Satanic Monument Controversy Comes to Belle Plaine

Yeah, I know what you're thinking - where the hell is Belle Plaine? Since I'm a Minnesotan, I'll tell you. Belle Plaine is a small town forty-some miles southwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota where I currently live. It's classic small-town Minnesota, with a population of about 6,700. That's mentioned in the section I clipped from the article below, but I figured I would lead off with it to give you a sense of place - since unless you're from around here, you'll have no idea where it is.

Anyway, a Christian group put up a monument to honor veterans in the town's Veteran's Memorial Park. No surprise, the monument featured a cross. City leaders decided that the monument needed to be taken down in case someone decided to sue - and to be clear, no one actually did. A lot of people in Belle Plaine liked the monument, so they protested its removal. The city's response was to set up an area where monuments from all religious traditions could be erected, including the Christian one. Which is actually quite reasonable, as I see it.

The symbol in this case was a modest but poignant 2-foot steel war memorial called “Joe,” which features a cross in its tribute to soldiers in Belle Plaine’s Veterans Memorial Park. City leaders, fearing a lawsuit rooted in the constitutional separation of church and state, in January ordered the removal of the cross. But more than 100 residents rallied to restore the full memorial. To defuse the turmoil, the city then decided to designate a small area in the park as a “free speech zone,” open to 10 or fewer temporary memorials, as long as they honor veterans.

The cross was reinstalled on the monument this month. And it’s about to have company: The Satanic Temple in Salem, Mass., is planning to erect its own memorial: A black cube, inscribed with inverted pentagrams and crowned by an upturned helmet. “Everyone understood this could happen,” said Belle Plaine resident Andy Parrish, who led the charge to restore the cross. “It’s more annoying than it is offensive.”

In Belle Plaine, a town of 6,700 about 45 miles southwest of Minneapolis, the original decision to remove the cross proved deeply unpopular. For nearly a month, flag-toting protesters occupied the park each day, often staking their own handmade crosses into the ground out of defiance. Almost overnight, small wooden crosses popped up in business windows, on mailboxes and front lawns. “The residents feel a sense of duty,” Parrish told an overflow crowd at a February City Council meeting. “Our veterans defended us and it’s our duty to defend them.”

City officials decided that night to authorize the public forum on park grounds. Councilman Ben Stier wondered aloud if the change would be worth it to veterans if they had to share their parcel with, say, a satanic group. They answered with a reluctant yes. The Satanic Temple was first in line to test their resolve.

I want to emphasize that all of this had to do with fears of a lawsuit on the part of city leaders. Nobody filed suit demanding that the monument come down. They were just worried that at some point in the future, somebody might. So they ordered it taken down of their own volition, not in response to any legal demand.

And the thing about this is that I totally support what looks like the outcome here. I'd rather drive by a public park and see a whole bunch of monuments put up by people of different religious traditions than drive by and see nothing. I also think that in this particular legal context, atheism needs to be treated as a religious belief as well - even though in reality, atheism is absence of one particular belief (in a God or gods) than it is a coherent set of beliefs. Atheists need to be given the rights as believers, so any atheist group should likewise be free to put up their own secular display.

The Christian monument in question is tasteful and I don't see any reason to remove it. However, if one religion is allowed to put up a monument on government land, every other religion needs to have the right to do the same. Whether they exercise it or not is up to them, but they need to be given the right to do it if they want. The Satanic Temple's monument is not offensive either, and it should be allowed to stand. And I think that's a better state of affairs than insisting that any monument with religious content be removed from government land.

Let's celebrate our religious diversity rather than trying to sweep it all under the rug.

Published in Denver Witch Quarterly

This article is cross-posted from my author website.

Even though I don't live in Denver and don't consider myself a witch, my article "Against Book Piracy" has been published in the latest issue of Denver Witch Quarterly.

The current issue has a bunch of material about the now-infamous Donald Trump binding spell, but my article doesn't have anything to do with that. If you're interested in my thoughts on the binding spell and the "Trump Magick War," they can be found here.

My article is more along the lines of my Truth About Writing post in the context of occult books and people who pirate them under the mistaken belief that we occult authors are making tons of money from our work. To be clear, we're not. The occult is a tiny market, and at this point it's pretty much impossible to make enough money writing occult books to live on, even at a minimum wage level.

