{Evil at Hungerford}[21st August 1987]

[Redbook4:67-70][19870821:1020]{Evil at Hungerford}[21st August 1987]

19870821.1020

The incidents of the day before yesterday at Hungerford* are a most distressing example of the extreme of Separation, which we call Evil, at work. (As it happens, by co-incidence on the day this occurred I was cross-referring my notes and maps for [1] into Vol.II [of this Journal]: maps whose operation encompasses Littlecote House, a few miles West of Hungerford, where the killer worked for a time, and which has an horrific ghost story with an unsettling effect on +K; and also, of course, Savernake Forest**.)

Earlier discussions of Evil, particularly in relation to killing, centre on the state of mind of the killer (not necessarily the motive). I think the conclusion was, broadly, that only a generalised Love could render killing anything other than Evil:*** more precisely, that the distinction is between selfishness and self-less-ness.

Given clues provided by the Police and others, I think one can assume that the killer Ryan was lucid (certainly at the end, and probably earlier: they usually are): not insane. So why did he do it? He was obviously, by accounts, a withdrawn boy, at least at times, and a loner as a man. ****He developed – possibly as a result of fear of others due to awareness of his own separation from them – a fascination with guns: 'the rod' in slang, Grail and Tarot symbol of the Separation (in this system, anyway). At a certain point some stimulus or combination of stimuli, swift or slow, brought him to a point of extreme anger, which manifested itself in actions of extreme separation, i.e. a massacre of a mostly random nature.#

*[Berkshire, U.K.. “The Hungerford massacre was a series of random shootings in Hungerford, Berkshire, on 19 August 1987, when Michael Robert Ryan, an unemployed part-time antique dealer and handyman, fatally shot 16 people, before committing suicide. The shootings, committed using a handgun and two semi-automatic rifles, occurred at several locations, including a school he had once attended. A police officer died in the incident, and many people were injured. 15 other people were also shot but survived. No firm motive for the killings has ever been established. It remains one of the worst firearms atrocities in UK history.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre ]

**[Where the massacre began. The detailed and very matter-of fact account in Wikipedia of the series of events beginning with this first murder is extremely distressing to read, not least for its sheer relentlessness.]

***cf.III. …[e.g.? [Redbook3:83-84][19870331:1825g]{Capital Punishment}[31^st March 1987]?, &

[Redbook3:84-85][19870331:1825h]{Capital Punishment [continued]}[31^st March 1987]p.84-5.?;

[Redbook3:206][19870419:1050](MORALITY AND ETHICS [continued(3)])[19th April 1987],ff.] 206-210 [especially 206-207].

****(I speculate that...)

#Later Police view is that it started with a rape attempt which went wrong <871003>. – Lechery immediately precedes Anger on the Outer Circle. <871003> [This Police view does not seem to appear again. <20160810>]

[continues]

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