79 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
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#19-1986
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Part One: THE ROOTS OF REVOLUTIONARY VANDALISM
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"Times were I would complain to him (Brother-in-law) about the
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irrational brutality of the Nazis, or their authoritarianism, and he would
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remind me that 'the German family unit, with the importance of the
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German father -- its patriarchical structure -- is probably to blame for
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much of that.'
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"'Maybe so,' I said.
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"'The original European tribalists did not even worship a father-god as
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their primary diety. Why do you think the Mother of jesus is so much more
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important to European Catholics than Christ or Jehovah? The Church could
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never have won their ancestors over without the cult of the Virgin. And
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with the Church came Roman imperialism, Kerry -- so it was imperialism
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that introduced patriarchy to Europe.'
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"What excited possibilities came top mind! Druids forming ancient secret
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societies to combat the foreign oppressor from Rome, leading to the
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organization of alliances between tribes of Visigoths and Vandals --
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gradually surrounding the heart of the empire with raging colonial peoples
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who would bring it crumbling to its foundations.
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"Witches against the Caesars!"
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--Kerry Wendell Thornley, THE DREADLOCK RECOLLECTIONS
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Famine Digest Edition, p. 13 ($5 from FOLK-WRITE: 2981 Lookout Place,
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Atlanta, Georgia 30305)
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"How, we might ask, did this word Pagan come to include newly emerging
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nature religions? Until the late 1960s the word had been used to designate
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either an ancient or indigenous tribal religion or an irreligious, immoral
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approach to life.
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"The change may have been due largely to Kerry Thornley, a man who
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appears in the next chapter in a most amusing role. Thornley, under the
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unlikely name of Omar Ravenhurst, helped found a complex of delightfully
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bizarre and surrealist Neo-Pagan groups -- among them the Erisians, the
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Discordian Society, the POEE, the Erisian L:iberation Front -- all devoted
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to the Greek goddess of chaos and strife, the Lady Eris. In 1966 a
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communitarian group called Kerista. He noted that B.Z. Goldberg, in his
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book THE SACRED FIRE, had observed that one function of primitive
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religions had been to provide refuge and relief; to lift temporarily the
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taboos of the society. Goldberg, according to Omar, wrote: ' What was
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forbidden at large in the bush not only was permitted, but in fact, became
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a duty in the temple of the gods.'
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"Taking off from Goldberg, Omar said that since the Jewish and Christian
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traditions were not credible in this age of science, they should be
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abandoned. He wrote: 'Let us forget them. Instead, let us look at the jobs of
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the far less intellectual, but far more constructively functional religions
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of old. These were the "pagan" religions -- the religions that survive to
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this day in England and the United States as "witchcraft."'
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"Pagan religions 'both stabilized and overthrew the social structure.'
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Modern psychotherapy, sensory awareness workshops, and existential
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games were attempting to do the same things..."
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--Margot Adler, DRAWING DOWN THE MOON, p. 275-76
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(Beacon Press, Boston, 1979)
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c 1986 Kerry W. Thornley
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Available from:
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Illumi-Net
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(404) 377-1141
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