The latest issue of Denver Witch Quarterly can be purchased here, from Smashwords.

A Skeptic Reviews America's Psychic Experiments

New Republic has a review up today of a new book on psychic experiments conducted by the United States Government, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U. S. Government’s Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis by Annie Jacobsen. I'm including the Amazon link because if you take a look at the critical reviews, there are several that point out inconsistencies and omissions in the narrative that sound legitimate. The reviewer, on the other hand, appears to be a smug capital-S Skeptic who seems to generally like the book itself, but spends most of his time going on about what a waste of time all these programs were because, of course, psychic abilities don't exist.

This experiment is only one of the strange stories—many of them recently declassified—in Annie Jacobsen’s Phenomena: The Secret History of the U. S. Government’s Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. As with her previous books on Area 51, Operation Paperclip (the secret project to bring Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. after the war), and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which develops new technology for the Defense Department), this one begins with the fallout of World War II and the extreme measures the military-industrial complex took to unlock and weaponize psychic abilities in the early days of the Cold War. Spanning over 50 years, Jacobsen’s tale takes us from the immediate postwar years to the CIA’s experiments in the 1960s and ‘70s. The Defense Department, she tells us, began its own experiments in the 1980s and ‘90s, before their final incarnation, Project Stargate, was finally decommissioned in 1995.

Later in the article, which I'm not going to quote, the reviewer tries to debunk remote viewing by citing a single failed experiment. However, if you dig into the Stargate material, there were also plenty of successful experiments that produced some reliable intelligence. I am not convinced everyone can be trained to do remote viewing effectively, but I think anybody talented enough to do practical magick should be able to develop a reasonable level of skill at it. One of the problems with trying to deploy these abilities on a large scale is identifying talented people in the first place who are worth the investment of time and money.

Although Jacobsen’s book demonstrates an alarming pattern of government activity, the phenomena themselves are what makes her book so fascinating, and often troubling. “My intention … for this book,” she writes, “was not to prove or disprove anyone or any concept, but to report objectively on the government’s long-standing interest in ESP and PK phenomena.” That being said, she cuts these charlatans a great deal of slack while subtly undermining their critics, creating a reading experience that’s alternately frustrating and exhausting. And while she couldn’t have predicted this before finishing the book, Phenomena arrives at the beginning of a presidency that is thriving on conspiracy, distortion of fact, the discrediting of reliable sources, and outright paranoia. With the President of the United States quoting the National Enquirer as a legitimate news source, we’re in desperate need of a thorough account of the overlap between the government and the occult—but given our current climate, such a book also requires greater moral clarity.

I guess "moral clarity" to this reviewer means that the book should make it clear that the James Randi, capital-S Skeptic position is obviously correct and that any believer in psychic or paranormal phenomena is hopelessly deluded. Obviously, I don't subscribe to that viewpoint. Personally, I like that the author of the book took a more neutral position, because arguing over the existence of psychic powers can consume a great deal of energy and is ultimately boring. People experience them. Of course they exist in that sense. So what we should be trying to figure out is what's going on, not "whether it's real." As a point, the Skeptic favorite "mass hysteria" is precisely as poorly understood as "psychic ability," and is really no more credible as I see it.

Presenting at NOTOCON XI

This article is cross-posted from my author web site.

I was originally asked to hold off on making this announcement until the official schedule was posted online, but since it's up now I figure I can go ahead with it. This summer, I will be presenting on Heptarchial Evocation at NOTOCON XI, the eleventh biannual conference of Ordo Templi Orientis, in Orlando, Florida. The presentation is scheduled for 9 AM on Friday, August 11th of 2017. It might have been nice to do the presentation a little later in the day, since I'm not really a morning person, but it's also pretty cool to be kicking off Friday's track of ritual presentations.

The presentation will include a condensed version of my Introduction to the Heptarchia Mystica talk and a full Heptarchial evocation ritual done according to the procedure laid out in Mastering the Mystical Heptarchy, with a few additional tweaks for a Thelemic audience. After the conference, I will be making the text of my talk available over on Augoeides as per my usual practice. If you would like to buy a copy of my book to peruse before the presentation, just click on the title there to order.

So if you will be attending the conference, I hope that you'll resist the urge to sleep in on Friday morning (which, to be fair, I might very well do myself if I wasn't presenting) and come check it out. It should be a good time.

