Tim Maroney

how very unpleasant

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:57:33 GMT

Since you ask, I have been under a lot of stress since I went from contract to full time, thank you. The last few days have been especially unpleasant on the work front. I think it is knocking me somewhat off my spindle. I apologize for any and all stupid comments, and I have deleted an egregious example.

Kat and I engaged in a psychological exercise this weekend and I think in conjunction with work stress it may be having a destabilizing impact on my consciousness. I note this by noting a higher rate of mistakes in issues that have become politicized or emotionally charged, and a reduction in useful social inhibitions.

I also find myself wishing to bathe again, which could mean a number of different things, from the need to relax my muscles to a feeling of inner stain. Bathing is not a desire I often resist, and so I have now bathed. For some reason -- I don't know why, but perhaps it will be obvious to everyone else -- I feel the need to post this.

The last time I saw Ebony Anpu was in a Top Dog in Oakland near his apartment, where he held classes in magick. These revolved around the use of recreational drugs and a magical working he had derived from Madeleine L'Engle and from Hermetic Qabalah. He had asked me to stop coming there after I attended a few of his classes at the nearby Ancient Ways. We had gotten along well at first, but when what he called "his women" had expressed too much interest in me, and after he had attacked me for some of my questions in class, he became much more hostile, and yet his behavior was still curiously interspersed with seeming kindnesses.

At Top Dog he was friendly enough, being at the time with Kim, for whom he made a show of civility. At this time I was on Order-Wide Bad Report and had been refused initiation to the first degree, based upon a string of slanders which I hope you will forgive me for not repeating here. The OTO was to drop the charges within a year after this meeting, two years after I was placed on Bad Report without trial or consultation. At the local level it was another seven years before anything resembling justice was done, and that only at the behest of the national and international authorities.

During this meeting it was still the worst of times. I had stopped going to Ancient Ways since a group of local members gathered outside and jeered at me through the window. (For my part and with my trademark rapier wit and indefatigable courage, I pretended to ignore them until they went away.)

Here a few blocks away, Ebony told me that I should move to another part of the country. I don't remember what I said back. I was in my play-it-down, handle-the-lunatic mode, which tends to respond to outrageous statements by changing the subject to small talk. What I wish I had said to him now is "Fuck you. I live in Berkeley." And you know, even though Kim was there, even though it would have been awfully rude, somehow I think Ebony was someone to whom I could have made that statement, and who might have understood that it was meant in the best possible way.

There was a lot not said between Ebony and myself. After that I heard a variety of reports. He wasn't exactly quiet about his enthusiastic support for my banning, and he described me as "a monster" to a close friend. Ebony also told this friend that he would break security on AOL to crack into his computer and take his Gardnerian documents if he refused to share them. This seems believable to me, since he had threatened to tap my phone, and ranted constantly about his intelligence community connections. That is, the threat seems believable, even though he may or may not have had the ability to carry it out.

I ran as directly into Ebony as I ever would again on IRC a few months before his untimely death. We chatted pleasantly on a few occasions. All this was some years in the past and my comeback in the OTO was under way. It felt like making up, but there was a lot we never talked about. I was surprised by his death, being so far removed from the local OTO that I had not heard he was sick, and he had not mentioned it to me in chat. I heard about his death at a Gardnerian Beltaine in the North Bay from a mutual friend, and jumped immediately to the conclusion that the drugs had gotten him, which does not really seem to have been the case. In some ways it was a reasonable enough guess but I have never completely forgiven myself for it, and there is no one else to forgive me.

At his wake, which I was allowed to attend since it was not on OTO premises or at Oz House, I saw a number of people who I had not seen for many years. It was pleasant enough, as a wake should be, but you know, we didn't really connect, and a lot of people kept a distinct distance. I didn't go to the wake to see them, or because it was the first thing remotely resembling an OTO event I'd been able to participate in locally for years. I went to mourn my friend. And it is very strange, given what transpired between us and that we were only on good terms for one short season, but I still mourn him today, and sometimes think I see him when I look into the nighttime stars.

up-mod of the day

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:55:37 GMT

For some reason I'm always pleased to get modded up to 5 on /.. Since I'm no fan of open source software in general, taking the fight to the beast's lair and emerging victorious is very rewarding -- much like, say, being scorned for years as a crackpot firebrand, sticking to my guns, and finding my perspectives and ideas on the lips of the next generation of leaders.

Of course, the latter is just a hypothetical and could never happen in real life....

email of the day

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 30 Jun 2003 00:46:08 GMT

As I have only skimmed your site its hard to say what your position is but I am constantly surprised to meet OTO people who are entirely wrapped up in the propaganda of the order.

Two points - 1) The OTO is the Outer Order. 2) After turning the OTO into his Thelemic propaganda machine, Crowley set up the A.:A:. because I believe he knew that OTO was an old aeon hierarchical conception and he was happy to have a propaganda machine promulgating his word. He knew he couldn't change it so he made it work as best he could to serve his purpose and then set up the A.:A:..

