Tag: power and secrecy

Epstein’s House of Mirrors and Other Tales

mim

There was once a man called Jeffrey Epstein.

In public he was a benefactor of science, a patron of universities, and a familiar presence at elite gatherings where presidents, financiers, and scholars lifted glasses in his honor. He spoke often about innovation and the future of humanity. He funded research into artificial intelligence and longevity. He donated to museums and cultivated relationships with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.

In private, according to court findings and sworn testimony, he engaged in the sexual exploitation of underage girls. For years he maintained elite access even after a 2008 conviction in Florida that resulted in a widely criticized plea deal and a remarkably lenient sentence that allowed him to leave his jail cell to work in his office by day. His re-arrest in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges exposed how effectively wealth, influence, and reputation had insulated him from deeper scrutiny.

Epstein seemed to understand a brutal rule of power: visibility can function as protection. The more photographed he was beside institutions of prestige, the less imaginable his alleged private conduct became to those outside his inner circle.

His gatherings were invitation-only, often held at his private island compound in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The architecture there blended minimalist modernism with a small blue-and-white striped domed structure that media outlets dubbed a “temple” because of its appearance. Guests described the environment as theatrical. Much of what occurred behind closed doors is documented only through depositions, allegations, and ongoing public debate.

Recently unsealed court documents, often referred to online as “the Epstein files,” have reignited public scrutiny. Thousands of pages of redacted emails including some visual material are being dissected not only by journalists but by ordinary citizens on TikTok, X, Reddit, and other platforms. Some social media users claim the documents reveal evidence of very extreme abuses beyond the charges formally brought in court, including references they interpret as ritualized harm or Satanic Ritual Abuse. These interpretations circulate widely online, though the verified criminal cases center on the exploitation and trafficking of minors.

Epstein was, by all outward appearances, a master of code-switching. By day he discussed finance, philanthropy, and global policy. By night, prosecutors allege, he participated in the exploitation of vulnerable girls. Private investigators with platforms on social media allege that he functioned as a sort of occult high priest who orchestrated acts of unimaginable depravity. He moved between these worlds without visible friction. Financier and social strategist in public; accused trafficker in private.

The deeper question is not merely how one man operated, but how systems of prestige allowed him to do so for so long. And whether others who participated in or enabled the abuse will ever face prosecution.

The Cult of Radiant Compassion

Across the ocean, in the mountains of distant lands, another structure flourished for centuries. Let’s just call it the Order of Radiant Compassion.

To outsiders, the Order appeared serene. Its temples were adorned with luminous murals depicting buddhas and bodhisattvas acting for the benefit of all sentient beings. Devotees spoke of nonviolence, transcendence of ego, and enlightenment.

But within the inner circles of the most accomplished adepts, a harsher doctrine was practiced. These gurus demanded absolute obedience. Students pledged sacred vows called samayas that many did not fully understand. Breaking those vows, they were warned, would condemn their consciousness to eons of unimaginable torment. Many vulnerable disciples were abused and gaslighted.

In this cult, the outer teachings emphasized kindness, while the secret teachings emphasized power and allowed for great cruelty. Advanced disciples were taught that reality could be manipulated through ritual and that consciousness could be fractured and reconstructed by tantric techniques. A disciple’s identity became malleable clay in the hands of the enlightened master who used those techniques to enforce his will. The language was luminous, but the implications were not.

Epstein’s circle believed themselves liberated from morality by intellect. The Order believed themselves liberated from morality by metaphysics. One cloaked itself in secular humanism, while the other cloaked itself in sanctified mysticism. Both relied on a similar architecture of control:

  • Public virtue
  • Private transgression
  • Initiation through secrecy
  • Loyalty secured by psychological or other forms of leverage

While some investigators have speculated that Epstein leveraged compromising information, the Order secured obedience through fear of karmic retribution and promises of enlightenment. In both systems, followers surrendered discernment in exchange for something greater.

The House of Mirrors

The lesson is not about one man’s island of horrors or one enlightenment cult’s flourishing through deception. It is about systems that divide the world into initiates and outsiders, that sanctify hierarchy, and that position certain people into positions of authority beyond moral scrutiny.

The public exposure of Epstein’s life shattered the illusion that prestige guarantees virtue. It forced a reckoning with how reputational power can silence victims for decades and how easily human beings are dazzled by proximity to influence. No system, whether financial, political, or spiritual, should ever place itself above ordinary morality. Accountability begins when we stop confusing the appearance of status with sanctity.