Bermuda Triangle Still a Mystery?

For quite a few years now, a possible scientific explanation has been put forth for the large number of ships that have allegedly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle - a rough triangle with points at the tip of Florida, the island of Bermuda, and the island of Puerto Rico. The ocean floor in this region is known to occasionally release methane bubbles, which some scientists believe can temporarily lower the density of the ocean water and sink a ship. However, physicist Helen Czerski has studied this phenomenon and concluded that its ability to sink a ship has been profoundly exaggerated. In fact, she contends that it poses little if any danger.

For decades, reports have claimed ships and aircrafts have vanished while traveling through the mysterious region of the Atlantic Ocean known as 'The Bermuda Triangle.' Some sailors call it the 'Devil's Triangle', claiming the area is plagued by supernatural powers or possibly extraterrestrial visitors.

However, there is a scientific explanation. "This idea that if you had a whoosh of methane bubbles from the sea floor, it could sink a ship," Helen Czerski, physicist and oceanographer from University College London, said. So the tiny bubbles really don't threaten the ship?

"The first thing is that this whoosh of gas is going to break up into small bubbles, really, really quickly. It doesn't rise as one massive, great big bubble." Czerski said. "It pushes up on the ship, much more strongly than the ship is falling into the bubbles. The bubbles actually make the ship go up, not down."

In fact, the Bermuda Triangle isn't really much of a mystery. As I keep harping on here on Augoeides, even very intelligent people routinely estimate or calculate probabilities wrong. The Bermuda Triangle is (A) one of the areas most strongly affected by Atlantic hurricanes and (B) crossed by one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The storms somewhat increase the risk to ships, but more importantly the sheer number of ships passing through the area mean that there seem to be an unusual number of disappearances. Several studies now have shown that the rate of lost ships in the region is not that unusual if you control for the level of traffic and compare it to other shipping routes.

So once again, this is a case where a failure to understand probability means a failure to understand life, and not just with probability manipulation technologies like magick. If you want to live your life to the fullest, it helps a great deal to accurately assess risk, and a little knowledge in that area can go a long way.

An Aurora Named Steve

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that I must look like a "Steve." Nobody ever calls me anything else besides my real name, and if somebody can't remember "Scott," "Steve" is always what they guess. Thanks to a group of Canadian aurora borealis enthusiasts, it sounds like I now share my fake name with a mysterious phenomenon lighting up the sky over Canada - a strip of aurora light that these enthusiasts decided to name "Steve."

The story started with a group of Canadians who were enthusiastic about finding and photographing the most stunning displays of the aurora borealis, or northern lights. They formed a Facebook group called Alberta Aurora Chasers to share information about the best and brightest displays. A few years ago, some began to notice that Steve — a strip of light that appeared a bit farther south than the northern lights — was something special.

After that, scientists began to take notice. “The really cool thing about this is the social media providing a nice bridge between the scientific community and these amateurs, who are incredibly talented observers of the night sky,” Dr. Donovan said. He explained that Steve is a strip of ionized gas moving through the air at about four miles per second, with temperatures as high as 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit — as hot as the earth’s core. It is about 16 miles wide and thousands of miles long, flowing from east to west across Canada.

Photographs of the phenomenon, most of which show Steve as a glowing ribbon of neon light, have captivated aurora borealis enthusiasts in Canada and far beyond.

I bring this up here on Augoeides in part because I'm a science enthusiast, and in part because as I see it, this is an example of a "paranormal phenomenon" as I employ the term. It's not "supernatural," but rather an unusual observation that doesn't fit the normal pattern. Scientists know that it's there and know what it's made of, and so far they haven't figured out why it behaves the way it does. But I'm confident that they eventually will.

As I see, the same is true of magical effects. Spell results aren't necessarily as obvious as, say, a glowing strip of light running across the sky - though that would be pretty damn cool to cast. The point is that anybody with a modicum of talent who has done the work should know firsthand that there's something to it. The nature of magick remains an open question, but I'm confident that once we work out consciousness, we'll be close to a definitive explanation.

The Path of Initiation - Earth

This article is Part One of a series.

