Arrest made in Pacific Palisades Fire, LA

Jonathan Rinderknech arrested: ChatGPT, French rap, and Uber: Palisades Fire suspect's trail

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Neither of these suspects is Jon Rinderknech

The Palisades Fire was one of two major infernos that hit Los Angeles on Oct. 7, 2025. The other was the Eaton Fire in the foothills of Altadena, which was caused by Edison, likely a negligent utility that left its inoperable transmission tower standing for decades and uncared for, making it a known fire hazard, according to attorney Mikal Watts (lafirejustice.com). Until now the means by which the historic winds that day managed to burn down the ritzy coastal areas of Los Angeles have been debated. The fire he set, the Lachman Fire, has been blamed on homeless individuals and fireworks. But authorities are now saying Jonathan Rinderknech, 29, a former Palisades resident now living in Florida, committed arson a week earlier and that those flames were never fully extinguished, coming to life with the strong winds.

• 29-year-old former Uber driver arrested in connection with starting deadly Palisades Fire (NBC News)
• Suspect in Palisades Fire allegedly used ChatGPT to generate images of burning forests and cities (Rolling Stone)

Uber driver charged in connection with starting the Palisades Fire | LAist.com

(KTVU Fox 2 SF) Rare "supershear" earthquake could hit California

• Fox News; KTVU Fox 2 San Francisco, Oct. 1, 2025; Fox 11 News, Oct. 8, 2025; Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Cody's alchemy: inner “purge” seeking insight

Cody Lowry (substack.com, 2/18/22), Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

When did alchemy end? [Or did it just continue underground?] (JSTOR Daily)

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The inner “purge” seeking insight

Maybe I'll read Alchemy & Mysticism

The Purge is a terrible trilogy about people using violence, channeling collective anxiety to slaughter each other. It's their way of attempting to burn through rising tensions between clans, tribes, neighbors, and so on, in a nearby town.

Perhaps the writers intended the film’s message to be a wake up call for how we need to work to remember the value of being neighborly (as modeled by Mister Rogers’ decades-long testament showing the usefulness of uplifting TV programming).

Wiktionary says the Latin root of the word “purge” is purgo, “to make clean” or “purify.” Unfortunately, the Purge perpetuates ultraviolent fantasies propagated on TV and in Hollywood since the 1980s. It might even be older than that.

Purgatory is a terrible series of purifications

During a recent caffeinated conversation, Dante’s Divine Comedy came up: It's a classic, a three-part work consisting of Paradiso (“Paradise”), Purgatorio (“Purgatory”), and Inferno (“Hell”).

In Purgatorio, a “middle-place between heaven and hell,” people are trapped by their own devices, until whatever “impurities” or stains of their souls are expunged and they can move forward on their spiritual paths.

A few years ago, I had the unique opportunity to attend meetings, which usually included the same elixir, with a remarkable man. I’ll refer to him as "the Alchemist."

A master of many arts, such as motorcycle maintenance, he had resolved to devote his remaining time on earth to experimenting and researching mystery schools, Raja Yoga, soul-forms, astral travel and how to apply these ideas to everyday life.

Of the many meetings I remember sitting in on, one involved the Alchemist's commentary on the topic of purgatory. His reflections were derived from a Gnostic idea. (The Gnostic Gospels were edited out of the official Roman Catholic version of Christianity, leaving out the story of chief apostle Mary Magdalene and the surprising Gospel of Judas, where Judas plays a key role in the plan).

Civilizations exist INSIDE our hollow earth? We're unaware of Agartha

In India, as St. Issa, I learned the wisdom of the East.

The "Gnostic idea" is that the surface of earth is a reform school overseen by a group of stern superintendent-wardens who are responsible for maintaining the quarantine of all “embodied-humans” in this realm. This includes ensuring that no embodied human escapes until she or he has completed the necessary spiritual-schoolwork required for graduating from “Terra,” our surface world.

