Glaukus

Spent the morning weeding all my pots, and didn't even get (badly) stabbed today! I'll have the most pampered cactus collection ever by the end of this lockdown!

I've given up on iso and detergent, I'd be doing it all day every day lol. I use my hose with a particular setting on the nozzle now, it is so effective at knocking them off with causing any damage to the plants. I only use the toothbrush on seedlings now. After this, I give them a spray with eco neem and it keeps them off for a few weeks to a few months, depending on the conditions. Scale is loving this cooler weather and rain hey.

Went on scale patrol today. Cleaned up a lot of plants, gave them some eco neem. A few plants have gotten a bit fungal recently so I gave these ones a treatment with anti rot (phosphorus acid). Grafted a few variegated seedlings that I'd better give away before I kill! Things are generally looking amazing at this time of year, but with all the rain and sun they're really glowing. Pharaoh MGRS peru Lumpy jacques

Happy Friday friends.

We're they with "God" or an imposter? What If The Devil Convinced The World That He Was God? by The Gnostic Dread|Published January 4, 2015 710 They say that the devil is the greatest of liars and deceivers. Christ refers to the devil as “the father of lies” (John 8:44 NIV). Therefore it would be probable that the devil is able to deceive even the brightest of minds if allowed. With that being said, what if he “which deceiveth the whole world” was able to convince the world that he was God? Specifically, what if the being that followers of the Bible pray to, Yahweh (often called Jehovah, Adonai, or LORD as well), is in fact the devil? I know, that may seem blasphemous and contradicting to someone who has never had that thought before, but allow me to explain. As I explained in a previous post, the original Hebrew term “Ha-Satan” is a title that is given to the devil and it’s meaning is “the adversary”. The issue here is that we are told to believe that the Serpent in the garden was the devil and that Yahweh was the benevolent god. However, let’s once again examine what exactly happened within the narrative of the garden myth. Yahweh was the first liar within the Bible, making him “the father of lies”; he told Adam he would die the day he ate from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:15-17) but this did not happen. Instead, Adam’s eyes were opened and his divinity was realized, Yahweh even admitting to this (Genesis 3:22), making the Serpent’s words true (Genesis 3:1-5). As you can see, Yahweh was the deceiver, not the Serpent. Let’s move past the garden myth to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). Here you have what almost everyone in the 21st Century ultimately wants, everyone understanding each other and working together in unity towards a common goal for mankind. The narrative says that everyone was speaking the same language and that they had decided to build a tower unto the heavens to make a name for themselves. When they began to build the tower, Yahweh came down and observed that the People were of one accord, and that with this unity they would be able to achieve whatever it is they wanted. Apparently this was a threat to Yahweh, for of course the authority is always threatened when the People are in unity. 1st Corinthians 14:33 claims that “God is not the author of confusion”, however Genesis 11:7 has Yahweh saying: “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” This confusion caused by Yahweh resulted in the people being divided up and scattered, never completing the tower. One must ask themselves…..why would a benevolent god not want the people to be united in a cause? And why would an all powerful, all knowing god be threatened by such? Maybe this “god” is not as powerful and all knowing as he claims to be, and that would explain why he is threatened by the unity of the People. Authority always needs to portray the image of being powerful by keeping the People divided and ruled by fear in order to maintain control. Yahweh is far from benevolent. Not only does he claim to be a jealous god, but claims that his very name is Jealous (Exodus 34:14). Thus Yahweh hates those who do not obey and serve him, and declares death upon those who will not submit. The narratives within the Old Testament show an overwhelming amount of murders done either directly by Yahweh himself or his servants under his command, from the killing of the first born children in Egypt (Exodus 12:29-30) to the literal genocide of the Amalekites done by Saul and his army under Yahweh’s orders (1st Samuel 15). They claim that the evils and atrocities that happen in the world today are the work of the devil and that may be true, but again who exactly is the devil? Throughout history and even unto the present day countless lives have been taken in the name of “god” Yahweh. Christ was very critical of the Pharisees who were the religious leaders and claimed servants of Yahweh during his time. Christ whose mission it was to awaken the people to the Kingdom of God within and free them from the religious laws imposed on them by Yahweh and his religious authorities, made it known in John 8:41-44 that the Father God he referred to was not the same god that the Pharisees served, and in fact called their god, Yahweh, the devil. “Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” Before the canonization of the Bible and the texts outside the canon being declared heresy and burned by the established Catholic Church, the Early Christians and Gnostic sects had a text in wide circulation called The Apocryphon of John which was considered by many to be the “part 2” to the Gospel of John. Within it, Christ appears to his disciple John again and begins to explain to him much about Gnostic cosmology. Christ tells John about the Monad, the “true God”, which he describes as being pure light, sovereign and Father over all, but is not to be looked at as being a deity for It is above and greater than a deity. He then starts to describe the chain in which each of the Aeons (emanations or aspects of the Monad) came into being down to the Aeon Sophia, a feminine aspect of God representing divine wisdom. The myth goes on to say that Sophia desired to conceive and give birth without the consent or involvement of her male counterpart. The child that Sophia gave birth to is Yahweh, who is known to the Gnostics as Yaldabaoth which means “son of chaos”. Yaldabaoth is described as having a body of a serpent and the head of a lion with flashing bolts of lightning in it’s eyes, and is said to be corrupt and imperfect due to both divine aspects (male and female) not being involved in his conception. When she had seen what she had produced, his mother Sophia wrapped him in a bright cloud with a throne in the middle so that he would not be seen by any of the Aeons. Thinking that there was no one else in existence besides himself and his mother, Yaldabaoth then took power from his mother Sophia and started to create other beings and rulers (known to the Gnostics as the Archons) and exalted himself above them claiming that he was a jealous god and there are no gods besides him, for he was ignorant of his origin and the other Aeons above him that emanated from the Monad. However by claiming this, he suggested to the host around him that there is another god, for if there were no other god, of whom would he be jealous? The text continues by retelling the story of the creation of the material universe by Yaldabaoth and the creation of Adam from the Gnostic perspective. Due to the corruption and imperfection of Yaldabaoth/Yahweh, the material universe itself is corrupt and imperfect in the minds of the Gnostics. This cosmology formed the basis of Gnostic thought, and explains why the Gnostics reject the material world (or rather the concept of materialism) and embrace the spiritual world within, for while Yahweh may have formed the physical body of Adam, the animate Spirit that was breathed into Adam came from the true “God” the Monad, the source of all life and things. This Divinity lies within each and every person and can come to be realized. In closing I would like to share a passage from another Gnostic text known as the Gospel of Philip. This gospel, like the Apocryphon of John, was not included in the Catholic Church’s biblical canon, however it was circulated and read by the early Christians and Gnostics. “The rulers wanted to fool us, since they saw we were connected with the good. They took the names of the good and gave them to the not good so with names they could trick and rope us to the not good. As though doing us a favor, they took names from the not good and placed them on the good. They knew what they were doing. They wanted to grab those of us who were free and make us eternal slaves.” Could it be that Yahweh is in fact the devil or Satan, and that through his servants (the religious authority figures) he leads the world to believe he is the true god by confusing the words and titles? Let me remind you, as I always must, that to the Gnostic these are all concepts, metaphors, parables, and myths explaining higher truths. It should not be taken and viewed in a literal sense. Understand that Yahweh is a concept of god created by man with a purpose and an agenda. In an upcoming entry I shall go in depth explaining the origin of this concept of god, it’s purpose and agenda along with showing how it relates to ourselves and the Universe. The Apocryphon of John is available to be read online here. Peace, Love, & Balance

