Perversion

By Linda Mihalic

Perversion is usually regarded as a sexual practice or act considered abnormal or deviant. However the word has a broader and more important spectrum of meaning: The act of perverting; a turning from truth or propriety; a diverting from the true intent or object; change to something worse. We speak of the perversion of the laws, when they are misinterpreted or misapplied; a perversion of reason, when it is misemployed; a perversion of Scripture, when it is willfully misinterpreted or misapplied, etc.
  To pervert is to turn from truth, propriety, or from its proper purpose; to distort from its true use or end; as, to pervert reason by misdirecting it; to pervert the laws by misinterpreting and misapplying them; to pervert justice; to pervert the meaning of an author; to pervert nature; to pervert truth; to turn from the right; to corrupt. To be perverse is showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable; contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice; sexually perverted.Webster’s American Dictionary


“All forms of perversion result from permitting evil to dominate the appetitive soul.”—Linda Mihalic


Propaganda and lies are perversions of the truth. An unwilling victim of sexual perversion is not judged as having done the works of evil; however, the sexual predator most certainly is. All forms of perversion are sins and usually vices that result from evil dominating the appetitive soul.

Evil is the perversion of honor, a conscious choice made against the Light. Evil cannot exist without a base of individual personality and mind through which to operate. Evil includes iniquity, abomination, and vice.

The world defines a vice on a continuum ranging from a slight personal failing; a foible, a flaw, an imperfection or a defect, to a serious moral failing, to wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption, or an evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit. Vices are usually associated with physical appetites and sensations.





Edna Lister on Perversion

To avoid perversion of Power, concentrate all energy upon doing one thing at a time. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.—Philippians 3:13-14.—Edna Lister, Will, October 17, 1934.


Man’s negative use of mind (thoughts, pictures in imagination, and emotions) work upon and even pervert divine ideas.—Edna Lister, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, October 19, 1934.


The wicked ever seek to pervert the Light.—Edna Lister, November 20, 1938.


When you are blinded, by appetites and self-desires, you are really blind to the difference between truth and illusion. For illusion is always founded in a fact, which is then distorted to fit any kind of perversion of truth.—Edna Lister, February 22, 1945.


Law is now perfect. No man makes law. It is. It can be twisted and perverted, yet left alone, law shall straighten itself and revert to its own absolute perfection with no help from man.—Edna Lister, May 28, 1945.


All the difficulties come when one has felt cheated out of having a love life. Unless one lifts and consecrates the creative fire, the fire is driven into the lower center, and perversion may result.—Edna Lister, October 30, 1952.


Voodoo and dissonant, discordant music rhythms excite the lower creative center and cause perversions and misuse of the creative fire.—Edna Lister, October 30, 1952.


As you lift and pray that the darkness is changed into Light, it leaves the wicked floundering hopelessly in the mesh of their own weaving with no Power to use, no one whom they can pervert, no place to go.—Edna Lister, July 2, 1956.


Experience does not defile the soul. Yet drinking, overeating and perversions are also sins and misuse of the creative fire. Those who indulge these base appetites have defiled themselves and must be cleansed and purified, to ascend.—Edna Lister, Revelation, the Beast With Ten Horns, June 10, 1958.


The law is Light; in dealing with darkness then, we find a perversion or an absence of law.—Edna Lister, April 3, 1959.


Evil did pervert and degrade the feminine mysteries, using them to gain control of man. All perversion, whether it is of appetite for drink or food, and especially drugs, is primarily under the misuse of the feminine mysteries. The perversion or possession of souls is under the feminine mysteries. Therefore, to clean up the misuse of all love powers since the advent of Jesus the Christ is essential.

By honoring and exalting womanhood, Christ opened the vibration of exaltation of the feminine love vibration, and started the trend for womanhood upward again. The only way to reach the Source is through a sublimated love that goes beyond outer satisfaction of greed for possession.

It’s as much a misuse of the feminine mysteries to be greedy for jewels, furs, houses, furniture, cars, and social position as it is to be greedy about the physical expression of love. They rank as one in the law. Therefore, to gain a balance in love is to open the feminine mysteries, and is the only way to gain complete soul balance.—Edna Lister, October 23, 1959.


Inverted imagination perverts Power into selfish channels for greed and gain.—Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.


The "God is dead" idea (Friedrich Nietzsche) is the ultimate in perversion of truth at this time.—Edna Lister, May 6, 1966.


Our prayers shall reestablish purity of heart, mind and purpose to go forth to shatter, to scatter and to consume all perversion, especially pornographic books and purveyors. They shall be divinely impaled by their own evil minds, incapable of thinking new thoughts, rendered impotent, and incapacitated in mind, body and affairs.—Edna Lister, August 21, 1966.


You must lift all dregs of the black mass, drug houses, African tribal massacres, fornications of earth, the adultery started by the Father of Lies. "Fornication" includes every possible perversion.—Edna Lister, September 8, 1966.


Today’s erosive permissiveness is creating a new cult of phallic worship and perversions.—Edna Lister, Choice: Your Glorious Foundation, October 16, 1966.


St. Paul preached against fornication. Fornication and adultery have different meanings. Adultery always refers to illegal commitments between males and females. Fornication includes every perversion in the world, between humans and animals as well.—Edna Lister, January 5, 1967.


Evil ones always seek to influence those whom they may pervert in any way into misuse of Power. Witness the millions who have followed evil.—Edna Lister, January 7, 1968.


The fifteenth Yetzirah Path of Darkness, which heralds the dawn of Rebirth in consciousness is the vibration of sex on the outer plane; its mundane expression often leads to perversion of the creative fire, beginning with adultery and fornication. Called the burning sands of the desert, it is the last grueling endurance test before God grants Power.—Edna Lister, The Fiery Furnace, March 19, 1970.


Fornication and perversion are sins against the Holy Ghost. It fastens one to the world misuse and relates to forgiving oneself. You can lift everything, yet memory would revert to foster that sense of contrition that you could misuse the Holy Ghost.—Edna Lister, December 4, 1970.

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Old Testament on Perversion

In short, the Old Testament term for perversion is "abomination," which appears in many places. We have included a minimum here.


Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.—Deuteronomy 16:19.


[The law on incest.] None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness.—Leviticus 18:6.


Thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her.—Leviticus 18:20.


Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance, that ye commit not any one of these abominable customs, which were committed before you, and that ye defile not yourselves therein: I am the Lord your God.—Leviticus 18:22-30.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884—1971
The original Pioneering Mystic, Christian Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of pervert: Latin pervertere: per- + vertere, "to turn."


The various forms of perversion are sins, and usually vices.<
Sexual perversions are among the works of evil.


References

Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, 2023.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

The Nag Hammadi Library. James M. Robinson, ed. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.

The Oxford English Dictionary: Compact Ed., 2 vols. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.

Webster, Noah. “Perversion,” Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: S. Converse, 1828. This work is in the public domain.