Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a new law that reduces penalties for domestic violence, and his enablers in the media defended his partial legalization of domestic abuse by turning to pseudoscience. Citing the work of Satoshi Kanazawa, a disgraced evolutionary psychologist who once claimed that African women were “objectively” unattractive, a Russian newspaper now claims that domestic violence is a net benefit for society because it promotes the birth of more males. Yes, the article is both immoral and sexist! I say this as preface for today’s topic, which also offers an astonishing claim about gender. As I have noted over the past few weeks, a large number of fringe historians have boarded the Trump Train for reasons either ideological or mercenary. Today’s entry in the wall of shame is Ancient Aliens pundit and “luxury” tour guide William Henry, the self-described “investigative mythologist.” Henry recently updated his website, which now features at least six pictures of himself on the homepage, and posted an article in which he claims that Donald Trump has received the sacred blessing of the Divine Feminine. I will wait while you laugh. Yes, the man who once bragged that he could grab women “by the pussy” whenever he wanted now allegedly has the blessing Mary Magdalene and the secret goddesses of America because the occult conspiracy that runs the world has chosen him to save us all. Oh, and Henry also reports that Trump is “linked” to Solomon and will cause Jesus to return when he kicks the Muslims out of Jerusalem. “When this prophecy is fulfilled, the Christ/Messiah will be seen riding upon a cloud ship of light to the rebuilt Solomon’s Temple. This is His throne. It is an awesome thing and is one of my special research subjects.” Henry does not explicitly endorse this vision of Trump—in past writings he expressed some misgivings about the rush among some evangelicals to bestow divine honors on Trump—but he leaves no doubt that he expects his readers to do so. His statements are carefully written to avoid actually saying anything. They are ambiguous enough that you could read them as either endorsing or rejecting Trump, but while he cleverly sits on the fence, he has no compunction about tying the Trump presidency to his fantastical pseudo-Christian spirituality. Henry bases his divine Trump fantasy on an invocation given by Timothy Cardinal Dolan at Trump’s inauguration. The prayer came from chapter 9 of the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which is considered canonical by Catholics and the Orthodox, but not by Protestants. The prayer is notable because it contains a personification of wisdom (Sophia) as a woman, which is what prompted Henry to fantasize that Dolan was calling upon the Divine Feminine, with actual and tangible results in the real world. “This particular summoning of the Divine Feminine Wisdom from the Divine Throne was especially potent as it was performed at the most powerful sacred spot on earth, the U.S. Capitol temple,” Henry said. In what universe is the U.S. Capitol the most powerful sacred spot on Earth? Chosen by committee, by the happenstance of political disagreement, it barely qualifies as a purposeful selection. “What most do not realize, but as Dr. Mark Gray and I revealed in our book, ‘Freedom’s Gate: The Lost Secrets of the U.S. Capitol’, is that when it was built the U.S. Capitol was viewed as a recreation of Solomon’s Temple, it was known as the Temple of Celestial Liberty and it was called the Arc (sic) of the American Covenant!” One wonders whether this was before or after the Capitol was rebuilt in the 1860s, with new wings and a new dome. Apparently, sanctity is a property that can be acquired with cash expenditures and a protractor. What a shame that Sir Charles Barry and Paul Wallot didn’t know this when constructing Westminster Palace and the Reichstag in the same era. According to earlier writings from Henry, the sanctity came after the rebuild, when he believes the remodeled Capitol became a duplicate of the Egyptian temple at Luxor! The phrase “Ark of the American Covenant” is not an official designation but was used by Henry James to describe the Capitol in 1905. The same phrase had also been used in the nineteenth century to describe the American ballot box, the Constitution, and the Monroe Doctrine. The Victorians were rather florid in their prose, and the line, while poetic, was essentially meaningless. The other phrase, about the “Celestial Temple,” is from the 1788 poem Birth of Columbia by Benjamin Russell. It should not be news that the Founders built the first federal buildings on the model of Greco-Roman temples. Neo-Classical was sort of their thing. William Thornton, who designed the original Capitol, explicitly modeled it on the Ionic temples of Greece because he considered them simple and beautiful. His plan was modified by committees and subsequent architects before anything was actually built. Imagine how many occultists would have to have been involved in order to pull off the conspiracy Henry imagines over a period of almost 100 years. But here is where things get weird. Henry knows that his audience is largely female since he talks about traditionally feminine things related to improving one’s connection to the universe and improving one’s emotional and spiritual feelings. So how does a man who seems willing to view Trump as a harbinger of Revelation (“Yes, the blaring trump of revelation called the world to attention on January 20, 2017.”) balance that with the fact that much of his audience will be made up of women who oppose Trump? Henry reconciles the opposites by arguing that the Women’s March which followed Trump’s inauguration was actually a divine spectacle meant to imbue Trump with feminine power! Donald Trump must have felt the Divine Feminine’s burning love. William Henry has long flattered his mostly American audience by telling them that America is infused with divine essence and home to God’s chosen people. Late last year he fantasized about communing with Trump to lead to UFO-angel “disclosure.” But even he seemed to have some reservations about Evangelical Christian fantasies about Trump smashing the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding Solomon’s Temple so Jesus can return, riding on a golden, beam-shooting “Resurrection Machine” built out of the Ark of the Covenant, the Rod of Aaron, and a bunch of other biblical bric-a-brac. “What the world needs now is Christ’s forerunner and a real estate deal maker and developer who can take on the impossible task of harmonizing the combative Jewish, Christian and Islamic believers and rebuilding the Tower…for all mankind,” Henry wrote with a touch of sarcasm. He seemed offended at the Evangelical suggestion that Trump was the reincarnated John the Baptist, but nevertheless he was unwilling to entirely discount the idea that Trump would fulfill Jewish prophecy and rebuild the Temple.
