The dying phoenix

 

It seems Professor Dave has an online stalker. "Allegedly". Specifically this guy: "Dioplatonis / Ambitheus Carson P Lee". 

In the video above, Lee demonstrates a bizarre ritual, supposedly derived from Crowley´s Thelema. He cuts himself and eats the blood, then rambles incoherently about five different things (but not Dave in this particular upload). In other clips, Lee claims to believe in Soulism, which at least initially was an ironic joke-ideology claiming that the laws of nature (including gravity) are inherently hierarchical and oppressive. This guy seems to take it seriously?!

Ooookay. Frankly, I don´t think this dying phoenix is a threat to much of anyone... 

Satanist discovers Satanism

 

 

Satanist cultist discovers that Satanist cults actually are cults. They´re Satanist, too. I mean, who knew. 

The ordeal of the abyss

 

An interesting exposition on Thelema, Aleister Crowley´s magick-esoterick system. The similarities with Tantrism are obvious. 

The presentation is better than the one I linked to before (but comes from the same OTO lodge), but needless to say, I disagree with essentially everything in this system. Note the "Satanist" and nihilistic aspects. 

Another attempt to cope with a permanently fallen world... 

Every man is a star

 

I only listened to this with one ear, but I´m going to put it out here anyway. An OTO group in Seattle (of all places) expounds on Thelema, Aleister Crowley´s magical-esoteric system. 

Come and chat with Crowley

Annoying atheist Richard Carrier argues against the recent claims by a Google engineer (now fired) that the LaMDA chatbox is sentient. It turns out that the engineer in question, Blake Lemoine, is actually a member of the OTO, a sex magic group often accused of being Satanist! Carrier calls him an "idiot" and a "loony". 

Carrier himself believes in trans-humanism and eternal progress through...I don´t know...sentient computers perhaps? So it´s really *two* kooks arguing against each other (LOL), with Carrier taking the sensible position mostly because he wants to engineer a chatbox that´s *actually* sentient... 

Why Google´s LaMDA Chatbox isn´t sentient

Throw away your pow-wows

 

In the above YouTube clip, Irish paganizing chaos magician and crypto-Crowleyan Thomas Sheridan reflects on European paganism (modern and ancient) and its relationship to Native American (American Indian) culture and religion. Trigger warning! 

Sheridan argues that Native Americans should break free from their "victim mentality" and that this is the only way in which they can rise up again. He argues that Whites have created a "generic" (and mostly fake) Native American "culture" which have then been taken up by the Native tribes themselves. (I´m not sure if he is factually correct on this.) How likely is it that, say, the Apaches had the same culture as the Hurons? He also attacks Carlos Castaneda´s books about Don Juan in this context, arguing that Castaneda was just trying to appropriate Native culture for the psychedelic New Age culture of the 1960´s. Natives should "throw away their pow-wows" and reconnect with their real, ancient traditions. If these are unknown, reconnect with the land itself: rivers, trees, animals, and so on. This return to the "natural law" will somehow restore the *souls* of Native Americans.

Sheridan believes that the extermination of Native Americans at the hands of European settlers had nothing to do with "the White Man". Of course the colonialists were technically "White", but their real nature was Christian or "Abrahamic". The Abrahamics fought a crusade against Native American paganism, just as 1000 years earlier they had fought crusades against the European pagans. The battle isn´t fundamentally about land or resources, but about people´s very souls. Today, as more and more Europeans are rediscovering their ancient pagan roots (this is an exaggeration, I think) and their connection to the land, the control grid is crumbling. Native Americans can and should do something similar themselves. 

In passing, Sheridan claims that Crowley invented Wicca as a deliberate diversion for "disgusting old hags", since he didn´t want them around the real magical lodges of Thelema. He hates Doreen Valiente in particular. (I never read any of her material.) Sheridan also discusses the differences between political, ethnic and cultural nationalism, arguing in favor of the latter. He doesn´t care about politics (well, except sometimes!) and believes that people who are non-Irish in origins can nevertheless become Irish by assimilation. He points out that the pro-British Crowley was ethnically more Irish than W B Yeats - apparently Crowley loved to hassle Yeats about it. Ultimately, however, it´s better if people simply remain in their own tribe. That brings real diversity to the world, or even a kind of "unity in diversity" (since all pagans really worship the same deities), rather than the fake diversity of SJW-ish globalism.

A very popular clip on YouTube. Worth watching and pondering. 

In the abyss with Thomas Sheridan

"Demons" is a documentary about demonic beings available free at YouTube. It´s made and narrated by Thomas Sheridan, an Irish occultist and chaos magician. To be honest, I wouldn´t call it a "documentary" in the strict sense. It comes across more like a weird work of art, with pictures of various hideous and monstrous creatures set to scary music and sounds. The narration feels very "stream of consciousness" and jumps from topic to topic in fast progression. I´m not *entirely* sure how much I really learned about the subject matter after having watched it twice...