Working with the Earth element is the first step on the path of initiation into the mysteries of Western Esotericism. On the Kircher Tree of Life, the mystical aspects of all four elements correspond to the tenth sephira, Malkuth, which represents the material world. The elements have both microcosmic (psychological) and macrocosmic (physical) components, and as with practical magick, aligning those components is the key to experiencing effective illumination and visionary work. Hence, I use the operant field in these rites just like I do for practical workings.

"Effective" is harder to define with rites of illumination than it is with practical magick. Practical magick is relatively simple to assess - you perform an operation with a specific objective, and then record whether it succeeds or fails. Effective visionary work should obtain information from the exterior world that you could not possible know by any other means, and effective illumination work should transform you in a positive way, increasing your degree of realization and in some real sense making you a "better person."

This process can be highly subjective, and failed initiatory operations often go unrecognized. I am of the opinion that a lot of the nonsense out there from certain allegedly "advanced" magical practitioners can be traced back to these sorts of initiatory failures, and this is a problem that has been acknowledged for a long time in the tradition. To avoid this, you always need to be skeptical about any apparent attainment.

Always test spirits. Always keep track of any changes you observe following illuminating and visionary experiences, and do your best to see if the changes you are seeing from your work are going in a positive direction. Stories of magicians "going insane" from failed operations are highly exaggerated - most often, nothing happens, and the danger lies in being convinced that something did happen and then acting from that perspective.

I have been very clear in my practical magick series that magick is more than just psychology. However, since your first and most important magical tool is your mind, it is with psychology that you should begin. This is not to say that I necessarily agree with Israel Regardie's contention that all aspiring magicians should start by getting years of psychotherapy. Much psychotherapy is quite frankly not that useful to mentally healthy individuals.

On the other hand, it also is true that mental illness afflicts about a quarter of the population in one form or another, and if you do suffer from such issues therapy can be useful in some cases. You will want to find a therapist who is up on modern, scientifically valid methods like cognitive-behavioral therapy, since most of the psychoanalytic methods have not been shown to work under controlled scientific conditions.

Aries Elixir Rite Intent for Leaping Laughter OTO

This post might be a bit obscure if you live outside the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota) or have no interest in Ordo Templi Orientis, the order I was initiated into more than twenty years ago. It's important to me, though, so that's why it's here.

Tonight Leaping Laughter will be holding a business meeting where our incoming master will be setting out priorities and such for the local body going forward. At Tuesday's Aries Elixir Rite, I issued the following intent in hopes of consecrating our local body to expanding into the greater community, and providing hospitality to all who seek us out in good faith.

As Aries is related to "The Power of Consecrating Things," I felt that this was the appropriate rite in which to issue such an intent, especially since it was the first of twelve zodiacal operations planned for the upcoming year. My intent consisted of five points, designed to dedicate and consecrate the Leaping Laughter community on all levels.

1. To strengthen and enhance Leaping Laughter’s relationships with the artistic and alternative spirituality communities in general, and increase positive attention to our work in all relevant contexts.

2. To bring members, guests, and visitors to Leaping Laughter who will contribute to our work in whatever capacity they can, who are committed to expanding the body and the order in general, and who are committed to maintaining fraternal relations with their brothers and sisters.

3. To protect Leaping Laughter from any person or situation that might undermine our hospitality, our work, and/or the personal safety of our members, such as those who are unable or unwilling to behave in a fraternal manner towards members, guests, and/or visitors.

4. To maintain Leaping Laughter as a welcoming and comfortable space for all who choose to attend our rites and events and abide by our policies, and to guard against the arising of any situation that might detract from this.

5. To extend the quality thus cultivated here at Leaping Laughter so as to inspire the healthy expansion of the order in general, in the United States and all across the world.

As I see it, these are all basic factors that go into making any group, and particularly a group dedicated to magical and alternative spirituality, a place where people will want to congregate, spend time, and hopefully support in whatever manner they are able. These are all qualities that I want to see cultivated going forward, and to be clear, none of these were issued because I find them lacking in the body as a whole or anywhere else.

I don't travel very much but I do attend the national conferences, and the people I meet there are generally awesome. That awesomeness is something that I hope every contact with our order can reflect, and as I'm sure you all know, I'm not shy about sending out magick to help wherever it's needed. After all, what's the point of learning magick if you don't put it to good use?

If all these tenets sound good to you and you're interested in checking us out, feel free to stop by. Most of our events are public, and our website can be found here with our calendar and other particulars.