And so on. Just so you'll know, friend, Crowley didn't join the OTO until years after he created the A.'. A.'. And I am about as much a propagandist for the OTO as Michael Moore is a spokesman for K-Mart.

smarter than the average goals

tim@maroney.org — Tue, 27 May 2003 23:34:36 GMT

Today I read keith418's pieces on SMART goals for the OTO. The SMART formula seems workable enough, although I am always wary of smarmy, over-marketed planning models. We might ask why we should concentrate on goals and strategy rather than on requirements, whether a matrix organization or a traditional hierarchy would better fit the organizational goals, or whether specific process and workflow models from business could be useful to us, rather than focusing on the SMART framework, which bears on a limited domain. But many organizations including the OTO do have problems that could be addressed through this model, so it seems like a reasonable starting point for discussion.

Under Strategy, which in nearly any other formulation of SMART goals would stand for Specific instead, I do not find much in the way of useful suggestions for a strategy. There is a characteristic pattern in Keith's discourse that is evident here, which is to insist vehemently and as if it is something everyone knows that "the leaders" are tragically deficient, without really saying how or pointing out any specific examples. Despite appearances, it is not would-be rabble-rousing; it appeals instead to rebels without a cause. They identify with the desire to lash out at some authority to prove their own individuality, but they don't want to get in any trouble, or go to the trouble of developing a Specific (there's that S again) alternative. True to form, rather than present a strategy Keith decries the faceless leadership's supposed lack of same.

The OTO has a strategic vision. It's basically the same as Crowley's though it has needed some tuning. The vision of the OTO is to be a crucible of initiatory spiritual transformation, in which a small number of highly capable people are presented with the opportunity to distinguish themselves before the current caretakers, and become the caretakers of the crucible in turn. The Mysteries of the group both embody the crucible of initiation and are sustained and sheltered by it. The project is multigenerational and in its early stages. I'm not sure why it would seem the leadership does not have this strategic vision.

Measurable is the real meat of any program. It's not only how you know whether you succeed or fail -- it's how you navigate toward your goal.

There are a variety of ways we could measure whether the crucible is actually fostering personal change and growth, but that of course would be psychology, which for some reason is anathematic, even though SMART goals themselves come from organizational psychology. Instead, the goals we see laid out before us, after wading through a few more paragraphs of vague denunciations of the faceless leaders, are not the ones we would necessarily think would be paramount for a spiritual group: money, property, membership size, and management choices. Of these I think the last, management choice, is the only really significant one of the four for a group that is not about money, and does not seek to convert the world.

On the subject of money Keith seems distant from the OTO of which I am a member. "I am asked to contribute to the legal fund, but not to a building fund, a charity fund, an internal publications fund, or any number of other areas." I've seen fundraising projects of these types, and many others, and contributed to some of them. Most of my donations go either to a local body or to OTO USA rather than to a particular fund, since I think earmarking unnecessarily complicates bookkeeping. Thankfully, I have never yet had reason to think that fundraising had become a primary goal of the organization, rather than a necessary evil.

To the extent that the property question is useful for the group it is being addressed through the national building fund. Owning property is not necessarily the best goal at this point. Tax liability has driven many fraternal lodges into receivership. We have been transitioning by policy to the use of neutral meeting grounds rather than private homes. A number of dedicated facilities have sprung up around the more successful local bodies already, by the hard work and support of the people in those communities. There seem to be sensible policies on property and they seem to be bearing fruit.

In membership Keith says that we do not watch membership numbers and strongly implies that we are losing members. Again, size of membership is not necessarily a good goal for the OTO, though we would expect it to grow if it were healthy. Membership numbers are published annually, by region and degree. They show a slow, incremental increase over the years. So I'm not sure what exactly the problem is here, or what justifies this classic KS substance-free rant:

If we have been losing members, are our leaders engaged in objective analysis and examination of the factors creating this loss, or spin and excuses that are entirely self-serving and subjective? One needn't debate the "quantity vs. quality" issue here at all, but what can ask – “What do the numbers tell us?” If this question is being asked, who is it being shared with and how? Good leaders admit that there are serious problems based on measurable factors and address them. Poor leaders spin away at the problem and obfuscate around the evidence. If the leaders do it, can we expect any different from their followers?

However, Keith does proceed to one point where he and I agree, which is that the OTO has had a bad track record in leadership choices. "If I was running a business it might naturally be my job to appoint managers. If I had a bad track record with my appointees, if many of them quit the company or had to be fired in disgrace, what would that indicate about my ability to judge character? Would subordinates naturally wonder what other skills I might be lacking?" This is one area where I am also greatly frustrated with the OTO. This frustration is only marginally abated by the fact that most businesses seem hard-pressed to find good managers. I hear the same concerns about leadership abilities from members of groups similar to ours, such as Pagan organizations and the Temple of Set, and in the history of other occult orders. As recent events have made clear, mainstream religions hardly seem to deal with the choice of leadership better than we do. I think we are facing a problem that is fundamentally hard for humans.

