The Satanic Symphony Orchestra

Here at Skeptophilia, I try not to focus day after day on people who believe crazy stuff.  After all, loony ideas are kind of a dime a dozen, and loony people just as common, so at some point this kind of thing starts seeming like low-hanging fruit.

But every once in a while, I run into an idea so loony that it almost seems kind of... inspired.  Which is why today we're going to discuss: how the Freemasons are altering your DNA using a musical pitch to make you hate Donald Trump.

This may sound like a ham-handed attempt at satire, but sadly, it appears to be real.  According to a link sent to me by a long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, this is the claim of one Mark Taylor, self-styled "firefighter prophet," who has this to say about his own credentials:

I am no longer simply Mark Taylor, but also Shakina Kami, a name that translates from a combination of the African and Indian languages into “Beautiful One Whose Desires Are Fulfilled, and in Whose Life the Lord Dwells with the Divine Wind of Providence.”

So I think we can all agree that sounds pretty authoritative, even though I have to admit that I speak neither "African" nor "Indian."  Be that as it may, Taylor/Kami used his Divine Winds of Providence to write a book with the somewhat cumbersome title The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story Of The Man Who Saw Tomorrow… And What He Says Is Coming Next, wherein we find out that not only is Trump the Anointed One of God, Taylor himself had a vision in which he saw how Trump would win, and how this would be a tremendous defeat to the Forces of Darkness.  It's filled with passages such as the following:

The Spirit of God says, ‘America, get ready, for I AM choosing from the top of the cream, for I AM putting together America’s dream team, from the president and his administration, to judges and congress to ease America’s frustrations!’  The Spirit of God says, ‘Rise up, My Army, and get in the fight…  Rise up! stomp the enemy’s head with bliss; send the enemy back to Hell and into the abyss.’

All I can say is that even if we're being ruled by the Dream Team Cream, lately the news has made me want to Scream.  Overall, I can't say my frustrations have been eased much.  In fact, most of the time I feel like I need to double my anti-anxiety meds just to make it through the day.

Anyhow, I guess Taylor et al. didn't stomp the enemy's head blissfully enough, because the Bad Guys are now fighting back.  According to an interview he gave on right wing activist Sheila Zilinsky's radio program, Pass the Salt Live, last week, we are now being bombarded by "frequencies" designed to alter our DNA:

I believe what happened on November 8th is that the enemy has sent out a frequency, if you will -- and if you'll remember, when we did your show on "frequency" we literally got shut down and had to start over again... those who are tapped into this frequency, and it agitated and took control of those who had their DNA that was turned over to the enemy.  And that's what's happening.  The Illuminati, the Freemasons, their main goal is to change the DNA of man, and they're doing it through these frequencies, whether it's the bombardment of the news media, whether it's rock and roll music, I mean we could go on and on with these frequencies as we've talked about before.  So you need to surround yourself with the good news, not the apocalyptic messages right now.  Not to say that things aren't going to happen, because we're always going to have fires and earthquakes and hurricanes.  It's not the apocalyptic message that everyone's talking about.   

I'm being bombarded by emails from Christians right now, saying, "Look, I support Trump.  But everybody in my family has isolated me.  Everybody in my church is not talking to me."  It's because their DNA is being controlled by the enemy.  By broadcasting the news media, the audio part of it, at 440.  That's why when you watch the news media you get agitated.  It creates fear, it creates panic.  And this is what is going on in the church.  The body of Christ has got to stop being vulnerable to this stuff.  You've got to stop listening to the mainstream news media.  Look, if I want to know what's happening, I'll go to Fox's website to catch the headlines...  That's not being broadcast, where I'm hearing it in a frequency or anything like that.  See, the thing about that 440 hertz is that it will damage your body organs.  That's another reason why people are so sick.  It changes your DNA.  That's the goal of the Freemasons, the Illuminati.  They want you to be part of that Illuminati bloodline.

Okay, I have only one question about all of this, which is:

What?

A news broadcast sent out solely at a frequency of 440 hertz wouldn't be damaging so much as it would be annoying, because it would be a single continuous musical tone at A above middle C, which would make it a little hard to glean information from, good or bad.  Also, if 440 hertz caused DNA to change, orchestra members would undergo horrifying mutations every time the oboe plays an A so the rest of the musicians can tune their instruments.

