The Cult of the Supreme Being was a short-lived state-sponsored religion during the French Revolution, created in 1794 by Maximilien Robespierre.
Why it was created
Robespierre thought the earlier Cult of Reason had gone too far in attacking religion and promoting atheism. He believed society needed some form of belief in a higher moral power to keep virtue and civic responsibility alive.
So he proposed a new idea:
There is a higher power (“the Supreme Being”)
The human soul is immortal
Virtue and republican morality should guide citizens
Religion should support the French Republic, not the Catholic Church.
It was meant to be a deistic religion—more like the philosophy of Jean‑Jacques Rousseau, who argued that societies need a “civil religion.”
The big public festival
The cult’s most famous event was the Festival of the Supreme Being on June 8, 1794.
Huge crowds gathered in Champ de Mars.
Robespierre led a grand procession.
An enormous statue symbolizing Atheism was burned.
Another statue representing Wisdom or the Supreme Being was revealed.
The ceremony was elaborate, almost like a theatrical civic ritual.
Why it ended
The cult lasted only a few weeks.
Many revolutionaries already distrusted Robespierre and thought the ceremony made him look like a high priest or dictator. Shortly afterward:
Robespierre was overthrown and executed during the Thermidorian Reaction.
After his fall, the Cult of the Supreme Being quickly disappeared.
✅ In short: it was an attempt to create a moral, civic religion for the French Republic—neither Catholic nor atheist—but it died with Robespierre.
The phrase “the chauffeur as hero” comes from the German philosopher Hermann Keyserling, especially in his book Travel Diary of a Philosopher.
What Keyserling meant
Keyserling was observing a cultural shift in the early 20th century. In earlier times, the admired figure was the heroic leader or aristocrat. But in the modern technological age, he argued, society was beginning to admire a different type of person—the operator of machines.
The chauffeur (driver of the new automobile) symbolized this new figure.
Keyserling’s idea:
The chauffeur controls powerful technology (the automobile).
He moves quickly through the modern world.
He represents skill, speed, and technical mastery rather than wisdom or moral leadership.
But Keyserling’s point was somewhat critical and ironic. He thought modern society was in danger of letting technical competence replace deeper spiritual or intellectual leadership.
In simplified terms:
Old heroic figure
New “hero”
King, warrior, sage
Driver, engineer, technician
The chauffeur therefore became a metaphor for modern civilization being driven by technical experts rather than philosophers or statesmen.
Why it mattered
Keyserling saw this as part of a broader cultural change after World War I, when machines, industry, and speed seemed to dominate civilization.
His warning was basically:
A society run only by “chauffeurs” (technicians) may move fast but doesn’t necessarily know where it is going.
Later influence
This idea anticipated later critiques of modern technological society by thinkers such as:
José Ortega y Gasset
Martin Heidegger
Both worried about technical control replacing deeper cultural wisdom.
Hermann Alexander Graf von Keyserling was a Baltic German philosopher from the Keyserlingk family. His grandfather, Alexander von Keyserling, was a notable geologist of Imperial Russia. Wikipedia
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Mar 11, 2026 Angela Thompson Smith, PhD, is a founding director and former board member of the International Remote Viewing Association. She is author of Seer: Thirty Years of Remote Viewing… and Counting, Tactical Remote Viewing, Remote Perceptions, and Diary of an Abduction: A Scientist Probes the Enigma of Her Alien Contact. She is coauthor, with C. B. Scott Jones, PhD, of Voices From the Cosmos. Her website is https://mindwiseconsulting.com/ Here she shares her childhood memory of a close encounter with an ostensible UFO in Dorset, England. Years later, she began to suspect that there had been a series of non-human interventions in her life. She set out to explore this possibility through a process of dream analysis, journal keeping, and the exploration of half-forgotten memories. She also immersed herself in the community of UFO researchers and experiencers. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on July 1, 2020)
A personal chronicle of three key legal privacy battles that have defined the digital age and shaped the internet as we know it.