The Alchemist went on to clarify that a primary step in the process of “graduating” from this realm is to “purify” oneself from all illusory thoughts that keep us karmically entangled, that is, earthbound.

According to these claims and his own research, experiments, and observances, the Alchemist concluded that what we call “normal life” on the earth's surface is, in fact, the purgatory realm described by Dante.

Yazoo Kristos: Jewish Essene Gnostic mystic

During its nascent years (approximately 1682-1772), the Religious Society of Friends, now colloquially called the “Quakers,” testified to the necessity of individual purging as a requisite for mystical self-initiation.

This mysterious practice of purging among the early Quakers has maintained little to no how to instructions as far as I've discovered. However, the desired result of purging is allegedly related to a cleansing of one’s body, mind, and spirit so as to receive divine revelation.

Making sacred

The ancient Mayan Chac Mool statues of Mexico (thoughtco.com)

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Alchemy symbols (free download, vecteezy.com)

Another requisite the Alchemist shared with us was the necessity of internalizing and embodying the act of sacrifice (i.e., “making sacred”). 

Dating as far back in recorded history as the Olmec and Mayan cultures, humans have immortalized the act of sacrifice in drawings, writing, societal mores and traditions.

Instances of such traditions are evident in Chac Mool statues of ancient Mexico. A man holds a sacred fire offering bowl over his abdomen while laying in a strengthening supine position.

• Mexico's Mayan Train: Costly railway controversy (MSN)
• Impressive facts about Mexico's Aztec Empire (msn.com)

The Jewish and Christian traditions used bread and wine and made a symbol of the Christ (the Kristos or "Anointed One") as a sacrificial lamb.

There were tithings to the Jewish priestly caste rabbis, who slaughtered donated animals and turned them into "burnt offerings" to JHVH -- four letters commonly misinterpreted as “Jehovah.” which actually represent the anglicization of the Hebrew letters: יהוה or “Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey.”

Some Essene rabbis claim these letters symbolize “that which cannot be named,” which relates to the divine order.

Godfrey Higgins wrote Anacalypsis

According to Godfrey Higgins' Anacalypsis, “the surplus of the burnt-offering meats [was] regularly sold for profit by the [stewards] of the temple.”

The hidden profit motive behind requiring temple-goers to bring sacrificial livestock to appease a “god” exposes the gradual corruption of what was originally taught as a symbolic parable in the ancient mystery schools of the East.

As the Alchemist revealed, the original wisdom teaching of “sacre-fice” had everything to do with a human activity done alone by an individual seeker focused on cultivating conscious contact with his or her “Higher Self,” the “over soul,” “thinker,” “guardian angel,” “inner light,” “Christ/Krishna consciousness,” or “Nirvana.”

This self-discipline focused “sacrifice” was actually a number of daily practices that includes but is not limited to:

• renouncing the consumption of animal flesh,
• daily rigorous physical survival-training,
• restraint in the use of one’s words and actions,
• daily hour-by-hour contemplation of the spiritual principles of one’s religious upbringing
• (with quarterly 17-85 hour solo commune-with-nature wilderness survival wanderings).

Anacalypsis: Pull Back the Veil

The list continues, but suffice it to say the archaic practice of animal sacrifice had absolutely nothing to do with capturing, raising in slavery, or ritualistically murdering innocent animals.

It had absolutely everything to do with learning and reinforcing self-control over one’s own limbic-system-dominated “animal-nature” mind, clearly illustrated in Hindu and Jewish symbols of controlling the horses of our chariot and Ezekiel’s vision.

The Alchemist would often emphasize, “Any so-called preacher or so-called religious scholar who condones (a) the ritualistic murder of innocent animals or (b) eating the rotting carcass of murdered innocent animals* is -- at the very least -- untrustworthy and corrupted by “inimical thoughts” and at worst criminal and probably prone to violent predatory activities in their modus vivendi (“life outside the public eye”).

