Lessons from Wild Wild Country

There's been some buzz on the Internet about the new Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country. The series documents the conflict between the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho, and the residents of Antelope, Oregon. Antelope is a small town twenty miles from the site where the Rajneeshis attempted to build a city called Rajneeshpuram based on the teachings of their guru.

The series makes it clear that there was all sorts of bullshit on both sides of the conflict. The people of Antelope come off as a bunch of intolerant hicks who hated on the Rajneeshis before they even interacted with them basically because they were "weird" and - gasp - liked having sex. I find it hard to believe that if the Rajneeshis were a bunch of Christians there would have been anywhere near the level of conflict that eventually took place.

The Rajneeshis, on the other hand, made elaborate claims about how enormous their new city was going to be. They promoted estimates of fifty thousand people, when the community at its height was more like maybe ten. In response to those exaggerated projections, the people of Antelope freaked. They put through legal motions to block the formation of Rajneeshpuram, which meant that the Rajneeshis had to relocate their official offices to the nearest community - Antelope. So the tiny town was overrun with Rajneeshis conducting the business of the movement.

Some Rajneeshis started buying property in Antelope to be closer to the group's administrative offices, which stoked fears that they were "taking over" the community. That fueled more conflict and more resentment, and everything escalated from there. It's easy to suggest that if the people of Antelope had just left the Rajneeshis alone they would have built all of their infrastructure in Rajneeshpuram and likely would have left Antelope alone.

As Aleister Crowley commented in Magick Without Tears, ninety percent of "Do what thou wilt" can pretty much be summed up as "mind your own business." Both sides could have used that principle to better effect.

OTO Member Wins Defamation Case

David Bottrill, a member of Ordo Templi Orientis in Australia, recently won a defamation case agaist a woman who shared a YouTube video accusing him of belonging to a "satanic and pedophile group." As should be obvious to anyone with half a brain who bothers to investigate, OTO is nothing of the sort. It is a fraternal order of magicians dedicated the system of Thelema, which may be approached in many ways - but which bears no resemblance to the cartoon "Satanism" of Jack Chick tracts.

A man who is a member of a little-known religious order has been awarded $18,880 for defamation after a woman shared a YouTube video on her Facebook page that made claims about him and his religion.

Australian man David Bottrill is part of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) fraternal religious order, which follows the writings of the late British occultist and magician, Aleister Crowley. According to Bottrill, members of OTO in Australia number around 100.

Bottrill claimed Katrina Bailey had defamed him by sharing a video on her Facebook page in mid-2017 that suggested he was a member of a satanic and pedophile group, who used his job to import children into Australia to facilitate pedophilia.

On Friday, the Australian Capital Territory Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) found in Bottrill's favour, saying Bailey had defamed him, and ordering her to apologise, take down the post, and pay $18,880.

The reality is that the only people who think that pedophilia and occultism have anything to do with each other are fundamentalist Christians, who made up phony "Satanism" in the 1980's to persecute members of minority religions. The idea was to get "Satanism" defied as child molestation so they could ban it, and then get all non-Christian religions classified as "Satanism" so they could become the American state religion. The whole concept was misguided, unconstitutional, and never would have worked - but there were those who "had faith" that God would make it happen anyway, and it ruined a lot of innocent lives.

I'll add that I've gotten really tired of this online nonsense over the last couple of years. The reason that people keep doing it is that lurid claims get them lots of attention and pageviews, and so far there have been few real consequences for promoting even outright falsehoods that go so far as to put lives in danger. With the upcoming lawsuits against Alex Jones over the Sandy Hook shooting and this successful civil case in Australia, that tide may finally be turning. Let's hope so.

The Iraqi Stargate

Here's a weird theory that's been floating around the Internet for about fifteen years now. Apparently, the gods of the ancient Sumerians were space aliens and they provided their worshippers with stargates. You know, those big round gizmos from the 1994 film and the television franchise that ran in three incarnations from 1997 to 2010. One of these stargates was discovered by Saddam Hussein when he ordered renovations to an ancient Sumerian palace, and the United States invaded to take control of the device in 2003.

Essentially, the Iraq War Stargate theory pushes and narrows this idea a little further. Saying one of the technologies that were gifted upon the Sumerians were stargates and their positioning was one of the major reasons for the years of strife in the Middle East. I reached out to Dr. Michael Salla, who wrote an in-depth article about the theory way back in 2003, to learn about it further.

