Space Invaders

People saying what they are or aren't is not necessarily an argument against it, especially if you travel to other countries a lot, but seems to become necessary these days when dealing with people who not only expect you to be like-minded, but given a captive audience like Facebook, will practically bury you in it regardless how far removed from the reality you actually live in. This is why I find sites like "Sodahead" and "Patheos" very disturbing. In all their single-minded efforts to assume globality, their view of the world is so far removed, it's like an alien invasion.

Sure, I can think of more creative things than split hairs over that idiotic "what makes you think you're so different". It's just another form of xenophobia towards anything that doesn't fit that Disneyland ideal...but then the culture shock is priceless the minute they step off that plane in Frankfurt. I remember that on the train back from Vienna, I was enjoying a schnapps and a smoke with a rather lively old lady heading for Munich. We were having a good laugh telling stories when a couple of starry-eyed evangelists from California walked in and stared at us like we suddenly had seven heads. Clearly they had just come from the passion play in Oberammergau and were about to ask us not to smoke, when my host protested loudly in her native German, pointing to the "Smoking" symbol- that there be no mistake which country they were in. Of course they fled the scene in an instant. I had to change trains in Munich, so our ways parted there. I had a half an hour so I headed to the kiosk for a herring bun, when suddenly some lost muppet intercepted me, asking me if I could speak English, in a rather demanding voice as she grabbed my arm. She was heading to Heidelberg and wasn't interested in going to the information office for directions. She insisted I read the schedule and take her to the track where the appropriate train would arrive. This was on the same platform as my own connection, so I thought, oh well if that's all she's asking. Family was expecting me in Offenburg within a specific time and these were the days before mobile phones. She had little to say for herself other than being a foreign student in Heidelberg University. She was assuming from my English that I was a fellow American, but to convince her otherwise, clearly required more personal information than I was willing or even allowed to give just anyone. This was after the time the American general Rogers had tried to blackball Kiesling with false accusations of closet homosexuality, and who knows who's kid this was.

This sort of scapegoating is rarely effective in mainland Europe. First of all, what people do in private here is not up for public scrutiny unless it violates the criminal code.  Secondly, Kiesling wasn't gay. He simply chose a career instead of family life because it really is difficult to maintain both in a military environment. I'm sure anyone who grew up in one can see that. Needless to say, the allegations only made everyone suspicious of what Rogers was trying to hide in the name of "national security". Yes, he was notorious for that, like so many others before him.

 When my train came she tried to stop me from boarding. She had this strange idea that it should be my duty to escort her to Heidelberg. Failing this she tried to tell me it was the only "Christian thing to do". That's when I leered at her, and yanking myself from her clutches, bolted through the open door in an instant. She went into a tirade, like making a scene was going to change anything. Normally people do come to your aid when you appear to be in distress, but her overweening behaviour had everyone avoiding her like the plague. The conductor must have gathered this as he secured the door behind me, shaking his head. Brandishing a cheesy grin at her through the window I waved as the train proceeded away. I could see she was on her best way to getting reported to the station police. My brother had a similar experience in Frankfurt waiting for the train, so it's not as if this was some mere isolated incident.

...and there it was gone.

Despite all that hullabaloo over Atwill's Covert Messiah, suddenly nobody's talking about whatever happened at Conway Hall that day, not even the slightest press review, nada. So, either nothing happened, or somebody took all the discrete legal measures to protect their interests (albeit Atwill or the CoE)...and even if there was any evidence in the form of actual documents, he certainly wouldn't have legal rights over them. Indeed, such circumstances alone could easily fuel another Dan Brown tale of millennial conspiracy, but if there's anything that really annoys me, it's the word "controversial". It means opposite sides of the same useless argument, neither of which has any relevance to the actual cause of the problem in the first place. Looking at human history as a whole, it takes no special powers to realize that all great empires were built on deception and emotional blackmail. Thus, whatever the Council of Nicea had in mind with their sloppy Greek translations and blatant censorships, making sacrilege of others to fit some greater utopia was always their venue. Not even the Greeks were spared in this endeavour. As for the "Messiah", how many Christians even know the actual meaning of the Hebraic word? I may be a heathen, but I did have one teacher of biblical history in my elementary years and ironically, she was from Jerusalem. I was free to chose whether I wanted to learn it or not. Indeed, learning of the Qumran scrolls proved highly revealing, and this back in 1964, while everyone else was too busy attending church.

http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/jewsandjesus/

Now having said this, some pagans will no doubt wonder where I'm coming from. My concerns are not so much about faith, rather, cultural heritage, hence; any folk that has to strip away the misconceptions to recall the experiences and lessons of their ancestors. While learning from foreign cultures brings innovation, it is always a question of ethics in how that connection is made. Not knowing your roots has a way of raising spirits that will haunt you until you make that connection properly.  As far as I'm concerned, denying a folk this possibility is akin to holding their soul hostage. Is it any surprise how many troubled souls there are in this day and age? Many are so damaged, they will never recover. Either way, however, I do not believe in utopia, nor the nihilistic rantings of frontal lobe disorders, but the different little dynamic changes that maintain the continuity of whole.

