Rowling Donates £1 Million to Charities on Battle of Hogwarts Anniversary

May 2, 2020 by Leave a Comment

In terms of Rowling’s net worth, of course, £1 million is peanuts. She once owned a yacht, just as a ‘for example,’ worth $28 million dollars (which she supposedly sold at a $10 million loss).

I begin with that note to anticipate nay-sayers wanting to downplay this characteristically generous and thoughtful gift on Rowling’s part. This is £1 million on top of the many millions she gives annually to Volant Charities and to Lumos — and the incredible income tax burden she bears without complaint or dodges (she pays 50% of her earnings which made last year’s bill £48.6 million — that’s $60 million, folks).

This gift will make a tremendous difference in the lives of the homeless and those suffering from domestic violence during this quarantine. And that is something we all should acknowledge, a gift to those in need for which we can be openly appreciative sans snark.

So, hats off and three cheers on this Battle of Hogwarts Anniversary for the thoughtfulness of The Presence. Thank you, Mrs Murray, for the good example.

Filed Under: Twitter

Rowling Says She Had Corona Virus?

April 30, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Read the whole thread here.

This is perhaps the single most important tweet The Presence has made since returning to Twitter because it seems to have disarmed the Horrible Herd of Social Media Puritans, who, up to this time and since Rowling’s transgender rights tweet last December, had been standing by to shout “TERF!” and “Transphobe!” in response to anything she posted. The news that she had had something like Covid-19 symptoms (good disciple of UK taboos, she chose to stay home rather than receive a confirmed diagnosis — thereby “saving the NHS”) simultaneously empowered the faithful to express their love and concern with best wishes posted from around the world on the thread.

And she came back and is posting on Twitter almost daily — a mixed blessing, I think, but a notable event. Your thoughts?

Filed Under: Twitter

Strike5 To Be All About Marilyn Manson?

February 3, 2020 by 12 Comments

Late last week Satanic rocker Marilyn Manson tweeted that J. K. Rowling had sent him a gift:

I think this is a strong pointer to Strike5 having Marilyn Manson song titles and lyrics as its epigraph and story backdrop the way that Blue Oyster Cult lines and themes were so evident in Career of Evil. Here are my three reasons beyond the gift of red roses, which floral present, unlike Manson fans at Metal Head Zone, I do not think suggests a romantic relationship between Rowling and the Rock Star. She’s a Fat Cops fan, remember? My bet is the roses are just a thank you for permission to use his lyrics in her new book.

Three Reasons Strike5 will be a Marilyn Manson Novel:

(1) The Anton LaVey Connection: We learned in Career of Evil that Jeff Whittaker is a rock star wannabe whose favorite album was by the murderer Charles Manson and whose reading materials were largely restricted to Aleister Crowley texts and The Satanic Bible by American organist Anton LaVey. The LaVey connection is a big deal because Whittaker’s son with Leda Strike is named Switch LaVey Bloom Whittaker. We already have a connection with Marilyn Manson in the Charles Manson album (the living Manson’s name is a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson’s names) but with LaVey we get at the heart of Marilyn Manson’s Satanic beliefs. From the rock star’s wikipedia page:

Manson was a friend of Anton LaVey,[126][127] who even inducted him as a minister in the Church of Satan, although Manson downplayed this. When questioned whether he was a minister in the Church of Satan by Bill O’Reilly, Manson responded with “No, not necessarily. That was something earlier. It was a friend of mine who’s now dead, who was a philosopher that I thought I learned a lot from. And that was a title I was given, so a lot of people made a lot out of it. But it’s not a real job, I didn’t get paid for it.”[128]

As a result, he has been described as “the highest profile Satanist ever” with strong anti-Christian views and social Darwinist leanings.[129]However, Manson himself denies this, and stated the following:

“ I’m not a misanthrope. I’m not a nihilist. I’m not an atheist. I believe in spirituality, but it really has to come from somewhere else. I learned a long time ago, you can’t try to change the world, you can just try to make something in it. I think that’s my spirituality, it’s putting something into the world. If you take all the basic principles of any religion, it’s usually about creation. There’s also destruction, but creation essentially. I was raised Christian. I went to a Christian school, because my parents wanted me to get a better education. But when I got kicked out I was sent to public school, and got beat up more by the public school kids. But then I’d go to my friend’s Passover and have fun. ”
— Marilyn Manson[130]

Manson is also familiar with the writings of Aleister Crowley and Friedrich Nietzsche. He quotes Crowley throughout his autobiography, including the Thelemic anthem, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”[131] Crowley’s esoteric subject matter forms an important leitmotif in much of Manson’s early work.

(2) The Tattoos! Rowling recently revealed she has a Solve et Coagula tattoo (or had one temporarily; it’s only been spotted at the Ripple of Hope Award dinner). That was discussed here and its supposed relationship with the Baphomet Satanist idol was dismissed as ridiculous here. Turns out Marilyn Manson also has Solve et Coagula tattoos and one of the Baphomet head as well (see above). From the MansonWiki listing of his many tattoos:

Solve Coagula In January 2014, Manson revealed new tattoos that goes from the back edge of his hands to his wrists. The term originates from Solve et Coagula, an alchemy reference. Roughly translated, it means “Dissolve and join together” or transmutation. The tattoo was done at Will Rise Studio in L.A.
Baphomet On Manson’s 21st birthday, band member and friend Gidget Gein took him to Tattoos By Lou in Miami, Florida to get his first tattoo. At this same session, Gein got a Creepy Crawly Spider tattooed on his wrist. Baphomet became known in the nineteenth century when it was applied to pseudo-historical conspiracy theories elaborating on the suppression of the Templars, and it became associated with a “Sabbatic Goat” image drawn by Eliphas Lévi. The tattoo appears on his upper left arm, under The Lucky Devil.
(3) The Crowley Natal Chart Twitter Header: On 25 January in addition to posting two tweets on her long neglected twitter page (well, neglected since 19 December’s Da Tweet explosion) including one announcing that “Galbraith5” was finished, she changed her twitter page header. It’s an astrological natal chart, one belonging to Anton LaVey, Marilyn Manson, and Jeff Whittaker shared influence, Aleister Crowley.

