The theory that a Full Moon brings out the loony people has been debunked by more than a few sources over the years, but that doesn’t stop people believing in the power of a Full Moon.
You only have to look at the Blood Moons that took place only a few short years ago, with the dire predictions of impending apocalypse and a worldwide shortage of chocolate to understand that events like these really do short-circuit the brains of the stark raving mad vulnerable and otherwise peaceful masses.
Now take the coming solar eclipse – and kiss your full moon goodbye. Crazy has a new king:
You must like cats. Drugs are OK
It isn’t only those trying to bump mankind up the evolutionary ladder that you need to watch out for. Apparently, the Lizard Man may also be on the loose during the eclipse:
A group calling themselves “Kentuckians for Coal” are protesting the solar eclipse, according to this press release. The group is angry about many things, including fake-news media hyping the eclipse while ignoring coal, overpriced souvenirs, and and the coming invasion of prostitutes.
The press release read like satire so I contacted the group to ask if it was such and was curtly rebuffed. “The coal industry in the United States is not a laughing matter” media coordinator Major Joseph Calvon informed me. He also wrote:
“We need the coal industry to be around for generations to come. Which is why we are protesting during the solar eclipse.”
I was still confused, but a Major outranks me so I didn’t ask further questions. Presumably the group is protesting the decline of the coal industry during a time when the sun won’t be able to generate solar power, but the press release clearly says that the group is “Protesting the solar eclipse”.
Adding to my confusion are the suggested slogans for the protest signs. One suggests “Blame Obama”, because sure I guess the president is responsible for the alignment of the moon and the sun now.
Another suggestion reads “Clean Coal!”. I’m guessing they must be thinking that the exclamation point is like a disclaimer or something. “Clean Coal! (actually, it doesn’t exist)”. Something like that.
My absolute personal favorite, though is “That’s What She Said!” Which I think is enough said on that topic. I wish them well.
At least there’s this to give us a laugh:
Heed Justin’s words if you want to live through the eclipse!
And I’ll leave you with this little gem that’s doing the rounds on Facebook:
Lord, give us a sign!
I’ll take a look at the religious folk in my next post.
Ever since those early days that we rarely talk about anymore – when humanity was just taking its baby steps and gurgling happily away at nothing like any oblivious toddler – we’ve seen signs and portents in most everything.
Things like the sun and the moon were worshipped as gods. Clouds were platforms for them and their angels to look down on us in judgment like parents looking down at their cot-bound offspring. The idea became universal among us.
Yeah. mankind pretty much never left that toddler stage.
All of a sudden gods were the IN thing and you could find messages from them in things like sheep guts and horse hearts. If you gathered the bones of your enemies and cast them down you could decipher the future. Plus they made a nice tinkly sound on the cave floor.
Then we discovered fire, and in the flames, we found a hotline direct to the gods as well as other hallucinogenic experiences, depending on what fuel you were burning. Cavemen would sit for hours giggling at each other giggling, someone would get the munchies and order take out sabre-tooth, they all grew beards and sang about Lucy in the sky. That sort of thing.
But when the gods were angry, or busy fighting each other or partying too much, ‘things’ started happening in the sky above us. Thunderstorms heralded the gods’ fury, flaming balls shot across the heavens, presumably to smite someone’s enemy, and every once in a while things got really bad.
Really really bad. Like the sun going dark kind of bad. Like the end of the world is coming kind of bad. Like whichever god whose fan club you were a member had decided enough was enough and it was time to wipe out everyone, whether they had renewed their membership or not.
You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this right now. If you haven’t, keep reading – if you’ve read this far you might as well see where this crazy Captain dude is going with his caveman and gods epic. (If you have? Read anyway you might get a chuckle or two more).
Still with me? Awesome! You see, the point of it all is this: mankind really hasn’t done a lot of growing up since those caveman toddler days. We may have whittled down our number of gods a little, but as soon as we see celestial events like eclipses (either kind), or the recent Blood Moons, we can’t help but think it’s Over. That our time on this little ball in space is at an End. The only difference now is that some of us have little books we like to carry that document our particular god’s instructions to its followers and helpful pointers on what to look out for when that god gets tired of having worshippers.
For every recent astronomical event – I could go ‘human experience’ recent, or ‘lifetime’ recent, but for argument’s sake let’s just take the last ten years as a sample – there are more than a few claimants that This Is The End. That god (whichever one) is reclaiming earth and Judgement Day is at hand.
Wikipedia makes mention of thirteen times that people were predicting the End in the last decade alone. I would reckon I’ve read at least six different predictions in the last year alone. Every time the chosen date comes along the prophet claims to have misinterpreted their handbook and offers up a revised date. And people keep falling for it.
If you’ve ever read the short story anthology “The End Is Nigh” (if you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor!) there’s a brilliant entry in which a charlatan founds his own cult on a prediction of the apocalypse. He picks a day entirely at random and the world actually ends. I keep thinking of this story every time I read yet another Judgement Day claim.
As for the Great North American Eclipse? I’ll have some more to say on that in the coming days. It won’t be the End of the World but it will be a spectacular event that you shouldn’ miss if you’re in its path. Forget your god’s book and go and be amazed at something as amazingly mundane as the moon blocking the light of the sun from reaching your vantage point – if you happen to be in view of it.
And remember that the rest of the world won’t see what you’re seeing – and that’s no way for Judgement Day to kick off, is it?
