“WITCHCRAFT – and the embrace of “magical” practices, like reading tarot cards – has recently experienced a resurgence of sorts among young, creative, politically engaged women,” reads The Guardian.

This is largely reflected in niche corners of US pop culture: 2013’s American Horror Story: Coven, in which witchcraft stood in for girl power, was the most popular American Horror Story season ever. A popular Tumblr blog, Charmcore, purports to be run by three witch sisters; it gives sarcastic “magical” advice and praise of the female celebrities it deems to be “obvious witches”. On the more serious side, teen sensation Rookie magazine has published tarot tutorials along with more standard-issue feminist and fashion advice, and Autostraddle, a popular left-leaning blog for young queer women, has an in-house tarot columnist. (more…)

PAUL writes:

I insisted on Sunday on confronting an idiot driving a highly-expensive (my bet is $75,000 at least) huge new pickup tricked out with enormous tires and a horn used by tractor-trailers. He ran a red light as I was waiting at the light a few blocks from my condo. It was red when he passed in front of me, speeding at least 40 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour road.  About fifty feet later he blew that horn as if to say, “Eat your liver.” (See Catch 22.)

I was going his way but not following him. I was returning to my condo.  I noticed he turned into my church’s parking lot.  So in an effort to get a good look at his truck, so that I could confront him another day, I walked toward the church’s parking lot which is directly across the street from my big condo building. As I began walking, I got more and more mad.  I was nearly killed recently by a driver who ran a red light. An idiot totaled my vehicle, but I was unharmed except for some minor pain that night. (more…)

  FITZGERALD writes: Here's a good article on the necessity of fasting. The West began dispensing with the ancient fasting tradition prior to the Protestant Revolution. The reformers dispensed with ascetic practices altogether as a form of works to be sacrificed on the altar of Sole Fide. The Catholics fell largely in line (Friday's as the last redoubt for instance, but even this was a watering down) as an accommodation to the attacks, but I'm sure this is an oversimplification. I need to find some articles with a larger purview than this, but it's a good start. Catholics must reclaim their ascetic roots and begin fasting again. The Great Lenten fast was uniform East and West by the fifth century. The fast of the East as it's now known is the shared inheritance of the Ancient Christian Faith. Men especially need to fast! Being a man I can attest to this!

COLIN FLAHERTY looks at 25 violent incidents at malls since Christmas:

At Pittsfield Township, near Ann Arbor, more than 100 black people attacked patrons and police and destroyed property, first at a movie theater, then an arcade, then a restaurant. Two were arrested.

At Ocoee, Florida, near Orlando, 800 to 1000 black people tried to rush into a theater without paying, then created violence in the lobby and the parking lot, where they defied police, destroyed property and assaulted others. (more…)

AS the annual observance of African-American History Month comes to a close, it is worth noting one of the most compelling reasons why African-Americans, or blacks, should have their own nation in North America: Blacks view themselves as a separate nation — a nation with its own distinctive history, its own heroes, its own literature, its own folklore, its own popular culture.

There is no Irish-American History Month, Italian-American History Month or German-American History Month. There is no White History Month. The Irish, the Italians and the Germans are not clamoring for these observances. That’s because they do not view themselves as separate to the same extent. They are not a separate nation. Look at the uniformity with which blacks approach politics. Almost all blacks vote the same way. No group in America has such a strong collective identity.

Can Americans ever amicably come to the conclusion that blacks should have their own nation and make this happen in a peaceable way?

One problem with this idea is that blacks, naturally seeking their own security, would likely make stiff demands. Black nationalism seems to necessitate white nationalism. Paradoxically, it is only by defending their own interests that whites could make black nationalism a practicable reality.

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  WHEN confronted with the thesis that the men elected to the papacy since 1958, including Mr. Bumble, or Jorge Bergoglio, are not true popes, objectors to this thesis, which is known by the scary word, "sedevacantism," often point to the fact that there have been immoral, bad popes before who are not considered anti-popes. No one is going around saying that Pope John XII, "whose life was such that the Lateran was spoken of as a brothel, and the moral corruption in Rome became the subject of general odium," was not a true pope. But the difference between an immoral pope and a "pope" who rejects part of Catholic dogma is key. No believing Catholic likes the idea of an immoral pope, but such a thing is logically possible, just as it is possible to be both Catholic and a serious sinner. There can be bad popes, but there cannot, positively cannot, be non-Catholic popes. The idea is an absurdity. A recent episode of "Tradcast," a podcast program at Novus Ordo Watch, examines the "Bad Popes Argument" at length. I strongly recommend it.

