Gordon White (Twitter photo)
Rune Soup, Gordon White's website, has a new post up on RAW, "Robert Anton Wilson: Right Wing Anarchist." I had trouble following his points; maybe you can do better. And is Thelema formerly a "radical Libertine philosophy" that is now " a homemade version of Twitter’s code of conduct"?
White is the author of The Chaos Protocols and other books.
5 comments:
I looked at this blog, it seems like trolling, to me.
I have listened to Gordon’s podcast when the guest was interesting… it’s been awhile. He has a great voice. To me it’s mostly New Age by another name… frequently self-contradictory and often silly. The silliness comes in forms like unto his comment on Thelema, which is really more a comment on some of its more visible adherents, not the philosophy itself. Taken like that I get where he is coming from… anybody from O.T.O. reading this want to comment?
Regarding Gordon’s books, and thinking of RAW, I’m reminded how Wilson was a bit ashamed to find his books with the new age stuff and how happy he was when they were moved to philosophy. Gordon’s books will not be moving to a new section…
I've written a fair amount about Gordon on this blog; here is what I wrote when he had Cat Vincent on his podcast, and see also the comments:
http://www.rawillumination.net/2016/01/cat-vincent-and-gordon-white-talk-raw.html
I'm not going to read the blog post right now b/c I'm tired. But I'm guessing the commentary has something to do with the history of the O.T.O. (As LVX hinted.)
Having been involved with the O.T.O., and mostly regretting it, I can say that it was once a sex-and-drugs free for all with pretentious, self-delusional antics happening as the set dressing. Or at least that's the reputation amongst old-heads. Some are nostalgic, some are dismissive...most seem to be grateful that it is over.
The O.T.O. wants legitimacy- or at least the hierarchy in the U.S. Gotta admit that tax-exempt shit is a mighty nice carrot. The leadership of the O.T.O. also changed in the eighties and the shift was completed with the rise of the new order. Nowadays, a few of the O.T.O. leaders are teetotalers who seem to think of Thelema as a new form of going to church. Complete with the (admittedly beautiful and fulfilling) Gnostic Mass performances and "bible study" sessions (that's how I thought of them). There's still sex and drugs, but it isn't quite the orgy that it used to be. (And certainly not during "services" aside from wine. Which, to their credit, they are more openhanded with than the Catholics.)
The O.T.O. also went through some major changes in the last decade as the rise of Trumpism and other forms of fascism made the more right-wing elements of Crowley's corpus look really fucking dumb. (Hard to see proud and beautiful ubermenschs in that crowd. At least, that's my bias.) Some of the right-wing chuds in the O.T.O. were fighting for their inalienable rights to be chuds and the leadership waffled while another, louder or at least more present on the blogosphere portion that was realigning Thelema with modern left-wing values demanded they take a stance. I don't know. (This is where I have no more personal involvement and don't really know what's going on.) Your average O.T.O. meeting, in my experience, is usually largely composed of people who are either socially inept, weirdly competitive, self-deluded, desperate, gullible and a few are pretty neat. But I was never able to match most of the members' faith in Crowley/Thelema/the O.T.O. I'm also guilty of most if not all of those flaws.
When I've made the boredom driven mistake of looking a Thelemic blogs, it isn't heartening. Boredom, hypocrite reader, makes fools of us all.
It's dumb. Humans are dumb. I'm dumb. Shit. Anyways, I thought "Chaos Protocols" was entertaining but I can't listen to podcasts about something as personal as magic so I don't know much about him. If Oz sensed trolling, I'd imagine White was at least being cheeky.
Rarebit Fiend, you should read the post if you get the chance. It has nothing to do with the O.T.O. I didn't mean the Thelema comment as trolling, that just seems an opinion about something in particular, maybe the O.T.O., but obviously not the entire multiplicity of Thelema. I meant the Trumpian, fact-challenged way RAW got presented.
Post a Comment