Random fits of heresy

To start with, this is the specific cursive I learned to write in growing up, myself from first grade and my brother from kindergarten, although at first it was very minimal how much would be written in cursive because of yknow, kid dexterity

Now, I either completely misunderstood what the instructions were and took them very literally, or my elementary teacher was a dick in some way, because I got very perfectionistic very early about getting these Exactly Right. For some reason I thought the more close to the examples something looked, the better it was, so obviously to have good handwriting you must mimic the examples perfectly as possible

[ID: a fairly complex cursive style guide for the alphabet, numbers, and some punctuation. /End ID]

This was another worksheet where a student would trace the letters, and according to the info where I found this, this was for first graders

Actually they're not all cults and you're doing the work of making sure actual cults can slip under the radar when you say stuff like that

Cult leaders LOVE that trend, because they can point to it and say, "people will call anything a cult, it's basically meaningless"

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

Like this is part of what Crowley meant by "every man and every woman is a star". It's genuinely interesting to see the charismatic elements of modern evangelical protestantism evolve a similar structure.

While you very well may be able to draw such a thread, I think any Thelemite who actually has a grasp of Thelemic theology and philosophy would agree that if you are not engaging in self-deification as a deliberate act of Will, you are in fact doing something wrong. When Paula White replaces the names of the prophets with her own, does she do it with the knowing, tongue-in-cheek deliberation of Crowley identifying himself as the Beast 666? I for one doubt it.

She makes herself an implement of her God by positioning herself as prophet—but would she go to the lengths that God asked if his prophets? Does she understand what this self identification means? If not, I would not see it as a deliberate act of Will, but as the type of careless, foolish blasphemy that marks megachurch style Christianity.

I love blasphemy. I love self-deification. (My blog probably makes that abundantly clear.) But if all acts are to be done "under Will", then I do not think that Paula White acts with Will in this way.

To be clear, I suspect you're correct about that line. (I would postulate that it goes through Wicca as well before it reaches the evangelicals.) But I just want to put it out there that just as Christian theology is warped by these preachers, so is Thelemic theology (if that's what they are, one way or another, influenced by).

when Christians tell each other "you're making an idol out of that" or "be on guard to not make an idol" blah blah

what they mean is "be suspicious of things that you love." "Be suspicious of finding joy outside of church."

After all, if you've already been told that sex and alcohol and drugs and dancing and secular friendships are all bad and dangerous, and you've successfully pruned all of these potential major sources of pleasure from your life, the instinct to keep pruning doesn't go away.

Or at least it may not for those around you, who take these extremely literal passages about "don't worship other gods" (gods whose religions have long been pruned from the world) and say "but we must sacrifice. We must keep pruning. We must be suspicious of joy. Do you care about something that isn't from the church? Do you find pleasure in your interests? How dare you."

and then. My partner started it. And the SAME THING happened to him.