Nick Farrell is mean to the Alt-Right (and they are upset about it)

Yesterday, in a howl Nick Farrell wrote a Facebook group moderator post about the posts that would get you banned from one of the Golden Dawn Facebook groups that he moderates. One of the things on the list was posting Alt-Right stuff. And his howl was met with screams that he was being unfair to the Alt-Right; and that by not mentioning the Alt-Left, he must somehow be supporting the Alt-Left.

Personally, as a fellow moderator of that particular GD FB group, I thought that backlash was ridiculous. First off, it is the Alt-Right posts that people keep trying to make that are the issue. Second, I haven't been seeing any Alt-Left posts in the pending stack. Third, the Alt-Left is a myth of the Alt-Right, who just assume that those who hate them are somehow organized beyond the Punch the Nazi level. Fourth, if Alt-Left posts were found in the pending stack, I would reject them (as well as Nick) simply because that particular GD FB group tries to remain focused on magic, and not on bovine end-products.

[If you are an Alt-Right, there is a Golden Dawn Facebook group ran by David Griffin which will totally let you post Alt-Right stuff. I am not sure if Griffin is an Alt-Right supporter, but he sure seems to hold their political position. In fact, the quickest way to get banned from his GD FB group is to be a liberal, and to tell him that his Alt-Right views are full bovine end-product goodness. And his GD FB group seems to be 100% about politics and 0% about magic, so there is a place for you.]

In response to the outrage that he was being unfair, and is somehow a member of the Alt-Left, Nick Farrell wrote a blog post. He wrote: 

"Some people think that the issue is political and you should not be talking about politics on a Golden Dawn chat group anyway.  While there is some truth in this, for me the issue is NOT political at all. Alt-Right ideas are not political at all but are the antithesis of everything the Golden Dawn represents.

Stripping away “political” ideas of alt-right we are still left with the following fundamental beliefs which are alien to the core of the Golden Dawn:

• The superiority of white males.
• Hatred of Jews and Muslims and homosexuals.
• A misogynistic opposition to “feminism” which is a call for women to adopt traditional roles."

You can read the rest of his blog post on his blog: Sorry, you can't be Alt-Right and a member of the Golden Dawn.

If Alt-Right is banned, why not Alt-Left?

Someone is going to be upset



Fuck you---I am Cat.

[This post was originally written in April 2012, and was not posted because I decided to be nice. It is being posted today because David Griffin and his Order will be demanding an apology from me in the future because of a project that I had in the pipeline for a couple of years that they will claim is ripping off their ideas because they openly stated that they are mixing science with the esoteric mysteries before the first part of my project was ready to be published. So I am just going to state the fact that I will not be apologizing for that project...or any other thing that I might do that upsets them in the future. The stuff in red was written today.]

There are days when you know that someone is going to be upset with you...and your friends...and your lodge...and your Order. This is one of those days. I imagine that they are also going to be upset with my cats.

Why?

Because my lodge looked at my notice of resignation, heard why I had to resign (because Griffin and company thought my opinion of them and their actions in the great book banning of 2012 were the "vilest"), and then proceeded to point out that my oath was not to Griffin's HOGD/AO, but rather to the BIOGD/BIORC and the IIOGD (which had given a previous HOGD/AO version the bird).

[Yes, there were groups calling themselves HOGD/AO before Griffin took out his trademark---shocking, but true. Even more shocking is the fact that my lineage may actually trace to Mathers. There are days I pray that it doesn't.]

Therefore, given that my oath was not to Griffin and his Order, and my duties likewise, the membership of the lodge did not see how the opinion of people outside our Hall had anything to do with whether or not I should remain a member of the lodge and Order. At that point, they set fire to my notice of resignation.

And you know that there is going to be a horde of people upset about this.

[For some reason, the members of Bast Temple do not consider the members of the HOGD/AO to be their brothers and sisters in the Work, I wonder why that feel that way.]

I am not really surprised by this. The people who join Bast Temple who do not like me and my actions tend to rapidly leave and join another Denver Golden Dawn lodge. My fellow and lady lodge members are used to my "in-your-face" opinions. In fact, they pointed out that the "vilest" language I used was actually polite compared to some of the things that I have said over the years.

They also did not think that I owed Griffin and company an apology over my honest opinion. In fact, it turns out that the lodge's opinion of the situation and the players would really upset some people.

The angry horde is going to be appalled that I am the polite, rational member of the lodge.

Furthermore, the members of the lodge want Griffin to know that they do not care about what I say about him and his. They understand that Griffin has appointed himself (or is it the Secret Chiefs and the Third Order?) judge and jury over all things Golden Dawn, but they would like to point out that they voted a long time ago not to join Griffin's Order. (Long story, mostly boring---and sad because they decided that they preferred a different devil in charge---it recently came back up with the revelation of new superior teachings which they voted not to learn.) And they want Griffin to know that his opinion is not welcome in matters concerning the actions of the membership of Bast Temple.

The angry horde, armed with pitchforks and flaming torches, want my head on a platter. And they are going to have to settle for calling me bad names. And that is really going to make them upset.

[Furthermore, I would like to add that my lodge knew about my bringing science into the esoteric mysteries project for the last two years, therefore I am quite sure that they not consider my project to be ripping your Order off.]

[One of the results of this demand for an apology is a new "tradition" where I am not allowed to bring myself on charges based on demands from Griffin's group. The membership of Bast Temple have stated that they will only consider bringing me up on charges on things that they discover on their own; by the way, they do not read Griffin's blog or forum...so demands for my head will be met with indifference by me.]

