Namaste to you, enlightened readers, and once again welcome to the Snake Oil Bulletin. This week we will delve into the universal consciousness that exists within us all. We will explore our inner divinities and open our third eyes to all the possibilities that the universal love energy can provide us. And while we're at it, we'll talk about dildos. Let's dive (heh) right in.

Chakrubs are the crystal dildos your cooter craves

Have your chakras been out of alignment, enlightened reader? It's understandable in our modern go-go world that invisible wheels of...energy (?) inside of our bodies would get all out of whack with one another. Most chakric disruptions can be traced all the way down to your bright red root chakra, located in the sacred space between your naughty bits and your bunghole. And what better way to stimulate that chakra than to shove a $150 rock up your cooch and go to town? Sounds stimulating? Then you my friend are the perfect customer for Chakrubs, the crystal dildos designed to get the ladies of your meditation circle in touch with every fiber of their freshly patchoulied punanis. Wonder how well they do debugging our laptops.

For those of you doubting the existence of such marvelous devices, Chakrubs politely offers an insider's look at just why the crunchier set would want to shove rocks in their fancy bits:

Chakrubs are sex toys made from 100% pure crystal that bring a sense of sacredness to your playtime. These beautiful, hand-crafted tools are created with the intention of opening oneself up to the healing properties crystals provide. Crystals have perfect molecular structures that have positive effects on our electro-magnetic fields. When our energectic [sic] bodies are at ease, we are at ease, we are open to healing, to peace, to love, to all of life's pleasures.

100% pure crystal what? Crystal is a shape, not a substance.

‘Chakrubs’ derives from Chakra, a Sanskrit word describing energy wheels. Chakrubs urge you to feel deeply, passionately, subtly. Light up your chakras, and create an intentional practice that that not only gets you off, but turns you on in way in which you will remain turned on and awakened with a renewed sense of self-awareness and wisdom.

Fucking your way to enlightenment is the most forgotten peg on the Noble Eightfold Path. We seem to recall a wise master who once told us "If you see the Buddha upon the road, kill him. But if you can't, bang his brains out. Dude's a freaking animal."

We believe that by purchasing your Chakrub, you tell the universe you are ready to explore what it means to be activated by your own sensual body. You are ready to delve into your humanness, your divinity, to heal wounds that may hold you back, to discover what is unique about you.

If this turns into repeated proclamations of Christian Grey awakening Anastasia's inner goddess, we're done.

Chakrubs aren't just some nonsense cooked up to take money from well-meaning sex-positivistas. The questionably labeled "Academia" section of the site offers us insight into just what these polished love rocks can do, and that is apparently a lot, as the chakras page helpfully breaks down what Americans think Hindus believe about chakras:

Life derives its liveliness from the vibrations of its energy wheels that are spinning with theirown [sic] rhythms to let vitality flow into and out of our sensation. Known as Chakras in Sanskrit,these wheels of energy are also the wheels of light that provide a path to awaken humanconsciousness [sic]. Chakras are the carriers of universal love, knowledge, and energy. Located along the spine, there are primarily 7 energy centers.

Oh thank you, that explained nothing. But perhaps we're being too harsh here. Part of the magic of woo woo is that it can't be pinned down with "labels" or "meaning" or "sense of any kind." If Deepak Chopra can get away with twisting words until they mean nothing, then why can't our beloved dildosmiths? At least they're providing us a physical product alongside their nonsense, even if said product starts in price at $70 a pop for an egg and goes up to $375 for a triple threat. You can even purchase dildos named after Hindu deities, because this wasn't walking a line of good taste just enough. Also eww, because "rose bud" in butt-stuff parlance does not mean what you think it means, Chakrubs.

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The Academia section also includes an exhaustive exhausting breakdown of what crystals are (answer: magic), but makes a point to bring it all back to science, if by "science" we mean the exact opposite of science:

While the ancient world related crystals with magic and mystery, the modern world bases the crystal healing philosophy on pure science and logic.

Oh this should be good.

The soul of the body is its energy.

Aaaaand off to a bad start.

The human body has an intricate electromagnetic system with which the crystals, being perfect electromagnetic conductors, can establish interactions. Crystals have the power to transform and strengthen various energies into biological energies that rebalance and revitalize our biological system not only in the cellular level, but in the mental, emotional, and spiritual level as well. Crystals carry healing vibrations that activate the chakras or the energy centers within our electromagnetic system while producing a positive effect on the entire body system.

