A thousand five hundred blog posts later (what have I learned as a blogger)

Can you believe that this blog has produced 1500 blog posts since its birth on July 16, 2007?

And not all of them have been cat pictures...but maybe they should have been.

Accountant Kitty has crunched the numbers--you need more cat pictures!

Let's crunch some numbers...

First off, does occult blogging pay? Yes and no. Yes, in the fact that I have gotten money from Adsense, have sold at least one book, and moved a bunch of pottery. No, in the sense that I have made more money with less effort doing other stuff. So don't quit your day job to blog about the occult. Remember that I blog for three reasons...

One, I am a mealy mouthed poopy head.

Two, I like being the center of attention.

Three, I assume that you like my sense of humor.

Pie charts make everything more interesting...

My top ten blog posts account for seven percent of the views that this blog has gotten over the years.

So let's assume that we can learn something from them...

At number one is...

E. A. Koetting, the Living God, a single post about his arrest--which I honestly thought would get about a hundred views and no more--is responsible for a whole two percent of this blog's lifetime traffic. (And a third of my top ten traffic.) Not a month has gone by since it was written that I am not impressed by the traffic it gets.

[It should be noted that I have started to study his business practices--there are lots of "positive" things to learn from his set-up...therefore, more EAK posts are a-coming! Sure, they will not get the same amount of traffic, but I feel like I owe him a positive shout-out...that and he provides a good contrast when you talk about the business practices of other occult writers.]

My second most read post is about search engines and Google. This is also another surprise. After all, this blog is not about providing helpful advice to other bloggers.

For ease of writing, and making a pie chart--I had to make a pie chart...I like pie charts...I LOVE pie charts--I combined the numbers of the three posts about David F***ing Griffin. He shows up at slot six in my top ten, and takes up three slots...which account for less than one percent of my overall lifetime views for this blog.

Now, given the greatness of the man, I expected this number to be higher. Hell, to hear the man talk, all ten of my top ten should be Griffin. Sure he is twelve percent of my top ten, but I expected higher numbers.

[It was the fact that no post about Griffin has ever cracked the three thousand mark that made me guess that an EAK post would only get a hundred views. After all, at the time, this blog was about Golden Dawn...supposedly.]

{What this blog is about now is open to debate. If there was an air of doubt before the December re-branding, there is a positive fog of doubt now. But I am fairly sure that it has something to do with cats...}

And yes, I know that I should go though my entire list of blog posts to determine the actual value that Griffin has...but having seen that five other blog posts beat him in the top ten, I don't feel like doing it today. 

Besides, having watched my traffic on a regular basis, I have noted that Griffin only shows up lately in my keyword search data about three times a month. And no, he does not make it into my top ten search terms for this blog. I know--I am shocked too. 

[The number was never that high even when he was big-mouthing the entire Golden Dawn community--make of that what you will.]

My number three top ten is actually a poem--Lucky Penny--but it is actually the picture that drives the traffic to it. The traffic the picture gets is one of the reasons that I eventually decided that most of my blog posts need pictures.

Number four on the top ten hit parade is--drum roll please--Red Flag Magic Garden Creeper Award! Again, this was a surprise. Even more surprising is the number of "defenders" who showed up in the comment section telling me that I was completely wrong in awarding a Creeper Award...but realistically it may just be one defender using multiple accounts. And it really does not matter, you can read the screenshots for yourself. 

Of course, the most amusing part is that the Red Flag post cracked three thousand--and we all know why that amuses me.

Number five is a birthday wish to a Golden Dawn authority. Finally, something Golden Dawn shows up. But I am fairly sure that it has nothing to do with Golden Dawn, and has everything to do with the birthday cat picture used in the post.

[Is this the last time, we will see a cat picture? Stay tuned--anything can happen!]

So, we finally get to a post about Griffin--sixth slot--remember I added the numbers of three posts for the purposes of the pie chart. If you dare go look--this is my most popular David F***ing Griffin post. Try not to read anything into that fact.

Eight and ten are also Griffin.

Number seven is my favorite "Beware of bad behavior by occultists" post. It is not really a surprise that Thirteen Warning Signs That Your Guru is Rotten is in my top ten posts. As long as people insist in posting "Looking for someone to teach me!" messages in Facebook groups, I will continue to share the link to this one. This post is currently expected to fight its way into my top five by the next time, I write about my blog numbers.

We know that Griffin is eight and ten, so what is number nine? A bloody book review. How did a book review make its way into my top ten, and perform better than 1491 other posts? Simple, people Google-ing the subject of the book. Turns out that a subject with little information on it will result in long tail effects.

Speaking of Google...

...provided that you are a Virgo.

Turns out that my top ten keywords that drive traffic to my blog, eight of them are people looking for cat pictures.

Yes, it turns out that more people use Google to find cat pictures than they do to find out stuff about the Golden Dawn. Color me surprised. "Halloween Cat" easily outranked Golden Dawn.

For convenience's sake, I combined the misspellings with the proper spellings for the purposes of the pie chart. And it is easy to see that this blog needs more cat pictures.

Not only did cat pictures beat Golden Dawn, so did the term "Google."