• *The only exception being that an individual must capture, prepare, and eat a wild animal because no other foods (vegetable, root, fungi, or cacti) are available within a 17-mile radius, such as we find among the Inuit huddled up in igloos in a frozen wasteland.

The Alchemist taught me well.

The Alchemist would often add, “Any astute seeker who has chosen to listen to my “Dharma talk” up to this point would do well to trust-but-verify the truth behind these statements by deeply researching:

• (a) the recorded history of religious clerical corruption (Eastern and Western) over the past 6,850 years,
• (b) the plant-based lifestyle of Mahayana Buddhists, Hindus, and the (original Christian cult known as) Essenes, and
• (c) the esoteric symbolism contained in Mayan, Hindu, and Jewish myths. More

Rebirth: Suffering high school again? (video)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly; STXmovies.com

I'm through with high school. Having suffered it once, I never want to have to suffer it again. Rebirth -- as imagined in the form of "reincarnation" where I get to come back but this time more beautiful, having learned lessons, evolved, less awkward, a second chance to avoid all the mistakes from the first time around -- is not that way for most of us.

Forget grammar, tell me it's not happening!

We will not be getting a chance to be human anytime soon, unless we tragically lost our opportunity due to some sudden and unforeseen unfair circumstance. A Tibetan lama might so influence things as to come back as a tulku to continue in these circumstances on this planet.

But there are many human planets and countless realities sorted into 31 planes of existence that it is a sign of a poverty of imagination to think that we will come back to circumstances like this. What if we did? Wouldn't it be excruciating, hellish, insufferable? 

This is unbearable, insufferable, impossible!

Wouldn't we continually be finding ourselves on The Edge of Seventeen, rich, white, privileged, unaware of how extraordinarily fortunate our (karmic) circumstances were compared to others and having very little knowledge of how to make them this way again in the future? Where will the Dharma be when you need it in the future?

• Rebirth: Not "reincarnation" but REBIRTH: punabbhava, Dependent Origination [of Suffering] (Links 3 and 10), karma

Sitting cross-legged with an iPhone and junk food like all teens do. (International dates)

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Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) and Krista Haley Lu Richardson) are inseparable best friends attempting to navigate high school together...until Nadine discovers that her super popular older brother and Krista have been secretly dating behind her back. They soon realize that there is a fine line between best friends and worst enemies. But that's not Nadine's biggest problem. High school is! And where's God (like the one in Persepolis) in all this? Is s/he even paying attention? Just look at this haircut!

The Edge of Seventeen

God, god damn it, are you even up there?

is a new coming-of-age movie in the vein of Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club -- an honest, candid, sexual, often hilarious look at what it’s like to grow up as a young female in today’s modern world.
 
Everyone knows that growing up is hard, and life is no easier for high school junior Nadine, who is already at peak awkwardness when her all-star older brother Darian (Blake Jenner) starts dating her best friend Krista.
 

Life is a slurpee: so suck it!

All at once, Nadine feels more alone than ever, until the unexpected friendship of a thoughtful boy (Hayden Szeto) gives her a glimmer of hope that things just might not be so terrible after all.

The film also stars Kyra Sedgwick as Nadine’s well-meaning but completely ineffective mother, and Woody Harrelson as Nadine’s history teacher, mentor, and reluctant sounding board.

The Edge of Seventeen marks the feature directorial debut of writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig, and it is produced by Academy Award® winner James L. Brooks -- the filmmaker behind big-screen, character-driven classics such as Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, Big, Say Anything, The Simpsons, Jerry Maguire, and As Good as It Gets. More
 

The Hells: Niraya ("Unhappy")

The Simpsons dealing with what is too horrible to voice (allposters.com)


Various torments, Saen Suk Buddhist temple, Thailand (http://www.payer.de/)

Hell/Underworld: Religious concepts of underworlds and hells include a thorough Buddhist concept collectively called Naraka (Pali, Niraya).

