Weird and Religious
Among certain Siberian shamanic traditions, shamans wore costumes covered in metal pieces and antlers to represent a spirit journey in which they symbolically died and travelled to other worlds. The clothing itself was seen as part of the transformation.
Religious image of the day.
In the name of religion
1994, Rwanda. Christian majority context. While mainly ethnic, church spaces were massacre sites and some clergy were complicit. Extremists manipulated Christian language about obedience and order, using religious authority structures to legitimise control, while others resisted and sheltered victims.
Fact
In Confucianism, public service is honoured, and Confucianism historically shaped systems where officials were selected through learning.
Population control
Religion has always provided an efficient system helping rulers control populations. Fear of punishment extended beyond death, and eternal consequences made compliance cheap and effective. Surveillance became supernatural, as god was believed to see everything, and even thought became subject to moral scrutiny. This internalised authority reduced the need for constant force because people learned to police themselves. Guilt replaced chains, and confession replaced rebellion, moving power from the body into the mind.
Quote of the day
“You can safely assume that you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott.
Ask the right question
Why do prophecies in religious texts tend to be vague, symbolic or written after the events they appear to predict?
Religious Crooks
Swami Premananda was a Hindu guru who ran an ashram in India and attracted international followers, later convicted of rape and linked to additional serious crimes, with courts finding that his spiritual authority was used to control and exploit devotees.
For more information, google the name.
Almost all of the crooks appearing in this section have their own wikipedia page.
Today we took a look at yet another religious crook but there are hundreds of thousands of them. You could spend a lifetime researching the topic.