Kicking around Neophyte Oath changes

Lately, I have been kicking around rewriting the oath of obligation that my lodge uses in our Neophyte (0=0) initiation.

Here are the changes as I currently see them.

[I] solemnly promise to keep secret the true mysteries of this lodge and Order, its Inner Names, the names of its members, the locations and the proceedings of its assemblies unless authorized to do so.

{Yes, I am borrowing the "authoritization clause" from the A&O Mathers version; it addresses the fact that we have to give out a location to someone who is not a member, so that they can get there in order to be actually initiated.}

I solemnly promise to keep secret any oathbound information I may have gathered concerning this Order before taking this Oath.

{Basically, just because you knew the identities of several members before your initiation, it does not give you the right to "out" them. On the other hand, as you will see, I could care less about protecting secret documents that have been published a dozen times already.}

I will neither copy nor allow to be copied any unpublished manuscript, document, or symbol of this Order, physically or electronically, until I have obtained permission of the voting members of this Order or the original creator of the material....

{Again, I am concerned only with unpublished material, and only if it is still under copyright. One should not have to stress that if the original creator of the material is still alive, then it needs to be cleared with them, but some people do not understand this. On the other hand, thanks to the copyright laws of an earlier time, most (if not all) of the material from the original Order is already in public domain. And yes, I think that the public domain material needs to be published, so that all the various offshoots have a level playing field in that regard. Not that there is ever really a level playing field if living Adepts are allowed to contribute to the system--the better Adepts produce better material; it is that simple. Furthermore, I was taught that the original creator of a document had control of the copyright, and not even the Order could stop them from publishing it if they felt like doing so. And yes, by voting members I am refering to the members of my group--the same people who have the right to ask me not to publish something; it does not refer to people who believe that the entire GD system should answer to them.}

Defining Evil Magic

Yesterday while looking for one of my Living in a Fishbowl posts, I ran across a comment that I forgot to address: the issue of evil magic in Golden Dawn. The truth of the matter is that while Golden Dawn makes an initiate swear that they will not perform evil magic, Golden Dawn never officially came out and defined what evil magic was. In fact, this clause of the oath does not show up in all the Golden Dawn branches despite Regardie's publication of this particular version of the obligation.

Looking at concept of evil from a historic viewpoint, one discovers that the definition of evil is a changable concept. Sacrificing your firstborn child was considered a holy act in certain ages and cultures; lynch mobs were considered a viable form of justice in some historical periods; slavery was considered the proper way to pad the labor market by some societies. All these acts today would be frowned upon by most people.

Now I was thinking about this the other day while talking to someone about Reiki. The discussion turned to the fact that sometimes a Reiki session seems to ease the passage of someone suffering by allowing them to die easier (aka speeds up the process of dying). Given our culture's aversion to death, this use of Reiki would be labeled evil by some people.

And it is because of this extreme bias (and there are tons of other examples) that make me advise anyone who is worried about performing evil magic that perhaps they should not be involved in magic and Golden Dawn in the first place. Sooner or later, if you do magic, someone is going to claim that some magic you did was evil. It will not matter how much you thought it though, or how you worded the spell, you will be judged as a doer of evil by someone who disagrees with your final decision to warm up the cauldron.

{And if you want my opinion about the specific complaint that sparked this post: Police has procedures to try to prevent punishing the innocent---does magic targeted at the "guilty" really need the same set of precautions? Are Maat and the other gods/goddesses of justice as faultly in their judgments as ordinary human beings are?}

Oath of secrecy

(Readers may want to note that this is in response to a yahoo group posting about an unfavorable Enochian Chess book review I did a couple of months ago. Those who are interested in my reaction as a book reviewer can read the entry on my writing blog. Under normal conditions, I wouldn't care to give this more time, but there was a point about secrecy that I think needs addressing.)

Today, the notorous Steve Nichols posted a comment on a couple of Yahoo groups about a recent unfavorable book review of his first Enochian Chess book. I am fairly sure that it was written by me; if not, I still feel some guilt about the one that I wrote. Nevertheless, he made one comment that I want to address.

(Actually two comments, but the response to the one {about his attempt to divorce Enochian Chess from Golden Dawn} can be summed up as "Prove that Enochian Chess was not a Golden Dawn invention.")

(Anyways...) Nichols said that "Polytheists such as myself, or Wiccans, or even atheists, cannot in all seriousness take any GD vows and oaths that are required. Personally, I think Oaths to be a bad thing on the whole, as they restrict freedom of the ba, and may not be appropriate to you at a later time when conditions in your life (or beliefs) might have changed from the time you made the Oath. Also the internecine politics of belonging to one or other of the modern GD factions can often make practitioners lose sight of the Work."

Say what?

Outside of the atheists (who I can not imagine being in Golden Dawn considering that they believe in no higher power, souls, or magic), the others can take the oath. Wiccans and polytheists have taken the oath to the Order, or tradition; I know because I have administered it to several. In fact, I am a polytheist and a Wiccan and I have taken the oath of obligation (I was already one when I swore my oath in Hathoor Temple, and they had no problem with administering the Neophyte, Portal, and Adept Minor oaths to me).

Those who view the oath of obligation as too restricting are the same people who view Satan in Paradise Lost (John Milton) as a hero, rather than the nasty envious toad that he is. (Not that I believe in Satan, but after spending half a semester reading it in literature class, I am going to get at least one reference out of it.)

The oath does not restrict you to remain in Golden Dawn for the rest of your life; if you want to leave, just quit paying your dues and quit practicing.

(As for the internecine politics, I agree with Nichols that it is terribly distracting. But you can study and practice the system without getting involved in that nonsense, so it is not proof enourgh to abolish the entire system.)