Before we got into the nitty-gritty, I had to figure out if a stargate was just as cool as Hollywood made it out to be. "It's kind of like an instantaneous space-time means of travel where people are instantaneously teleported from one area to another," said Salla. Yup, super cool.

So, the stargate is apparently found near in the Nasiriyah, a city about 370 km south-east of Baghdad—in the ancient city of Ur—within that city is the great Ziggurat, a massive temple, which had a, you guessed it, stargate. Some theories also argue there is a stargate directly in the city of Baghdad, in one of the basements of Hussein's palaces— where he probably did some pretty freaky stuff with it.

While the locations and number of the stargates is in dispute, one thing the theorists do all agree on, is that the Iraq War wasn't the first time that a foreign power showed interest in it. In what sounds like a super sweet Indiana Jones fan-fic, the Nazis were fighting the British in during WWII over control of the Stargate.

Mastering the Thirty Aires Submitted!

We seem to have survived the latest Nibiru Rapture in order to allow me to make an important announcement to fans of my Enochian books. Yeah, that's totally the reason! It's kind of like an Enochian Entirely-Other-Than-Apocalypse - so take that, Donald Tyson! Anyway, this is cross-posted from my author website.

It took a lot longer than I ever expected, but my draft manuscript for Mastering the Thirty Aires has finally been submitted to my publisher. Editing and book production usually run around six months or so, which means that the book should be available sometime next fall.

Mastering the Thirty Aires completes my trilogy of books on the mostly-Dee-purist-with-some-additions system of Enochian magick that I have worked out over the last twenty-five years. It focuses on practical results, and uses what I consider the best interpretation of the material in the Dee diaries for attributions and powers of the all the spirits and other components of the system. It deals with how to use the Aires and Parts of the Earth to effect political change, and also includes some valuable and practical material on zodiacal magick.

I'm looking forward to making this final piece of my base Enochian system available to the public, and will keep you all posted when I have a release date. Thanks for your patience, and I think you will like the final result very much.

New Nibiru Rapture Tomorrow!

David Meade is back. After being relentlessly mocked here on Augoeides over last year's Rapture/Nibiru end of the world conspiracy theory, the dude has no idea when to quit. Now he's made a new prediction that's exactly the same as the last.

Oh, except that it happens tomorrow. Cue the mass hysteria!

According to conspiracy theorists, codes in the Bible suggest the end of the world is imminent, with Earth set to be destroyed tomorrow, April 23. One theory suggests the end times dates back to astrological constellations appearing on November 23, matching the book of Revelation 12:1-2. The passage signals the start of the Rapture and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

The passage 12:1–2 reads: “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.” It is thought that Virgo is the woman from the passage. On April 23, the sun and moon will be in Virgo, as will Jupiter, which represents the Messiah. Experts at first dismissed this claim when they discovered this alignment happens very 12 years. However, the conspiracy theories claim another planetary alignment, representing “the Lion of the tribe of Judah’, will make this time the Rapture.

Christian conspiracy theorist David Meade is the main expert suggesting the end times are here. Mr Meade also predicts a mythological planetary system known as Planet X or Nibiru will appear in the sky on April 23. He claims it will then pass the Earth in October, causing the start of the Rapture with huge volcanoes and volcanic eruptions due to its gravitational force.

About Damn Time

Poor Alex Jones! After years of bullshit over the "Sandy Hook Truthers," he finally is being sued by the parents who had to endure death threat after death threat along with the insinuation that their murdered children never existed. As a parent I find it hard to imagine much that would be more awful, and it's also clear that Jones giving a platform to a bunch of crazies is the whole reason the harassment existed. So as I see it, Jones is entirely responsible. Whether or not he personally defamed the families, which appears to be his defense, it should not have been hard to figure out that this is what some of his listeners were going to do. He's never even come out and forcefully denounced those people either - rather, the only real pushback he gave is essentially that he wasn't sure.

The InfoWars host is being sued for defamation by Neil Heslin, the father of 6-year-old victim Jesse Heslin, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, who lost their six-year-old son Noah, for $1 million each over his conspiracy theories and “vicious lies” surrounding the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Responding to the lawsuits on his show, the controversial broadcaster denied that he ever believed the shooting was faked and 20 children were not killed there.

“You’re allowed to question things in America, that’s not defamation,” Jones said. “But what is defamation is to file lawsuits that say I said things I didn’t say and then put me and my whole family through the ringer and lie about us and hold us up against dead children and say basically ‘we hate their families, we hate the children.' It’s almost like I’ve murdered the children and that’s not what happened.”