The Serpent: Enemy of Man, Or Enlightener Of Man? by The Gnostic Dread|Published June 1, 2014 141 What proper way to start off a blog dealing in Gnosticism than in the beginning…the beginning according to biblical tradition that is. Let’s discuss a major figure within the first few chapters of Genesis, the Serpent. According to the traditional Christian thought, Adam and Eve were created by a god named Yahweh (often translated as LORD, Adonai, or Jehovah) who placed them in a garden and told them that they could eat from every tree and plant in the garden, except the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. There then appeared the Serpent in the garden, who supposedly tempts Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve then goes to Adam and gives him the fruit to eat as well. Yahweh finds out what had taken place and banishes Adam and Eve from the garden while also cursing the Serpent and establishing the Serpent as an enemy. Because of this, the Serpent is always called Satan or Lucifer. However, the biblical text itself never refers to the Serpent as either title. The identification of the Serpent as Satan or Lucifer comes from Christian theology that says that Satan was once an angel named Lucifer who rebelled against the god Yahweh and was thrown out of heaven and became Satan. That theology usually begins with the verse Isaiah 14:12-14: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” Which is then reinforced by a verse from the New Testament Luke 10:18: “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” And finally by this verse, tying Lucifer, Satan and the Serpent together, Revelation 12:9: “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” While it may seem justifiable to uphold the Christian theology when picking out and isolating these verses alone, when you go and study these verses in their original context you will see that the theology is flawed. The very first thing that must be understood is these verses all come from three separate books within the Bible, one which comes from the Old Testament section and the other two coming from the New Testament. That means they were all written at different times in history by different authors who never met each other and historically would have had different world views. For example, the Isaiah verse is found within the Old Testament which is a Jewish text. If you were to look into the Jewish theology on what that verse means, you would see that from their tradition the verse was not referring to Satan or a fallen angel, but rather was referring to a man, an unnamed king of Babylon. This becomes apparent when you continue reading the verses that follow: “Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?” – Isaiah 14:15-17 Jewish tradition has a concept of Satan, but it is not seen as the chief force of evil or the enemy of god. The original Hebrew term, “satan”, is a noun from a verb meaning to, “obstruct, oppose,” as it is found in Numbers 22:22, 1 Samuel 29:4, and Psalms 109:6. Ha-Satan is most often translated as “the accuser,” or “the adversary.” The definite article “ha” (which is the English “the”), is used to show that this is a title bestowed on a being, versus the name of a being. Thus this being would be referred to as “the satan.” This concept goes back to Ancient Kemet (Egypt) to the divinity Set. Set was the divinity of opposition. While Set would be an opposer to Heru (Horus), in the Ancient Egyptian’s understanding he was not originally an evil deity. Set simply symbolized all opposing forces, which were necessary forces in the universe. Therefore as said previously, Satan is not a proper name but a title. It is a name given to one opposing you. When your enemies come to oppress you, they are opposing you; therefore they are satan to you. You are opposing them by defending yourself; in their eyes you are the satan. You can say our fraud governments are “Set”anic due to them being adversaries to the masses by their abuse of power. So why was the Serpent called Satan by Christians? Because the Serpent made Adam and Eve disobey and oppose the god Yahweh. Did this actually make the Serpent evil and an enemy to man though? Let’s examine what exactly had taken place in the garden myth. The god Yahweh decides to create Adam and places him in the garden of Eden: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” – Genesis 2:15-17 Here you can see Yahweh commanded Adam not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that if he did he would surely die “in the day that thou eatest thereof”. However a little while later, the Serpent appears to Eve: “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3:1-5 Here you can see the Serpent had asked Eve a question about not being able to eat from every tree, and when Eve responded that Yahweh had said she would die from eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the Serpent informed her that wasn’t true, and that her eyes would be opened and she would be like Yahweh, knowing good and evil….and that’s exactly what happened! Genesis 3:22 says: “And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” This verse confirms a few things. First, it confirms that Yahweh was a liar while the Serpent told the truth. Yahweh told Adam that the day they eat the fruit from the tree of Knowledge, they would die. However, the Bible tradition shows that Adam went on to live another 800 years after the birth of his son Seth (Genesis 5), an event that occurs long after what happened in the garden already. The real reason for Adam’s eventual death is revealed at the end of Genesis 3:22 “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” Adam was from the beginning a finite being, as opposed to Christian theology that says Adam was created perfect and immortal, which has no biblical support whatsoever. If Adam and Eve had been able to eat from the Tree of Life, they would have then both been immortal, but since they were prevented from doing so they both eventually died. This verse also confirms the natures of these two characters, the Serpent and Yahweh. Yahweh lied to Adam and Eve and concealed the truth of the nature of the tree of KNOWLEDGE, where the Serpent told them the truth. Also, the Serpent didn’t force Adam and Eve to eat from the tree, nor did it tempt them. It simply told them the true nature of the fruit and let them decide what to do. The Serpent gave Adam and Eve a CHOICE. Yahweh however used FEAR and DECEPTION to prevent Adam and Eve from eating from the tree and to submit to him blindly. He didn’t give them a choice, he wanted blind submission. When they didn’t blindly submit to him, he cursed them and prevented them from life. Now applying this myth to real life, Yahweh prevented Adam and Eve from KNOWLEDGE and kept them blind and ignorant. Who does this today? Does not “big brother” keep the masses blind and ignorant while holding knowledge from them? And when certain people become informed about the true nature of things and don’t submit to big brother, does big brother not then try to keep that person away from life and liberty? Does not big brother use fear and lies to control the masses? The Serpent rebelled and gave the KNOWLEDGE to Adam and Eve. This is really the only thing the Serpent is guilty of. This is like someone today who rebels against this world system and informs the masses of the true nature and intent of their corrupt government. Of course to “big brother”, someone doing such a thing is an enemy. That is why the Serpent is called Set-an. The Serpent is not called “Satan” because it is evil or did anything wrong, but rather because it is an enemy to Yahweh, in the sense that a truth speaker is an enemy or a “terrorist” to today’s corrupt governments or “big brother”. Christians over time started to call the Serpent “Lucifer”, based on their theology revolving around the Isaiah verse I gave earlier. Though their intent for giving the Serpent the title “Lucifer” was not a benevolent one, it was still a proper one from the Gnostic point of view. Lucifer means “light bearer”, light in an esoteric sense being equated with knowledge or “gnosis”. The Serpent is the one responsible for giving the “gnosis” or knowledge of themselves to Adam and Eve. Therefore, it was their “light bearer” or Lucifer. This is why in many cultures the Serpent is not a symbol of anything evil at all, but rather a symbol of knowledge and wisdom. The Gnostics identify the Serpent as an aspect or agent of Sophia, which means wisdom and is also feminine because the subject deals with the suppression of the Divine Feminine principle as well (something I will go into in a future post). Sophia was a revealer of gnosis who came from the true “god”, the Monad who is ultimately above simply being referred to as a “god” or “goddess” in the anthropomorphic way most are used to. So in conclusion one must ask themselves, who is the true enemy of man? The god Yahweh, who, like our governments today, used fear and deception to make his subjects submit to his will blindly, or the Serpent who told man the truth and gave him the freedom and choice to be more than what they were being told they could be? To the Gnostic, the Serpent is mankind’s liberator and enlightener who gave Adam and Eve self-knowledge and realization. The real enemy of man is the one who would try to keep man ignorant and submissive. Who is the individual within the myth that does that? Yahweh, whom the Gnostic’s refer to as Yaldabaoth which means “son of chaos”, a fitting name for one who causes so much devastation, death and confusion within the biblical text. I will go into detail about the Gnostic’s view of Yahweh in a future post. Peace, Love & Balance

