Do you have any tattoos?
And if so, are you a pagan trying to summon or ward off demonic forces? Are you sure???
Because The Australian has today published an article that wrings its hands at today’s tattoo-friendly culture, linking this clear descent into Satan’s lair with the decline of Christianity. They are dead serious.
“Tattooing the body is prohibited in the Bible precisely because this was seen a a pagan practice associated with investing inanimate objects with magical, god-like properties,” writes journalist Melanie Phillips, a right-wing journo whose pieces can usually be found in Murdoch‘s UK masthead The Times, where this article was originally published.
“One wonders why Beckham, the manifest advantages of whose physique are given to few other men on earth, should want to mutilate himself in this way.”
“Various explanations might be offered for the appeal of the tattooist’s needle. The whiff of rebellion against bourgeois convention appeals to the fashionably rebellious bourgeoisie. There’s perhaps a degree of narcissism and a yearning to be unique. Maybe also, for some, inarticulacy plays a part: those with a poor command of language may find satisfaction in using their own skin as a statement.
“Surely, though, something rather deeper is going on. Tattooing or body alteration has been around since the earliest known societies. Heavily associated with such pagan cultures, it typically involved propitiating the gods or either summoning or warding off demonic forces.”
DEMONIC. FORCES.
Phillips then goes on to elaborate that while Beckham’s tatts mainly relate to his fam, and in fact carry a number of Christian themes, it is *just* not that simple.
“He appears to believe they can manufacture a desired reality, to keep his family always with him and even to become literally part of him,” she writes. “This fantasy erases the boundary between living beings and manufactured things. It objectifies the body. It also comes close to using the body to worship images. All this, regardless of the Christian themes pictured on his skin, is pagan.”
She explains this utterly bonkers line of reasoning by pointing to the rising number of pagans vs the falling number of Christians.
From 2001 to 2011, the number of Brits identifying as Christian dropped from 72% of the population to 59%, while the number of identifying as pagans grew from 42,000 to 56,000. Just to clarify: that was a mere 0.0009% of the population.
And make no mistake guys – there are probably pagans hiding among us.
“I’m sure David Beckham is a splendid fellow. I doubt whether he is a pagan, although his spiritual side seems to be a little vague. But when it comes to the image of himself he chooses to project, he would appear to have become a pagan god for our desacralised age.”
Oh lord. What have we become.
Source / Photo: The Australian.