That is not to excuse the problem, only to contextualize it. It is a problem so serious that our continued existence and the rightness of that existence are both threatened. Perhaps it is hard to solve in part because it is so important. Here I am glad to say that there are tangible signs of improvement. Unwise choices from the past fall away -- or are pushed where necessary -- faster than before, and later-generation leaders (often but not always younger) have taken and are taking their chairs. The middle and upper degrees have expanded and been refreshed, and there is much more scrutiny of local body masters and those who wish to apply to speak for the Order, as opposed to the very damaging anything-goes and it's-their-funeral attitude toward volunteers from the 1970's to about the early 1990's. We are shifting to a governance of laws rather than of men, with the necessary concerns for due process and other forms of human rights and "business way." This work toward better internal process and less reliance on potentially whimsical and wrong leadership decisions is everywhere evident and to me it seems a serious attempt to deal with the problem, and one that so far has had tangible results for the better. I think, hope and pray there is more we can do but the direction of change is positive.

The next letter in SMART is "A", for accountable. Or, it is sometimes. Among the hundreds of SMART pep talks in a Google search I see A for Action-Oriented, and sometimes Attainable or Achievable, not Accountable, just as the S usually means Specific, not Strategic. These idiosyncratic usages appear almost as if someone had been bending the SMART concept to fit their critique. But not to quibble. Surely accountability is a principle with which no one could disagree. If someone shows that they can't handle a certain responsibility, then they won't continue to do so. It also means some investment in human resources will be respected and that people will receive warnings and be given the opportunity to discuss problem issues when possible. It's common-sense thinking about management, as many of these planning programs turn out to be, hidden behind acronyms and charts.

Yet while no one could disagree with the principle of accountability, Bro. Keith manages to put it in the most disagreeable way possible, as yet another protracted series of accusations against "the leaders". If we are going to take a motivational-speaking approach to planning, then let's at least be aware that talking about improvements and relief from pain points is going to sell better to almost any audience today than the fire and brimstone approach Keith actually takes in explaining, not accountability itself, but the dire consequences of lack of accountability.

Paragraphs pass before one real point bearing on the organization appears. There can be a problem with cronyism, and with the one-way nature of OTO degrees. This is almost lost in the spluttering, though:

Instead of ratifying accountability and demonstrating it, the hierarchy exists to thwart accountability and render it meaningless. This is easily seen when people of higher rank are allowed to get away with more and have more excuses made for them. There is no clearer evidence of inversion and the parody of rank and honors than that. This sets up a new diminishing spiral of expectations, so that one expects less and less from the hierarchy and makes more and more excuses for it. Naturally this serves to call into question its justification as local efforts, uninformed by the corrupt nature of the hierarchy, are seen as more effective and have greater practical justification. How many then notice the very damning questions this situation brings to bear?

I've heard fewer cronyism complaints of late than I used to hear -- again, around the time when the OTO started to shift more toward a basis I could identify with, in the mid-1990's, when two particularly unpleasant leaders were held accountable and selected out -- and I talk with a lot more people these days. I think it is a problem in any small self-governing group and that it has been and continues to be a problem in the OTO. As I said with respect to leadership choices, I see distinct measures of progress. I am not going to say too much about procedure at this level, especially since it is not something of which I am directly part. However, the improvement of the Grand Tribunal, the shift of the Electoral College from a forum for accusations to a policy-making and leadership-selecting body governing the Man of Earth, the understanding that international members or even national members of the VII may not exercise the privileges of the SGIG in all cases, and the apparent increase in activity by Chapters of Rose-Croix, all seem like positive moves toward correct and accountable internal governance.

Moving on past the ominous closing comment that "In the long run the implicit conflict, caused by a steady opposition to real accountability, will doom the hierarchy much more than admitting to failures, and accepting accountability for them, ever will", we proceed to realistic. This seems like a peculiar word to use for a spiritual program, and Keith does note the issue himself. In typical KS fashion the inherent tension between realism and spirituality is stated as a blast against mystics as contrasted with magicians, who are presumably much more realistic. Beyond this we are given no particular statement of what the realistic goals should be, and I am left with no response but to note that the areas where I have seen improvement are, unlike some spiritual areas, ones to which pragmatic and realistic criteria apply.

Finally we come to T for Time Line, or more normally, Timely. Personally I am part of this every time my local body, Mons Abiegnus Oasis, has an event. We need to be timely on this meso-level, but on the macro-level, we who tend the OTO are more like farmers or gardeners than entrepreneurs. We are not trying to double profit for the fiscal year, or beat the three-minute mile, or sell insurance, all normal SMART domains. Our Mysteries are alive and we tend them, improving in that as we go, and hopefully leaving something better for the next wave of caretakers than we have gotten in our turn. A multigenerational spiritual project grows toward goals that vary across generations, can't be imposed by mandate, require field trials that last for years, and necessarily adapt to an unpredictably changing environment.

I think it is hard but also unnecessary for me to answer Keith's question "What can we expect from our communities in our lifetime?" Over a long time horizon, I don't think detail planning is fruitful. Neither myself nor anyone alive can tell us where the human species will be in fifty years, much less the OTO. As long as the Mystery of the OTO is alive and transforming itself into something better I am willing to work with it. I do not control the OTO, nor does any one person or one generation. It may transform itself into something I would not choose to associate myself with, either during my life, or after it. These are risks I am prepared to accept. During this period of my life I am one of the many people helping to improve the OTO, and that is what I'm looking for, not assurances that we will own churches by the time I enter my dotage. Others' goals may well differ, and be no less smart than mine. And yet, as Robert S. Rubin reminds us in his paper on acronym drift, Will the Real SMART Goals Please Stand Up?, “only one thing remains clear, not all SMART goals are created equal.”

train wreck

tim@maroney.org — Tue, 27 May 2003 19:46:12 GMT

What is it that makes watching a train wreck so fascinating, so that even though we are ashamed of ourselves, we can't tear our eyes away, and only wish it had the decency not to occur in front of us and face us with this impossible choice?