Sheridan argues that demons are real beings, which surprised me, since in his other content, he argues that gods are *not* real, rather being archetypes of energies present in the human psyche. Demons are identical or similar to the Irish fairy, live in other dimensions of reality, or at certain places in the landscape, or even at ancient monuments. Summoned, they can be forced to serve the magician and reveal certain secrets, but the process is extremely dangerous. The demons often taken the form of children or beautiful youth to dazzle the magician. They habitually lie to flatter the magician, with the purpose of disrupting the ritual and drive him literally insane. Demon possesion is a real thing. Sheridan doesn´t believe that exorcists can kill demons - rather, they simply release them into the world, making the demon free to attack other people! 

Demons come from "the Abyss", where everything is meaningless and malignant. The demons therefore want to enter our world, where they can get form but continue to wreak havoc. The most powerful demon is named Choronzon 333 or C333. The Abyss can also be interpreted as the deepest reaches of the human mind. The magician can become a living god by tapping its powers, but only if he can pass Choronzon and remain sane. 

The documentary references Richard Gallagher, a psychiatrist who believes in the reality of demonic possesion, the magician David Conway, and Aleister Crowley, the notorious founder of the Thelema "religion". Crowley was presumably on a first name basis with both Choronzon and another entity, known as Aiwass. In general, Sheridan seems relatively positive towards Crowley. He connects Aiwass to the Grey Aliens. Finally, the narrator also tells us about his own demonic encounter, similar to "sleep paralysis", except that Sheridan claims he was wide awake, not paralyzed and it wasn´t dark in the room. 

Perhaps the evocative character of this production is in itself some kind of ritual. For the best, we hope... 

Most original heresy so far

An entertaining article from the (obviously heretical) THAVMA website. 

Seriously, bro, Thelema is just another form of Christianity

Butterfly Meditation

A review of "Freemasonry and Ritual Work: The Misraim Service" 

This is an extensive reference volume (over 500 pages), containing virtually everything Rudolf Steiner ever wrote on Masonic rituals. Steiner was the founder of Anthroposophy, a spiritual path similar in some ways to Theosophy, while also drawing on other sources, including Steiner's own imagination (or clairvoyance, if you are less sceptical).

Steiner was never a Freemason in the strictest sense, but he did develop an interest in the so-called Rite of Memphis and Misraim, an “irregular” Masonic rite with a convoluted history. He believed that Masonry had “betrayed” the ancient Mysteries, while nevertheless keeping some of its rituals. Steiner also knew that many of the German romantics he admired had been Masons, including Goethe. For these reasons, Steiner decided to establish a kind of quasi-Masonic society for members of the German Theosophical Society, later to become the Anthroposophical Society. To that end, he got in touch with Theodor Reuss, who represented the Memphis-Misraim lineage in Germany. For a hefty fee, Reuss gave Steiner the right to start new lodges and even gave him a flashy title. Steiner, of course, used Reuss' certificate to set up his own “Masonic” society, open only to Steiner's supporters. Unfortunately for the future founder of Anthroposophy, Reuss was something of a character, doubling as the leader of Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an occult order which would later acquire world-wide notoriety due to the activities of one Aleister Crowley. Still today, opponents of Anthroposophy accuse Steiner of having been an actual member of the OTO, perhaps participating in rituals of sex magic!

Those who look for scandals in this book will be disappointed, however. It contains descriptions of various initiation rituals, photos or drawings of ritual implements, and lengthy interpretations of the meanings of the Masonic ceremonies. Since I know next to nothing about the Rite of Memphis-Misraim, I don't know to what extent Steiner might have revised the various rituals, although they do have a stereotypically Masonic feel, with coffins, candle lights, secret passwords, planetary symbols, etc.

Steiner's interpretations are obviously Anthroposophical, with all the usual speculations about man's cosmic evolution at Old Saturn, Lucifer and Ahriman, Atlantis, the Mystery of Golgotha, and so on. He also places great emphasis on various legends and speculations about Cain, Abel and Seth, while making the startling claim that Hiram Abiff later reincarnated as Lazarus and Christian Rosenkreuz. In some strange way, Lazarus was also a reincarnation of John the Baptist, who would later appear as the romantic poet Novalis!

Steiner's Masonic group was known under several different names, but Mystica Aeterna seems to be the designation most known to the outside world. Steiner disbanded the Masonic group at the start of World War I, fearing that it could be seen as a secret society by the German authorities. Critics often point to another possible reason: Steiner had conspiracy theories about secret (Masonic?) societies in Britain, claiming that they were behind the war with Germany. The editors of this volume point out, however, that after the war Steiner permitted Anthroposophists in both Germany and Britain to simultaneously belong to Masonic lodges.

I can't say that “`Freemasonry' and Ritual Work” really thrilled me. I skimmed most of the material, and it's occasionally repetitive, being a reference work. However, it's probably of considerable interest to people who take Freemasonry and Masonic rituals seriously, although the strange Anthroposophical interpretations might perhaps put some people off.

Three stars.

Oh, and the meaning of my review title is a secret... ;-)