From a seasoned leader in the field of digital privacy rights.
Throughout her career, Cindy Cohn has been driven by a fundamental question: Can we still have private conversations if we live our lives online? Privacy’s Defender chronicles her thirty-year battle to protect our right to digital privacy and shows just how central this right is to all our other rights, including our ability to organize and make change in the world.
Shattering the hypermasculine myth that our digital reality was solely the work of a handful of charismatic tech founders, the author weaves her own personal story with the history of Crypto Wars, FBI gag orders, and the post-9/11 surveillance state. She describes how she became a seasoned leader in the early digital rights movement, as well as how this work serendipitously helped her discover her birth parents and find her life partner. Along the way, she also details the development of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which she grew from a ragtag group of lawyers and hackers into one of the most powerful digital rights organizations in the world.
Part memoir and part legal history for the general reader, the book is a compelling testament to just how hard-won the privacy rights we now enjoy as tech users are, but also how crucial these rights are in our efforts to combat authoritarianism, grow democracy, and strengthen other human rights.
This Mercury retrograde in Pisces has been a ride, and now we’re approaching the climax of the journey as Mercury retrograde is conjunct not only Mars, but the North Node of purpose.
The tripleMercury–Mars–North Nodeconjunction perfects between March 14th and March 17th, 2026, and takes place at 8°-10° Pisces.
In this messy cobweb of Mercury retrograde, something is starting to emerge.
Something we might not be able to articulate very clearly – yet something we can already feel taking shape beneath the surface.
The Bigger Picture
SaturnandNeptune have met, shaken hands, and are already in Aries.
The world has changed – irremediably so. By now, none of us can really argue with the new reality, with completely new rules of the game.
But – and there’s always a but – like fairytales have taught us time and time again – even inside a reality we’re not fully on board with, or we might simply like to tweak a little, – there’s always some room for maneuver.
Remember when Cinderella wanted to go to the ball but had no way to get there? And the fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a golden carriage?
That kind of magic.
Fairytales, dreams, and all things Pisces and Neptune are that liminal space where we can argue with reality.
We might not be able to literally turn pumpkins into carriages but we can still reimagine the possibilities.
Mercury retrograde in Pisces is the magic “undo” button of the zodiac. In the next week or so, we can still go back, change conditions, and look for nonobvious connections that can help us turn the story around.
Mercury retrograde is not alone. Mars and the North Node add something else to the mix: momentum. The spark that may have started as a dream now comes with the urge to act on it.
What we’re feeling is more than ‘just a dream’. There is an impatience now – the desire to actually bring that vision to life, even if the conditions are not fully there yet.
Something inside starts asking:
If not me, then who? If not now, then when?
Mars Conjunct The North Node – The Hero And The Call To Adventure
Mars is the ultimate call to adventure, and the North Node, the deeper soul calling to the future that is asking to be lived.
According to Joseph Campbell, who articulated the concept of the Hero’s Journey, the call to adventure comes when the old concepts, ideals, and patterns no longer fit the person we’ve become.
The Hero’s journey starts with the call to adventure – to go on a mission, to go to the ball – but the Hero almost always refuses this initial call – because they are afraid of what it might demand of them, or because they believe they don’t have the means to succeed.
But then something interesting happens. Once the hero commits to the new journey, they almost immediately get help. They meet a mentor, encounter supernatural forces or signs along the way.
Gandalf. The Fairy Grandmother. The White Rabbit.
Things seem to magically align so that the hero can move forward.
In real life, these show up as serendipities, or meaningful ‘coincidences’.
Once we unfreeze ourselves from our resistance, we start noticing details or opportunities we’ve been blind to before.
Just like when we buy a red coat and then we start ‘seeing’ red coats everywhere – because we are now tuned into that frequency, we are aware of the red coat – when we commit to the journey, we start noticing details that are connected to the journey, details that can help us take the next step.
We meet someone who casually mentions something that suddenly clicks.
We open a book or an article and the exact sentence we need seems to jump off the page.