I think perhaps it is that on some primal level we tag the information as important. There is a compulsion to absorb it, to take advantage of a rare opportunity to see - what? A vision of your own end, perhaps? A comprehension of the depth of misery to which the world can abruptly sink? Escape routes to store away for later use?

Perhaps it is simply that it is a peek through the manufactured and peaceful world to a kind of reality that seems firmer and more fundamental. This world is physical. I am made of thinking meat. It could be turned to hamburger in an instant, or some sudden neurological glitch could turn the thinking part psychotic, or aphasic, or violent, or, again, simply dead. Everything we construct ourselves to be in our identities and in our society is transcended in the train wreck. How could we not be transfixed?

open source as unpleasant subculture

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 26 May 2003 21:02:26 GMT

A /. story led me to the archives of the Linux kernel mailing list. In this I am reminded of one personal reason I have never been attracted to the Free Software or Open Source ideology. It requires a major lifestyle commitment which involves the company of unpleasant people, as a quick browse through those archives will demonstrate.

The promise of making the source code for software freely available is easy modification. That is, given that software often needs to be customized to meet the requirements of a particular project, a wealth of free software should make accomplishing any project's goals easier, because one can modify something that is already close to the requirements instead of starting from scratch.

The reality is different. When combining small free tools for simple functions, like adding simple forms to a web site, and given a good initial tool selection, then one can often apply this method and quickly integrate some simple command-line-based tools, or perl or Python modules, without a great deal of startup time or lifestyle commitment to the project. Modifying the large open source projects where customization presents interesting possibilities, such as the Linux or Darwin kernel, the GCC compiler, or the Mozilla browser, however, is a very different story. They are not particularly penetrable without help, and it can be very misleading to try to understand them by reading the code oneself or using whatever sparse documentation may be available. They require a lifestyle commitment and subculture participation.

Large open source systems are sprawling and Frankensteinian, and one is going to need the guidance of the mailing list and chat room to get anywhere with them. For instance, there may be a paper on memory allocation in the system (a basic service required by almost all software programs, but often different from program to program). This document might well describe only a hoped-for future direction, which was never implemented after the person left the project. Going through the source and looking for memory allocation might fail to reveal that there are actually five different memory allocators, all representing partially tuned attempts to deal with different aspects of the problem, and scattered throughout the code controlled by a set of macro expansions. Of course, the community knows this already, and therein lies the problem.

Popping into a chat room to get an answer is really not that odious a responsibility, in theory. In practice, though, one has to actually integrate into the community, spending long hours bartering for help, and trying to make the best of dealing with unpleasant and undersocialized people who often have little social status or acceptance outside the community. The level of discourse ranges from abusive to actionable. Simply getting straight answers is difficult. Ordinary technical issues become the objects of gargantuan philosophical and religious debates, usually uninformed by any reading in the relevant computer science literature. Heaven forfend that someone should drop in with a well-meaning technical question that has become a hot-button issue for the insular software-project subculture, or wishing to help solve a problem that has been vehemently denied for years.

Every free project community I've encountered so far is run as a fiefdom and partakes of a highly polarized insider-outsider dynamic. Abuse is taken for granted and encouraged toward newbies, as a kind of hazing that establishes loyalty to the group. The prize is the sanctioned ability to give more abuse than you receive. These seats are highly coveted and it is assumed that newbies will be contenders, so abusing newbies and driving them away serves a function beyond initiatory bonding as well. The best way to take them is to be willing to soak up a lot of abuse and to spend sixteen hours a day glued to every relevant chat room, mailing list, bug database and cvs archive, waiting for some justification for your next tantrum. Take another look at the Linux Kernel mailing list, reportedly one of the most functional communities in open source. It runs about 250 messages a day. This is all these people do.

Between the time drain and the unpleasant company, making a significant contribution to free software and open source would require a kind of lifestyle commitment that I am not prepared to make. Having an ordinary software engineering job already leaves my life revolving around software more than I would like it to. I don't have time to invest in an online apprenticeship in a "free" project that wants to eat months of my life before it will give me the time of day. In my profession, I don't have to. I'm not a newbie at more than twenty years experience. The people hiring me know my references and background and they treat me with professional respect and collegiality. If I have to spend a large portion of my life on software, I'd like to do it in an atmosphere of decorum, not in a chat room getting jeered at by sixteen-year-old aspirants to a retro cyberculture dream world that never existed. I'm a software professional, not a software nerd. The center of my life is elsewhere, and status in such an insular and unpleasant community has no appeal for me.