Medieval illustration of Hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (circa 1180)

Chinese: Diyu, Christian: Hell, Interim state, Egyptian: Duat, Germanic/Norse: Niflheim, Hel, Greek: Hades, Tartarus, Hindu: Naraka, Islam: Jahannam, Judaic: Gehenna, Sheol, Shinto: Yomi, Japanese: Jigoku.

The Great Waste or the unfortunate planes of existence in general may be unhappy, miserable, or involve torment beyond belief. They exist here and now or in the afterlife. Like the Western concept of hades or Judaism's sheol, they may or may not involve much inflicted suffering. The animal world, for example, might seem to involve less unhappiness than the human. And the human world, although counted as the lowest of the "fortunate destinations," may involve so much suffering as to merit the title "hell" from time to time. What are here being called "hells" are the various realms ranging from the animal world down to a horrific place known as Avici, with a focus on the various Nirayas.

It is incorrect to conceive of hell as strictly underground. Some "hells" are located in space, for instance the Lokantarika-niraya (SA.ii.442f.; DhsA.297f) and the Asurabhavana (where beings cast out of one heaven landed and took up residence). The fact of the matter is that there is great variety and diversity. The purpose of hells, as with all worlds, is simply to provide suitable conditions and circumstances for the experiencing of karmic results, which are almost always mixed, athough Avici itself refers to "uninterrupted" torment.


Graphic depictions making hell real have been popular. While they may lend themselves to exaggeration and poetic license, they may also approximate visions of some existing reality.

Some Buddhist hells are fiery and painful, and torment is inflicted by wardens. Some are cold and gloomy. The Realm of Hungry Ghosts is pathetic and desperate, with hunger, exposure, and few prospects. The Naraka/Niraya world is the name given to one of the worlds of greatest suffering in Buddhist cosmology. Earth-prison, limbo, shadow realm, nether region, underworld, purgatory, perdition, demonic plane, inferno all might describe layers of these unfortunate destinations.

• Reference: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Hell

Niraya (nir+aya) means "devoid of happiness." According to Buddhism there are several woeful states where beings exhaust unskillful karma. They are not eternal worlds of endless suffering -- but they must seem that way to the beings there. The difference between interminable and indeterminate must seem academic when hope is lost and the results seem to far outweigh the deeds that gave rise to them.

Nevertheless, with the exhaustion of the unwholesome (akusala) karma there is a possibility for the denizens residing in such states to be reborn elsewhere based on their past good actions.

• Reference: A Manual of Abhidhamma being Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha of Bhadanta Anuruddhācariya (ed. in the orig. Pāli text with English transl. and explanatory notes by Nārada Mahā Thera, 5th rev. ed. Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Soc., 1987).

Various torments, Wat Saen Suk, Thailand (http://www.payer.de/).

Nirayas: the Hells
Various lists of Nirayas are found in various Buddhist texts. In the Commentary to the Jātaka* there occurs the following list: Sañjīva, Kālasutta, Sanghāta, Jālaroruva, Dhūmaroruva, Mahāvīci, Tapana, Patāpana.

The Samyutta and Anguttara Nikāyas and the Sutta Nipāta contain a different list: Abbuda, Nirabbuda, Ababa, Atata, Ahaha, Kumuda, Sogandhika, Uppala, Pundarīka, Paduma (S.i.149; A.v.173; SN.p.126; see also Dvy. 67).

The Commentaries explain (e.g., AA.ii.853) that these are not separate Nirayas but specified periods of suffering in Avīci (the great hell). The Devadūta Sutra (M.iii.185) of the Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima Nikāya) contains yet another list: Gūtha, Kukkula, Simbalivana, Asipattavana, and Khārodakanadī. Other names also occur sporadically (e.g., Khuradhāra (J.v.269), Kākola (J.vi.247), Sataporisa (J.v.269), and Sattisūla (J.v.143).

The most fearful of the Nirayas is, however, the Avīci-mahā-niraya (see s.v. Avīci).