Someone casually mentions a place, a course, or a person that ends up becoming important.
Or we stumble across a tool or solution to a problem we’ve been wrestling with for months.
Mercury Conjunct Mars Conjunct North Node
With Mercury conjunct Mars, we start paying attention (Mercury) to those concrete steps (Mars) that move us forward and lead to meaningful changes – not just ideas, not just intentions – but actions that can actually make a difference.
If I no longer do this (fill in the blank: your energy-draining activity) then I have time for this (fill in the blank: something that energizes you).
If I actually use my (fill in the blanks: neglected talent or resources) then I can actually (fill in the blanks: result you want to achieve).
Even if not all the conditions are in place yet (Mercury is still retrograde for a few more days) we want to pay attention to what’s happening → and take action when the moment calls for it.
This is one of those times when it’s ok to act now and think later – as long as what we act on is aligned with our higher path. When something feels like a clear yes, it’s a clear yes.
This is also an invitation to venture into the unknown when we don’t have all the details yet.
It’s a test of trust – do we trust the universe (Pisces) enough to believe that there is always something there to guide us?
Do we trust our own intuition that knows things our cortex might not have fully caught up with yet?
Do we trust that the spark in our soul is the very guidance that we’re on the right path, even if it’s still dark or misty ahead?
Mercury, Mars, North Node – If Not Now, Then When?
When Mercury conjuncts Mars, we’re not looking for ideas or inspiration – we actually go for it.
And with the North Node activation, we are talking about our soul’s purpose.
Something that moves us forward in a way that feels aligned with who we really are and what we’re here for.
Every single one of us is unique – a unique genetic combination, a unique natal chart, a unique path. And we are here for something that no one else can do in quite the same way.
In a world built for standardization and conformity, transits like this are a reminder to return to ourselves – to that spark that makes us, us.
And when we follow that spark, life has a way of meeting us halfway.
Subscribe To Future Updates
If you want to keep up with the future transits, make sure you subscribe to Astro Butterfly’s weekly newsletter.
An enjoyable evening of community interaction, about the choices your future took because of Powerful Ideas. This time it is GLASS.
Glass and the link between art, science and global communication.
So will our conversation be spent discussing glass as material, or vision, or art? There is a bit of structural complexity to this, and I am intrigued as to how these conversations will go.
I am sure it will be insightful, fun, and a chance for lively conversation.
“Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you – but: what did you learn?”
~ Idries Shah
–Idries Shah (June 16, 1924 – November 23, 1996) was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging … Wikipedia
Trump: "I said, 'Why don't we just capture the ship? We could use it. Why did we sink them?' He said, 'It's more fun to sink them.' They like sinking them better." pic.twitter.com/nR6KOxFCTY
“The Bhagavad-Gita says, “It is better to follow your own path, however imperfectly, than to follow someone else’s perfectly.”
Yes — that idea does appear in the Bhagavad Gita, though the wording you quoted is a modern paraphrase.
The verse usually cited is Chapter 3, Verse 35 (and a very similar line appears in Chapter 18). A common translation reads:
“Better is one’s own duty (svadharma), though imperfectly performed, than the duty of another well performed.”
What it means
The teaching is about svadharma — one’s own path, role, or inner calling.
The idea is:
Each person has a unique nature and responsibility.
Even if you carry out your own path imperfectly, it is spiritually healthier than imitating someone else’s life perfectly.
Living someone else’s life creates inner conflict and inauthenticity.
Context in the Gita
The teaching is given by Krishna to Arjuna, who is reluctant to fight in the great war described in the Mahabharata. Krishna tells him that, as a warrior, he must fulfill his own duty rather than try to adopt another role.
A slightly fuller translation
Another widely cited version:
“Better one’s own duty, though lacking merit, than the duty of another well performed. Better to die in one’s own duty; the duty of another is fraught with danger.”
So the modern quote you gave captures the spirit of the passage, even though it simplifies the original Sanskrit concept of dharma.
Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