Gnosis, Mystery and Unitarian Universalism

tim@maroney.org — Fri, 23 May 2003 16:29:23 GMT

Gnosis, Mystery and Unitarian Universalism
By Jeva Singh-Anand, 1 April 2001

666 on freedom of thought

tim@maroney.org — Fri, 23 May 2003 08:48:14 GMT

De Libertate Mentis (from Liber Aleph)

There shall be no property in Human Thought. Let each think as he will concerning the Universe; but let none seek to impose that Thought upon another by any Threat of Penalty in this World or any other World.... I charge thee therefore that thou permit none to tyrannize any other in Thought, or to threaten, or in any other wise to blaspheme the great Liberty of Our Father the Sun in the Grand Cosmos, or of His Viceregent in the Little.

non-depleted uranium in afghani urine

tim@maroney.org — Thu, 22 May 2003 20:20:46 GMT

Afghans' uranium levels spark alert - By Alex Kirby, BBC News Online

A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown "astonishing" levels of uranium in their urine, an independent scientist says....

But he found no trace of the depleted uranium (DU) some scientists believe is implicated in Gulf War syndrome.

Other researchers suggest new types of radioactive weapons may have been used in Afghanistan....

The UMRC says: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces."

It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads.

Other explanations seem possible. Al-Qaeda could have been experimenting with radiological weaponry in the caves. Hitting a buried stockpile of low-grade fissile materials could surely throw up radioactive dust.

Afghanistan also has natural uranium resources, which could conceivably be released into the air under conditions of heavy bombardment by ground-penetrating weapons. These resources have so far been largely unexploited, except by the Soviets during the occupation.

The Soviet nuclear program was notoriously dirty, and it's possible that radioactive waste and byproducts from these programs could have been haphazardly disposed of in Afghanistan's natural caverns, then later hit by American weapons. It's not even necessary to postulate that bombardment had anything to do with the civilian contamination in the Soviet waste scenario.

Nuclear waste has discernible isotopic signatures, and mass spectrometry could test for long-lived nuclear reactor products such as Cesium-135 and -137. Mining wastes would have their own isotopic signatures. While it is possible to distinguish refined uranium from nuclear waste and ores, the UMRC seems narrowly focused on uranium. They have not yet published their results so it is hard to say what possibilities they might have excluded.

On the other side of the question, the Bush administration has said that it wants to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons. I'd like to think that despite the current madness, this is still not a country where radioactive weapons would be developed and used in secret as alleged. But in this climate it would be hard for me to rule anything out.

lies on play and whim

tim@maroney.org — Thu, 22 May 2003 00:39:00 GMT

Broomstick-Babblings (from The Book of Lies)

     FRATER PERDURABO is of the Sanhedrim of the Sabbath, say men; He is the Old Goat himself, say women.
     Therefore do all adore him; the more they detest him the more they adore him.
     Ay! let us offer the Obscene Kiss!
     Let us seek the Mystery of the Gnarled Oak, and of the Glacier Torrent!
     To him let us offer up our babes! Around Him let us dance in the mad moonlight
     But FRATER PERDURABO is nothing but AN EYE; what eye none knoweth.
     Skip, witches! Hop, toads! Take your pleasure! - for the play of the Universe is the pleasure of FRATER PERDURABO

in paragraph 7 (Skip, witches) is seen the meaning of the chapter; the obscene and distorted character of much of the universe is a whim...

a fruit basket and card

tim@maroney.org — Wed, 21 May 2003 23:16:19 GMT

From my new employer. How nice. The sweatshirt is incredibly boring, though.

I will be going to San Jose on Jun 2 for orientation. That lasts from morning until evening on Monday, and half the day on Tuesday. At that length it has better be good. If people try to make me do "I'm a little teacup" participation exercises I just stare at them until they call on the next person.

I had to work a half day today on an urgent bug today despite being on vacation.

I'm about to begin writing on file cards and spreading them around in various arrangements. If you know me you know what that means. Or maybe you don't. It's a simple technique for bringing order to a sprawling subject domain. Many cards are set aside. Some are rewritten again & again. Some never change. Many have additional notes attached. They are put in piles and then taken out or copied into other piles. The result is a draft outline.

I am also considering bringing the Yi and/or Tarot oe bear on my side writing project. I don't usually do that but in this case I have a feeling it just may work. The problem space there has a few great and solid pillars within it, but bridges are not as yet woven across the abysses between them. The Tarot might be superior for this project given its imagistic quality and that the end result would be in a visual medium. Personally I tend to favor the Yi.

I have a few other side projects that I want to get to the two-page treatment level before I have to put on the shirt. I'm not too worried yet, although of course, I haven't yet gotten as far as I'd hoped.

Addendum. 4:18PM. My four-figure tax refund check has finally arrived, as I broke open the new deck and laid the new pen upon the cards. I think I will take a quick trip to the bank. Quite a change from being in the red since last week! And tomorrow I get paid for two weeks of overtime, my last automatic deposit as a contractor.

traditional Thelemic anti-Semitism: a discussion

tim@maroney.org — Tue, 20 May 2003 22:21:10 GMT

http://www.livejournal.com/users/stonemirror/267996.html?thread=1106652

chimpanzees - genus homo?

tim@maroney.org — Tue, 20 May 2003 06:32:49 GMT

Chimps May Have Closer Links to Humans

Humans and chimps share 99.4 percent of DNA -- genetic code for life -- according to a team led by Morris Goodman of the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

"We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes," said Goodman.