Mix all that together and I think it’s a good bet that Strike5 will be a nightmare trip into the Satanist rock and roll scene via Jeff Whittaker with a soundtrack provided by the recordings of Marilyn Manson. Serious Striker Joanne Gray has written me to suggest the title of Strike5 could be Manson’s heavy metal 2012 album Born Villain. I suspect we’ll know if that is a bullseye prediction by the end of the month, maybe even this week.

Three quick notes:

  • All of the above, all of it, came to my attention — the roses, the tattoos, the natal chart — through the researches and generosity of Nick Jeffery who sent links to each. A hat tip and a big thank you to Nick!
  • Yes, I think we’re going to learn at last in Strike5 who sent the 50 roses to Strike’s office in Career of Evil. No, I don’t think they were for Robin or from Matt Cunliffe. I wonder if Marilyn Manson opened his card? And of course I get that Born Villain or whatever Strike5 is titled if a Manson themed novel is a lock down parallel with Strike3’s Blue Oyster Cult and one more bit of ring evidence that this is a chiastic seven book series.
  • Is Rowling a Satanist? No, she isn’t. Is she going to enjoy writing about the dangers of the real occult, the madness of popularized rock n’ roll nihilism, as a contrast with the risible supposed dangers of her Hogwarts Saga? Yes, I think she is. [Note to the friend who continues to try and post under a variety of identities on various threads here about Rowling the Satanist: get a new IP address for better luck getting past our filters.]
Let me know what you think!
Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Twitter

Rowling Finishes Strike5 — Big Hint? Aleister Crowley’s Horoscope Header!

January 25, 2020 by 10 Comments

The Official Announcement this afternoon on twitter:

It has been a busy day at the neglected Rowling twitter feed. Careful observers will note that she re-tweeted a posting from American comedian (and hard core leftist and atheist) Patton Oswalt a few hours before this book announcement and that she changed the header and cameo on her page as well.

Nota bene: her global social media following post TERFing controversy has grown on the twitter platform by 200,000. So much for the disappearance of Rowling fandom…

Three quick notes that we will discuss here at greater length in the next week:

(1) Nick Jeffery has ID’d the horoscope in the header as the natal chart of Aleister Crowley.

I’d love to think she is trolling us here at HogwartsProfessor because of the Baphomet posts I put up earlier in the month (in which I explained that she isn’t a Satanist or Crowley disciple), but have to think that it really is a pointer to the return of Jeff Whittaker in Strike5, in parallel with Career of Evil, and that a la the death of Harry’s godfather in Order of the Phoenix, we will be seeing the death of Cormoran’s step-father in his fifth adventure. Whittaker is the ardent satanist and Crowley devotee in the series. Good news for Shanker fans!

(2) Rowling is back on twitter, it seems, with the first real postings of note — with the exception of 19 December, of course — since January 2019. The sabbatical seems to have been a New Year’s resolution along the lines of, “I won’t post again until I have submitted the Strike5 manuscript.”

‘Da Tweet’ on transgender overreach? That may have been a family passion, it turns out. See Dr Neil Murray’s private twitter account, @Slowfinger45, for his several re-tweeted postings on transgender matters here, here, here, and here (there are more; hat tip to Nick Jeffery again for discovering both Murray’s ‘Fat Cops’ rock band — husband plays the keyboards, hence ‘Dr Slowfinger’– and his hidden twitter account).

I wonder, though, if the new cameo picture of her with hand over mouth isn’t a joke of sorts, a signal to her Universal Studio handlers, that she isn’t going to be speaking her mind here about social justice and political issues; Patton Oswalt is covering the impeachment hearings for her…

(3) I have been re-reading the Strike novels this past week, and, half-way through Lethal White for the umpteenth time, I realized who killed Leda Strike. It was Uncle Ted. More on that tomorrow and in days to come! Let the full bore conversation about Strike and speculation about the new novel begin!

 

 

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes, Twitter

Emma Watson on Transgenderism

January 12, 2020 by 2 Comments

This interview with Paris Lees, a transgender woman, for British Vogue was released last November, which is to say “before Da Tweet,” Rowling’s solve et coagula moment of redefinition. Hat tip to the friend who suggested I watch it in light of Watson’s silence after Rowling’s tweet; it’s easy to see how conflicted she must be between her thoughts on this issue and her debts and loyalty to Rowling as mentor. (The video is cued to where the relevant conversation begins and it continues for seven minutes before they segue to movie talk.)

Only Ezra Miller and Evanna Lynch of all the Wizarding World movie stars have spoken their minds about Da Tweet and neither of them gave a decisive thumbs up or thumbs down vis a vis what Rowling said and whether they agree or disagree. More on that anon. Any thoughts about Emma Watson’s situation or what she says to Paris Lees? Her fears for a six year old transgender child in the UK?

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Twitter