StructureCop :: Friends blog

http://mormon-magus.info/?p=41

The Master instructed the group, saying: “Followers of the Way, what is important is to approach things with a true and proper understanding. Walk wherever you please in the world but don’t let yourselves be muddled or misled by that bunch of goblin spirits. The man of value is the one who has nothing to do. Don’t try to do something special, just act ordinary. You look outside yourselves, going off on side Don’t try to do something special, just act ordinary. You look outside yourselves, going off on side roads hunting for something, trying to get your hands on something. That’s a mistake. You keep trying to look for the Buddha, but Buddha is just a name, a word.

(more…)

http://mormon-magus.info/?p=40

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200801/1201648719.html

http://discoflux.com/node/100

Discordian Society to Canonize Mormon Leader

“The Discordian Society will adopt Gordon B. Hinckley as a Saint”

United States of America (Press Release)

January 29, 2008 — Columbus, Ohio1.29.2008

For Immediate Release:

The Great Googlie Mooglie Cabal, as Ordained Representatives of the Erisian Movement has announced plans for the immediate canonization of Gordon B. Hinckley and the inclusion of him in the pantheon of Discordian Saints as St. Magusundies

St. Magusundies, in life, met all the criteria necessary to prove that he was a special emissary from the heart of the Void and a Child of Eris. We need only point to his temple building, his proselytizing and the fact that before he became President of the LDS, he had dedicated 23 temples to verify his sacred position as a key element, tasked with maintaining the Wobble of the Sacred Chao and its Hodge-Podge balancing act.

St. Magusundies will be canonized on Sunday, March, 23, 2008 at 4:20 in the afternoon. Any and all members of either the Latter Day Saints, or the Discordian Movement are invited to the ceremony to be held at the Googlie Mooglie Cabal, in Columbus Ohio. A special day of celebration will be announced during the ceremony.

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

Muncher of the ChaoAcorn

Chatterer of the Words of Eris

POEE of The Great Googlie Mooglie Cabal

http://mormon-magus.info/?p=39

“Text and Ontology”, by Stephen Mace

This is an article by Stephen Mace that argues that the idea of “being” is an outdated concept, and instead, everything can be described by “doing.” This should hold particular interest to Latter-day Saints, because we believe in a social Trinity that is exactly described in terms of “doing.”

Here is an excerpt, but you should really read the entire article.

“But if it isn’t all Being, then what is it?

I will not say Becoming, since that implies an action too random or undirected to be consistent with our obviously well-designed circumstances. Instead I will offer Doing, presenting us with a universe of process, with all aspects of manifestation pursuing some goal, more or less distant, more or less intelligently. Doing gives us a universe that is dynamic on all levels, driven by an implied purpose, and hence an implicit intelligence, and this is surely consistent with the self-driven contrivance of physical nature.”

http://mormon-magus.info/?p=38

“The distinguishing characteristic of a person is the possession of will, the power to accept or reject, to move or to stand still, to obey or to disobey. From the very beginning the being now known as man possessed a will, and by the operation of his will has reached his present condition. Above all other things, man is a will. If that be so, the training and use of the will is man’s first concern.”

—————

“Love is the Law. Love Under Will.”

- Aleister Crowley

http://mormon-magus.info/?p=37

I’ve noticed that figures 9 through 10 aren’t included in the temple, but are included in what the world can find out.

Is this effectively a green light on modern occultism?

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/abr/fac_2

Fig. 8. Contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God.

Fig. 9. Ought not to be revealed at the present time.

Fig. 10. Also.

Fig. 11. Also. If the world can find out these numbers, so let it be. Amen.

- Book of Abraham, Facsimile No. 2

Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection
by Lance S. Owens

http://www.gnosis.org/jskabb1.htm

Excerpt:
"Through his associations with ceremonial magic as a young treasure seer, Smith contacted symbols and lore taken directly from Kabbalah. In his prophetic translation of sacred writ, his hermeneutic method was in nature Kabbalistic. With his initiation into Masonry, he entered a tradition born of the Hermetic-Kabbalistic tradition. These associations culminated in Nauvoo, the period of his most important doctrinal and ritual innovations. During these last years, he enjoyed friendship with a European Jew well-versed in the standard Kabbalistic works and possibly possessing in Nauvoo an extraordinary collection of Kabbalistic books and manuscripts. By 1844 Smith not only was cognizant of Kabbalah, but enlisted theosophic concepts taken directly from its principal text in his most important doctrinal sermon, the 'King Follett Discourse.'

Smith's concepts of God's plurality, his vision of God as anthropos, and his possession by the issue of sacred marriage, all might have been cross-fertilized by this intercourse with Kabbalistic theosophy--an occult relationship climaxing in Nauvoo. This is a complex thesis; its understanding requires exploration of an occult religious tradition spanning more that a millennium of Western history, an investigation that begins naturally with Kabbalah."

Well, this should be interesting.

A little bit about myself:
I'm active in both the LDS (Mormon) and occult communities, and I seem to have gained somewhat of a reputation in the former for my activity in the latter. I would say it's mostly positive, but I don't think most of them know quite what to do with me. As for the rest, I've made some friends with similar interests in the esoteric, and I've recently started a message board for experimenting with and mixing Mormonism with practically everything else out there. (http://unfettered-mormon.org/)

I also have a blog that's been up for a while where I muse about Mormonism and various ideas in occultism (chaos magic mostly). I haven't been posting that often, but there's already a nice backlog of posts. I have it set to automatically cross post here for future entries, but you'll have to go there to check out the old posts. (http://mormon-magus.info/)

Anyway, that's about it for now.

Default Settings:
I've set all current users to the following settings:

Public comments: On
Comment notifications: On
File storage: 1 byte (effectively disabling the system except for administrators)
User icons: 20

These settings are being done manually until Matt can set it up as a blanket rule. Since we've only got ~130 registered users right now, it didn't take long.

If you wish to change your comment settings, click "Account Settings" at the top right in the gray bar. You will also find, at the bottom of that page, where to set your blog editor (wysiwyg by default; this can be turned off).

If you have questions or comments, leave a comment at this post.

Premier accounts

I'm considering what to grant Premier account holders who use their blogs regularly. I'm thinking, so far, that anyone with a full profile by the middle of the year 2008 who also regularly uses their blogs for six months following sign-up (posting at least once a week), will be granted 100 user icons permanently, along with any other paid account options we offer within a set period (to be determined), all free. The Premier account will only be offered to the first 500 users who meet the criteria. The terms of this offer may evolve, particularly the mid-2008 time limit if the site doesn't take off very fast.

- Sheta

As is no doubt obvious by the time you see this, we've implemented the new blogs, based on the Elgg blogging platform. We're still working out the kinks as well as various little things we don't care for (such as link text). Right now, for instance, we're working on keeping the system from compressing the profile images if images are kept within a certain parameter, but we're between tweaks, so the images are liable to look pretty strange for a bit. We have successfully prevented the platform from squishing user icons in the sidebar (which I thought was a stupid idea to begin with - it's not like they're big anyway). If your computer's resolution is less than 1024 x 768, you may see some page distortion or scrollbars in the sidebars. Feel free to complain to webmaster@rendingtheveil.com if it's intolerable. You might also consider tweaking your resolution enough to split the difference.

I'm sure we'll be adjusting the details for a while, so you have time to get your suggestions or bug reports in. We aspire to finishing the worst of it by official launch on October 31, but that may be optimistic. ;-) We'll see.

Thanks so much for joining us!  I hope you'll like it here as much as I think you will.

- Sheta Kaey
RTV Managing Editor