Gender-neutral pronouns (because the SJW insist that we need them)

The other day on Facebook, one of my friends (well, a FB friend--some of them count as friends, right?) posted a link about an article talking about how SJW (social justice warriors, or social justice fanatics, or social justice zealots, or social justice m*****f***ers) were upset with a Bernie Sander's loss, and were blaming it on Elizabeth Warren, claiming that the loss was caused by her not being progressive enough.

And the lot of us was talking about how political movements keep getting highjacked by SJW. And it does happen. And sometimes in the strangest places. I once saw an artists co-op be hijacked by the SJW.

(True fucking story: Business meeting, planning for an event, and suddenly we have three hours burned up by SJW trying to figure out how not to offend people. And all the while, me and one of my artist friends are sitting there rolling our eyes--because the quickest way to become famous as an artist in the good ol' USA is to offend people. And someday, I plan on doing exactly that.)

Anyways, so the lot of us on Facebook are exchanging stories. Including stories about how the Occupy movement short-circuited because everyone and their mother insisted on including their pet issue, instead of focusing on a single issue.

Then (true to form) some SJW starts to chew various people out in the thread for not caring enough about one of their pet issues. In this case, it was all about trans-gender issues, including bitching about why no occult Order has ever decided to use gender-neutral pronouns.

Any occult authority when faced with hordes of SJW. 

I will admit that I gave a tiny little scream. After a couple of witty comments about how burning people at the stake was probably wrong, I remarked that I was off to write this blog post, and the SJW said, "Go on, have the last word. It is obvious that it is important to you." And then the SJW continued to harass else everyone in the thread.

(For the record, I got side-tracked--obviously I care, but not enough to write this post in a timely manner.)

Now, exactly what the fuck is a gender-neutral pronoun? It is a way to refer to someone without assigning gender to them. And it is only a problem for languages like English that has gendered pronouns (ex. he, she); there are many languages where all the pronouns are gender-neutral already....presumably SJW has other things to complain about these languages (because SJW are always raging about something).

As many of you know, one of my damn bachelor degrees is in Literature (because...because I am a complete idiot as the SJW crowd will point out). Up until 1960s, style books were listed "he" (and its siblings) as a non-gendered pronoun. Yes, that's right; "he" is non-gendered. (That's chanting you hear is the SJW crowd getting out torches and pitchforks.)

I am aware of non-gendered pronouns. Left to my own devices....well, honestly, I would just continue writing the same damn way that I have been writing---using those damn gendered pronouns. If I was forced to use non-gendered pronouns, I would use "one" and "they"---and "it" if I was in a mood.

By the way, according to the SJW crowd, this is not good enough.

There is also the little fact that I think using "Lord" in a non-gendered way to refer to various entities that rule over various types of operations is completely all right (while completely ignoring the fact that some of these entities have gender [bad Morgan], and some are even beyond gender [bad, bad Morgan].

No, no no. According to the SJW magicians, using "Lord" is wrong. Period. End of discussion. And refering to the general population of magicians and witches, using either "he" or "she" or even "they" is also wrong...because some humans are beyond gender, or trans-gender, or.... [Let me be honest, I get confused by the terms "cis" and "trans"---which makes me a very bad Morgan.]

And yes, I am aware of "ze" and "zhe" and other terms....but I really can't tell you which of them are actually trans-gender, and which are non-gendered, and all that jazz.

More fucking pronouns than I actually need. 

And not for the lack of people in college telling me that these terms are better. Of course, I might have been one of those people who thought that the idea of re-writing Shakespeare for a non-gender/trans-gender audience was just plain silly (I mean gender is part of those stories in their original historical context, right?). [Honestly, this argument is put forth by some Literature students--all of which I believe are pricks and/or cunts.]

At this point, those SJW, who are all about fixing the way society looks at gender, want to take away my Writer Union card (though being an erotic writer is grounds enough for the SJW to want me to quit writing the way that I write), my Adeptship (because if I can't figure a politically correct and gender-less way to say "Lord", it means that I am not really an Adept), and my university degrees (because I am not liberal and progressive enough to have actually earned two bachelor degrees).