Now, in all fairness, my top ten search keywords only counts for two percent of my lifetime page views on this blog, so there might be tons of stuff in the lower reaches that totally trumps the number of hits that cats and Google gets. On the day that I total up all the Griffin post numbers, I will also total up the views for the cats, and we will have proof who is more popular.

I am sad that Australia was not higher in the ranks.

In terms of traffic, ten countries account for eighty-one percent of my traffic. The United States accounts for fifty-seven percent, with number two Russia accounting for eight percent.

In my head, Australia is more important than it actually is. Australia, you need to step up your game. Two percent is a poor showing. Australia, you can do better.

[I have corrupted a couple of Australian Golden Dawn students--and I would like to corrupt more of them. Therefore, Australia needs to do better.]

{Do Australians like cat pictures? If so, I can provide.}

As for traffic from various platforms, Google accounts for thirteen percent of my traffic; Facebook accounts for four and a half percent. And a single blog has sent me a whole one percent of my traffic (which is not bad at all)--Head For the Red if you are curious.

So that is it for my first 1500 posts (eleven f***ing years). Here to the next 1500--of which a whole quarter must be about cats, if I am reading my data correctly.

Meow!

Crowley is Day and EAK (yes, I said that)

Today, in a Facebook discussion, I said that Aleister Crowley was the Christian Day and E.A. Koetting of his day (lawsuit happy, insulting, drug-using glory hound who insisted that the world rotated around his revelations and teachings). Now, I realize that this was an unfair comparison; but damn it, I could not come up with a better one to illustrate how Crowley acted in his lifetime.

And now for some memes...

Would Crowley do Miley? Maybe if she sounded like a goat.

Mandatory Koetting joke with that age old question. 

Sorry, this Christian Day meme always makes me laugh. 

Now to be fair, I do think that two of these three would be interesting to have a drink with. The third one, well, I am fortunate that I never have to worry about running into him.

And speaking of people I won't drink with: Why did I not include [name redacted]? Because no one knows who the fuck he is! I was trying to illustrate why Crowley was so scandalous in his lifetime--not make him roll over in his grave--and a complete unknown (outside of those circles) does not serve the purpose of the joke, even if he does like to claim that he is more famous than Crowley. Remember any joke you have to explain does not work (with the exceptation of Eddie Izzard, who is great at making jokes that need explaination work).

And this concludes today's edition of "Yes, I fucking said that." Tune in tomorrow when I go on to makes jokes about how Cthulhu would make a better President than anyone currently running.

Yes I said that (the David Griffin edition)

No denial here--yes, I did say that.

Facebook down, Instagram down, can't play Vikings Gone Wild!, Bejeweled Blitz is unavailable, Hulu seems to be missing also...oh, I guess it is time for an installment of "Yes, I said that!" the delightful game where I admit to saying and doing things that has upset various people on the internet.

And tonight's offended contestant is the ever delightful David Griffin. There are many things I have said and did that Griffin, and his rabid followers, are annoyed with.

Perhaps the best one to start with is what I said when I recently learned that paid government trolls were trying to discredit him. Yes, I said, "Wait a second! You can get paid to annoy and discredit this man?! Where do I sign up?"

Is there a conspiracy to destory him and his Order? Hell, if I know. But I would love to get a paycheck simply for annoying the man--that would so beat writing erotica and grave robbery for a living.

Hey, it is not like David Griffin and me will ever be besties.

Not that he hasn't tried to be nice to me. For instance, in late December, he posted the following picture to his Golden Dawn Facebook group.

Colorado Kitteh sez Dude, I tink dis was some bad catnip!

Problem is that a couple of days later, David Griffin complained about people causing discussions to go off-topic with non-magical talk, including talk about the legalization of marijuana.

David Griffin feels that I am part of the plot to destory him and his Order, and his Facebook group. 

Honestly, I wasn't trying to derail his discussions. But yes, I was guilty of talking about the legalization of marijuana. Some members of his Facebook group did not understand why he had tagged me with the Bad Catnip kitty. So, I had to explain that it was a joke, that Griffin knew that I lived in Colorado, that I was a supporter of the legalization of marijuana, and that I was the caretaker of a feral cat colony as well as being the pet of several cats. And considering that this was the only discussion talking about the legalization of marijuana, I guess I should have just ignored the questions of those who did not understand the joke in the first place, and allowed Griffin to explain why he was tagging me in a cat picture. 

I was a little surprised that he went on to say that anoyomous bloggers had called him, "HugASatanist Griffin." Yes, an anoymous blogger did popularize that nickname, but they were not the ones who coined the nickname. Yes, I was the first person to say that Griffin wanted us to hug Satanists. It happened during the lead-up to last year's MagickAll--an event that featured E. A. Koetting as a guest speaker, At a certain point, the non-Griffin Golden Dawn community, which represents maybe a whole one percent of the GD community (the other 99% being firm Griffinites) got upset that E. A. Koetting would be invited to a Golden Dawn sponsored event, due to him being a black magician, and the Golden Dawn Neophyte oath containing the clause that one promises not to do black magic ever. 

