Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to challenge you to think, what are the psychological, spiritual, and social implications of wearing a mask and consequently joining the COVID cult, as I call it? The CDC has pronounced that wearing cloth coverings of masks over your face when in public can help prevent asymptomatic carriers from spreading the coronavirus to others.

And the CDC's updated guidelines call for Americans to use cloth masks or whatever is available to help prevent the spread. And consequently, dear listener, as I don't need to tell you, this isn't new news. Mask mania has swept the country. Mask or die! I have found in my own anecdotal experience, my own personal experience, that the more fervent, zealous, and evangelical the mask wearer is, in his insistence that you wear yours, well, consequently, the less informed he is about the efficacy of masks.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between the two. A correlation there is, however, between zeal and ignorance when it comes to masks. Most mask-muzzling zealots simply have not done their homework. They take at face value what they've been told, and they follow like lemmings over the cliffs of Dover, or they follow like sheep who follow the Judas goat to the butcher. They follow the mandates of their mask-muzzling government minders.

But there is something larger at work here. When the true facts of the case are brought to light, masks do nothing to stop the China virus. Masks do nothing to stop the China virus. This fact has been abundantly substantiated in many studies in the past, long before the China virus entered the American lexicon, or COVID-19 for that matter. And these studies had no ax to grind.

They had no point to prove in regards to the politics of mask-wearing. No, they simply demonstrated scientific facts. Follow the science? Well, let's follow the science. What were these studies?

Let me point you to an article by Dr. Dennis Rancourt. Dr. Dennis Rancourt, excuse me, R-A-N-C-O-U-R-T. And he's a PhD in physics at the University of Ottawa. And he's a seasoned professor of research and investigation too. And he published in April of 2020, a paper that's entitled, Masks Don't Work, A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy. Once again, that article is entitled, Masks Don't Work, A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy.

Now in this paper, Dr. Rancourt, reviewed seven different studies done on the efficacy of masks in stopping viral transmission, not bacterial transmission, but viral transmission. And they were studies that were done between 2010 and 2020. And his conclusion, what is Dr. Rancourt's conclusion? Let me read his rather extensive conclusion. And I quote, no randomized controlled trial.

And parenthetically, the randomized controlled trial, the RCT, is the gold standard of empirical research too. He says, no randomized controlled trial with verified outcome shows a benefit for healthcare workers or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions. Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public.

Furthermore, if there were any benefit to wearing a mask because of the blocking power against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a respirator, an N95 respirator, compared to a surgical mask. Yet several large meta-analyses and all the randomized controlled trials prove that there is no such relative benefit. Masks and respirators do not work. Unquote. This, dear listener, is the science.

Follow the science, we're always told. Follow the science and put your mask on. Well, that's the mantra of St. Anthony Fauci and the so-called health professionals at the CDC and the NIH, the National Institute of Health, who are so eager to muzzle us with masks. But in reality, they do not follow the science. They do not cite any randomized controlled trials to substantiate their claims because there are none, as Dr. Rancourt so devastatingly points out.

Their science is merely bald-faced assertions without support coming from government bureaucrats posing as scientists. By wearing masks, most Americans are following the voice of authority, not the voice of science. At least we should be clear about this fact. And additionally, too, what I love about Dr. Rancourt. Towards the end of his article, he asks several pertinent questions about mask wearing.

These questions have a direct impact upon our health, too, but which have not yet been subjected to randomized controlled trials. And those questions are, Dr. Rancourt asks, for example, do used and loaded masks become sources of enhanced transmission for the wearers? For the wearers and others. And then he asks, do masks become collectors and retainers of pathogens that the mask wearer would otherwise avoid when breathing without a mask? A very good question.

Masks can be great transmitters of disease, not preventers. And then he asks, what are the dangers of bacterial growth on a used and loaded mask? Then he asks as well, what are long-term health effects on health care workers, such as headaches arising from impeded breathing? Oh, my wife suffers from headaches after wearing a mask after just 45 minutes or an hour. These are good questions to ask.

And then he asks, are there negative social consequences to a masked society? Oh, there certainly are. We have seen that anecdotally, if not in studies, right? And then he asks, finally, are there negative psychological consequences to wearing a mask as a fear-based behavioral modification? That's almost a rhetorical question, because indeed there are negative psychological consequences, spiritual ones too.

