Wizards Should Know Better 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇷🇴✝️

Dear Wormwood We managed a frenzy of attention from “The Last Supper” (a painting I despise and I refuse to understand) controversy during the Olympics. Well done. You incited, as planned, many so called “Christians” who think their “faith” is all about being offended by the world we control. The more we can agitate them, even to use violence and destructive means as a way to show grievances, the better. Mixing in our Bacchus feast to confuse them was your most brilliant touch. That will be written into our annals of most clever (uncreative) acts. What was truly a delight to me, my dear Wormwood, was to see how this issue detracted from the actual competitions which requires so much discipline and training. Our Enemy’s playbook is filled with such allusions which we have tried to copy. But, as you know, we have yet to fully capitalize on what these athletes attain in discipline. This will require further research. You may think that the Enemy delights in seeing hard work and artistry, but we can also turn that spectacle into the device of ego for our purposes. What our subjects call “the arts” are so full of potential and yet so dangerous for us! We need to make sure that artists are filled with anger, so much so that they forget that their gifts given to them can create works that are the most excruciatingly blinding to us. When I even think about the aforementioned work, I shudder and am filled with incomprehensible despair. Why is that? Well, it seems that when best of them practice their craft, they remind us of how high we used to fly, but now that we are earthbound (and subterranean), limited in our vista. The arts somehow makes us, yes even us, to long for such a world of splendor which we chose to leave behind. Inciting to cause cultural havoc has been an easy playbook. Do not get used to using the same tricks. Keep them focused on the past glories to defend, rather than future hopes. You and I are not capable to see the future as they do. Artists can cause much trouble for us, and their gift, especially with discipline, is the hardest to tame. Yet, as you’ve done many times successfully, artists are so easily tempted into despair with their open hearts. Artists see with the Light which blinds us, and are capable of creating a new vista which our minds cannot bear. That’s why we need to keep reminding them the impracticality of being an artist. It is impossible to be an artist (keep whispering that into their ears)! That lie has worked so well I wonder if they don’t realize that the Enemy is the only true Artist. Your Affectionate Uncle, Screwtape (2024 #theologyofmaking version)