The Moral Logic of Ritual Killing in the Wrathful Practices of Tibetan Buddhism

mim

This piece follows up on my previous essay, “Tantric Deception: Black Magic and Power in Tibetan Buddhism,” which explored Solomon FitzHerbert’s study of tantric statecraft and the normalization of ritual violence in seventeenth-century Tibet. In this post, I turn to an even more revealing feature of FitzHerbert’s findings: the Fifth Dalai Lama’s own moral reasoning about ritual killing.

In his autobiography, the Fifth Dalai Lama confronts the criticism that tantric rituals of destruction should not be directed “against ordinary people.” His response is stunning in its candor: “We do not need to be ashamed of this,” he writes, “as it is taught in the Tantras.”¹ He goes further, citing the eight kinds of spirits who “fiercely execute the punishment” on behalf of the enlightened adept.²

Here the Great Fifth is not apologizing for violence; he is codifying it. FitzHerbert explains that the Dalai Lama invokes a moral category known as the ten fields of liberation (sgrol ba’i zhing bcu), a rubric for identifying the kinds of people whose killing can be ritually justified in tantric Buddhism.³ These include those who “cause harm to the Buddhist religion,” “bring dishonour to the Three Jewels,” “endanger the life of the guru,” “slander the Mahāyāna,” “sow discord among the vajra community,” “prevent others from attaining siddhi,” or “pervert views concerning karma and its retribution.”⁴

In other words, violence against the enemies of the dharma was not merely tolerated; it was systematized. The moral categories of Buddhist tantra aligned precisely with the ideological boundaries of religious loyalty. To kill an “enemy of the faith” was to enact liberation through wrathful compassion, a punitive act performed in the name of spiritual duty. In this context, the term liberation does not refer to enlightenment but serves as tantric code for killing.

The crucial question, then, is this: who decides who counts as an enemy of the dharma? It is the guru, a figure endowed with godlike authority, who makes that determination and authorizes the strike, much as a mafia boss sanctions a hit within his own organization.

Such ideas did not remain abstract. As FitzHerbert shows elsewhere, the Dalai Lama’s government ritualized the deployment of these doctrines in warfare and political suppression.⁵ What we see in these passages is the theological backbone of that policy: a cosmological logic that made violence both righteous and karmically justified.

When the “Fields of Liberation” Become Personal

The ethical implications of this doctrine extend far beyond the seventeenth century. Its structure, dividing the world between defenders and destroyers of the dharma, still echoes in the tantric imagination today. Within closed guru/disciple networks, where authority is absolute and ritual power is personalized, this logic can turn inwards toward vulnerable disciples.

When a teacher is accused of abuse–sexual, financial, or psychological–some may interpret criticism of that teacher as slander of the Mahāyāna or harm to the guru, two of the very offenses listed in the ten fields of liberation. Under this view, the accuser becomes a threat to the vajra community itself. The rhetoric of “vajra hell,” karmic downfall, or spiritual ruin can be mobilized as a form of punishment.

Even when no public or obvious ritual of destruction is performed, the doctrinal framework legitimizing wrathful retribution remains intact and the teacher may privately extract revenge. A teacher who sees himself as an accomplished tantric adept may claim to act from “enlightened wrath.” Certainly he convinces himself that is the case. He may claim his retribution is not from malice but from a compassion that destroys obscurations and seeks to protect his community from dissenters. In this way, spiritual authority can blur into coercion, and the old metaphysics of tantric punishment can be redeployed against dissenting students.

Thus, the problem is not simply historical. It lies in a theological grammar that still allows destructive acts to be reframed as enlightened means. When criticism is recast as “slander of the dharma,” and when the guru’s person is identified with the deity itself, retaliation can be justified as upholding the sacred order.

Facing the Doctrine Honestly

When Western seekers encounter Tibetan Buddhism, we are often presented with an image of serene compassion, untainted by coercion or cruelty. Yet the Fifth Dalai Lama himself dismantles that illusion. He writes without hesitation that violent tantric rites are legitimate instruments of enlightened rule. The “theatre state” of seventeenth-century Tibet was the political expression of doctrines like the ten fields of liberation.

If the tradition is to be understood honestly, these passages should be part of an open and very public conversation. The Fifth Dalai Lama’s own words make clear that within tantric ethics, destruction is allowed, and killing can be framed as an act of perverted compassion. The challenge for modern practitioners and scholars alike is to recognize how this same moral architecture can exist whenever authority claims transcendence from accountability.

Footnotes

  1. Solomon G. FitzHerbert, “The Fifth Dalai Lama and the Tantric Politics of State Formation in Seventeenth-Century Tibet,” Arts Asiatiques 27 (2018): 88.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Ibid., 89.
  4. Ibid.
  5. Ibid., 74–83.