And I will unpack these here in a few moments. But I would like to ask then, why do authorities mandate masks if they're no good? If they're instruments that do not do, what is claim for them? Why command the use of a useless thing? Useless, at least for the purpose for which it's pleaded.

Oh, herein lies the thrust of the rest of my broadcasts, because it goes to the heart of power and control, always at the obsessive hearts of politicians and government bureaucrats. What they have achieved is a circumstance beyond their wildest dreams, I submit to you, dear listener. What they have achieved is the initiation of a large portion of the world's population into the COVID cult, what I have come to call the COVID cult. Unless you think I'm being a bit overdramatic with that title, please, just please entertain this analysis of cultic initiation. I'd like to spend the rest of my time in this broadcast on cultic initiation.

And this was a topic that was researched and documented by Dr. Arnold Van Genep in his article, The Rites of Passage, or his book, excuse me, The Rites of Passage, published initially at the turn of the century from the 19th to the 20th century, that is, and then republished in 1960. That book, The Rites of Passage, by Dr. Arnold Van Genep, documents the three stages of cultic initiation. And I'd like to go over those with you here in the time remaining. And those stages are, number one, what Dr. Van Genep calls separation, or what we would term social distancing. Separation.

A very important part of every normal person's psychological, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being is the everyday contact that we have with family members and loved ones and friends and neighbors and our workmates. A six-foot distancing is only a token of the larger distancing that's expected from the initiate into the cult. All relationships, including those with spouses and significant others, they, too, must be disciplined with distancing, mustn't they? Normally, too, life is filled with macro events, aren't they?

Our lives are filled with big events like birth, death, and the funerals that result, marriage, high holy days, if you're a religious person for the Christian, would be Easter or Christmas. Baptism, too, is very important in the Christian's life, or graduation, first communion, all these things. These are significant markers in our lives, life passages, if you will, that define us, and they gratify us, and they fill our lives with essential meaning. But social distancing, that is, separation, in Dr. Van Genep's terminology, separation has demanded that we forfeit or severely alter, beyond recognition, all of those life passages.

And we do it for the sake of the COVID cult. Not only is life marked with macro events, dear listener, filled with meaning, but also life is filled with the thousands of micro events of daily life, but so meaningful nevertheless. Things like greetings or hugs, handshakes, smiles, farewells, close face-to-face conversations, even the small inflections to our words and gestures that we give by a slight frown or a grin or a pout or pursed lips or oohs and ahs, right? But have you noticed how you have been separated from your fellow humans by these profoundly silly and destructive behaviors like mask wearing?

That indeed does hide those small inflections of the face that aid in our words and gestures. Elbow bumps instead of handshakes? Face masks that choke not only your oxygen intake, but your facial expressions, and they banish you to virtual anonymity. But you are marked as one of the compliant initiates, however, into the COVID cult, and everybody recognizes their fellow cult members by their masks. We are also expected to alter our most cherished and intimate relationships for the sake of the COVID cult.

That's the essence of separation in Van Gennet's terminology. Now, formerly, we would meet our spouses or our lovers or our BFFs for lunch, or we'd go jogging with a neighbor, maybe, or you'd go to the office Christmas party as the normal pattern of life with those we love. On and on we could go. Life, communication, connectedness are intimately bound up with this daily routine of communication and fellowship with those we love. And we take it for granted until it's gone.

But these things too are expected to go away for the sake of the COVID cult. There's a reason why cult leaders and groomers take this as their first step. The people in our world, our loved ones, our fellows, are our first defense against coercion and manipulation by outside authority. When we are stressed and pressed, when we're confused and disoriented, it's our community, our knit-together community of friends and loved ones and neighbors. They are there to bring us back, to put our feet back on the ground, to calm us down, right?

Well, distance someone from these network of friends and neighbors and workmates, and you distance that person from all that has given him meaning and support. This is not new in history. What's happened to us? Ancient mystery cults like the cult of Dionysius. They would kidnap the initiate in order to remove him or her from their network of loved ones and neighbors.

And this was to prevent interventions. Scientology, another example of a contemporary cult. Scientology insists that the initiate be willing to leave friends and family for an indefinite period of time. And that is to be determined by the auditor or the cult leader. This measure is also intended to minimize intervention once the grueling process of auditing, as the inner examination of the self and the tearing down of the old self and the rebuilding of the new is called auditing.

