Continued:

This conveys that the "star" is a unique angel of light, he's specifically the Serpent, he's associated with the Tree (knowledge of good and evil), he's worshipped as a baal or god of gods, this worship involves a manmade image (snake-pole), the image also references the sexual perversion of satyrs, he lays claim on healing, he also claims the planet Saturn, and he leads the Titans or Rephaim as his shadows. All this appears to be in the composite picture intended by Amos's words and by Stephen's words; other concepts in this thread appear not to be in the primary picture.

God's chain of transmission of this symbol is, first, the tree of knowledge of good and evil and its serpent. Free will is a good and God's knowledge of evil without partaking of it is a good. God the Father conveys knowledge of evil without partaking, but only through God the Son. The serpent was created good and represents that limited evil is necessary to make free will real. Second, the bronze snake on the pole. The bronze represents sin, the cause of the poison that kills, and the wood represents lifting up a standard, the necessity of confronting sin in its reality as a corrupter of ourselves, as opposed to embracing sin as if we have any power of moral judgment remaining. Third, Jesus on the cross: the sin-bearer yet the holy exalted one. The taw and tau crosses may be included among these but add nothing significant.

Satan's chain of corruption of this symbol is, first to multiply the snakes and poles to signal the (contradictory) diversity of his operation in contrast to the unity of God, as seen in Sumer; then to embrace God's symbol of unity and overload it as an object of worship in itself, independent from God, rather than a means of grace of God's operation; then, to associate one snake on a pole with a particular god of healing (Asclepius), and two snakes with a god of communication (Hermes), so as to delegate and redirect multiple confusable concepts under his auspices; then, to distort the crucifixion a legion of ways, while making pole-snakes as ubiquitous as dollars and their cognate brands.

We can also say that God created the neutral math behind the pentagram and hexagram, and Satan sought to corrupt this as well, starting with an association with health similarly to his longstanding association with the Rephaim, then introducing the pentagram into Israel as signifying Jerusalem, then gradually increasing the associations until the hexagram represents Israel worldwide. Along the way he has corrupted polygrams with associations with goats, false Wisdom, demons, astronomical stars, and the like. But the origins of polygram stars are as amoral shapes, and the similarity of associations between this chain and that of the snake-pole is due to demonic pressure.

However, when Amos speaks of the star of the gods his most immediate physical artifact conceptually is Nehushtan the bronze serpent worshipped in his day; and when Stephen speaks of it his most immediate physical symbol conceptually is the serpent of the rod of Asclepius. The fact that we moderns associate a different shape with "star" than what has become the dollar shape "$" may be a prophetic inclusion but is not the original intent.

Could it be said that God is using the text to convict people of use of the hexagram, or pentagram, by Satan? It's not impossible to say that as divine rather than human intent, but on that account we would need to say first that there are many symbolically different stars of Rephaim (hexagrams being run-of-the-mill), second that the hexagram has no special provenance with Satan (never solely his), and third that the hexagram has no special association with one people-group just because in our time and place this is our most common association (Hindus regard it both as the male-female unity and as the heart-mind unity, and it also represents the six states of Australia or of Northern Ireland). Therefore regarding the hexagram as "a star of Rephaim" (not "the") is not excluded but is neither Amos's or Stephen's conscious intent nor an abandonment of that neutral symbol to the Rephaim.

Add: Michael Heiser has collected numerous hexagrams, heptagrams, and octagrams from Babylonian seal art, which fills in a gap in polygram tradition in the millennia between Bronze Age Armenia and Amoraic Jerusalem.

This demonstrates to me that use of polygrams to represent shining stars is closely tied to, and probably derived from, the use of alternating angular points and wavy lines to represent the rays of the sun, especially when visible as patterns of straight lines through clouds. The sun is always encircled to contain the ray phenomenon, while the stars may or may not be encircled. There is no focus on an exact number of rays for stars, though the sun typically has eight in agreement with compass points.

Again, this reflects the tenuousness and malleability of the satanic chain of symbology. There is no evidence of certainty in Babylon that hexagrams specifically must be associated with Saturn specifically. Heiser's evidence is that they most often represent the Pleiades (Biblically Kimah, not Chiun), but they can stand in for any star but the sun. The typical satanic misdirection of using anything to mean anything other than the truth is repeated when Zecharia Sitchin repurposes the star symbol to mean not Saturn but the sun, even though the sun has a different aspect and Babylonian symbol. Babylon works to distinguish two related symbols, then Sitchin works to misguidedly rejoin and conflate the two as if one.

The contribution was precipitated by a faulty article that used a particular seal (VA243, seized upon by Sitchin) for yet another repurposing, claiming the central star to be (not Pleiades nor Sun but) Saturn again. Yet, as already shown, there is no evidence connecting the subject chain of transmission about Saturn, found in the Bible, with the chain of transmission about hexagrams, which were not even provably connected within the culture until 300 AD (Scholem's sourceable date) and which did not acquire a relationship with Saturn until more recently. Semiotics and symbolism can be made into exacting sciences.

