In the 1600s, Europeans exploring the American southeast wrote of a purification ritual practiced by the native people, involving dancing, vomiting, and large amounts of what the travelers called black drink. Served from shell cups, the highly caffeinated tea was brewed from the shrub Ilex vomitoria, a species of holly. In a new study, researchers have found the first direct evidence of black drink — not in shells from Florida or Mississippi, but in ceramic beakers at the ancient city of Cahokia outside what’s now St. Louis, Missouri. The finding hints at a trade network that flourished centuries before Christopher Columbus landed in the New World, in which caffeinated drinks had Starbucks-like importance and possibly religious significance.

[ continued ]

PARIS, Sept. 24, 1928 – (UP) – Aimee Semple McPherson has deserted Paris for the more placid city of Geneva, but the Montmartre was still stunned today after her whirlwind “sin tour” of the gayest streets in the world.

Up the hill that is the Montmartre went the California evangelist, shuddering as she traveled a trail thick with champagne corks, scantily-clad girls and laughter.

In some ways it was similar to the “sin tour” that Mrs. McPherson made in New York, except that she found Paris far more wicked than the American metropolis and was “happy to be an American.”

Accompanied by a United Press correspondent, she entered the “Dead Rat” cabaret where waiters rushed up with tubs of champagne only to halt with a perplexed expression on their faces as she waved for them to take the wine away.

Gigolos, the dancing men of Paris, bowed low and asked her to foxtrot with them, but Mrs. McPherson begged the men to forsake their riotous living and embrace the greatest pleasure of religion. They turned away.

“Heaven and Hell” was her next stop and from there she went to “Pigalle,” “Russian Caviar,” and “Briccotops.” In each cabaret, she sought to convert the waiters and entertainers.

Came midnight at the “Tabaria,” and nude girls rode chariots thru the swirling crowd.

“What a pity, what a pity,” said Mrs. McPherson. The tour ended at “Forest Glade.”

“My heart nearly stopped when I saw girls, unclothed or nearly so, dancing, singing or riding their chariots all for such pleasures of the flesh,” Mrs. McPherson said.

Arriving at her hotel, she wrote the following impression of her tour for the United Press:

By AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON

“I stood on the brink of Hell tonight and looked down inside.

“Gay Paris is polished on the outside, but it is the rottenest city in the world at the core.

“I want to cry from the highest point in Montmartre.

“This city is a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah, but it seems to me that God’s patience is being tested and Paris is doomed to certain destruction. Your revelry will burst like the bubbles in your champagne glasses; your toy balloons you burst with cigarette tips.

“Satan has blinded you.

“You are sex mad.

“You have forgotten civilization.

“You have reverted to animals, but I know who are hungry for religion and some day I will come back and try to save a few souls.

“I suffered to see those young girls whose lips quivered under the carmine. I thought of the unhappiness of their mothers as I saw them stretch their bare arms to their dancing partners, who whirled their barely clad bodies in the mad dancing, but I was disgusted with the gorgeously gowned matrons, stalking through the cabarets, trying to cover their sinful hearts with a thin layer of silk.

“It hurts me to think of the thousands of young Americans who come here imagining they are on a lark, without chaperons.

“If only their parents knew that Montmartre is wilder and dirtier than the tinseled dance halls of the old, wild west.

What an atmosphere; what pitfalls. Everywhere the popping of corks; girls and boys on high chairs bent over bars or girls with baby faces letting strangers circle their waists on the dance floor.

“These orgies are worse than Rome. They last from sunset to dawn. They make me ask: Where is France’s reason? Where are her churches?

“It is too awful to describe, but some day there will be a reckoning and they will pay for every vile kiss which has crushed the lips of callous companions.

“Paris is like a white sepulcher, a burial place of thousands of rotted souls.

“I would love to hold a revival here and clean out the shadows from the webs where sin is driving people crazy.

“The more I see of Paris and Montmartre, the more happy I am to be an American.

“At home at least we never liberate such commercialized deviltry.”
++++++++++++++++++++

While Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson was conducting her “sin tour” (paid for by the Angelus Temple), she was involved in a scandal at home.

