Thursday, April 19, 2012

I am a pagan and not a horse

Fuck you---I am Cat---I will play with anyone I want to.
Some days, you just have to say that "A white horse is not a horse."

And this is proving to be one of those months...I have yet to see a day on the blogosphere where it does not apply.

For those of you who are tuning in late, there is an campaign going on another blog that is based on the bear trap of "If you agree with anything that I say, then you have to agree that my entire world view is true." It is one of the reasons that I dislike the blogger in question; they use this bear trap all the time.

(Over the years, my dislike of this person has grown based purely on their public actions. It is probably just a personal problem.)

It must be nice to live in a black and white universe where there are only heroes and villians, the good guys and the crooks. It must be even nicer to be able to tell the difference between the two camps. Myself, I live in a shaded universe without no clear cut definitions of right and wrong, no clear cut difference between perfect and imperfect.

The most amusing part is that the line between good and evil they seem to be using is whether you are pagan or not. If you belong to a society that was Christian-only any time in its entire history, then you are evil. Gee, one should burn their Rosicrucian union card, shouldn't they?

This is coming from a convert to paganism (sometime after 1995). I think that they might be in their anti-Christian phase. I expect them to now run around cleaning up all evidence that they are a convert to paganism---they periodically scrub their past history to fit their current set of arguments. For instance, they would rather scrub the fact that they were members of certain groups rather than say, "Gee, that was a really bad decision in hindsight."

Now, I have been a life-long pagan. In fact, I have been a life-long Wiccan.

Maybe I should give some context here. My father was a Catholic, and my mom was something else (one of those Christian groups that really frowns on the Catholic Church). Based on the research I have done, my family on my father's side at some point converted to the Catholic Church. It seems that side of the family might have originally been Jewish.

Given the difference in opinion about religion between my parents, it was decided that I would be raised without a religion. So the only exposure to Christianity I recieved during childhood was a few children story books focused mainly on the Old Testament (or maybe it is because I only read the Old Testament stories).

But I was exposed to a religion as a kid---my dear aunt was a Wiccan of the Gardnerian stripe. It didn't help that my mom believed in reincarnation and astrology. So when I say that I have been a life-long Wiccan, I am serious.

I came out of the broom closet in 1978 when I was thirteen. The timing of this decision was a very bad idea in hindsight. As a result of coming of the broom closet, a strong attempt was made to "save my soul."

It was the attempt to save my soul and the attitudes of certain Christians that caused me to go through a rather long period where I was anti-Christian. Either that or I spent an extended time period being a teenager.

My anti-Christian period is matter of public record. If one is curious about how bad my anti-Christian bias got, feel free to read the last article contained in Four Cornerstones (available for free on Smashwords).

I was still in my ant-Christian phase when I first encountered Golden Dawn. And I was still allowed into the Order. I somehow convinced them, despite my charming personality, to invite me into Inner Order. Of course, in all fairness, this was a branch of the tradition that gave an earlier AO claimed-descent group the bird.

So I am one of those Golden Dawn members that was told "If you are not a Christian, you have to be willing to study Christian symbolism." And I said Ok.

Later on, I was briefly a member of the Thelemic Golden Dawn, a fact that I have not hidden either. And this was despite the fact that I do not completely believe in the Book of the Law. This may or may not make me a Thelemic. (I don't consider myself a Thelemic, but there are a couple of Thelemics who do---it is one of the reasons my lodge does not have an anti-Thelema rule in Outer Order. Inner Order does, but it is a "You have to make a choice between Orders rule"---it would apply equally to someone who had a membership in the HOGD/AO or the MOAA as it does to the AA and OTO.)

Of course, I am hoping that this is just an anti-Christian phase that I am seeing. I fear that it is just another attempt to get the rest of us to acknowledge that the person in question is the greatest Golden Dawn magician and leader of all time. (Ok, I know that statement is wrong, but it is how I tend to read most of his tactics---it is the only end goal that makes sense of half of his statements.)