Which could be kind of entertaining, even if it wouldn't really be conducive to a good performance afterwards.

Also, you really get the impression here that, besides the fact that Mark Taylor is nuttier than squirrel shit, he also has no concept of how DNA works.

Or maybe I've just listened to too many symphonies in my life, and I'm now part of the "Illuminati bloodline."  Which, now that I come to think of it, would be kind of cool, especially if it came with evil superpowers.

But I'm guessing that's not really all that likely, because here I sit, drinking coffee and trying to reboot my brain with only marginal success thus far, instead of cackling maniacally while shooting lightning from my fingertips, which would be a lot more fun.

The real problem, of course, is that once you start looking into this stuff, you very quickly go down the Bottomless Rabbit Hole of Lunacy, and start watching videos with names like "432hz vs 440hz pt 2 Nazi Fluoride How Illuminati 440hz Music Poison Pineal Gland," which not only has to do with Nazis, fluoride, the pineal gland, and "frequencies," also involves astrology, the All-Seeing Eye, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Elvis Presley, the year 1776, and pacts with the devil.  It ends by asking, "Did they deceive the mass and Themselves while they didn't knew IT?", which I think is a pretty good question.  After watching all of this stuff, I'm not sure what I knew anymore, myself.

So many thanks to the loyal reader who sent me the link, which has left me feeling like I need a double scotch even though it's only eight in the morning.  I suppose I should buck up, as I have a big day ahead, retuning all of my musical instruments to 432 hertz so that my pineal gland doesn't freeze up and turn me into a Trump-hating Nazi Freemason.  I hate it when that happens.

The music of the spheres

It probably sounds uncharitable of me, but I wish that all of the people who can't be bothered to exert the time and effort to learn a little bit of science would stop pretending that they know what they're talking about.

We saw it last week with Ken Ham, blathering on for two hours about "historical science" while Bill Nye stood there staring at him with a "what the fuck are you talking about, dude?" expression that has got to become the basis of a meme somehow.

Of course, it's not just the creationists who babble about scientific concepts like the Second Law of Thermodynamics as if they actually understood them.  The New Age types do the same thing, usually venturing off instead into such esoteric fields as quantum mechanics, evidently mistaking "I don't understand quantum physics" as being the same as "quantum physics means whatever I decide it means."

I ran into an especially good example of this a couple of days ago, over at the loony website Spirit Science and Metaphysics.  And one of their posts, "Here's Why You Should Convert Your Music to 432 Hz," should probably be up for some kind of woo-woo wingnut award.

If there is such a thing.  Which there should be.

In this article, we find out that we are jeopardizing our health, all because we've been tuning our musical instruments wrong:

Most music worldwide has been tuned to A=440 Hz since the International Standards Organization (ISO) promoted it in 1953. However, studies regarding the vibratory nature of the universe indicate that this pitch is disharmonious with the natural resonance of nature and may generate negative effects on human behaviour and consciousness. Certain theories even suggest that the nazi [sic] regime has been in favor of adopting this pitch as standard after conducting scientific researches to determine which range of frequencies best induce fear and aggression. Whether or not the conspiracy is factual, interesting studies and observations have pointed towards the benefits of tuning music to A=432 Hz instead.

432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe. Studies reveal that 432 hz tuning vibrates with the universe’s golden mean PHI and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity and magnetism with biology, the DNA code and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA start to resonate in harmony with the spiraling pattern of nature, our sense of connection to nature is said to be magnified. The number 432 is also reflected in ratios of the Sun, Earth, and the moon as well as the precession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, the Sri Yantra among many other sacred sites.

Count 'em up, folks.  We have:

• vibrational frequency
• resonance
• Nazis
• the "Golden Mean"
• the pyramids
• conspiracies
• a "grand unified theory"
• DNA
• spirals
• Stonehenge
• some vague shit about astronomy
• "sacred sites"
• light, time, space, matter, gravity, and magnetism

That's it, folks.  I think we can pack it in; we have reached Bullshit Nirvana, here.