Superior Court Judge Carlos S. Hardy was being investigated for accepting a $2500 check from Aimee and her mother, Ma Kennedy, for rendering “legal services” regarding her ministry. Many had accused Hardy of accepting money in return for helping McPherson out of a jam.

Contained within the articles of impeachment was an allegation that Judge Hardy had obstructed the grand jury’s investigation into McPherson’s 1926 claim that she had been kidnapped and held for ransom following her mysterious disappearance while going for a swim at Ocean Park. A more likely scenario was that McPherson had left Los Angeles to engage in a discreet affair with a former KFSG engineer Kenneth Ormiston. However, nothing was ever proven largely due to McPherson’s political influence and enormous following.

The American Bar Association expelled Hardy, however, the California Senate acquitted him for accepting a “free will offering” instead of a legal fee.

++++++++++++++

One last note: On September 27, 1928, three days after McPherson published her attack on Paris, a Los Angeles clergyman, Reverend Pletsch, launched an attack on McPherson while speaking at a church in London, England.

“She is the twentieth century Jezebel,” Pletsch warned. “She is coming to London to chase out the devil and later pack her bag and get out first.”

[ source: bizarre los angeles ]

[ The Dreams of Dr. Plague ]

10 of the Most Dangerous Chemicals in the World
10 of the Deadliest Proteins on Earth

Epomophorus (Hysignathus) monstrosus. (1878)

George Edward Dobson. Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900.

So much amazingness from the US National Library of Medicine.

THE SISTERS of the Cross of Shame,
They smile along the night;
Their houses stand with shuttered souls
And painted eyes of light.

And no man tells his son the truth,
Lest he should speak of sin;
And every man cries, “Woe, alas!”
And every man goes in.
– Dana Burnet
(American poet, born 1888)

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915. Upton Sinclair, ed.

Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect. The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of a composer’s soul when he is stirred by inspiration. There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

A few days ago I told you I was working every day without any real inspiration. Had I given way to my disinclination, undoubtedly I should have drifted into a long period of idleness. But my patience and faith did not fail me, and to-day I felt that inexplicable glow of inspiration of which I told you; thanks to which I know beforehand that whatever I write to-day will have power to make an impression, and to touch the hearts of those who hear it. I hope you will not think I am indulging in self-laudation, if I tell you that I very seldom suffer from this disinclination to work. I believe the reason for this is that I am naturally patient. I have learnt to master myself, and I am glad I have not followed in the steps of some of my Russian colleagues, who have no self-confidence and are so impatient that at the least difficulty they are ready to throw up the sponge. This is why, in spite of great gifts, they accomplish so little, and that in an amateur way.

[ source ]

BENEVOLENT TRIPLE CONJUNCTION
May 11th, 2011 saw the triple conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in the 24th degree of Aries. Both the Greater and Lesser Benefics joined forces with the Winge’d Messenger in a helpful conspiracy to renew our faith in ourselves and each other. Our experience of this alignment was filtered through a pragmatic moon in Virgo, making it all the more possible to intuitively know what must be done if we are to bring about necessary positive change.

We have the wisdom and good fortune to familiarize ourselves with planetary cycles in order to skillfully navigate each transient energy as it arrives. We also have the means by which to hold onto that energy if we so choose, even after an alignment has passed. We thereby recapture what would otherwise have been a missed opportunity. Beth’s blend for the Benevolent Triple Conjunction is created with impeccable astrological precision on an immeasurably auspicious day. Just as one might hold an electrical charge in a battery, she has – quite literally – kept time in a bottle.
— Forest Cobalt

This liquid talisman was created on May 11, 2011 during the conjunction of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter in Aries. The oil unites the energies of the two Benefics with Mercury, resulting in an oil of movement, adaptability, expansion, optimism, creativity, confidence, attraction, and inspiration. It holds the qualities of positive fearlessness, expansive courage, and helps to bolster the spirit so barriers that we have erected for ourselves in the past can finally be overcome.

Through this liquid talisman, your possibilities are limitless, and reality is yours to create.