Nobody Expects the Playgan Inquisition

Aside from the self-proclaimed "experts" of Llewellyn press, we get the odd trolls from a certain American multifaith hub trying to push their credo on us like some god-sent vulcan thought police. Bring up topics like Atwill's "Covert Messiah", and we get slated as Christian bashers before the goods even hit the podium of Conway Hall. Kinda jumping the gun, aren't you Spanky? Yeah go bury your head in the sand, whining about how we should just focus on paganism while you're trying to tell us Jesus was a wiccan. Oh really? Lemme guess...he must have been the one Gardner met in the New Forest under the pale moonlight...yes, we all come from the godass- Holy Crap Batman! I have to agree with your religious contenders that you are just another tokenistic fashion statement, fantasizing cult fandom by playing mythical gods like a game of pokemon. I mean hell, you're such an icon of virtue, you have to ask for donations to go to a Pantheacon just 12 minutes away.

How Hucksters Profess Wicca to be an Ancient Secret Tradition

The usual excuse is that Wicca draws its “secret” knowledge from the Orto Templi Orientis and/or its alleged masonic roots. What they do not tell you is that the O.T.O. is Rosicrucian, thus its adherents not allowed to join a “regular” Lodge, no matter how much they may “borrow” from masonic practices. These are two entirely different cups of tea, one about sacred geometry, the other about hermeticism. In the late Victorian Age, when technology made world travel much easier for the common man, there were all kinds of secret societies, full of eccentrics and adventurers looking for some rich bastard to sponsor their wildest dreams of avarice- Samuel Liddell Mathers, his prodigy Edward Alexander Crowley, and his ally Alphonse Louis Constant (notice I removed the bogus names) no exception. That was the popular trend of the times. The truth is that neither Crowley nor Gardner ever got accepted into a regular Masonic lodge, Ancient Scottish rite or otherwise. Constant (Eliphas Levi) had studied to be Jesuit priest until he came across the grimoires, which sparked his interest in Hermeticism. The only Freemason was Mathers but he had to give it up when he joined the OGD and that is where he translated the Key of Solomon.

The problem with all this aspiring to be a pagan witchcraft tradition is the biblical assumption of ancient Babylon as the root of all human civilization. Too bad that DNA studies and recent archaeological findings in Anatolia and the lower Danube prove otherwise, but then the favourite argument against that is that “there are no scientific proofs, just opinions”. Conversely, any lack of “written evidence” tries to imply that either countless inquisitions and witch persecutions destroyed it, or that it was simply too primitive to qualify as anything intellectually challenging. Ironically, the witch craze of plague ridden Europe, was not so much suspicious of pagan folk practices as it was of close knit Jewish communities. Like most Christians even the mystics took the Levant for rife in black magic ever since the Crusades. Necromantic tales like Lilith and the Witch of Endor appealed to their darkest fantasies...and so the whole popular misconception of what defines a witch, was born. Despite all this, pagan folk practices simply carried on under the veneer of Catholicism, masking over the old spirits, their sacred places and feasts, with the trinity and names of saints. In feudal times they did not have the privilege of literacy, so much of their knowledge remained an oral tradition. It also preserved the identity of clans and craftsmen. Gardner tried to bridge this historical gap by alleging having met such a group in the New Forest. He liked to invent his own folk-legends, drawing on a Scottish heritage he never had. This was also a popular trend among latter day eccentrics and adventurers. Oh the ever so mysterious Celtic race! They will tell you little is known about them because they didn't write it down. Heaven forbid ever mentioning that Scots Gaelic is in any way Germanic.

Folk magic bears no resemblance to hermeticism. It is agrarian, arboreal, not a temple craft. Its roots are tribal and lives on in the sacred groves and springs of clans that have been around for countless generations. Their paleolithic roots were not matriarchal as Margaret Murray tries to suggest. Like with most tribal societies, men and women generally had each their own discrete secular circles. “Venus” figures were not alone among phallic symbols. While churches were built on ancient mounds and circles in the course of Christianization, they still remain portals to the otherworldly. This is why the Christian taboo of the widdershins walk around churches. On the other hand, people raised on strict Christian academia tend to poo-poo folk magic as primitive superstition, yet regard temple/ceremonial craft as summoning such cosmic potential, the power trip simply appeals to a lust that the frugalities of evangelism cannot satisfy. No surprise that figures like Crowley and Gardner had quite a reputation of sexual profligacy.

So if you are privy to certain hereditary psychic skills, do you really need the label “Wicca” to justify it? Even if you apply it to the systems suggested by these people, it does not make Wicca a hereditary craft, let alone an ancient tradition. Give or take, most natural talents prefer to be solitary because they can't be arsed by individuals who aspire to confuse the issue with too much hierarchical role play for supremacy. It's the difference between lateral and vertical development in dispensing one's creative juices, thus why most Hedgewitches are women. Is it matriarchy, partriarchy or just plain natural order at work? Think about it.