Mathers made a mess of things

The Secret Chiefs are not amused

There are some things that one does not do on the blogosphere and the forums if one does not want to be accused of being a flaming troll. One of which is to point out that certain people made a royal mess of the system. This list includes MacGregor Mathers, Moina Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Wynn Westcott, and Paul Foster Case.

Call any of these people less than perfect, and you find yourself met with a mob armed with pitchforks and flaming torches. Each one of these people have been enshrined in the Hall of Perfect Adepts, and no lesser mortal is allowed to point out that their product could be improved upon.

Given that fact, the most that you can do is edge up and hint at the fact that product improvement could happen. And even that will get you a "Shut up! You are just trying to destory the Orders built upon their work."

So I felt a certain amount of amusement...and a certain amount of anger...when I saw today who admitted that Mathers screwed some things up. Yes, they have been part of the mob of angry villagers. I guess it is ok for them to say it, but not the rest of us.

They are not revealing anything by stating this fact. They are not the first to say this. They have merely trained the rest of us to avoid the subject like the plague when it comes up in the public sphere.

The rest of us only talk about this fact in private. One of my instructors has several lessons that are designed to help the Adept Minor realize that perhaps Mathers' work is not up to par. And the members of my own lodge have heard me state several times that there are problems with the Mathers' material.

Of course, my opinion cannot be stated out loud in public because I do not have the sanction of the Third Order. If I would have said this, I would have sensative body parts nailed to the wall.

I am annoyed; I am pissed; and I wonder how one gets the right to blackmail the rest of the community to shut up, so that one can be the first to say something publically that the rest of us have been saying in private for a long time.

(Oh, I am not being completely truthful here. An unholy trio have been calling Mathers "a masonic loon" publically for some time because of the mess he made of the system. I guess not everyone cares if they are set on fire by an angry mob.)