I'll See your "Lightworker" and Raise you a "Whitelighter".

Or half-whitelighter or whatever the hell Rose McGowan is on Charmed. You think I regularly watch that crappy show?

Hell no! I'm too busy writing epic poems about Buffy the Vampire Slayer to have any time for that.

But when all this "lightworker/Obama" stuff started coming out, I was reminded not of DPUD's video games, but of the syndicated TNT series about 2 sexy, sexy witches and Holly Marie Combs.

Now, if you've never watched "Charmed", (and, really, who could blame ya?) it's basically about 3 sisters (the aforementioned sexy witches played by Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan and, umm, Combs) who live in San Francisco and who combine their powers to protect the world from demons. And evil. Or maybe just evil demons. I dunno. I usually watch it on mute.

Anyway, McGowan's witch is a "whitelighter" (actually, I think she's only a half-whitelighter. The other half? Irish.) What is a whitelighter you ask?

Well it's basically an angelic figure with the power to heal. And to "orb" (teleport) herself and objects around. From wiki:

Whitelighters are the messengers between the Elders and witches. Leo helps the Charmed Ones by asking the Elders for help whenever they need information not provided by the Book of Shadows. Healing is another special ability granted to Whitelighters, and is used when their charges have been injured. As long as there is the faintest breath of life left in a person, they can be healed from any injury, whether the injury is magical in origin or not, though they cannot heal self-inflicted damage. A Whitelighter's healing abilitiy is triggered by the emotion of love.

Why is this relevant?

Well, because in the world of Charmed, there are also, you guessed it "Darklighters".

And what do Darklighters do?

Pretty much the opposite of Whitelighters. From wiki:

Powers

Darklighters can teleport from place to place by orbing, as Whitelighters can, but their orb effects are black in color.[1] Their ability is called black orbing.[4] They also come equipped with crossbows, which they can summon into their hands at any time.[5] The Darklighter crossbow arrows are coated with a special type of poison that is especially lethal to Whitelighters.[1] Some Darklighters also possess the touch of death, a power triggered by hate and focused through their hands that allows the user to burn someone to death - in contrast to a Whitelighter's ability to heal others.[1] Similar to Whitelighters, Darklighters also possess the ability to sense another magical being's presence through a magical form of telepathy.[1] Hence they can locate a Whitelighter anywhere on the globe by merely concentrating.
[edit]

Goals

The Primary goal of all Darklighters is to kill Whitelighters in order to make witches more vulnerable to an evil attack. In addition, Darklighters often work as hired guns or mercenaries to higher level Demons and Powers. They generally work with Warlocks or demons to accomplish their goals.

Hmmm...Lightworkers and Whitelighters seem to overlap a little. Same with the whole Darkworker-Darklighter thing.

And that whole "communicating with the Elders" bit? Sounds pretty Obamessianic to me! Why if I were Morford, I'd have 1,500 words ready for next week about the "ancient wisdom" the Obamessiah has to share with us mortals.

Anyway, after reading DPUD's post that Gabe linked, I wondered, "how long was Charmed on"? The answer:1998-2005.

In other words, pretty much the same timeframe in which DPUD's cited games were released.

Which means what?

That Morford's article relies not only on a philosophy that was probably lifted from XBOX video games, but also on the narrative of a TV show that originally ran on the WB.

The WB, people. What's next? Will Morford write about how Smallville was really a rural suburb of Chicago, and Obama's only weakness is bald guys with environmentally invasive pollutants?

Probably.

In any event, I just thought I'd throw this out there for y'all to consider. Mainly because I wanted to post the pic of the two sexy, sexy witches. But also because if I'm ever going to be brought on board a "new-age" philosophical bandwagon, I'm gonna hold out hope that it's at least based on a wholesome show that used to run on FOX.

Like "Married with Children", or something. But that's just me.

posted by Jack M. at 02:18 PM

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