The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, proposes that chimps be added to the genus Homo, currently reserved only for humans.

"Some day we'll live on Venus. Men will walk on Mars. But we will still be monkeys, down deep inside." - David Byrne, "Facts of Life"

today's quasi-thelemic song lyric post

tim@maroney.org — Tue, 20 May 2003 06:02:26 GMT

"It's your motherfuckin' world. Do what you like." -- Lil' Kim

the best thing about being priest...

tim@maroney.org — Sun, 18 May 2003 19:13:33 GMT

... is not having to say the Creed. What a load of old cobblers that thing is.

the machines are boring

tim@maroney.org — Sun, 18 May 2003 18:25:39 GMT

(However, the theatre in Orinda was nice -- thanks to bellacrow for the tip!)

another twelve hour day

tim@maroney.org — Fri, 28 Mar 2003 05:17:18 GMT

We have a big push on the software front. I anticipated it a couple of months ago and tried to head it off, but my warnings were not heeded, and so now milestones are slipping and people are working crazy hours. That includes me. The upside? I'm a contractor, and I get paid by the hour. The downside: I will become an exempt employee soon, because in this climate I need the job security. Then I can put in sixty hour weeks and not get any overtime.

People are making brilliant comments in a few recent entries. I have time to read them at a rapid clip as the email notifications come in, and no time to respond to them properly. Maybe tomorrow, with luck.

Oh yes, there's a very good chance that Kat and I will be able to get to Austin for the Io Pan Jam and New Orleans for the Jazz Festival! I'm going to take off two weeks between contracting and slavery -- I mean, exempt employmentt. We might even be able to get to the parties leading up to the Jam.

notes of a skeptical thelemite

tim@maroney.org — Thu, 27 Mar 2003 03:53:20 GMT

In response to several interesting questions from mendaxveritas, I set down in epistolary and Socratic form some of my thoughts on interpreting Crowley's work in a skeptical but praxis-oriented light. I've copied some of the dialog here for my own future reference. These notes are not an essay, but may someday form the basis of one.

1. What does Thelema mean to you?

    7. A history of events and a collection of artistic and academic works. (Thanks to ecosystem.)

2. What does True Will mean to you?

    7. An unworkable metaphysical concept created by Crowley and not appearing in BotL.

4. What does Initiation mean to you?

    6. An experiential means of "charging" or empowering symbols for use in meditation and ritual.
    7. A social bonding process involving the creation of a new world-order and placement within it.
    8. A means of indoctrination by placing candidates in a receptive state and tying their social status to acceptance.

5. Is self-initiation possible?

    7. Not in the social or indoctrination sense, but in the experiential or "charging" sense, sure.
    8. Yes in every sense, if it's a self-initiation assigned by a group (see Pyramidos).

6. If someone is not yet an Adept, what do they really know?

    6. There's no such thing as an Adept. Crowley's system of degrees is a false system of psychology.
    7. Whatever they know. Adepthood means completely different things to different people.

7. What is the difference between "Aleister Crowley" and "The Master Therion"?

    6. That's a tough one. The difference between Crowley and V.V.V.V.V. is much easier to grasp.

1. I realized after posting that the first question was phrased incorrectly. It really ought to have been "What does it mean to be a Thelemite?"

Ah. That's very different. My definition of Thelemite is derived closely from Rabelais, omitting the term "well-bred."

7. If you find it easier to describe the relationship of "AC" to "VVVVV" than that of "AC" to "Therion", then by all means do so. Perhaps that is a better question.

V.V.V.V.V. was a voice in Crowley's head which was not identified with his conscious self. That much is clear from his unpublished journals. I am less clear on what Crowley meant by "The Master Therion" as a pseudonym. The Therion pieces unlike the V.V.V.V.V. pieces appear to be written by the conscious self rather than some right-brain poetry center. One approach to the question would be that the Therion voice was felt to be a combination of the conscious and unconscious voices.

I'm sure Rabelais doesn't mention Liber AL (for obvious reasons), so should I infer that you don't consider acceptance of Liber AL to be essential to the definition of a Thelemite?

Certainly not essential, and it can even be inimical. A Thelemite per Rabelais is someone whose sources of virtue are within themselves; he deliberately inverted the Christian idea that wisdom came from external sources in the Bible and the Church. If someone is a BotL-thumper then they may be relying excessively on an external source of received wisdom rather than on their own internal sources. If so, then the Rabelaisian definition would not apply.

I agree that AC did not identify VVVVV with his human personality, which I think is what you mean by "conscious self". I think AC would have said that as a Master of the Temple, VVVVV resided above the Abyss, and so by definition was not part of his ego.

That's a little more abstract that what I was trying to say. Crowley was conscious when V.V.V.V.V. was speaking. According to his journal from the time when he received that rapid-fire burst of Class A texts over a few months, he simply heard the voice and it gave him dictation. There were no trance phenomena; he was in his ordinary state of consciousness. One model of this curious process would be that V.V.V.V.V. was the voice of Wernicke's area, the right-hemisphere analogue of the ordinary left-hemisphere speech center, a la Julian Jaynes.

