93 Ben et al

good points -
yes indeed some magicians have flirted with fascist and racist ideology in
the past - indeed occultism in general has oftened been accused of being a
closet right wing ideology - and that not confined to the sethian mythos -
personally i've been quite concerned to try and reclaim some of that
material - as it seems to me there is no inherent link between the original
Seth and any authoritarian point of view - if anything i would have thought
the cult of Horus more readily lends itself to authoritarianism - what with
all that stuff about kingship etc etc.
But probably any religious text can be distorted in various directions -
afteral,l look at the way Gandhi derived the notions of non-violence from
the Bhagavad Gita - where the text doesnt really indicate anything of the
sort??

Yes indeed some of the TOS people have been overtly, shall we say
chauvinist, in the past but now claim to have seen the errors of its ways.
In the case of  Storm i like to think its the power of the mythos that has
moved them away from all that right wing stuff although it is still a strong
trend - also to be seen in the Northern Tradition and Sabbatic Witchcraft,
maybe even tantrism, chaos magick, probably most styles at one time or
another. In a sense its a battle for the soul of these movements - and thus
best to engage and argue the case??
i was always liberatarian anti-fascist for as long as i can remember - so i
am inclined to be compassionate about the mistakes people make in their
naive youthfullness - ; ) Although some would say that
once a X, always an X -

'love and do what you will'

mogg

On the topic of early Gnosticism. -
and indeed many other forms of personal piety in the classical world - seems
like young so-called 'intellectual pagans' of the roman world - went on
pilgrimages to distant shrines in search of a personal revelation from all
sorts of gods whose inner nature they really had no clue to (eg Mandulis and
Aion)- so you are right it is a feature of the religious life.