And damn it, NO, NO, NO, I am not going to learn to write stuff in a gender-less SJW way. First, it feels damn artificial to me. Second, that is not my voice or viewpoint. Third, some of the mysteries are about polarity and gender. Fourth, not only do I have to learn to write that way, but the readers would have to learn to be able to read that stuff (have you tried to train readers to read odd stuff---it is harder than it looks). Fifth, fuck you SJW!!!

Let's be honest, no Order is going to work that hard. AMORC at one point promoted Esperanto as an universal and preferred language for initiates. And how well did that project go? Well, do you know anyone who speaks Esperanto? Anyone? Me neither.

And if I was to write in a trans-universal language style, it would end up sounding something like Cityspeak from Blade Runner (Cityspeak was a wide mixture of Spanish, French, German, Hungarian, Chinese, and Japanese)---though my version would probably have a little Yiddish, Hebrew, and Ancient Egyptian tossed in. But the SJW would declare that not good enough because...because, damn it, I am not trying hard enough to jump though the Social Justice Warrior hoops, and I am a white guy living in reasonable safe neighborhood.

Just screw you SJW, I am not writing that way. And yes, I know, I will be one of the first ones against the wall when the SJW revolution comes because I am evil for using gendered pronouns. Then again, I assume that everyone is going to placed against the wall at some point because as far as the SJW is concerned, we are all social justice sinners, heretics, and traitors.

Roots of Golden Dawn: Part 4

And while we are considering terms that people assign different meanings to, and then forget that others are using other meanings for the same term, which causes a great deal of arguments, let's look at the term: Secret Chief.

In Golden Dawn, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors surrounding this term. Whether or not, an Order has made contact with the Secret Chiefs, or even believes in their existence, is the source of much of the opinion in the Golden Dawn community about whether or not a particular branch, or leader, is legitimate or not.

There are those who use the term Secret Chief to talk about entities that exist on the astral plane, who have evolved past the point of needing bodies, or perhaps never having a physical form in the first place; these entities are said to guide and inspire the Orders from a higher plane. Exactly when an entity becomes a Secret Chief and not just a random entity (angel, saint, demon, god, muse, old dead guy) is unclear. Aleister Crowley is the most notorious individual who claimed such contact, but he is definitely not even close to being the only one to make such a claim.

Others use the term to describe members of the ultimate esoteric secret society, so secret that even those they contact are not allowed to know their real identities. They are Uber-Adepts, of at least the 8=3 Magister Templi Grade, and more often than not are members of another esoteric tradition. They tend to be from regions that birth new esoteric traditions and movements.

A big point of concern among those who care about such things is whether or not these Secret Chiefs have actually crossed the Abyss or not. Some say that only those who have crossed the Abyss can be Secret Chiefs. Others say that it is not crossing the Abyss that counts, but the production and use of the elixir of life.

These are the two most common definitions of Secret Chief.

(There is another definition that rests solely on function, but you are unlikely to run into anyone that seriously gives it the time of day.)

The problem with both of these definitions, and their variations, is that the access to the Secret Chiefs is so terribly restricted that only a single person in any particular generation, or time period, can be in contact with them. And when more than one person, or Order, claims to have access to them, one has to presume that someone is lying, or perhaps delusional.

(There is also the slight matter of higher fraud: how can you be sure that your "Secret Chief" is not lying about being a Secret Chief?)