The same was true of Therion, but it is the Curse of the Magus that he must speak, knowing that he will be misunderstood; so he wrote as simply as possible, almost as a parent speaks to a toddler.

Perhaps. I don't know of any clear biographical data on the subject.

You... restrict your concept of initiation to "charging symbols", "social bonding", and brainwashing (I think that is a fair reduction of your third definition).

Indoctrination. Brainwashing is a different, albeit related, process.

[P]erhaps a better question is, what is it that you are looking for in Thelema if not initiation as AC defined it, according to the curriculum that he devised for individual attainment (i.e. the AA system)?

I'm not looking for anything in Thelema. As a Thelemite I am not dependent on others' received wisdom.

If you reject the model of the HGA as the True Self, do you also reject the model of the conscious ego as a false self, and of the crossing of the Abyss as the way to finally free oneself of that illusion?

Crowley didn't take Aiwass as his MT motto, so how would the HGA be the True Self?

All concepts of selfhood are illusory, as per Hume. The illusion of self is a product of neurological narrative, in which a massively parallel system creates a story about a unitary character that does not exist.

This is becoming an interesting discussion; you seem to reject so much of the core of what AC believed and taught that I wonder what it is about him and/or Thelema that attracts you.

Crowley was a talented creator with an unusual connection to aspects of his own unconscious mind. His work is to me a subjectively useful source of symbolic associations that I can weave into my own personal symbolic tapestry, and his rituals and meditations are enjoyable and fulfilling to perform, helping me tap into my own unconscious sources of wisdom. I'm by no means a follower of his system, though. It's obvious to me from the biographical data that his view of spiritual degrees consisted of force-fitting his personal experience into a traditional framework, and that he was willing to lie in order to make the fit to tradition look convincing to others. It's also clear that his methods were not effective for others, and that the methods he proposed for others were not what he practiced himself.

"Don't fly more humans than you have to"

tim@maroney.org — Wed, 26 Mar 2003 03:55:23 GMT

The solution to the unreliability of the space shuttle?

Simple -- try to minimize casualties by keeping people off that godforsaken deathtrap.

This is not just my snarky observation, but the recommendation of the former commander of the space division of the Air Force Systems Command to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

NASA may have to live with a risk factor of two catastrophes for every 113 shuttle flights, so it should limit its crew size and use robots and unmanned rockets whenever possible, a missile and rocket expert [Aloysius Casey] said Tuesday....

Steven Wallace, a board member in charge of accident investigations for the Federal Aviation Administration, suggested that a reliability level of 98 percent would not suffice for commercial airlines.

"In 2000, we operated 11 million flights, 32,000 a day and without a single fatality," Wallace said. "Operating on this level of reliability, we would lose 640 of those airplanes every day."

jihad: war against the infidel

tim@maroney.org — Wed, 26 Mar 2003 00:40:29 GMT

CNN radio is repeating a short piece claiming that "jihad" does not mean "holy war" and that Islam is a peaceful religion. I have no doubt that the numerous media reports to this effect are well-meaning and meant to counter rampant and spreading anti-Muslim bigotry. Nor do I have any desire to provide ammunition to those who ignorantly defame Islam, but in fact Islam is not historically a peaceful religion and "jihad" does traditionally mean a holy war carried out to bring a land of unbelievers under Islamic control. Every religion has its warts and jihad is one of Islam's greatest failings from a human rights perspective.

It is true that there are more philosophical interpretations of "jihad" as well. These are much less common and more marginal uses, which one would need to hunt intently through several scholarly references to find. These non-warlike definitions of "jihad" are spiritualized versions of the plain and common primary meaning, which every Arab speaker knows.

Daniel Pipes has been covering militant Islam for decades, and he has his facts straight on this issue. The word has only been recast in popular discourse in recent years as a propaganda measure. Real scholars are not fooled.

When Saddam Hussein tells the Arab world that Iraq is the country of jihad, he is using the traditional and usual meaning of the word, in the correct expectation that he will be understood by his target audience as referring to armed struggle against the infidel. When terrorists gather together under the name Islamic Jihad, they are not perverting an originally pure philosophical term. They are speaking in plain language, in which jihad means holy war.

Thelemites who insist that the Third Chapter may only be read metaphorically should not be too quick to point fingers here, or at the glorious divine slaughters of the Bible. The Third Chapter lends itself all too easily to a literal meaning, and Crowley interpreted it in that light. His idea of how the world would be brought to Thelema was a very similar kind of holy war, modeled in his interpretations on the traditional jihads of Islam, a religion he greatly admired for its masculinity.

It would be a wonderful thing for Islam and for the world if the abstract and philosophized meanings of "jihad" were to become the norm and the old warlike meaning be forgotten. However, as current events remind us, that meaning is still primary today.

the geneva convention: just for them

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 07:57:01 GMT

The Fourth Geneva Convention

Article 27

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.

US Gives Way on Prisoners

Darcy Christen, a spokesman for the ICRC, said the distribution of the Pentagon photographs violated the Geneva convention that states that prisoners of war "should be protected from public curiosity."