(It should be noted that I have heard that Griffin's Order, being the most modern and progressive, as well as best lineaged, GD group today does not include this anti-black magic clause in their Neophyte oath, therefore, black magicans are welcomed in the HOGD/AO; and not having the clause, the HOGD/AO could actually invite a black magician to lecture their members on how to do black magic.)

Yes, I was super hostile about Griffin and Koetting being besties.

My coining of the nickname, HugASatanist, was probably the politest thing I said during the uproar. At one point, Griffin said that anyone protesting the attendance of E. A. Koetting at MagicakAll was a racist (a feat done by swapping out the term "black magician" for the term "black man" in the hostile statements made by the non-HOGD/AO community), and that it was also Wiccan bashing--both accusations got my Irish up, and I said a lot of hostile stuff in return. And yes, I recently said that I found it ironic that Griffin now finds Koetting to be a dangerous black magician. 

Speaking of nicknames, yes, it is true that yesterday when someone asked why Griffin is so obsessed with the SRIA, claiming that the SRIA are out to destory him and his Order, I said, "One of the reasons that he who must be mocked talks so much about the SRIA, is simply the fact that legally he is not allowed to name another Order that he fought a court battle against--the SRIA shares a common member with this unnamable Order." The common member last name, for those who are unaware of this factiod, is Cicero. But the important part is that I just coined a new nickname for Griffin, "he who must be mocked."

Another thing that I recently said is that I thought that his ad copy (blurb) for his latest video, and the video itself, was simple fear mongling. (I have said several times in the past that I feel that Griffin is using fear and conspiriacies as selling points, and a way to bind the members of his group to his leadership--so it is nothing new in what I said about his marketing style.) I also said that I did not like his Starship video background special effect, that his movements were awkward, and that the information content of the video was extremely low. I also mentioned that I felt that the fact that E. A. Koetting was now being used as the archvillian evil black magician to be especially ironic. Of course, I do not feel completely bad about this, for I recently learned, thanks to a posting by someone that I am positive is a sock puppet (yes, I said that someone was using a sock puppet to fed Griffin advertising opportunities), that Griffin believes that even my serious videos on the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram are nothing more than jokes. I would repeat what I said about the man after I heard this, but I really do not need to do so--my regular readers know that I occasionally swear like a sailor. 

No, I am not in serious competition with Griffin--I tend to avoid the "I am under magical attack" audience.

The most insulting thing I have probably said, in the last six months about David Griffin, was about his Facebook group. One of the things that I dislike about his group is that it tends to be knee deep in people who have never cracked open a book on the Golden Dawn. Now, I do understand that Griffin's version of Golden Dawn is not the same one that I am accustomed to--that in his Order, the Grade initiation rituals are not nearly as important, and that one can actually do all the Grade work before recieving the initations, something that is impossible to do in the version of the GD that I work with.

But because his Order is set up that way, his Facebook group, in my opinion, bogs down in conversations where people are claiming to be the next Messiah, smarter than everyone else about the Golden Dawn, despite the fact that they do not know the first thing about Golden Dawn as far as I am concerned. And yes, I did say on more than one occasion that it is the price you pay for wanting to have the biggest and most active Golden Dawn Facebook group, as well as an Order that is built to handle vast masses of people--something that I have said on several occasions is not what GD is about. 

It is because of that trend of crap conversations filled to the brim with nonsense, that I have said that I follow his Facebook group for "purely entertainment reasons." Yes, I said that the only value his group offers me is its entertainment value. Now, this is not always true--occasionally, a good conversation does happen there, but it could be weeks between good conversations. Weeks where, as far as I am concerned, his Facebook group exists solely for making me laugh. 

So why do I say the things I say about Griffin? 

One, my style of Golden Dawn is different than his. I am outright conservative in my approach to Golden Dawn when my style is compared to Griffin's. The only thing that Griffin is more conservative about is the subject of lineage, which makes sense considering his Order's lineage traces back to the Ancients and was authorized by the Pharoahs themselves. My own lineage only traces back to a bunch of Odd Fellows who also decided to work the Golden Dawn system.  

Two, I get caught up in the flame war. The instance that Griffin accused me of being involved in a conspiracy against him and his Order, I became part of the oppostion. At heart, I am an angry blogger, and I am quite willing to be angry at him, just for the heck of it. 

Three, I refuse to make peace with the man. I was raised in a household where one carried grudges to the grave. Once I was gifted with the accusation of being his enemy, my upbringing kicked in and dig a trench and a no man's land, complete with barb wire and land mines. 

But most importantly, I say stuff about Griffin because it amuses me to do so. I take great delight in mocking the man on a regular basis. Of course, given my family background, this probably means that I really, really love Griffin--for arguing and fighting and insulting one another was a family pasttime during my childhood. 

And on that note, I leave you with two memes I created about David Griffin, and one that I got from someone else. Yes, I am the person who created the first and third memes. And yes, all three memes amuse me very much...especially when sharing them with the entire world. 

Based on an extensive scientific study, this is what David Griffin posts on the internet. 

And we all know it is true because Griffin says it is. 

Hey, I say that this line from Third Rock From the Sun fits Griffin to a T.