Talk:David Spangler

Untitled
Is this accurate?

"No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a LUCIFERIAN Initiation." David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations --Striver 21:23, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It would have to be placed in context to even make sense. He is also quoted as saying “Christ is the same force as Lucifer” . Let me know if you find the context, I'm interested in him. (Spangler, that is.) &mdash; goethean &#2384; 21:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * More here. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 21:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * All three of these links are useless. the first two no longer direct anywhere, the third is a POV christian ministry site that cannot be used as a reliable source here. I know talk pages are not article space, but what we have here is pure, unadulterated character defamation, if there are no valid sources for this comment. As far as i can tell, this quote was made up by right wing christian triumphalists to defame him and add fuel to their new world order/rockefeller/bla bla bla conspiracies. The entire phrase appears 277 times in a gsearch, and every single site is a conspiracy site. you think that at least one more mainstream site would pick up on this rather alarming sentence. oh, but i guess the entire media structure of the world outside the raving nutjobs is controlled by the satanic forces (which of course would include me as an evil agent or gullible dupe. google is probably run by satan personally. maybe it should be called Jewgle?) PS i do welcome any valid references for what Spangler MIGHT have said, including sources showing he did say this, but i doubt anyone will find that, as it is simply not something a typical new age believer would ever say (or believe. "pledges" to worship a particular instrumentality are very rare among new agers, and much more in line with fundamentalist doctrine). Oh, and the moon landing was faked, and cavemen domesticated dinosaurs...(mercurywoodrose)66.80.6.163 (talk) 15:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

No. That quote is not accurate, nor was David ever involved with the United Nations or Planetary Initiatives in any capacity. The misquotes were started by a woman named Constance Cumby who named David as the antiChrist in the '70's and her misquotes have been repeated by people who don't bother to do their own research. The original quote was a rather unfortunate joke David made at the end of a very beautiful talk called "Lucifer, Christ and God" in which he uses Lucifer, the fallen angel, as a metaphor for the process of dealing with the human shadow within each one of us as part of the spiritual path. The quote was "Maybe in the New Age, everyone will have to take the Luciferic initiation!", meaning to transform those more ragged, less lovely parts of ourselves. Meant as a joke, and heartily laughed at at the time (I was there), it has been taken seriously and redefined by the Christian Fundamentalists, who haven't bothered to actually read the original. In fact, they tell their followers not to read it, because it will only confuse them. Had David edited the talk himself, that joke would have been left out.

Here is part of an article David Spangler himself wrote about it all (the whole article can be found as David's Desk #42, available through the Lorian Association website):

