"Our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence"

Messianic imagery, Gnostic redeemer-myth imagery, New Age nonsense about “lightworkers” and elevated states of consciousness…

Collective hysteria has broken out in the American media, and some of the finest examples of a whole new literary genre have been collected together by the good people at the Obamamessiah blog (they're so straight-faced that it took me a while to be sure that this really is an exposé rather than an horrendous celebration), which chronicles the tide of sheer lunacy into which much of the US media has plunged during the last twelve months. The examples below are typical.

(H/T to Fr Finigan at The Hermeneutic of Continuity for drawing attention to this blog.)

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Mark Mortford (“Is Obama an enlightened being?”, San Francisco Chronicle June 6, 2008).

Lee predicted Obama would be elected in November. “When that happens, it will change everything. ... You’ll have to measure time by ‘Before Obama’ and ‘After Obama’”, Lee said during the panel. “It’s an exciting time to be alive now”. ... “Everything’s going to be affected by this seismic change in the universe”, he said.

Spike Lee, American Film Director. July 10, 2008.

Barack Obama strides into that void. While voicing “other worldly” themes he suggests “this world” solutions. His soaring oratory and his ambitious promises make his appeal to hope and his drive for change seem reasonable and attainable. He appeals to all that is innate and created in us in a longing for that “better country, that is a heavenly one” discussed in Hebrews 11. And he offers fulfillment in his election to the presidency at which time he will unleash the power of government to set things right in a world currently turned upside down. Thus he offers a messianic hope with the full weight and force of the U.S. government to back him up. For many right now, with the youth leading the way, this is a compelling combination. Heaven on earth is indeed appealing rather than having to wait.

Peter Wierenga, World March 27, 2008.

Vibrational Intelligence, or VQ is a measure of all the intangibles. It's what’s electric, resonant, pulsating, replete with energy, and connecting us all. It’s ubiquitous and it’s viral. It permeates the quantum field. Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings of who we are as a people, and as a country. We’ve surfaced him out of “the field” and charged him with the task of riding this wave on our behalf….

Obama has tapped into his own VQ. He’s listened to the unspoken, heard the unvoiced, and has responded to the yearning of our youth, our boomers, and the disenfranchised. He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence, of which we’re all a part; and he’s simultaneously speaking into that field. In that collective vibrational field exists a longing for the more of who we are, and the hunger to live it.

Eve Konstantine, Huffington Post February 5, 2008.

You couldn’t invent some of this stuff…. The site is also worth visiting for some of the ridiculous iconography:

One particular work invoked the sacred, picturing Obama’s great head – illuminated by sunbursts – emerging from the clouds over a bare-breasted maiden who is robed in an American flag and emerging from a volcano. Note that in the lower-right-hand corner an assemblage of people are literallykneeling before Obama.

We live in strange and scary times.