...What? I just...with the...what? Who is behind these baffling buttplugs? Chakrubs are the brain children of Vanessa Cuccia, a California businesswoman who came up with the idea while undergoing a spiritual awakening at the same time she was working in a sex store. According to her own testimony, Cuccia entered the house of an enlightened guru known for collecting various crystals, and immediately shouted to a packed room that some of them would make great sex toys. We kind of fell in love with Cuccia with that line. Thanks to a penetrating interview with Salon, we get some insight into Cuccia's thought process behind her contraptions, including why all the insight on crystals included on her site is mostly bullshit:

First, I would like to say that people who believe in the power of crystals know that you can have any crystal and set an intention with it, and because they’re good conductors of energy, it could hold an intention.

So what you're saying is that any crystal could do anything so long as you have the intention? So what's the point of all the different crystals? If the $189 prism crystal can have all the same magical properties as the $150 black onyx (haha, we'll wait for you to get your jokes out that the black one is bigger), then why bother with any of them? If a single crystal is a veritable sonic screwdriver of can-do-anything-ness, why even bother using different kinds?

Cuccia is also kind enough to remind us to always play safe with our magic dildos, but not safety in the sense of "don't stick it too far up your sugar basin" but safety in the sense of "don't put them in your bedroom because they will explode with magic":

You have to feel yourself and go with your own thing. I used to keep a bowl of crystals by my headboard and I couldn’t sleep. I think that everybody has different levels of sensitivity and different crystals are going to feel more intense than others. I would never say “don’t have crystals in your bedroom.” I love having crystals in my bedroom, I think they really help the energy, and Chakrubs can be placed just as any other crystal to help the energy flow in your bedroom. But that being said, if you’re a person that is super sensitive to subtle energies, then don’t have it in your bedroom. Have it somewhere where it could be on an altar somewhere else in a meditation room, something like that.

A dildo altar! Excuse me, ma'am, but this dildo altar witchcraft does not sound right with THE LORD. There is only ONE kind of dildo altar he accepts: Thank you very much. Lastly, for all you skeptics, Cuccia has a few choice words with which we don't necessarily disagree.

I love to reiterate that these properties of the crystals, they’re passed down from many, many generations. A lot of people will say, “That’s bullshit,” about these crystals. I like crystals because it’s something tangible that I can touch and I myself feel a vibration in the crystal, that’s my belief. Some people say it’s a placebo. If it is a placebo, it’s still helping.

That's actually fair, and in Cuccia's defense she isn't claiming her sex stones can heal diseases or cure autism or anything evil; just vague promises of increased consciousness and uniting energies and other nondescript silliness. Unfortunately once again our crystal aficionado inadvertently reveals her hand:

There is science to crystal energy. That being said, all the properties of the crystals, they’ve been passed down for thousands of years, so I do think that whatever intention we hold, the crystals will just help amplify that. Sometimes I feel if you’re picking a crystal, you should go flat out on intuition and not necessarily read about what it does. Go off of your intuition and you will never be steered wrong with what you pick.

In other words, make it up and you'll never be wrong. We can't disagree with that. Despite all our ha-ha funny jokes, we're not actually against this idea. Anything that gets people to learn about their own turn-ons and get more in touch with their quivering quims is a good thing. From Cuccia's own testimony, developing and later using the Chakrubs helped her to discover new things about her sexuality and made her feel a pleasure she hadn't experienced before, and for that we say kudos. If it feels good and no one gets hurt, go have at it. Sure it's couched in a lot of woo woo nonsense about activating love crystals like we're in a magical girl anime, but carry on, masturbators! Though we will simply note that if in your infinite hippie wisdom you need to feel vibrations all throughout your chakras, we'll remind you that there are many rabbits with all kinds of vibration levels for you to choose, and only some of them have to do with magic in your taint.

Snake-eating preacher believes other weird shit too, whadyaknow!

Last week Yr Wonkette took a look at Prophet Penuel Mnguni, pastor of the End Times Disciples Ministry in South Africa. He was the guy that told his congregation to eat live snakes because through the POWER OF JESUS he'd turned them into chocolate. He then followed up his release from jail on animal cruelty charges by making his congregants eat rats. Yeah, that assface. Would you be shocked to learn, enlightened reader, that Prophet Penuel believes other weird shit? And that he isn't too fond of gays? I can see the bewilderment etched across your faces, but it is true!

