There May Not Be Such a Thing as a Sane Superstition
Very little separates reptilian overlords from mainstream religion
Very little separates reptilian overlords from mainstream religion
I’ve been writing about Sherry Shriner and her reptilian doomsday cult for so long I believe those words make sense to people. If they don’t make sense to you, here’s a quick breakdown:
Sherry Shriner is a cult leader and religious con artist.The cult members aren’t reptilians, but rather they believe in reptilians — lizard-like creatures who wear human skin and hold positions of power among the global elite.
The book came out in May and I blog about Sherry and her people here.
One of my great frustrations is the story seems so farfetched and loaded with outlandish claims and beliefs that people think it’s fiction. It is dead serious.
A True Life Horror Story
Sherry Shriner and her followers didn’t just believe in some weird things. They believed in most weird things. Everything from myths, vampires, giants and MK Ultra super-soldiers running amok, to a successful alien invasion that’s been going on under our noses.
What I wanted to try and get across is this nebulous idea that the people I was talking about weren’t crazy, but also believed they fought aliens in the woods (not unlike the Nashville Christmas Bomber).
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The challenge was making it part of the narrative. I wanted to talk about what they said and saw as if they really said and saw it. Several of the cult members talked about a mission to Fort Knox wherein they saw and fought a brain in a jar as well as reptilians and other evil beings.
I recounted the story the same way I’d recount any story from people who had witnessed an event.
This is the editorial note I got:
I laughed when I read it, and I’m laughing now as I remember reading it. The passage made it into the book untouched but much better contextualized. What the note reminded me, though, was to coax readers into a fantasy world in the way I imagine fiction writers do. Maybe it’s something I did too well.
Crazy isn’t the right word
Still, these are just people practicing their faith. It’s the facet I’ve struggled with most of all, the problem I continue to meditate over. I’m not a person of faith so stories about angels and demons, divine intervention, and things that go bump in the night all sound the same to me. That’s what I try and get at when asked how Sherry and her ilk can believe what they claim to believe.
Once you step into the spiritual, all the regular rules for belief and understanding go out the window by definition. What bothers me is how easily we all slip into superstition, because once you’re there anything can happen.
Come to Think of It, Maybe We Are Living in the New Babylon
Our religious myths will define us whether we like it or notmedium.com
For those of us who believe in a soul, or in ghosts, or both, crossing into Sherry Shriner’s world is easier than we might like to think.
When we consider conspiracy theories, especially the more outlandish ones, that’s what I’d like us to remember. I worry that saying it’s crazy to believe in lizards living in people’s bodies, but that it’s absolutely sane to say there are ghosts in one’s home, misses the point about perception and reality.
It’s one of the reasons we dislike and are so terrified of cults. If we stand too close, we see how primitive our own beliefs may seem to someone from the outside.
What I want to ask, and continue to keep asking, is whether there are any sane superstitions. I also want to take an uncomfortable look at how superstitions affect the less-superstitious. It happens in insidious little ways and in life-destroying massive ones.
We want to think that there’s some sort of material difference between, say, Sabbath elevators, birth control bans, and fighting aliens in the woods. I would like to think that, too, but I’m having a hard time doing the reconciliation. In fact, I worry the only material difference is that no one forces people to fight aliens in the woods out of respect for their faith.
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Tony Russo is a journalist and author of “Dragged Into the Light: Truthers, Reptilians, Super Soldiers, and Death Inside an Online Cult.” Subscribe to his Bagel Manifesto here.