The alien is a euphorbia.

Well I've never had a real issue with nausea, but it does seem to keep my tummy happy.

Hard to say I suppose, I mean 2 seeds is a very small amount of any of them. But I have always had a very good experience with them this way.

I take a lot of what 69ron has posted with a grain of salt. He has made a lot of claims about a lot of things that people have tried to replicate without success.

I can't say I've detected much difference between strammonium, innoxia and metel seeds, but I've only ever used max 2 seeds per serve as admixture with cimora.

Oh boy, welcome to the cactus mental illness recovery group! Well, actually, there is no recovery, it's a terminal affliction. I reckon if you go along to one of the Brisbane meetups you'll come home with some nice cactus. Otherwise, not sure if you're on FB, but there's an Aussie tricho auction group run by Torsten and some of the gang where you can indulge your new addiction. If you have anything specific you're after, post up a wanted in the plant sales area forum here and I'm sure you'll get what you're after. Some of them ain't cheap though!

Maybe we should do a multi category grow to keep it interesting and have a bit of variety. I'm keen to have a go at those giant beans.

Systematisation is an attempt at playing god.

I cut whenever they need a trim, but usually only in growing season between September and May. If I was cutting for tea material I'd choose sections around the diameter of my little finger or bigger. Anything smaller is just a hassle to deal with, but the smaller stuff is pretty good for propagation.