*J.v.266, 271; the same list is found in Dvy.67, except that Raurava is substituted for Jalaroruva and Mahāraurava for Dhūmaroruva.

• Reference: Malalasekera, G. P. Dictionary of Pāli Proper Names. Pali Text Society, 1974.

Niraya is the name given to one of the multilayer worlds of greatest suffering in Buddhist cosmology. Niraya is usually translated into English as "hell" or "purgatory." It differs from the hells of Western religions in at least two important respects. First, beings are not sent to there as the result of any divine judgment or punishment; second, the length of a being's stay is not eternal, though it is usually very long.

Instead, a being is reborn there as a direct result of his or her previous karma (actions of body, speech, and mind) and resides there for a finite length of time until that karma has achieved its full result. After this karma is used up, one will be reborn in another world as a result of an earlier karma that had not yet ripened. Karma means action or doing; whatever one does, says, or thinks is a karma.

The mentality of a being in the hells corresponds to states of extreme fear and helpless anguish in humans. Physically, Niraya is thought of as a series of cavernous layers which extend below Jambudvīpa ("India" or the "human realm" in general) into the earth. There are several schemes for enumerating these hells and describing their torments. One of the more common is that of the Eight Cold Hells and Eight Hot Hells, which are described below.

• Cold Nirayas
• Hot Nirayas
• Nirayas in Buddhist literature

Cold Hells

Arbuda – the "blister" hell. This is a dark, frozen plain surrounded by icy mountains and continually swept by blizzards. Inhabitant of this plain arise fully grown and abide life-long naked and alone, while the cold raises blisters on their bodies. The length of life in this world is said to be the time it would take to empty a barrel of sesame seed if one only took out a single seed every hundred years.

Nirarbuda – the "burst blister" hell. This world is even colder than the one above, and here the blisters burst open, leaving the beings' bodies covered with frozen blood and pus.

Aṭaṭa – the hell of shivering. Here the beings shiver in the cold, making an aṭ-aṭ-aṭ sound with their mouths.

Hahava – the hell of lamentation. Here the beings lament in the cold, going "ha, ha" in pain.

Huhuva – the hell of chattering teeth. Here the beings shiver as their teeth chatter, making the sound "hu, hu."

Utpala – the "blue lotus" hell. Here the intense cold makes the skin turn blue like the color of an utpala waterlily.

Padma – the "lotus" hell. In this hell the blizzard cracks open the frozen skin leaving one raw and bloody.

Mahāpadma – the "great lotus" hell. Here the whole body cracks into pieces and the internal organs are exposed to the cold and they also crack.

Each lifetime in these hells is twenty times the length of the one before it.

Hot Hells
Sañjīva – the "reviving" hell. In this hell the ground is made out of hot iron heated by an immense fire. Beings in this hell appear fully grown, already in a state of fear and misery. As soon as the being begins to fear being harmed by others, their fellows appear and attack each other with iron claws. Otherwise, the attendants of Yama appear and attack the being with many fiery weapons. As soon as the being experiences an unconsciousness like death, they are suddenly restored to full health and the attacks begin again. Other tortures experienced in this hell are having melted metal drop on them, being sliced into pieces, and suffering from the heat of the iron ground. Life in this hell is 162*1010 years long. It is said to be 1000 yojanas [7,000 miles] beneath Jambudvīpa and 10,000 yojanas [70,000 miles] in each direction.

Kālasūtra – the "black thread" hell. Here, in addition to the torments mentioned above, black lines are drawn upon the body, and Yama's servants cut the beings upon the lines with fiery saws and sharp axes. Life in this hell is 1296*1010 years long.

Saṃghāta – the "crushing" hell. This hell is also upon a ground of hot iron, but is surrounded by huge masses of rock that smash together and crush the beings to a bloody jelly. When the rocks move apart again, life is restored to the being and the process starts again. Life in this hell is 10,368*1010 years long.

