Caroline et al

well yes i agree with much of whats been said about crowley
i wasn't really making a pitch for him ; ) -
there's probably been enough of that
- i'm more into updating or 'correcting' some of his stuff
- where i think its worthwhile - which it often is -
seems like he often had some very prescient insights, but they, IMO, need a
little bit of tweaking to make them relevant - i'm not sure if this is the
kind of thing you'd find in some of the 'in-group' writers you mention? - i
rather assume the tendency there is not to revise but to preserve in aspic
the 'words of the master' - and i'm not into that.
Hence my attempt to 'rectify' liber resh -(see my blog for the result).

My point in mentioning Crowley was merely that in his channelled text 'Liber
Al', there is his famous, perhaps notorious , reframing of the nature of
blood sacrifice - often misunderstood - the one that starts - 'the best
blood if of the moon monthly' which is placed at the top of the traditional
hierarchy of human and animal sacrifice (in terms of efficacy) - the point
being that this could/should be seen as the abolition of animal sacrifice
within modern magick -

I take the point made by other posters about how to recognise a 'recon'
tradition (by the hiatus) but also that it is a question of degree and that
it is also a 'political' decision determined to some extent by the ruling
orthodoxy - in our case christian theology. In egyptology, it's often said,
when studying the various revivals and reconstructions of egyptian religion
that occured in ancient times (for example the Kerma culture of Sudan), that
these 'born again' groups are often 'more egyptian than the egyptian' - ie
at the beginning of the revival certain extreme practices, such as human
sacrifice, are also revived - not sure if the modern revival fits that rule?
: )

'love and do what you will'

mogg











I can't understand why people want to *obey* Crowley so much. I've recently
re-activated my membership in the Ordo Templi Orientis after a hiatus of
seven years away from them (for various reasons). When I recently re-read a
sampling of his work to "get back into the groove" of Crowley literature and
brain-space I was shocked and actually embarassed at what appear to be his
severe delusions of grandeur and lunatic ideas about himself. Sure, he was
creative, sure, he was prolific, sure, he was before his time and he must
have been charismatic... but puhleese... If anyone went around spouting such
self-obsessed religious psychosis like that these days people would be
shunning them and laughing behind their back - wouldn't they? I know its
absolutely *not done* to criticise Crowley, but I just can't help it. Not
that he's all bad of course... and maybe he was actually correct to think he
was *so important*. I think, in a way, that with religious claims, one
really *can* claim anything - the supernatural is a free-for-all, is it not?
Whose to say? I mean (with another delusion of grandeur case) was Charles
Manson actually *wrong* to think that the Beatles were the Four Horseman of
the Apocalypse? Maybe not, if you look at them in a certain way...........)

>>I wonder why we, as pagans, need see ourselves as less connected to our
historical past than others cultists - perhaps it is the hiatus<<

I think it probably *is* the hiatus. We've had 2000 years or so, also, of
bad press about Pagan religions from the Christian establishment, and we've
had to kind of get over that. Pagan religions were supposed to be "evil",
demonic...

>>but even so, for example christianity (roman variety) has its breaks in
its apostolic succession (as in the anti-popes) and yet has no porblems
about styling itself christian.<<

Although there are many Christianities, not only one. Also, if there was a
very long break (one or two thousand years)... then if it were revived, or
reconstructed, people might look diferently at it.. romanticise it even...

>>Isn't the idea of continuity a bit of a mental fiction?<<

I dunno, maybe you're right. Maybe it is irrelavent, we can only do _now_
what we can do. The past is gone, we only have the present and future.

  I thinking of the book 'After Babel' in which the author talks about the
paradox of translation.

>>there was maybe a concerted attempt to make paganism respectible - and
that meant for many the denial of its quite recent magical past.<<

That's still happening in (backward) Australia. But anyway, most pop-Wicca
adherents wouldn't knwo there was any "magical" history older than the
1950's.... OK, that was mean, but that's the kind of attitude one develops
from working for a very POP-Wicca magazine for six years.

>>ps: on greek religion - i wonder if you know of Evangelos Rigakis and his
Threskian project -<<

No, I don't.


Sabina said....
>>also the chapter "The Study of Folklore and the Reclamation of Paganism"
in my book _Witching Culture_.<<

Actually I've got that book. I'll have to have a look. (So much to read....
only one brain....).



~Caroline.