In which the pond manages somehow to link Bjorn Lomborg, Balmoral, Krishnamurti, David Pocock, and that hate-mongering troller Miranda the Devine in a Sunday meditation ...

So many loons, so little time, but the pond is indebted to its correspondents.

Inspired by one, the pond headed off to Miranda the Devine's grotesque twitter account, which you can also do here.

Oh sure if you look at the front page, it presents as just a standard sort of page view. But click on a tweet and you get the messages framed by that hysterical, jumbled montage of newspaper banners.

It's about as subtle as a haddock in the face, and perhaps more like a bottom-feeding flathead, the Devine happily splashed about in the sewer vent.

And then there was the news another correspondent brought on the Lomborg front.

A vegetarian with theosophical origins?

Yes it's all here.

Now Madame Blavatsky is too well known to dwell on at length here (you do know she was an early supporter of Isis, don't you?), but it reminds the pond of one of its favourite Sydney anecdotes, featuring the sage Krishnamurti:

That's the Sydney Mail on 3rd March 1937. The rumour was that Krishnamurti was going to walk across the waters of Sydney harbour, in a manner befitting the new Christ, but with infinite wisdom, the sage realised that this might be a bit tricky, and disavowed the Theosophists, amphitheatre buildings and institutions in general. 

Of course there are some spoil sports and pedants who suggest that the proposal to walk between the Sydney heads was a bit of mythologising, but it was certainly built for theosophical purposes:

The Star Amphitheatre was a Grecian Doric style structure built between1923 and 1924 above Edwards Beach, at the northern end of Balmoral. It was a site described as having ‘the best view from Balmoral Beach of theNorth Head of Sydney Harbour’. (Roe 1980, p104).
The amphitheatre was designed by architects, J.E. Justelius and Son, and built by John Jamieson at a cost of 16,000 pounds. The architectural drawings showing the beach elevation indicate that it was three stories high, with the stage towering 21 metres (70 feet) above the beach. Underneath, at beach level, was a library, meeting halls, meditation and tearooms. The Star Amphitheatre could seat 2000 people and had standing room for another 1000. The building was partly cut into the sandstone rock and partly constructed of concrete. (Souter, 1994, p167). At the time the Mosman Daily described it at the time as a ‘remarkable building of massive beauty’.
There are many myths surrounding the purpose of the Star Amphitheatre, the most sensational, which is still made by some media today, was to witness the second coming of the messiah—walking on water through Sydney Heads! 
It was built by The Order of the Star in the East, an offshoot of the international Theosophical Society, which had been formed in 1913 by Mrs Annie Besant and Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1914 Leadbeater left the headquarters in Adyar, India to establish a Sydney community. The Order of the Star in the East had been established to prepare the way for a new “world teacher” who would use the amphitheatre to address his audience. This teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti had been found by Leadbeater as a young boy. He subsequently rejected this role as a messiah and only spoke there on one occasion.
Mary Rocke, a retired doctor, member of the Theosophical Society, secretary and physician to Leadbeater, purchased three adjacent blocks of land sloping from Wyargine Street, Balmoral to the beach. With a loan of 4,000 pounds and the rest of the cost raised by selling subscription seats, the Star Amphitheatre was built on this site. The amphitheatre was described in the Theosophical publication The Star as ‘a symbol in stone of that which our daily lives should be …simple,pure, clean, dignified’. (Roe, 1980 p102). (in pdf format, google for the source).

All long gone now, but what is true is that Krishnamurti was due in Sydney in 1929 for the big Messiah event, and the amphitheatre was to feature in a big way ... but sadly that was the very year he pulled the plug on the whole box and dice of the Star of the East, and his 'no guru, no leader, no teacher, no religion, no sect' path became his standard line ... which the pond copped back in 1970 in the Sydney town hall ... oh so long ago.

Krishnamurti had started presenting "the new messiah" as "an ordinary fellow" before the proposed 1929 Sydney junket, as you can read in the Adelaide Register on 31st July 1926 at Trove, starting top left here, and the fall out in Theosophical circles caused by his departure was immense for Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, as remembered in the Sydney Morning Herald, 18th May 1954. at Trove here.

Which brings us back to Lomborg, and it suddenly became clear to the pond why it finds him so unnerving.

Now it's wrong to play the man rather than the ball, until you discover that the background to the man is so revealing and suggests something about the origins of his ball-handling skills.

Just as it can be said that the pond's understanding of life, the world and science has been deeply warped by Catholicism (whither limbo? where in the bible purgatory? why all this fleshly guilt and self-loathing? why did nuns delight in torturing small children?), so it can be said that Theosophy must surely leave a mark.

Never mind, it's all a bit of a quest and a learning experience, and so to return to the Devine.

It is truly remarkable that a woman that puts out such bile and snark should then wonder why she gets it back in spades.

As the correspondent noted, there was another encounter, to be found on Twitter here:

Now the pond will confess to having vaguely heard of David Pocock, who seems to upset conservatives for some reason, but that response was just too polite.

You see, when someone calls you a tosser, they should do it for a good reason. They shouldn't be able to call you a tosser and then say, oh sorry got that wrong, without at least owning up to the fact that that sort of behaviour makes them a tosser supreme, or if you will, a tosser compleat.

The point is that the Devine had already sat in judgment on Pocock because of his alleged political or social attitudes. That he made some arcane gestures with hands only confirmed in the Devine's eyes that he was a tosser. When it comes to looking at people, the Devine's the hanging judge kind ... all prejudice and bile, and let's not go all soft and lovey-dovey and dewy-eyed and touchy-feely huggy-wuggy ...

The pond routinely thinks of Miranda the Devine as a tosser, but only because there's so much evidence, and not just in the matter of Pocock.

Which is why the bemused response of the Devine was so bemusing:

Translation: I'm an offensive insulting git, and I didn't realise and I didn't think, but let's make anything out of me being a twit, let's just move on.

Which is why if the pond had been Pocock, it would have been asking, What is wrong with u Devine? Why did u toss off a gratuitous insult about someone being a tosser without having the first clue what u were talking about?

Admit you're a tosser and a wanker and a trolling fuckwit for good measure, and then we'll move on ...

Here's the rub.

Apparently Pocock is a Christian of the forgiving kind, while the Devine is a Catholic of the elephantine, blundering, hate-mongering kind ... which is to say not much of a Christian, so much as, pace Krishnamurti, a wretch trapped in an institution and badly in need of an alternative way of looking at the world.

Yes, you need to be an ex-Catholic tosser to spot a Catholic tosser ... QED, that's where idle, superstitious chatter about limbo and purgatory and transubstantive cannibalism will get you ... snapping at pink condoms and people reputed to take an interest in gay rights ...

Ah well, it passes for a Sunday meditation, but you can't expect much depth, not when the subject's the Devine, and you could drown in a couple of centimetres of water ...