Once this is underway, minimization of interventions must be maintained. And then also the maximization, the initiate experiences in attachment to his new community. Oh, all these things. Separation, the practice of social distancing or separation has had a spectacular, wildly successful effect on Americans, hasn't it? Our cult groomers have used fear very effectively to drive us to it.

Oh, the most sacred rites of passage in life have gone forfeit to the cult, haven't they? Funerals, weddings, birthday parties, oh, gone away. Our elderly loved ones languish in nursing homes, dying of loneliness rather than COVID. Even newborns are socially distanced from their mothers at birth because of the fanaticism of the COVID cult. I even saw a picture recently of separated newborns with shields and masks on.

How absurd, how mad. Also the hallowed festive games we shared as a nation are dead too. This bothers me too. They are hollow figures, the sports of our nation, hollow figures of their former selves. The national pastime baseball has struck out.

Football has run out the clock with Americans with its alienating politics and cave into COVID. Basketball as well has found a more profitable following in China and has abandoned its roots in America. Well, Dr. Van Ginnup has effectively described this important initial phase of cultic initiation, separation, but it's not the only one. And I can move on to number two. Dr. Van Ginnup also describes marginalization.

Marginalization, or as we would put it, lockdown or shelter in place or isolation. And here in marginalization, the initiate is taken out of the life that he knew before and through drastic and sometimes threatening measures, he is marginalized. I quote now Dr. Leonard George, who in an article helps to summarize Van Ginnup in his book, Alternative Realities. Dr. George's book is Alternative Realities, another good book on this subject. And he says, far from the stabilizing features of everyday life, the initiates experience uncertainty concerning who they are and about what is real, unquote.

Ah, the essence of marginalization, getting you to question who you are, getting you to question reality. Familiar, comforting routines are disrupted. Daily schedules are upended. Life as such, no matter how gratifying or unhappy it may have been before. All of it though, comes to a crashing halt.

And that's tumultuous, no matter how happy you were before. And it is amazing how successful this measure of marginalization has been in initiating Americans into the COVID cult. Most cults initiate members on a one-by-one basis. Our cult groomers have managed to accomplish marginalization on a massive national scale. Admittedly, such a huge undertaking is not perfect.

Not everyone becomes hypnotized completely, and some not at all, like me. The ambitious effort at mass marginalization may be partial and incomplete, but it is huge nonetheless. We have to hand it to our cult groomers. In the previous history of pandemics, the sick were quarantined. They were isolated.

But for the first time in history, everyone was quarantined, healthy and sick. We were isolated, locked down, marginalized, in Van Gillip's terminology. Combined with this previous step, separation, the initiate enters the most dangerous phase of his transition to a new normal. Ah, this is because the process of marginalization is so thoroughly dissociating from routines and patterns of life. We are by nature creatures of habit.

Without a measure of predictability in our lives, why, our stress and adrenaline levels will kill us very quickly. The unknown, the uncertain moment, the seeming random events unplanned for, all these tend to wreak havoc on the human psyche and the well-being of the average soul. Part of the fight in the survival of the fittest is indeed to reduce to a measure of predictability our daily life circumstances. Locking down our lives utterly destroys this civilized pattern. And Dr. Van Gennep warns that this is a very dangerous moment for the cult initiate.

Those who may have been on the edge of stability already, or have a marginal sense of worth and self-esteem, or who maybe are vulnerable to new traumas, these may be destroyed further or they may even commit suicide. In the ancient world, initiates to the cult of Dionysius were famous for the attrition rate due to death. They were known for their excesses, that is, drugs and drunkenness, violence to others and to self-madness, self-mutilation. And this often occurred during this phase of initiation, that is, the phase of marginalization. This has been, in fact, one of the tragic consequences of the COVID cult lockdowns.

Dr. Michael de Boisblanc, Dr. Michael de Boisblanc of John Muir Medical Center in California reported that he has seen unprecedented numbers of suicides and attempts because of the lockdowns. He says, and I quote, we've seen a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks, unquote. And the date reported was May 26th of this year. And CDC director Robert Redfield has said this, and I quote, there has been another cost to the lockdowns that we've seen, particularly in high schools. We're seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID.

We're seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above excess that we had as background than we're seeing the deaths from COVID, unquote. Oh, dear listener, with the stressful and traumatic, this phase of cultic initiation is necessary, however, to the transformation of the initiate to his status as a cult member. Oh, once this has been achieved, though, marginalization and separation, once these two things have been successfully achieved, the final phase is introduced. What is that final phase? That final phase in Dr. Van Genup's terminology is called aggregation.