27 Comments
At Risk
2/9/2017 11:52:04 am
Yes, Jason, obviously the present structure would need to go, unless a future temple could encapsulate it while still keeping the new temple's "integrity" intact.
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Tom
2/9/2017 01:11:10 pm
The Dome was built on the designated site where christ was expected to return to earth (also where Abraham was thought to have offered Isaac as a sacrifice) by christian arabs. I doubt that building a new blood offering temple of solomon over the landing ground would go down well with the archetypal reformer of the jewish religion.
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Weatherwax
2/9/2017 04:13:38 pm
But, yes, many people believe that the Temple will be rebuilt before their imaginary sky daddy will come and kill all those other people not like us. Which group of loonies will start a pointless war, is the question for our future.
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Mhe
2/9/2017 06:59:42 pm
Isn't there a less literal Christian interpretation of the prophesy based on the New Covenent where The Temple is "The Church" and that the second coming could occur at any time? It isn't based on a human agenda but God's.
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El Cid
2/9/2017 09:52:13 pm
No, this is unpossible. Clearly the Supreme Being of the Universe who is also his own son must wait for humans to take care of a real estate dispute before magically manifesting back upon Earth.
flip
2/9/2017 12:06:04 pm
A man telling people that another man is the godsend to women. And look, a female god approving at that! They couldn't be more obviously patronising if they tried.
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V
2/11/2017 12:05:38 pm
Oh, wear a bustle now! Because if you do it now, it's your own choice and for fun. If you wait, it's a mandate and therefore will suck automatically.
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Harry
2/9/2017 12:58:10 pm
Donald Trump grabbed the Divine Feminine by Her Divine Femininity!
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Uncle Ron
2/9/2017 01:15:22 pm
Mr. Henry is, at the very least, deluded if not simply bat-shit crazy. This blog is already several times more coverage than his rantings deserve.
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Typos everywhere
2/9/2017 01:19:10 pm
The frequent occurrence of typos in this article make it unbearable to read and is certainly characteristic of an amateurish attempt at journalism. There is "if" for of, the lack of prepositions in other key places, and so many more. I know that everyone else who posts here loves to make fun of the typos of those they hate, but there should be some standard here.
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Scott Hamilton
2/9/2017 01:43:10 pm
I'm sure you meant '"if" for "of"' and "some standards here."
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Tm
2/9/2017 01:49:04 pm
I never make fun of typos. I'd much rather make fun of the anal retentive.
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Scott Hamilton
2/9/2017 01:51:24 pm
Too bad you failed at that, as well as basic punctuation, grammar, and spotting your own hypocrisy.
Tm
2/9/2017 02:12:44 pm
Scott, please note the reply indentation which indicates that my remark was directed to "typos everywhere", not to you. I was busy writing my reply at the same time you were posting yours.
tm
2/9/2017 01:31:42 pm
I don't get to read your blog as often as I used to. My loss. I laughed when I read "But here is where things get weird." halfway through your post. After learning that the "Devine Feminine" is a misogynist, I hope to God you were being sarcastic. Then again, that was before I read the post from the preposition police.
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Tm
2/9/2017 01:36:36 pm
Oops! DIVINE! The spelling police may be after me ;p
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V
2/11/2017 12:08:00 pm
The Divine Feminine is not, you're right, it's her jealous and less famous sister, Devine, who is misogynistically supporting Trump, purely out of spite. It's short-sighted, of course, but there are reasons Devine is less famous, after all.
Scott Hamilton
2/9/2017 01:49:27 pm
One correction: Dr. Kanazawa is not, despite what the linked article says, an evolutionary biologist. He's an evolutionary psychologist, and he works at the London School of Economics. He's a biologist in about the same way Deepak Chropa is a nuclear physicist.
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2/9/2017 01:54:48 pm
Duly noted and corrected. I'd never heard of Kanazawa until today, to be honest. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention in 2011.
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Only Me
2/9/2017 02:04:55 pm
I read all of this and only one question came to mind: are these people delusional?
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crainey
2/9/2017 04:25:26 pm
I suspect Elizabeth Warren would have something to say about this!
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Not the Comte de Saint Germain
2/9/2017 10:33:21 pm
Feminine wisdom is to Donald Trump as heat is to liquid nitrogen.
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Americanegro
2/11/2017 08:33:29 pm
So like a fact of life, like gravity?
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Not the Comte de Saint Germain
2/12/2017 01:04:17 am
Heat and wisdom are qualities that are present, to varying degrees, in specific things. Liquid nitrogen and Trump are specific things that contain so little of the quality in question that the quality might as well not be there at all.
Kal
2/10/2017 12:08:12 pm
If Henry was talking about "Divine: The filthiest person alive!" from 1970s campy horror maverick John Waters, a 300 lb drag queen who famously scooped up dog feces to 'How much is that Doggy in the Window?' in a film called Pink Flamingos? Sure, Trump worships the late drag queen, d. 1989. Glen Milstead (Divine) would get a kick out of Trump being in charge, and he would proclaim 'I am the filthiest' once more. After all, Divine also wanted to be queen.
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Americanegro
2/11/2017 09:15:14 pm
No one believes that.
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Debra Jensen
8/24/2019 07:39:47 am
I feel Trump is Enlil
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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