from her journal at http://lynnsart.net/index.php/about/go-ahead-and-tell-me/. Here you will find methods of torture, details of her system, even names of perpetrators. Images of a journal drawing and a painting were presented by Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson to the 2004 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women panel.

Madonna of The Electro-Shock Belt – Oil, 2008

The over-riding theme in Lynn’s artwork is dissociation. Body parts are disconnected and reassembled, multiple figures are merged into one. Colors swirl, uniting and then separating the forms. A sense of dread and terror permeates her work.

Dr. Schirmer’s Playpen – Steel parts, copper wire, paper, underwear, 2010

Recently she has started experimenting with more geometric compositions, where soft, pretty colors and balanced composition contrast with horrific content. It is every bit as disturbing as the more fragmented pieces.

Lynn is totally prolific. This summer she exhibited in three shows — one solo — and curated a large exhibit and street art project last year. Among her major efforts are “Franklin and Madeline,” a two-person (James Cicatko and Lynn Schirmer) show about the Franklin Scandal in 2007. http://schirmerstudio.com/fm. “After Dinner Party is a website, exhibit, performance, and street art project she created to help educate the public about newly rediscovered knowledge of female anatomy.” http://afterdinnerparty.com/. Guess what it’s about!

Designing websites helps pay the rent in slow months. She created two of the best known RA/MC sites; S.M.A.R.T.S.’ ritual abuse pages at http://ritualabuse.us/‎ and “Ritual Abuse, Ritual Crime, and Healing” at http://www.ra-info.org, as well as http://nonstatetorture.org). They are visually elegant, easy to find your way around, non-triggering, and technically simple for the site owner to modify. See http://likelyarts.com/ for demos and be sure and check out the portfolio section.

I would love to have her talent, courage, and energy. Her background — no — I’ll stick with my own, thanks, not that I have a choice. But comparisons are pointless. Each of us does what we can to mend our broken self and heal the wounded world, and that is more than enough.

The Fall Equinox

The “coming events” page has been updated.

It’s often hard to tell what tradition a particular Satanic group uses to design its rituals. For that reason, I try and describe traditions from as many cultures as possible in the hopes that something may ring a bell for you.

The fall equinox occurs all over the world on the same day, and every culture marks it in some way. It can vary from September 22 to September 24, depending on the day that the sun crosses the equator. (I have mistakenly listed it on September 21 on all the calendars I have compiled, because my group started their rituals on the evening before holidays.) This year it is on September 22. Note that it is the fall equinox only in the Northern hemisphere: in the Southern Hemisphere it is the spring equinox.

Apparently the fall  equinox was not celebrated in Celtic or Anglo-Saxon countries. Modern Celtic-based Pagans call it by many names: Harvest Home, Festival of Dionysus, Wine Harvest, Harvest of First Fruits, Cornucopia, the Feast of Avalon, and the Second Harvest Festival. Modern Druids call it Mea’n Fo’mhair or Alben Elfed and honor the Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering wine and cider to trees. In Gardnerian Wicca it is called Autumnal Equinox, and in the 1970’s it started to be called Mabon, after the child of the Divine Mother who was kidnapped as a baby and rescued by King Arthur.  (It’s not clear to me what this has to do with the equinox.) The name of the Teutonic celebration, Winter Finding, lasts from the fall equinox to October 15th, Winter’s Night, which is the Norse New Year. This may be the source of Octoberfest.

In England, the last stalk of corn harvested represented the “spirit of the field” and was made into a man-shaped doll. (Note that “corn” was a general name, and refereed to any grain, including barley and oats. What we call corn, or maize, is a New World grain.)  Corn dolls were drenched with water representing rain or burned to represent the death of the grain spirit. Large wickerwork figures were also constructed to represent the corn spirit and burnt in mock sacrifice. Farmers and merchants gathered at fairs. Often a large glove was hung above the fair, symbolizing the handshake of promises and openhandedness and generosity.

Christian Britain replaced equinox traditions with the feast of Saint Michael, also known as Michaelmas or the Feast of Michael and All Angels, on September 29. It is celebrated with a goose fed on the last grain of the season (as in Rome), is when debts are collected, and is the time for fairs. Christian churches honoring St. Michael were built on many pagan sites.

Some groups draw on Greek, Roman, Egyptian, or Mayan beliefs.

In Rome the celebration was dedicated to Pomona, goddess of fruits and growing things. A feast was celebrated with a goose which had been fed on the remains of the grain in the fields after the harvest.

In Greece, Persephone had to return for six months to her husband Hades in the netherworld because she had eaten six pomegranate seeds when she first was kidnapped by Hades. Her mother, Demeter, Goddess of grain and harvests, was so heart-broken that everything stopped growing until Persephone returned the next spring.

The Egyptian Sphinx points directly toward the rising Sun on the equinox.
The Mayans of Central American built their great pyramid so that when the sun sets on the equinox light and dark create the pattern of a diamond-backed snake descending the pyramid. The equinox is called “The Return of the Sun Serpent.” Similarly, stone cairns were built throughout Britain: the first light of the day on the equinox travels through a corridor and shines on a sacred stone. And there is also a site in Salem, New Hampshire containing six stones, one now fallen, which point to both sunrise and sunset on the equinoxes. Carbon dating shows that charcoal from the hearth is between 3,000 and 4,000 years old.

Some Satanic calendars on the Internet (http://www.survivorship.org/resources/altcalendar.html) list specific activities which are reported to occur on the fall equinox. They include: Midnight Host, blood rituals, dismemberment of corpses, cannibalism, sexual orgies, and the removal of hands to perform “Hand of Glory” rituals. Sexual orgies and blood rituals occur at pretty much every Satanic ritual, in my opinion. Midnight Host appears to refer to a group of people that appear at midnight, led by Satan. The Hand of Glory is a human or wax hand that is supposed to make the owner invisible, and is the rite is not performed by many groups.

Background for other Satanic holidays is posted on this blog. You can find an essay on Halloween on 10/2011, Candlemas on 2/2012, the spring equinox on 2/2012, and August ritual dates on 6/2012. I hope some of this information proves helpful to you.