Post by raybar on Jun 19, 2013 19:32:14 GMT -5
The Holy Solstice (Peace and Clear Weather Be Upon Her)1 will be occurring at 5:04 UTC2 on Friday. That translates to 22:04 (11:04 PM) Thursday evening here in Los Angeles, which is not a very convenient time to sacrifice anything to the gods, neither the old gods nor the new. It’s even worse in New York at 1:04 Friday morning. But in Hawaii it’s a very civilized 19:04 (7:04 PM) Thursday evening.
So let’s all meet at Lily’s house for lunch tomorrow. Then we’ll go up to the volcano and sacrifice the Volunteer(s)3 in the cauldron at the exact moment of Solstice (or at least within Orb4 of it). Afterwards we can go out to dinner -- someplace nice -- where we will honor the Volunteers for their Sacrifice and thank them for placating the gods and staving off Divine Wrath (Their Will Be Done)5 Otherwise it could be “double double toil and trouble” for 6 months.
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1 - This is an ancient blessing. “Peace” because it is difficult to conduct a proper ritual during a battle, and “Clear Weather” because it is difficult to see the sun rising between the pillars on a cloudy day. It probably sounded more spiritual in the original (long lost) language.
2 - UTC = Coordinated Universal Time, a successor to Greenwich Mean Time. And don’t ask me why it’s not CUT, it just isn’t.
3 - Although the ritual could be considered human sacrifice, those who die are volunteers, not victims. Volunteers must be of legal age, fully understand what they are doing, and jump into the cauldron of their own free will. They are never pushed, thrown, or coerced in any way, as this would be repugnant to the gods.
4 - Orb is short for orbita, the Latin word for orbit. We wish the Volunteers could die at the exact moment of Solstice (Peace and Clear Weather Be Up on Her), but there is really no practicable way to insure such accuracy, so we allow a tolerance of about a minute and a half before or after the precise moment (84.4 seconds, actually), which is 1/1000 of a day and is thus the time needed for the earth to move 1/1000th of the distance it moves within its orbit in a single day. Astrologers borrowed the term “orb” from us centuries ago and changed its meaning to suit their unholy purposes.
5 - This is another ancient blessing, which was borrowed from us by Christians, changing “their” to “his” in their delusion that there is only one true god, and that human concepts of gender could possibly apply to the Divine.