Add: The connection of these semiotics to the logos of the AMA and AAP should be obvious; the AAP admits its sketchy history. However, it has been pointed out that, unlike real swaddling, the medieval "swaddled Christ" motif used by the AAP greatly resembles the core snake-pole symbol. Christ becomes the good tree and the mummy-style wrappings become the evil snake. This allows us to tie in another medieval icon representing the same conflict, the swaddled sphere depicted as having an encircling horizontal band and a downward-only vertical band, creating the image of a T inside an O. This represents the medieval mappa mundi called the O-T map because the T (with east on top) represented centering in the Holy Land with connection to the Don River (perceived as connecting to the Arctic), the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. (The remainder of the O was Asia, Europe, and Africa; aka Shem, Japheth, and Ham.) In other words, the "swaddling" of the O-T map was the oceans, which of course typically represent the wicked in the Bible just as the land represents the righteous. These depictions very often emphasized the impotence of the Christ and of the righteous, not the potence. Jerusalem was called the navel of the swaddled sphere. Therefore, T and O becomes yet another connection to the same symbol as asterisk and dollar are.

See, this is so vague I have no idea what it's talking about.

Progress, life extension, world change, invention, science, freedom: what's the alleged conspiracy even doing here against these things?

Why do you decline to say you're a Muslim or you're not a Muslim? You've been asked that before so you answer first please.

Even if it were as you say, the point is that you need a mod or an admin to remove the Politics tag (or to add it to the feed regardless). So we do what we can to move that direction if that's what the community wants. In the silence of admin, making the best case that the community is apolitical seems to be indicated, and isn't happening, and neither of us are actively doing it right now, so maybe this cascade has run its course.

this and this are the words of the living God

So the deficit of moderators enforcing apoliticality is an insignificant deficit to you, and the air and exposure is a benefit. I guess I figured that but will need to pray on what a clear valuation would be.

Your words seem to mean that the initial change from apolitical to political, if there was one, didn't have the benefits laid out. My recollection, which is not logged, is that when I was asked to join the mods about one month after the community's founding there was no doubt to any of us that the community declared sufficient authority over politics. Now, the first mod action, on the day of the community's founding, was to approve a post about "never forget" J6, and the next action the second day was to delete a meme that used AOC's political posture in a nonpolitical context (which I didn't wheel-war later). So I'd agree the line has always been very blurry, but I don't think it was something that admin was prepared to micromanage upon that first community rollout, and so the status a month later is the more normative.

If there was no discussion then, discussion now is certainly fine! But, before praying on it in more depth, I can say my first reaction is that to add apoliticality to our civility rules would be pretty similar to the state regulating political speech in a 501(c)(3). Hard sell, which is why I asked you.

While you’re at it, you should probably get c/Christianity unhidden too

Hmmm, why? Do you want to lay out for me the benefits and deficits of such a change?

Well, I've been engaging this with an assumption of lack of continuity with the current mod team.

The current team is names inactive over one year, plus Doggos and C who reserve the right of indefinite silence. I would presume those two accounts are responsible enough to let matters proceed when they've been informed and remain silent.

I don't know how the initial decision arose, but if it was by admin without full agreement by all the founding mods then at least those mods didn't war. However, 5 years later a changed situation that prompts mod action due to community consensus, if not opposed overtly by admin, would not be a wheel war. If admin undid something without public deliberation that mods publicly deliberated over, that would be wheel war (but if that description applies to anything then it would be like forums clearly created in bad faith and rapidly nulled).

I don't think charm is what works here. Personally it's still hard for me to justify making a case that the community is unified on any change, because discussion hasn't run its course and analysis of consensus may not be straightforward, and then there remains the question of what ruleset the community would favor for moderation. When I first implied ease of moderation of this community looked average, I think I was wrong, because there's a lot more going on than I realized. If I have time and desire to report it fully then I would try to account for all views expressed (no matter how trollish) and hope that some consistency of consensus can be gleaned therefrom. Perhaps I'll have enough vision to make a proposal that can get it over the hump, but for now it's the threads that have arisen.

[Ad:] Are you voting against moderation and in favor of relative anarchy?

That account is suspended and if you see its like return just ping Paleo immediately.

Thanks for the faint praise, you're more nuanced than I thought.

For me, 1.5 years, and I documented the event for people who bring it up.

Um, pretty simple, if the mods remove the political tag with credible evidence that an apolitical standard is being applied, then the admins will either let it go or raise their objection. I suppose it's possible for the admins to do nothing and leave it out even with community effort, but they can continue being appealed to. But we have a few steps to take before we can test them on that, don't we? And (ad) voting for moderation would allow a moderator to remove the tag, wouldn't it?

Then (ad) you would vote YES here because you favor having a moderator to remove the Politics flag.

I would love to see a consensus that Conspiracies is apolitical along the definition I just gave. Perhaps it is!

Is that one direction finite or infinite?

Maybe directed finity for one implies undirected infinity for all.

This comment suggests to me that we might need an apolitical conspiracies page if such a thing could be sustained.