Alex Jones of Infowars.com speaks during a rally in support of Donald Trump near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 18, 2016. The InfoWars host is being sued for defamation by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones added suggestions of him saying the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax was merely him playing “devil’s advocate.” He told his listeners: “We looked at it, and I don’t think the thing was a hoax.

“The media jumped on it, they exasperated it, they faked some locations, they did some things in the aftermath… but the new hoax is that I’m saying they’re crisis actors and it didn’t happen. My listeners said a lot of them look like they’re acting, we looked at it and I said ‘I can’t say that’—that’s what I’ve always said.”

Via Solis Aries Elixir Rite - Year Two

Today's Magick Monday post is a full script for the Aries Elixir Rite that we will be performing tomorrow, Tuesday April 17th, at Leaping Laughter Oasis, our local Twin Cities body of Ordo Templi Orientis. We will continue the momentum of last year by performing one of these per month for each of the twelve signs. I will be posting the full scripts here on the preceding Mondays so people can take a look at them if they want to attend. Also, if you are in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota) and would like to attend, let me or someone at the lodge know. This is a public ritual and all are welcome.

0. The Temple

The ritual space is set up with an altar table in the center. The bell chime, banishing dagger, and invoking wand are placed on the altar. In the center of the altar is placed a cup of wine for creating the elixir, within the Table of Art corresponding to Aries. Items to be consecrated may be placed on the altar by any of the attendees, as Aries is attributed to the Power of Consecrating Things. This ritual may be performed with one, two, or three officers, who may alternate taking the Officiant role and divide up the reading from Liber 963. The Via Solis Elixir Rites were written by Michele Montserrat in 2010 for the Comselh Ananael magical working group.

I. Opening

All stand surrounding the altar. Officiant inhales fully, placing the banishing dagger at his or her lips. The air is then expelled as the dagger is swept backwards.

Officiant: Bahlasti! Ompehda!

Officiant then performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. All rotate accordingly.

Officiant: We take refuge in Nuit, the blue-lidded daughter of sunset, the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky, as we issue the call to the awakened nature of all beings, for every man and every woman is a star.

All: MAKAShANaH

Officiant: We take refuge in Hadit, the secret flame that burns in every heart of man and in the core of every star, as we issue the call to our own awakened natures, arousing the coiled serpent about to spring.

All: ABRAHADABRA

Officiant: We take refuge in Heru-Ra-Ha, who wields the wand of double power, the wand of the force of Coph Nia, but whose left hand is empty for he has crushed an universe and naught remains, as we unite our awakened natures with those of all beings everywhere and everywhen, dissolving all obstacles and healing all suffering.

All: AUMGN

Officiant: For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

All: All is pure and present are and has always been so, for existence is pure joy; all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass and done; but there is that which remains. To this realization we commit ourselves – pure and total presence. So mote it be.

Bell Chime

Against Mister Rogers

This post leans a little more political than what I usually do here, but I figure that Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister so it still vaguely falls under my umbrella. A couple of weeks ago, Boing Boing posted this article explaining that yes, there really are conservatives out there who hate Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. This particularly dumb segment from Fox & Frieds explains why. According to "experts" and "studies" that are never really cited, making kids feel good about themselves is a terrible, terrible thing.

Fred Rogers is the subject of a documentary and a biopic starring Tom Hanks, both out later this year. Though most Americans assume he's a national treasure, he's widely loathed by conservatives who center him in their myth of "participation trophy" culture.

I remember one columnist describing him as a saccharine man whose job was to help the education industry tell stupid children they were special—one of the more enduring impressions I got of American conservatives after moving here in the 2000s. (Another: turning on the radio to hear someone muttering, barely in control of his rage, about how much be hates bisexuals, intoning the word "hate" over and over. At first I thought it was a theatrical performance, a character in a radio play, but it turned out to be The Michael Reagan Show.)

Anyway, here's Fox and Friends complaining that young people are entitled and useless because Fred Rogers stressed the importance of love and its absence in their lives.

Now I want to ask a serious question here. Have any of you ever seen one of these mysterious "participation trophies?" Conservatives have been complaining about them since at least the late 1970's, and I've never seen one. I grew up in the 1970's and 1980's and loved Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a small child, so according to this segment I should have been right in the thick of it. My kids have never seen these mythical objects either.