  AT POLITICAL ISLAM, Bill Warner describes the "jihad that led to the Crusades" in response to Obama's recent remarks about the evil of the Christian Crusaders. He lists the Muslim invasions and conquests that occurred between 355 and 1095 A.D.

  JOE A. writes: Having your feminism and eating it too is now a reality in England, home of the dead letter once called the "Magna Carta.”

AT The Orthosphere, Thomas F. Bertonneau continues a series on higher education. He recounts an episode that illustrates university doublethink:

The philosophy faculty of the college that employs me annually hosts an endowed lecture the purpose of which is to bring to campus someone currently feted by the philosophical community for his or her outstanding, or at any rate notable, work. (more…)

  ACCORDING to the Washington Free Beacon, Hillary Clinton, during her years in the Senate, paid her female employees 72 cents for every dollar she paid her male employees.

IN his sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, St. Alphonsus Liguori spoke “On the Number of Sins Beyond Which God Pardons No More:”

 O folly of sinners! If you purchase a house, you spare no pains to get all the securities necessary to guard against the loss of your money; if you take medicine, you are careful to assure yourself that it cannot injure you; if you pass over a river, you cautiously avoid all danger of falling into it; and for a transitory enjoyment, for the gratification of revenge, for a beastly pleasure, which lasts but a moment, you risk your eternal salvation, saying: “I will go to confession after I commit this sin.” (more…)

  "THEN the devil took him up into the holy city and set him upon the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down. For it is written: That he hath given his angels charge over Thee, and in their hands shall they bear Thee up, lest perhaps Thou dash Thy foot against a stone. Jesus said to him: It is written again: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God." [Matthew 4, 6-7]

FROM the unpublished writings of Lawrence Auster:

The radical individualism that has undermined our collective sense of nationhood expresses itself not only through ideologies such as feminism, but, perhaps even more harmfully, through a leveling, “pop-culture” ethos that has insensibly replaced the old bourgeois-Christian ethos of the West. This popular culture is so much a part of the fabric of our lives that even conservatives hardly seem to notice it. In their complaints about cultural disorder, conservative moralists tend to focus on easy-to-identify, hot-button moral issues such as abortion and homosexual liberation, while taking for granted–and often happily participating in–the loosening of standards in every area of life, the systematic downgrading of speech, dress, and manners, that has made sexual immorality and its attendant ills inevitable. (more…)

A GRATEFUL READER writes:

I was struck by a paragraph that appeared to me with force on the eve of Ash Wednesday. The book, A Landscape with Dragons, The Battle for Your Child’s Mind by Michael D. O’Brian, discusses the dangers of Gnosticism and the Occult in literature for children. Below, I have placed in bold the phrase which struck me. Addressing the parent of a child who has been severely bent in the wrong direction by reading bad books, O’Brian writes:

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IMAGINE what it was like to live in a society in which a season of penitence was observed by all. In the Middle Ages, meat, eggs and even dairy products were banned during Lent in much of Europe, making abstinence unavoidable for most. There were many people who were not holy, of course, but there must have been a “supernatural energy,” as Dom Prosper Gueranger refers to it, in the air. The French abbot wrote in his Liturgical Year:

There are but few social questions which have not been ably and spiritedly treated of by the public writers of the age, who have devoted their talents to the study of political economy; and it has often been a matter of surprise to us that they should have overlooked a subject of such deep interest as this: the results produced on society by the abolition of Lent; that is to say, of an institution which, more than any other, keeps up in the public mind a keen sentiment of moral right and wrong, inasmuch as it imposes on a nation an annual expiation for sin. (more…)

CAREY writes:

The interesting thing to me about TV awards ceremonies, the fashion industry’s lust for all things Dark and Occult, and even Jay-Z adopting the single commandment of Thelema (‘Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law’ of Thelema) as a motto is that the people in these industries read blogs too. They’ve seen over this past year that there are quite a few people out here who have read up on the occult. And while there have always been what culturally are known as conspiracy theorists, the entertainment industry has taken notice that the people who have noticed that something is horribly wrong and have thus tried to learn more about the occult are not the typical cultural idea of that: many even-handed, calm people are now speaking up about this. So the people in the entertainment industry have seen this and have adjusted their tactical position.

They don’t deny it, they simply laugh at it all and dare anyone to call it what it is: blatant homage to very old, very evil gods and demons. Continuing with the age old idea that the best tactic Evil ever managed to come up with was convincing humanity that It doesn’t exist in any singular mind or entity—that there is no such thing as what we might call ‘Primary Evil’ (Satan) and that only the hearts of men do evil—the entertainment industry is now openly worshiping and laughing it off with the support of Western Culture. And tacit support is still support. So long as people continue to chuckle at the notion that this is even happening, the entertainment industry will simply get bolder.

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READ about it at Tradition in Action.

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