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To catch you up, forcing your congregation to do weird shit has become kind of a thing in South African evangelical churches of late. Penuel's mentor made headlines last year by making his disciples go out into the field to eat grass because he'd turned it into food, and later had them drink gasoline because he'd turned it into pineapple juice. See, Penuel and his ilk are believers in the modern miracle movement, which comes from the same school of thought as faith healers and the like. Basically, the idea is that your pastor has been so blessed by God (because your pastor is so special and perfect and wonderful and also needs $6.5 million for a private jet plz k thx) that he has the power to do magic like Jesus did. Sure, officially speaking Jesus' superpowers came from being the SON OF A FUCKING GOD, but recognizing hubris has never been evangelicals' strong suit.

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Penuel's powers are varied and many. In one instance, Penuel claims to have turned a woman's hair into food, and then ordered his disciples to eat it. Other instances are just as weird, according to his openly posted Facebook account. In one sermon he claimed to increase the temperature to the point that people were stripping their clothes off, but apparently it wasn't hot enough that they'd take off things like pants or sweaters.

In another post, Penuel commanded snake demons to enter the bodies of several congregants, who then proceeded to flop around on the ground like they'd had a few too many sips of the communion wine. In yet another, he admits to forcing children in his congregation to eat cloth after having transformed the cloth into food. And then in another post, Penuel claimed to have actually transformed a man into a horse, and celebrated by promptly taking a pony ride on his back. The site is littered with testimonials of people claiming Prophet Penuel healed them of diseases, but the faith healing bunk seems almost quaint in comparison to the kinky pony play and feeder fetish stuff this guy is getting up to. Sure, there is one girl who claims that the prophet came to her in a dream to feed her blood and cure her of a concussion, but that's downright humdrum to a guy who actually claims to have multi-man ninja cloning powers.

Penuel seems to take deep personal glee in inflicting pain on his congregants, demonstrated by multiple posts in which he claims to heal people from pain and demonstrates by jumping into the air and stomping on them. But perhaps strangest of all of Penuel's sermons is the one from July 26th in which he performed the first straight-to-gay conversion in human history. We'll let the Prophet himself explain this one, and just throw a big blanket [sic] all over this thing.

Sunday service 2015-07-26 DEMONSTRATION OF GOD’S POWER Man of God commanded the spirit of gay (Homosexual) to enter one certain guy in the church and intently the demon manifested and started walking exactly like gay’s [sic] and said his name is Ntlantla from Hammaskral and he is 23 years old, he manifested by showing his breast saying is his cleavage. Indeed God is able to reveal hidden things. To God Be the Glory.

Thing the first: gay men don't have breasts. We may grow manboobs from gorging ourselves on the tears of Christian bakers, but we don't magically grow breasts and cleavage upon sucking our first dick. Thing the second: the last time we heard of a charismatic young man shoving a 23-year-old twink into another guy's body, we had to pay for a 3-day trial membership (haha, jk, who the hell pays for porn?). Oh wonderful, there are pictures of this no doubt respectful display. Here, Penuel demonstrates he doesn't know the difference between gay men and ballerinas. Here we see the ratchet queen in her natural habitat, throwing shade to ward off predators. Dancing Queeeeeen / Feel the beat of Penuel's feet on your back / Oh yeah! We'll depart this loathsome Man of God for today, though no doubt we haven't heard the last of him. All we have to say is that American evangelicals need to step up their flim-flam game if they're going to beat out their African competitors in the miracle game. If Peter Popoff doesn't transform one of his followers into a buffy-headed marmoset soon, we will be as disappointed as South African Danny Glover. People these days.

Flotsam, Jetsam, Hokum

• It isn't as funny to call your wife an old ball-and-chain if she's been court-ordered.
• Did you miss the GOP church potluck and singles gangbang? Never fear, Yr Wonkette has you covered.
• Used to be you'd cover up your gay lover by claiming you were neck-deep in lady hookers. The times they are a-changing.
• Peggy Noonan awoke from the floor of her modestly adorned bathroom last morn, rubbed the gin from her eyes, and proclaimed it was Morning in America once again. It was actually 2pm.
• Kirk Cameron's sister, DJ Tanner, has some S-M-R-T thoughts about the homos. Seems the apple doesn't fall from the other bug-fuck crazy apple.
• It would be irresponsible not to speculate on the demons lurking inside Barack Obama's brain.
• Some good news at last: Jesus-aborting whore pills have prevented over 200,000 cases of womb cancer since they emerged fully formed from Satan's realm.

[Chakrubs / Salon / Oddity Central / Nehanda Radio / Feministing]