So I am in a position where I am reading his current line of arguments and thinking to myself:

"Gee, I was Golden Dawn before someone took out their trademark. And honestly, the SRIA has never said a single word to me about what I am currently doing. In fact, I am not even sure that the SRIA is aware of me...outside of one individual who likes funny cat pictures. And honestly, if the pagans are allowed to study their esoteric mysteries in private and restrict their membership to fellow and lady believers, shouldn't the Christians be allowed to study their own mysteries in private also? As for the threat of a group gaining full control over Golden Dawn, I am more worried that a dog lover may succeed."

Personally, I am more worried about certain politicians and their "Christians are being attacked" nonsense. That line of thought could make it unpleasant for all of us.

And now some content for the "A white horse is not a horse" comment. I am studying Chinese Philsophy and Religion at the moment. The Logician School (Ming-Chia or Ming-Pien) thought that there needed to be an one on one correspondence between words and reality. What the word "white" describes has nothing to do with horses; and the word "horse" is not describing a color---and if it sounds stupid, well, there is a reason why this school of Chinese philosophy disappeared after the Flowering of a Thousand Schools period.

I used it because it was fresh in my mind, and it is like saying that "A Golden Dawner in the SRIA is not a Golden Dawner." Of course, the fact that I believe this will be used as proof that I am not a member of a true Golden Dawn Order. And so it goes.

Remember Elvis loves you.

10 comments:

Joseph Max said...

It's become quite clear that the "Golden Dawn leader" in question has mounted this entire campaign for the express purpose of tarring another Golden Dawn Order that he is expressly forbidden by legal contract to defame in public, nor allowed to mention the names of the leaders of that other Order. So instead he goes after them obliquely by defaming the other Order they both are leaders of also.

Of course, he's left more than enough pointers to indicate who he's talking about, which is the point.

Like Nick Farrell, one prominent member of this latter Order recently published the original 6=5 ritual by the old Alpha et Omega Order of Mathers. The "leader", I'm quite certain, has been beside himself with anger and frustration for not being able to vent his spleen upon her as he has done, shall we say, so "unelegantly" on Mr. Farrell.

So now he's spun a gloriously paranoid conspiracy theory based on not very much but insinuation, innuendo, a tortured chain of inference without evidence, one anecdote offered without specifics, and most of all, driven by his all-abiding and eternal enmity toward these Golden Dawn leaders he considers his rivals, for thwarting his plans of establishing a world-wide monopoly on anything with the words "Golden Dawn" in it.

In the interests of full disclosure, I had some small part in the thwarting of those plans. And also, I will disclose that the leaders of the targeted Golden Dawn Order are my personal friends, and I am honored by their friendship. They are wonderful, caring, loving people who have devoted "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor" to preserving and building the Golden Dawn movement. They do The Great Work quietly, devotedly, with never a trace of animosity or enmity toward any other persons following the Golden Dawn path, regardless of differences in belief, religion or practice. (With the exception, of course, of the aforementioned "leader".)

My prediction is this: this "backdoor" campaign of slurring and defiling the Golden Dawn Order of my friends will fail, and fail miserably. What the aforementioned "leader" is actually showing is his desperation. There will be no exodus of friends and associates from the Golden Dawn Order he has backhandedly attacked. The only real result of it all is to show the world, in the words of the Bard, that he is:

"...but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

Deanna Bonds said...

I think it is time to release the first of The Teachings of Elvis. Do you think the world is ready?

Fr. A. said...

Bravo Morgan, shamefully these same folks are disgracing the Shoah memorial Rites by attempting to use emotional bait and switch tactics on the very eve of such events. Maybe because certain folks in SRIA actually have access to the extant corpus of the GD... covering the Truth, seems the active strategy.

zirdo said...

I can't for the life of me understand how his posse tolerate the shrill narcissism. It's got be like living with a remote controlled toothache

Joseph Max said...

