The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has launched an investigation into a video filmed at night on its Geneva campus depicting a mock ritual human sacrifice.
The ceremony appears to have been staged in front of a statue of the Hindu deity Shiva that is on permanent display at the complex, home of the Large Hadron Collider.
"Cern does not condone this type of spoof, which can give rise to misunderstandings about the scientific nature of our work."
Update, 2021: YouTube says: "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on violent or graphic content. Learn more"
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
First it was the Ancient Egypt Ions, now this.
I can understand the conCERN here. High energy physics is hard enough to explain to people with good science education let alone the general public. It seems like a magical mystery to most people and throwing occult ritual in doesn't bolster the noble cause of these scientists.
But then wow, there's a giant statue of Shiva the Destroyer on the campus of an institute tasked with recreating the conditions during the most powerful explosion known to science. Couldn't they have gone with a less fearsome icon? A Smurf perhaps?
The Indians gave them a Shiva, so that's what is on display. Maybe the US can send them one of those statues of Trump that I saw on the news and they'll consider putting it somewhere else prominent ? Or a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, I hear those have a reputation as especially harmless.
Also, that's not really Shiva in destroying stuff mode, it's Shiva dancing.
And The Satanic Temple gave them a blood sacrifice, so that's what was on display in this video. Why are they so uptight about other peoples' religious beliefs?
The agnostics gave them particulate dark matter.
As well as the statue being a gift, there's a significant (if somewhat spurious in my view) history of particle physics people being interested in Hinduism. So it's a very appropriate statue to be at CERN.
Not, of course as appropriate as the altar to the Great Old Ones, but they keep that concealed: what do you think all those the tunnels are for, and what lurks in the fifth experimental hall that they never mention?
Robert Oppenheimer, on the success of the Manhattan Project, quoting the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death [Shiva], destroyer of worlds."
allgedly.
From William S. Burrough's Soul Killer:
"Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast? If human and animal souls are seen as electromagnetic force fields, such fields can be disrupted fields can be totally disrupted by a nuclear explosion. A mummy’s nightmare. Disintegration of souls. And this is precisely the ultra secret and super sensitive function of the atom bomb: a soul killer...Scientists always said there’s no such thing as soul. Now they’re in a position to prove it. Total death, soul death. It’s what the Egyptians called the second and final death. This awesome power to destroy souls forever is now vested in the far sighted and responsible men of the state department, the CIA, and the Pentagon. Governments fall from sheer indifference. Authority figures deprived of the vampiric energy they suck from their constituents are seen for what they are: dead empty mass manipulated by computers. And what is behind the computers? Remote control of course. Look at the prison you are in, we are all in. This is a penal colony that is now a death camp. The place for the second and final death."
So THAT'S where the bit in Warren Ellis' Planetary about nuclear scientists strapping themselves to atomic bomb tests in order to prevent their souls from being sent to the afterlife after death comes from.
Surprisingly, I believe Burroughs got the idea from one of Greg Bear's worse books (Psyclone).