Jesus Theme Park

The company paid for my US colleague and myself to do a guided tour of Jerusalem yesterday. The tour was very oriented to Christian magic, as you'll see.

One of the first stops was a magic shop, selling all manner of magical items and spells that confer protection on the owner. I suspect the tour guide got a cut of anything sold - which of course was on a 50% off offer (yet the 50% off seemed suspiciously high for the tat available). I was horrified to see some of the party actually buying some of it.

The following is a rather fetching wizard's suit, which was available at the foregoing magic shop..

The box-set below is a really special deal - you get Holy water (useful against vampires, if I'm correct), Holy earth (not too sure of its value, but it obviously will enable plants to grow miraculously), Holy oil (an improvement on 20/W50) and Holy incense (better than AirWick).

This is a special little corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where some extra special magic occurred some 2000 years ago.

This non-magical stone below, somehow transfers magical dust to any non-magical item rubbed or placed on it. People were rubbing all manner of things on it - I tried my mobile phone, but I still only just managed to get a 12 hours from a full charge, thus I'd send the stone back to the makers declaring it obviously faulty under warranty.

Now this place below (literally) is supposed to be the burial place of the Christians' God - but I can tell you he's not actually there (the guide told me so in a conspiratorial whisper), so it's a bit of a scam. However, I do think it was quite clever of the Magicians to ensure the place of their God's death, anointing and subsequent burial are all within a few yards of each other - saves on buying property and keeps your market in one place so they can be fleeced to the max.

Apparently this most holy of Christian sites is also the place where the most hatred is shown between the different sects. The guide told us that, until quite recently, fights regularly broke out between two of the sects because they couldn't agree who had the right to pray there at certain times. Jesus would turn in his grave - if he had one. Religion, eh? Who needs it?

I could have sworn that this T shirt (in the Arab Quarter) said "Guns 'n' Noses" when I took the photo - it must have miraculously transmogrified inside my camera.

More photos of the Jesus Theme Park tomorrow, If I'm not too knackered on returning to Blighty.