Oh, yeah, and it wouldn't be complete without a quote from Nikola Tesla:

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” – Nikola Tesla

Presupposing, of course, that you have taken a physics course and understand what anything that Nikola Tesla said actually means.

We're then shown a bunch of photographs that are supposed to be relevant, including ones that look like this:

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

These images are the patterns that emerge from standing waves in a metal plate (either free or forced vibrations); there's nothing mysterious about them.  (Although the theory behind the patterns is wildly complex.  I have a bachelor's degree in physics, and the math is way beyond anything I am capable of comprehending.)  Once you know what the images are, it's hardly a surprise that using a different frequency (432 Hertz rather than 440) will produce a different pattern.  But what they're telling us boils down to the 432 Hertz pattern somehow being "prettier..." which translates, apparently, to its having beneficial health effects.

Or something.  It's kind of hard to tell, frankly, what they do mean.  If you thought the preceding quoted paragraphs were bad, take a gander at this one:

All of the frequencies in the spectrum are related in octaves, from gamma rays to subharmonics. These colors and notes are also related to our Chakras and other important energy centers. If we are to understand that (…) Chakras are connected to the Seven Rays of the Solar Spectrum, then the notes and frequencies we use for the same should be the same. A432 Hz is the tuning of the Cosmic Keyboard or Cosmic Pitchfork, as opposed to the A440 Hz modern ‘standard.’ It places C# at 136.10 Hz ‘Om,’ which is the main note of the Sitar in classical Indian music and the pitch of the chants of the Tibetan monks, who tell us ‘It comes from nature.’

Oh.  The "Cosmic Pitchfork."  That makes total sense.  And I'm sure that the Tibetan monks are perfectly nice people, but the fact is, I wouldn't go to them for instruction on physics, any more than I'd go to Stephen Hawking to receive the teachings of the Buddha.  And talking about "octaves of gamma rays" makes about as much sense as talking about "photons of musical pitch."

But that doesn't matter.  You must immediately retune your guitar and fiddle and other musical instruments, because otherwise your pitch will clash with the Cosmic Keyboard.  And heaven knows we wouldn't want that to happen.

What bothers me about all of this is not that some woo-woo has a weird idea; having weird ideas is kind of the woo-woo raison d'être, after all.  What bothers me is that because the writer of this article is able to throw around some fancy-sounding scientific jargon, coupled with jargon from New Age metaphysics, there is this veneer of sensibility to it -- if you don't know a lot of science yourself, you might be fooled into thinking that what is on this webpage actually says something.  And a lot of people apparently have been fooled.  All you have to do is do a Google search for "432 Hertz tuning" and you will find, literally, hundreds of sites like this one that claim that if you don't retune your music, you are risking remaining unenlightened forever.

I have known more than one person who has regularly been suckered by this kind of stuff.  One of them, a long-ago acquaintance in Seattle who seemed to fall for every piece of freshly-minted New Age nonsense that came down the pike, would have panicked upon reading this, and not only would have immediately paid to have her piano retuned, but she would have done whatever she could to make sure that her CD player was outputting sounds tuned to a scale based on A = 432 Hertz, not the standard 440.  (And she would have attributed every joint pain, headache, and queasy stomach she'd had in the past three years to listening to music at the wrong pitch.)

So just to be clear; there is no health (or emotional, or spiritual) benefit from tuning to 432 Hertz.  It's even been the subject of an experiment, by Trevor Cox, professor of acoustical engineering at the University of Salford, a study that (surprise!) blew down the claim completely.  Put simply, this contention is 100% pure, grade-A, unadulterated pseudoscientific garbage.

And I think to round things out, I'm going to listen to one of my all-time favorite pieces of music -- Domenico Scarlatti's sparkling Sonata in D Major, K. 96, "La Chasse" -- as played by the brilliant Stephen Malinowski (and accompanied by a cool graphic of the musical score).

On a harpsichord tuned to A = 440 Hertz.  Take that, woo-woos.  And tell me if, after listening to this, you felt "aggressive and disharmonious."  Because if so, I think there's something more wrong with you than the way your music is tuned.