David Griffin’s writings are all about one thing: David Griffin. The purpose of the rest of the Golden Dawn community is to give David Griffin the opportunity to show what an innovative and superior magician and leader David Griffin is, since David Griffin was chosen to fill the role of David Griffin by Secret Chiefs™®© that only David Griffins can talk to. Other Golden Dawn leaders don’t show the proper respect for David Griffin’s wisdom and insight simply because they are insanely jealous of David Griffin's undeniable David Griffin-osity, and so, with sadness, regret, and immense regard for David Griffin, David Griffin must condemn these errant leaders, so that the non-David Griffins of the world can be free to stand in awe of David Griffin’s intellect, magical powers, sexual prowess and all-around awesome David Griffin-ness.

Fr. A. said...

Most generally when a person boasts of fast cars or large trucks or big golden wands they are trying to compensate for lacking something else...

Deanna Bonds said...

@Joseph I think you said his name too many times. He is like Beetlejuice, that will cause him to appear.

His latest blog posts are so crazy I don't think they need any type of response. They speak for themselves. Although it is definitely a backdoor attack that he has been ordered not to do by a judge.

I put link to the Cicero's
Societas Rosicruciana in America site in my blog list of links to show support during these 'Red Scare' times.

Rebsie Fairholm said...

I am a little disappointed to find that after all these weeks of build-up, spouted off with the tormented finesse of the cheesiest commercial novelist, the Dark Hand of Evil™ apparently belongs to the British branch of the SRIA.

The Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia is long established and well respected here in the UK. They are especially renowned for their exceptional library. And yet, it seems, all this time this bunch of depraved librarians has been plotting to destroy the Golden Dawn (presumably in revenge for some unforgiveable past sin, like Mathers taking out a book and not bringing it back on time). This campaign has integrated seamlessly with their ongoing persecution of Pagans, Jews, Thelemites and other non-librarians. So much so, they've been able to keep this evil conspiracy entirely secret. If you go to their website, as linked to by the "GD leader", you might see only an innocent group of book-cherishing Rosicrucians and Freemasons ... but if you view it through your special library barcode scanner specs (available only to trademark-bearing adepts) you will see all the raging deluded hate-filled and self-obsessed filth revealed on this apparently innocent website. Additionally, the site is packed with cunningly hidden anti-GD propaganda and secret curses encoded in the form of Dewey decimals. Be very afraid.

I fear I'm already lost, however. I've known John Paternoster, the gentleman whose photo appears on the "GD leader"'s blog post, for many years and I've always found him to be a thoroughly kind and charming man of the utmost integrity. I had no idea I was being secretly persecuted for being a Pagan and a non-librarian.

Joseph Max said...

And everybody notice how the SRIAm is reacting to all of this?

Silence.

That's how it's done, people.

PS: "Red scare" is a perfect analogy, Deanna. It's like an episode of McCarthyism.

"I hold in my hand a list of Golden Dawners who are card carrying members of the Communist Party, ooops, I mean the SRIAm."

"Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the SRIAm?"

I'll say to them what Joseph Welch said to McCarthy:

"Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Joseph Max said...

My Godz, no sooner do I post a comment about the similarities of this to McCarthyism, than I find ol' Nemesis actually using the "card-carrying member" line, claiming everybody who says anything they don't like are "card carrying members of the SRIA". Man, you just can't make this shit up.

Well, I'm not in the SRIA, they're a little to steeped in Christian mysticism for my taste, but now I'm considering it!

But wait a minute, doesn't that statement kind of negate their entire argument about the SRIAm not admitting Jews, Pagans, Thelemites, etc.? If we're all "card carrying members", then they DO admit Jews, Pagans, Thelemites, etc.

Oh, I get it! We're all secretly born-again Baptist fundamentalists! What a clever game we've been playing. That makes perfect sense!

No wait, it doesn't.