In the end, the only advice I can give is to beware of the disagreement in how people are using the term, and judge leaders and Orders solely on their usefulness to you personally.

~~~To Be Continued~~~

Roots of Golden Dawn: Part Three

Let’s take a look at the word “lineage.” It seems to be a clear-cut word, and people who use it tend to act as if it has a precise definition.

It does not.

Looking it up in the dictionary, one would think that it only would have one use in esoteric circles. The dictionary says that lineage is the “1. lineal descent from an ancestor; ancestry or extraction. 2. the line of descendants of a particular ancestor; family; race.”

And while it is true that lineage in esoteric circles does mean “lineal descent from a source,” what makes talking about lineage is so frustrating is the fact that there are (at least) three different things that people are tracing the line of development of (or lack thereof) and refer to by the term “lineage.”

I realized this a few years ago after a particularly heated internet discussion. Taking a step back, I realized that what person A was saying about lineage was not what person B was talking about. And either one of them seemed to be thinking of lineage in the same manner that I was.

At this point, I started to research the term and how it had been used in the past. I discovered that the confusion about the term had existed since the formation of the modern lodge system in the 18th century. (The confusion might predate the eighteenth century; my own sources only go back so far.)

It was like the internet discussions except that one did not have the luxury of being able to ask a writer how they were defining the term.

Even worse, some writers seemed to be using the term in more than one sense.

And the cherry on top? I realized that I, myself, was using the term lineage to describe more than one thing. This offended my Virgo Sun and Leo Mercury.

So I sat down and looked at what I was using the term to describe, and then proceeded to coin some clarification terms to make it clearer for others to understand what I was trying to say.

(It is with some pleasure [yes, I have an ego] that I have stumbled across other members of the Golden Dawn community using the same clarification terms to clear up the confusion about their own use of the word.)

So what are the three kinds of descent that the esoteric community uses the term “lineage” to describe?

The first kind of descent is “Administrative Lineage.” This type of lineage refers to the right to run a group under the approval of a parent organization, and have its members recognized as legitimate and true members of that parent body.

The second kind of lineage is “Initiatory Lineage.” It is the type of lineage referred to when we talk about person X initiating person Y, who in turn initiated person Z.

The third type of lineage is the tracing where the ideas of a system come from; this type of lineage I refer to as “Memeonic Lineage.”

Possessing one type of lineage does not mean that you automatically have, or are entitled to, another type of lineage.

It is best to remember that one only knows for certain who gave oneself their authority, who was in the same room when you received your initiations, and where one got the inspiration and material for one own ideas and opinions; everything else you are told by other members, including your leaders and teachers, is merely hearsay. If you were not present for the event, you can not be sure that it actually happened the way that you were told it did.

~~~To Be Continued~~~

Roots of Golden Dawn: Part Two

“Where is the foundation of Golden Dawn? What are its roots? What is the essential core of the Golden Dawn system?”

At fist glance, these questions may seem to be the same question, but they are not. I am not talking about a single question, but rather a set of highly related issues that dovetail into each other.

One thing that causes no small amount of confusion and grief in Golden Dawn, and other esoteric circles, is the way that initiates use words and language. One thing to bear in mind when reading the writings of initiates, or talking to them, is that language, and the subtle ways to use it, is one of the hidden tools of the mystery traditions.

I remember a conversation that I had with a Soror a few years ago. She was reading a book by one of the famous initiates. Encountering words that she had never seen before, she exclaimed that the initiate was making up words. I asked her what words she thought he was making up, then I reached for my dictionary (ok, I admit that I never heard of these words either). Behold, he was not creating new words; the words were in the dictionary.

Some Adepts use words very precisely. The Adepts of previous ages were also the product of classical education, with better vocabularies than we tend to have today. They choose their words carefully with a purpose in mind. And there is often more than one layer to a lot that they say. Many of us initially have difficulty coming to grips with this fact.

This habit of carefully choosing words is more apparent in the circles where secrecy is given more weight, but it can show up in any esoteric environment.

One of the side-effects of secrecy, if you truly embrace it for an extended period of time, is that you start to become aware of the words coming out of your mouth and pen (keyboard). You have become aware of the possible subtle meanings that might be hidden in the words of others. It makes listening to politicians, oh so very interesting.

But there are drawbacks to this precise and subtle use of language. One of which is the trap of thinking that everything that comes out of someone’s mouth is precise and/or was purposely chosen; other drawback is mistakenly believing that other people are defining their words in the exact same manner as you are.

My most used examples of words that might not mean what you think they mean are the names of the elements (Spirit, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth), angelic names (not all entities named Michael are the same), and the word “lineage.” To this, you can add anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth.



~~~To Be Continued~~~