"Such pictures should not be disseminated. They could have a strong impact on the family and the Muslim community worldwide," he said....

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, shrugged off criticism of the prisoners' treatment as ill-informed and said he had "no doubt" they were being humanely treated. But Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based pressure group, said the US was violating international law by avoiding the PoW label. "This is going to come back to haunt [captured] American servicemen."

the myth of the surgical strike, part N+1

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:30:52 GMT

From CNN: Two U.S. cruise missiles fell in unpopulated areas of Turkey on Monday, the Pentagon said. No one was hurt. In a separate incident the day before, Turkish and U.S. military authorities investigated an undetonated missile that appeared to have fallen into a remote village in southeastern Turkey. No one was hurt by the missile, which witnesses said left a crater 13 feet [4 meters] wide and 3.3 feet [1 meter] deep. The missile fell in Ozveren, 430 miles [688 kilometers] northwest of the border with Iraq, about 5:30 p.m. [9:30 a.m. EST], as planes were seen flying overhead, witnesses said.

From the NY Times, this ambiguous report: Iran Says US, Iraqi Missiles Have Hit Its Territory

Interior Ministry spokesman Jahanbakhsh Khanjani told Reuters that several missiles which had fallen in southwestern Iran since Friday ``were American which had gone off course.'' He did not say how Iran, which has also complained that U.S. and British jets have violated its airspace during their sorties into and out of Iraq, had determined the origin of the missiles.... Two Iranians have been injured by the apparently errant missiles, one of which hit an oil refinery depot in the southwestern town of Abadan, which is about 30 miles east of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and on the opposite side of the Shatt al-Arab estuary from Iraq's Faw peninsula.

burning down the house

tim@maroney.org — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 06:10:21 GMT

Today I once again had the honor to conduct Mass at Mons Abiegnus Oasis, with my lovely Priestess trueheart, the estimable Deacon EMK, and our two dear Children, H & J, recently returned from Portland. This was my first Mass since ordination at the hands of Arch-Bishop Lon Milo DuQuette in February, and for me, it was at once the easiest and most intense experience I have had as Priest. I love the opportunity to raise my voice in song to the Gods, and I love it even more when they respond in kind.

Many thanks to those who came to share the blessing. It's all about you.

a strange thing

tim@maroney.org — Sun, 23 Mar 2003 01:57:52 GMT

A little while back, I took an old essay which had been called "Twilight Crossing" -- a late 1980's attempt to create a sort of liberal Satanic group, which I abandoned shortly after it began to spin in a direction I didn't like -- and took out the organizational context, focusing instead on the Hekatean aspects of my personal vision, and on my literary interest in the "Satanic school," a post facto interpretive category applicable mostly to 19th and early 20th century anitinomians such as Blake, Shelley, Baudelaire and Crowley. I then posted the stripped-down essay on my web site as Hekate and the Satanic School, replacing the old Twilight Crossing piece, which still described the idea in terms of a group.

It had been years since anyone contacted me wanting to join Twilight Crossing, which is just as well. Since the edit, I've received several queries about how to contact the Satanic School, even though the new version tries to make it clear there is no such organization. I'm not sure how to answer these people, but more to the point, how does making an idea less organizational attract more people to joining it as an organization?

umberto eco on the protocols of julius evola

tim@maroney.org — Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:48:19 GMT

The poisonous Protocols

[One] version of the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion was] published by Julius Evola in 1937.

Evola wrote that the Protocols had "the value of a spiritual tonic". He added: "Above all, in these decisive hours of western history, they cannot be ignored or dismissed without seriously undermining the front of those fighting in the name of the spirit, of tradition, of true civilisation."

International Jewry, he claimed, lay behind the main sources of the perversion of western civilisation: "Liberalism, individualism, egalitarianism, free thinking, anti-religious enlightenment and their various appendages which lead to the revolt of the masses and to communism itself." For the Jew it was a duty "to destroy every surviving trace of true order and superior civilisation... One Jew is Freud, whose theory is understood to reduce the interior life to instincts and unconscious forces. Another is Einstein, who has brought 'relativism' into vogue... Schoenberg and Mahler, leading exponents of the music of decadence. Tzara is a Jew, the creator of dadaism, the extreme limit of degradation of so-called avant garde art... It is the race, it is an instinct at work here... Now is the time when the forces are rising up everywhere, because now the face of the destiny to which Europe was about to succumb is revealed... May the hour of 'conflict' find those forces gathered in a single, cast-iron bloc, unbreakable and irresistible."

More information on the Evola edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion may be found in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (New York University Press, 2002). On p. 66 Goodrick-Clarke discusses the accompanying essay by Evola, "The Authenticity of the Protocols as Proven by Jewish Tradition."

Some Evola proponents have noted, correctly, that Evola's racial theories were different from those of the Nazis. Evola's main objection to Nazi racism and anti-Semitism was that they were rooted in materialism, that is, physical heredity, while Evola's were rooted in metaphysics. To Evola, it was a mistake to say that the blood of Jews was dirty -- to him, it was their souls. Mussolini adored Evola's Summary of Racial Doctrine and made it the official racial policy of Fascism.