Raurava – the "screaming" hell. Here beings run here and there looking for refuge from the burning ground. When they find an apparent shelter, they are locked inside it as it blazes around them, while they scream inside. Life in this hell is 82,944*1010 years long.

Mahāraurava – the "great screaming" hell. It is similar to Raurava but with greater pains. Life in this hell is 663,552*1010 years long.

"The Scream" -- a series of expressionist paintings by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, depicting an agonized figure against a blood red sky. The original German title given to the work by Munch was Der Schrei der Natur ("The Scream of Nature"). The Norwegian word skrik is usually translated as scream, but is cognate with the English "shriek." Occasionally, the painting has been called The Cry. In his diary dated 22.01.1892, Munch described his inspiration for the image thus: "I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

Tapana – the "heating" hell. Here Yama's servants impale the beings on a fiery spear until flames issue from their noses and mouths. Life in this hell is 5,308,416*1010 years long.

Pratāpana – the "great heating" hell. The tortures here are similar to Tapana, but the beings are pierced more bloodily with a trident. Life in this hell is 42,467,328*1010 years long. It is also said to last for the length of half an antarakalpa.

Avīci – the "uninterrupted" hell. Beings are roasted in an immense blazing oven with terrible suffering. Life in this hell is 339,738,624*1010 years long. It is also said to last for the length of an antarakalpa.

These hells by no means exhaust the tale of possibilities. Some sources reckon five hundred or even hundreds of thousands of different hells. In Chinese Buddhist texts, the numbers and types of hells were elaborated in a variety of creative ways; see Di Yu for examples of this sort of treatment. Tibetan Dharmapala at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois Yama is the name of the Buddhist god and judge of the dead, who presides over the Buddhist hells or purgatories. Although ultimately based on the god Yama of the Hindu Vedas, the Buddhist Yama has developed.

According to Puranic cosmography, the earth is divided into seven concentric island continents (sapta-dvipa vasumati) separated by the seven encircling seas, each double the size of the preceding one. Similar to the division of the human world, the hells are conceived of as subdivided underground layers even as this conception is not always applicable.

The sufferings of the dwellers in the hells often resemble those of hungry ghosts (Pretas), and the two types of being are easily confused. The simplest distinction is that beings in hell are confined to their subterranean world, while the hungry ghosts are free to move about. A hungry ghost is a kind of ghost associated with hunger common to many religions.

The Hells in Buddhist literature
Descriptions of the hells are a common subject in some forms of Buddhist commentarial and popular literature as a caution against the fate that befalls evildoers and an encouragement to virtue.

The Mahāyāna Sūtra of Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha (Dìzàng or Jizō) graphically describes the sufferings in hell and explains how ordinary people can transfer merit in order to relieve the sufferings of the beings there. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva is often known in Japanese as JizÅ or in Chinese as Dizang, is a popular Mahayana Buddhist Bodhisattva, usually depicted as a monk.

The traditional Chinese Buddhist story of Mulian explains how this disciple of of the Buddha spiritually journeyed to one hell to help his mother, who had been reborn there, obtain a better rebirth. Maudgalyayana (Pali: Mahamoggallana; Jp: Mokuren; Ch: Mohemujianlian), also known as Mahamaudgalyayana, was one of the Buddha Shakyamuni's disciple foremost in supernatural powers.

The Japanese monk Genshin began his Ōjōyōshu ("Essentials of Salvation") with a description of the suffering in hell. Tibetan Lamrim texts also included a similar description. Genshin (942-1017) was the most influential of a number evangelists active during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Japan.

Chinese Buddhist texts considerably enlarged upon the description of hell (Dì Yù), detailing additional hells and their punishments, and expanding the role of Yama and his helpers, Ox-Head and Horse-Face. In these texts, hell became an integral part of the otherworldly bureaucracy which mirrored the Imperial Chinese administration. Feng Du (Traditional Chinese: pinyin) is the realm of the dead in Chinese mythology.

Reference: NationMaster Encyclopedia