It seems the simplest method would be to repurpose 4thHorsemanNews if those contributors agreed. That would entail (1) unlock it, (2) appoint a new moderator, (3) verify consensus that it can be "apolitical conspiracies" and what that means. The mod could then restore most all the hidden posts and logs except for what is clearly political, and recontact the original contributors. For me a working definition of political would be reference to political parties, orgs, or agents, but not to generic reference to ideas, positions, or documents.

Other methods are possible but the News generated a great initial mass and a lot of content that is now hidden for unclear reasons (including mine), and I'd like to see all that not wither.

If admin finds it necessary not to comment on how they handle the reported death of a moderator, as usual I seek to understand their silence. It seems here though that this could be one of the cases like those where admin recognized the need to award a community. Obviously that's another admin intervention beyond the one that Conspiracies is thinking about and the one Graph is backhandedly seeking, but something possible if you have time. You might ask LoneWulf for more about his contact with the mod's wife.

All and Trending work as expected (even though "All" here means "some of All"). All/New contains all live and unfiltered as expected. Trending/New I just confirmed again to contain those same 5 porn items if you scroll to their timestamp. So clearly Trending/New is missing some check on the NSFW tag.

However, I may have oversimplified it previously, because it would seem the expectation is that All/New is really all and Trending/New would use filters like NSFW because otherwise it'd be identical to All/New; and obviously Trending/New skips TheDonald. So I guess that missing the NSFW tag here is an unexpected continuing behavior that needs looking into, and thanks in advance for passing that detail on.

But marking WizardDuels as not app-safe is just an overwatch one-off.

After you wrote this Grim deleted it on my report. However, the log says he then approved it again, but it doesn't show, so that's a separate minor anomaly. See my response to Paleo, to be written next.

Inception, not "at inception"; towards death, not "at death"? Process of dying, not "death"?

Bond suggests "Where can life turn"; so does freedom.

Kosmoi (multiversal) follow sufficient perception of kosmos (universal).

Free thinking, transparency, fairness, nature.

Argue aka "make white (argent)", enlighten.

All the sons he didn't kill were busy in other regions than Judea at the time, sorry. His favorite at the moment was Antipater who was stuck in Rome a long time. Sounds very ad hoc and driven by a desire to find something from a distance that those on the scene didn't find. I respect that your sources of authority are not the same as the traditional grammaticohistorical method of archaeology, but it'd be better to test those sources than to put out the misbegotten conclusions first.

Great! You moderate some essential communities very well and you do have the experience. As a quick answer, I'm confident we can include more users as "interested in discussion" based on the prior threads. I was thinking I or someone ought to do a bit of analysis on all responses to the subject so far, but they do need a bit of time to crystallize. It's possible to redirect people here as a megathread, if the cats can be herded. So I'll be back here.

If you want homework, you might look at the questions u/Neo1 posed me about shills. For instance, I'd frame, what constitutes "excessive, unnecessary and/or bullying 'meta' posts"? That would seem to be our best rule against forum sliding on the meta level but it doesn't handle topical sliding by the gradual change in the character of contributions toward some theories and not other theories. There's no forum rule that tells where our freethinking imaginations are intended to go, which makes us an easy target for sliders. We could (continue to) build consensus about where we're going (namely just "a fairer and more transparent world") as a preparatory antidote for this risk.

He doesn't define the framing that "kabbalah becomes digital life".

If you know Aronofsky's movie π you would probably get a better window. Everything in the cosmos is mathematically determined. Kabbalah seeks core congruences between numbers and all things. Healthy application of the principle is when Christians say seven is the number of perfection, or when Matthew implies fourteen is the number of King David. It can easily be used unhealthily. I anticipate that "digital life" means the recognition that our lives have mathematical determinism (that doesn't contradict freewill) and that AI is an attempt to model that. And, when unexplained, it is effectively magic. It would probably need Messianic intervention to help us get it right.

Would you like some help vibrating kabbaloth, creating glamim, manifesting kosmoi, or the like?

(Herod was about 68 and was too sick and impotent to have done this wholly unevidenced speculation. His bowels were in the process of premature decomposition. I can check the history if you like. It's a bit facile to accept the Biblical account of Herod's genocide, which gives wholly different reasons, while rejecting the same account on the point of Mary's innocence.)

Official explanation: The Spirit of God overshadowed Mary so that what was born of her was the Son of God.

My details: Since the Angel of God was capable of manifesting as many things and was the preexistent form of Jesus, the Angel simply manifested as the seed (of the woman) and then took on her flesh, i.e., emptied and disseminated itself throughout one spotless cell of her flesh. Upon one cell recognizing another the chemical propagation of the seed's nature is instant throughout the zygotic boundary. From then on the divine nature no longer manifested as a divine-angelic nature but only as a divine-human nature.

(This happened on 25 Dec, 5 BC. Jesus was born on 6 Oct, 4 BC. At 3 a.m. no less.)

Joseph as adoptive father conferred full Jewish and Davidic rights upon his son because adoption was as strong a tie as natural generation. Jesus's adoption was never in question, only his legitimacy.