Aggregation. We call it the new normal. What the cult leader does, what the groomer does in initiating the new person into the cult, is begin to aggregate the separate parts of the man's personality into a new one. Here, Van Genup observed in aggregation that the cult leader or leaders now provides that which is necessary to the propagation of the cult, the initiate's new self-concept. He or she is now groomed to be a contributing member of that society.

Once again, as Dr. Leonard George puts it in his book, summarizing Dr. Van Genup, he says, they are taught the knowledge and given the symbols appropriate to their new rank. Following their initiation, when they return to the society, they are, in a sense, reborn. They have had old truths canceled and new ones revealed, unquote. Very descriptive. We have to hand it to our cult programmers in the nation, whether it be political or medical cult groomers.

They have thoroughly immersed us in the new knowledge, and they have bequeathed to us the symbols appropriate to our new rank, as Dr. Van Genup would put it. That is, our new rank is that of obedient and compliant slaves. The mask is the ubiquitous symbol of that rank. Fellow slave, I recognize you by your mask. Additionally, we have the knowledge of appropriate social distancing, right?

And new normals, all this new language, having a swab stuck up our nose for regular testing. That's new knowledge, right? Plus a whole new lexicon with which to display our knowledge. Aren't we proud of ourselves? We're so much a part of the team.

Oh, dear listener, the mystery cult of Dionysius, once again, going back to ancient Greece and Rome, the mystery cult of Dionysius was a mystery because there was a body of knowledge concerning the gods, which was only communicated to the initiated. Ecstatic, mysterious trances could be had. Secret invocations could be made to conjure the presence of the gods. Secret cures and potions could be assembled from secret recipes. Yes, the knowledge of the cult, right?

Even as the knowledge of the COVID cult continues to grow. And Scientology, to use our contemporary example, Scientology as well promises a new knowledge of the self through the mystery process of auditing. Now, auditing is a grueling process of rigorous self-examination and sometimes brutal criticism, which issues in trauma and disintegration of the personality and sense of self. And what the programmer does then, the skillful programmer rebuilds that self in the image of the cult, such that the initiate is, in a sense, reborn, as Dr. Van Gennep, excuse me, would put it. A new birth, right?

Oh, all of those moments of isolation and self-reflection and disintegration of the personality are not wasted by our programmers. Oh, all of the media is and was and is focused, excuse me, with 24 hours. You remember this, especially during the weeks of the pandemic and lockdown, that 24-hour wall-to-wall coverage of the crisis, so-called, all the while rebuilding the image of who and what we were now, right? Because of the virus. Oh, out of whole cloth was created the new normal, which is Dr. Van Gennep's aggregation.

Yes. There are other features as well. There are other features to this pandemic and this COVID cult. First of all, the initiate does not have to give his or her consent in order for these measures to be effective. That's important to assert.

You don't have to give your consent in order for these measures to be effective. In fact, oftentimes, we do not even have to be aware that these techniques are being used on us. Oh, that's precisely what has happened to most of us, but that nevertheless, no, in no way inhibits their efficacy. They're still effective. We see that all around us.

Oh, and then as well, there is a dissociative attachment, a dissociative attachment, which obtains in the process of initiation. That is, the initiate buys into the cult wholeheartedly because he or she has sacrificed so much and undergone such a radical change that to go back to the old ways would represent an even more radical step. As Dr. Van Gennep has said, old truths have been canceled. New ones have been revealed. Oh, yes.

A new normal has been achieved. To go back would be a radical step, a more radical step. And as we see with cult members all around the world, perhaps you know some relatives or friends that have been immersed in cults because no amount of reasoning with them or no amount of rational thought seems to dissuade this new initiate. And that's true with people all around us, the mass Karen. Oh, those who insist that this shutdown was necessary.

On and on we could go because facts don't matter to the cultist. Appeals to old attachments fall on deaf ears. Only the cult counts. Only the COVID cult counts now. And we've seen the programmers have a miserable success rate at persuading once confirmed cult members, don't they, from leaving their newfound family and their new way of life.

Oh, that's what's in for us if we're not careful, dear listener. The COVID cult has claimed many, many thousands, millions of victims here in this country. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday. We are not a part of the COVID cult.

We have been meeting right along at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Once again, we meet on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. And you can call us for more information or feedback at area code 208-523-0196. That's area code 208-523-0196.