You can find out more about the coming eclipse at the NASA site:
It sounds scary, doesn’t it? Or a bit like the name of a death metal band. And starting very soon and continuing on until the end of September 2015, you’re going to be hearing and seeing those three words a lot. Already it has been the focus of books and websites. The coming Blood Moon Tetrad is being described as the herald of the End Times and promises to culminate in Judgement Day.
But here at After The Last Day I live and breath the Apocalypse (slightly smoky if you wanted to know). I can confidently tell you Jesus isn’t coming to Earth in a fiery chariot and sending the non- believers to hell.
So why do I believe you should really fear the coming Blood Moon Tetrad? Because every religious zealot out there is champing at the bit for the End Times to happen. And a lot of people are going to make a lot of money exploiting the Blood Moon Tetrad.
So what IS the Blood Moon Tetrad?
Glad you asked! In a nutshell the Blood Moon Tetrad is a buzzword buzzphrase that was adopted by the brains behind the people who want to exploit everyone. There actually is no officially recognised term ‘Blood Moon’, not in astronomy.
I’m not going into specific verses from the bible, but there’s talk about the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood before the day of the LORD comes. A nice and generic prophecy, a lot like Ragnarök’s signs and portents (but a whole lot less fun – I rather liked the fire-sword wielding giants), and one that can be bent any which way you like. Reading the above passage, pretty much any eclipse could be a herald of doomsday, and to the superstitious people who formed the bible, pretty much any eclipse might have been.
During a total lunar eclipse, the sun, the earth and the moon are in alignment (perfect for pagan sacrifices, vampiric rituals, and tea parties). But because Earth is blocking the sun, the only light the moon receives is refracted from the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, which makes it look red. The moon I mean.
A lunar Tetrad is four successive total lunar eclipses, without any partial eclipses muddying the water in between them. There are some partial solar eclipses happening in between all the total lunar ones in this sequence, so its probably important to make the distinction – its a lunar Tetrad, not simply a Tetrad.
Why are these Tetrad things such a big deal?
Lunar Tetrads are rare occurrances. From 1 AD to the end of the century (2100 AD) there will have been only 62 recorded Lunar Tetrads. This NASA page does an excellent job of boring you with all the details, if you want to have a read.
This century alone will host 8 Lunar Tetrads, and there were none at all in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. What the religious nuts are exclaiming over is the fact that the 2014-2015 Tetrad will fall on the Jewish feasts of Passover and Tabernacles.
The April eclipses align with Passover, and the October / September eclipses with Tabernacles. Including this Tetrad, that’s happened only 8 times. According to religious historians, significant events have occurred during these dates. Religion isn’t my strong point so I’m not going to bother entering that particular debate but if you want to know more, and can keep an open mind, check out http://redmoonrapture.com/ – but if you’re not religious, make sure you turn off your speakers first!
There’s nearly four and a half minutes of my life I’m never getting back…
The blog Massive Truth tempers that information a little more and is probably the better read of the two.
What should you take from all this? Are these events mere coincidence? Well, in a word, yeah. When you consider that the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar and is therefore based on the patterns of the moon, its pretty obvious that at least some of their major events will fall on a full/eclipse moon.
To suggest (as some have – not the above two sites) that the Holocaust was caused by a Blood Moon Tetrad is not only offensive it’s wrong – by about 12 years.
If a Blood Moon rises and nobody sees it, is it still a Blood Moon?
Blood Tetrad April 2014 Eclipse visibility
Here’s the actual schedule for the Blood Moon Tetrad:
April 15, 2014
October 8, 2014
April 4, 2015
September 28, 2015
The 2014 events, the first of which is coming up very soon now, will be visible from North and South America (see below), Australia, and some of Europe. It won’t be visible from Israel. Of the 2015 events, only the last one will have any visibility from Israel – and that just before sunrise. So the question is: if nobody in Israel can see the Blood Moon Tetrad, is it still a Blood Moon Tetrad?
‘Ware the exploiters
Christian Pastor John Hagee wrote a book in 2013 called Four Blood Moons: Something Is About To Change. Evidently a few people read it, and starting blogging about it. He’s probably about to make a bucketload of money from it now that the Blood Moon Tetrad is in the headlines. This guy is against Gay Marriage, thinks God sent hurricane Katrina to teach New Orleans a lesson, and claims Hitler was fulfilling God’s Will. Why people listen to him is beyond me but I’m sure his book will start making headlines.
The wnd.com website interrupts their article about the Blood Moon Tetrad to remind you to:
Don’t be left in the dark! Find out everything you need to know about the “Blood Moons” phenomenon. Get the DVD, the autographed book and the calendar direct from the WND Superstore.
Wow. They wouldn’t even let you finish the article first.
Captain Doomsday’s Final Word
You have my apologies. Although I like a good Apocalypse as much as the next conspiracy nut, this just isn’t one of them. Religion is a powerful thing, powerful enough that the unscrupulous or just plain misguided can make claims that can’t be backed up – and which can exploit people’s innate need for belonging. It’s the reason why there won’t be a Judgement Day version of This Is How The World Ends.
Religion has always snubbed science unless it is to its benefit: now that we can predict lunar Tetrads and have charted their history, God suddenly owns them. That’s not true. A lunar Tetrad – any Tetrad – is an astronomical event to witness, not a Hand of God event to be feared. So please, beware the exploiters! And please click on the ads on this webpage so I can make money keep the blog running.
What do you think? Does the coming blood moon tetrad worry you? Or do you think its a load of bull aimed at selling books? Have your say in the comments below.