We all have moments when we put our foot in our mouth and say something we later wish we could take back. Being a spiritual teacher I like to think I practice mindfulness about what I say, but the fact is I’ve “tasted toes” many times. And being a teacher gives me the opportunity to do this in public. That can be bad enough. But when it’s immortalized in print or now on the Internet, the consequences can last forever. The usual culprit in my case for foot in mouth is a part of me that wants to be a stand-up comedian and sees every lecture as an opportunity to make an appearance. The fact is, I enjoy hearing people laugh in my talks (hopefully if I’ve told a joke). Once I even gave a thirty-minute talk where the entire lecture was basically a set up for a pun at the end. Be warned. But my impulse to make funny can land me in hot water when the joke is not understood or later taken out of context. Then it’s not so much my foot that’s gotten into my mouth but my funny bone. This happened back in 1971 when I gave a talk on Christ and Lucifer. Being a biologist by inclination and not a psychologist, I usually draw my metaphors and images from the life sciences, but on this occasion I took a page from Dr. Jung’s writings and talked about the role of the shadow in our lives. The shadow is Jung’s term not simply for the negative side of our personality but the hidden, disowned side; it is the part of us that we’d rather not see or admit to but which actually holds the energy and insights we need in order to become whole. In my talk, I used the image of the Christ to talk about this state of wholeness and Lucifer to represent the shadow. My point was that Lucifer, a name often used as a synonym for Satan and evil, meant “the Lightbringer.” How could something that was dark bring the light? In effect, this is the question that Dr. Jung posed. He said that we each had a part of us that was broken and in shadow because we didn’t want to acknowledge it but that in fact, it was precisely by acknowledging and accepting it that we would come into wholeness. This is a profound insight and one that is central to many transformative spiritual processes. In my language, it’s by acknowledging our power to break things—to create brokenness in ourselves, in others and in the world—that we discover our equivalent power to heal things—ourselves, others, and the world—and to create wholeness. In the lecture, using mythic and metaphoric images, I said that Lucifer as the Lightbringer was the one who confronted us with our darkness and our capacity to harm and break things. Lucifer presented us with our shadow so that we could see it and perform an act of alchemical transformation through our acceptance, acknowledgement, love, and forgiveness of this part of ourselves. Our brokenness, our shadow, stood between us and the Christ within, and Lucifer gave us an opportunity to bring it into the Light of our wholeness. At one point in the lecture, carried away with my own metaphor and indulging in a bit of hyperbole, I called this confrontation with the shadow within us (in order to transform it into a path to our inner wholeness or the Christ within) a “Luciferic initiation.” I meant by this that such a confrontation would be the beginning of our own healing and entry into wholeness, just as the good Dr. Jung implied. My foot was edging towards my mouth, but I don’t think it had quite gotten there. It was at the end of the lecture when my inner standup comic, seizing the moment when I felt relaxed that the talk was done, succeeded in jamming my foot all the way past my lips. Seeking a laugh, I said, “Maybe to enter the New Age, we all need to take a Luciferic Initiation!” I got my laugh, but unknown to me then, I got a lot more besides. In time, I became enshrined in modern Fundamentalist lore as the antichrist, the man who said we all have to sell our souls to Satan to enter the New Age. This happened because my talks at Findhorn were recorded, and after I left the community they were transcribed, collected and published in a series of books. At the time I felt this was great. Every few months I would go into a bookstore and discover that I had a new book out. I never realized being an author could be so easy! Unfortunately, there was no editing of the contents, and sure enough, the crack about the Luciferic Initiation made it into print. When I read it, my inner comedian chuckled, remembering that moment, not at all realizing that the printed words conveyed none of the irony or tone of voice with which I had delivered that remark. Indeed, upon later reflection, I realized too late that it didn’t read like a joke at all. Enter a woman who was writing a book on the evils and dangers of the New Age movement. She was looking for material to substantiate her view that the New Age was Satan’s work, and when she found this lecture with my reference to taking a Luciferic initiation, I can only imagine the thrill she must have felt. This was it! Paydirt! The smoking gun from the lips of the man who had been called the “Father of the New Age” that confirmed her worst and most lurid suspicions. I doubt she ever read the lecture, or if she did, she ignored completely what I had to say or how I defined the “Luciferic Initiation.” She had what she needed, and that it was taken wholly out of context made no difference. At such moments, who pays attention to the Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness? Whether she had any hesitation or not, the fact was that she created a whole narrative around me as the antichrist calling for people to initiate themselves to doing Satan’s will in order to be part of the New Age. And this narrative was so compelling that soon it was being repeated in other books and on television by Pat Robertson on his 700 Club and by other televangelists on their shows. And now it is on the Internet where there will forever be a David Spangler who is proclaiming the need for a Luciferic Initiation. Why bring this up? It’s old news (the lecture, after all, was forty years ago), and in a world confronted by enormous challenges, my unsavory reputation with Fundamentalist Christians is pretty small potatoes. (And I want to add that this is only with a few Fundamentalists and Evangelicals; most of the ones I’ve met find this accusation pretty funny. In fact, I was contacted by the head of one of the largest Southern Baptist bible colleges in Texas who graciously apologized for the furor. “I wouldn’t want you teaching Bible studies at my college,” he said to me, “but I know you’re not the antichrist.”) I had actually forgotten all about this and only remembered because my daughter, doing some research on the Internet, came across a reference to me as the antichrist which surprised her no end. She hadn’t realized that she’d been living with a person of such cosmic significance! My story about the Luciferic initiation is a story about words, words uttered in jest which later are taken to mean something very different; it’s about words that one wishes could be recalled and about words that are used to distort and mislead in order to prove a point that can’t be made any other way except through falsehood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jemmom (talk • contribs) 19:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

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