Lonelygirl15

Sheikh Gomelez wrote:Time for the Jets to cool. And Sharks, you need to chill, too.

STELLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bernardo and Sharks:
We’re gonna jazz it tonight,
They’re gonna get it tonight,
Tonight.
They began it, they began it,
And we’re the ones
To stop ‘em once and for all!
The Sharks are gonna have their way,
The Sharks are gonna have their day,
We’re gonna rock it tonight...
Tonight!

Riff and Jets:
They began it.
They began it.
We’ll stop ‘em once and for all
The Jets are gonna have their day,
The Jets are gonna have their way,
We’re gonna rock it tonight.
Tonight!

Bbbbbennie and Jets...

Kasdeja wrote:Bbbbbennie and Jets...

Somehow, I think of the title of a certain Brian Eno album... Here Come the Warm Jets.

"Dead Finks Don't Talk" is great song from that Eno album; the song's lyrics summarize a worldview.

But dead finks don't talk too well
They've got a shaky sense of diction
It's not so much a living hell
It's just a dying fiction.

Sheikh Gomelez wrote:

Kasdeja wrote:Bbbbbennie and Jets...

Somehow, I think of the title of a certain Brian Eno album... Here Come the Warm Jets.

You should be thinking of an elton john song. cuz it is.

I know. But "Stella!" is a famous bit of dialogue from a Tennessee Williams play adapted for the screen by Elia Kazan, not from West Side Story, the musical with the Sharks and the Jets, so I felt free to move within a pretty broad frame of reference. Film led to film, and musician led to musician.

Besides, Eno is cooler than Elton John.

Sheikh Gomelez wrote:I know. But "Stella!" is a famous bit of dialogue from a Tennessee Williams play adapted for the screen by Elia Kazan, not from West Side Story, the musical with the Sharks and the Jets, so I felt free to move within a pretty broad frame of reference. Film led to film, and musician led to musician.

Besides, Eno is cooler than Elton John.

Dude, you're right. that's streetcar named desire. I must be slacking in my pop-culture encyclopediacal brain today.

i can't think of a quote from west side story. wasn't I feel pretty off of that?

Yep.

And "Somewhere" and "Maria" and... well, a lot of great songs.

sororyzbl wrote:i can't think of a quote from west side story.

"Cut it, Action Boy. I and Tony started the Jets."

So, are the jets-- or the Jets-- on the forum sufficiently cooled off now? And are the Sharks calm?

sororyzbl wrote:

Sfonzarelli wrote:As someone who's into Aleister Crowley, my main beef with you guys is that you're giving the uninformed the impression that everyone who's into Aleister Crowley is a humorless quasi-Scientologist minor bureaucrat/pendant incapable of percieving irony and obsessed with sociopolitical legitimacy.

Maybe I should detail the secret ritual I performed last night, which involved a pastry magickally transformed into a dozen donuts, invoking OJ simpson wearing nothing but a bikini top and oversized suit jacket. With a stuffed unicorn sticking out of it. Facing pittsburgh. All of it for the purpose of making some cool crap appear in the attic that I'd never gone into. I found some readers digest condensed books, a plastic palm tree, and my childhood.

I'm a Subgenius, I can't take anything seriously. I personally see a lot of Erisianity in the LG 15 saga, people just keep mistakening it for Thelema.

Thelemia was an early form of Erisianism!

So that being said, why are you so into "informing" people? Wouldn't you rather intentionally confuse them for your own amusement? (And possibly for greater strategic reasons) I know I like to.

you like it raw don't you?

tannhaus wrote:Yes, Crowley was a revolutionary. So was Jesus. So was Mohammed. So was every other person to start a religion. I don't see your point there.

Crowley was a socio-political revolutionary as well as a religious one. (For the record, so were Mohammad and Yeshua)

For instance, Martin Luther...now there was a revolutionary.

Actually, Martin Luther was not very much of a socio-political revolutionary, in fact his reformation basically purged Catholicism of all of it's redeeming qualities and kept the corrupt organizational structure. But maybe that's just my personal bigotry against Protestants.

But, we don't see the protestants running around going "NAH! In your face, catholics! We don't believe in your pope. We're evvilllllllll."

Have you ever actually met a Protestant?

No, that would be ridiculous. Any religion that can't move past the revolutionary phase probably doesn't have any substance to it. It exists as a revolutionary movement only.

Revolution is intrinsic to human society. Any religion that is done with the revolutionary phase is in it's autumn years as a cohesive religion.
EDIT: I should clarify what I mean by this. People always adopt techniques that work in any field, and religion is no exception. But religious dogma, like anything always needs to updated and modified as parts of it become irrelevant. To quote Woody Allen, "And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark."

But, thelema isn't that way. We have just as much substance as any other religion.

That substance is meaningless if it's not going to a good cause. Aum Shinrikyo can practice yoga and study kaballah, but if they go out and gas random people, it's still not a good thing.

It's interesting in your examples of groups we're like, that you quoted three groups which are probably the largest maligned religions out there.

How are Scientologists "maligned"? They're fucking wealthy and affluential. Two of the three groups I mentioned are corrupt bureaucracies that enslave people. (The third is just dopey)

Yes, when we're a persecuted religion, we act like one. That's no big surprise because.....we're a religion....and we're persecuted.

How are you "persecuted"? And why do you want not to be persecuted?

As far as what Crowley would have wanted, I believe he would have wanted the religion to evolve over time....

Everything evolves naturally, whether anyone wants it to or not. And good occult practices in the western world continue to develop. I don't see what that has to do with your point. If something has evolved into something lethargic and stale, it hasn't evolved, which is what I see a lot of the turn-of-the-century pagan orders and their adherents doing.

As far as the way he acted when people accused him of lies, well, the fact we're sitting here defending him 60 years after his death for those SAME lies....that really says something. Crowley's approach was wrong.

It was a wrong approach for creating a mass marketable religion, which isn't what he wanted to do.

You brought up the Wiccans....and that was a great choice. When the wiccans came onto the scene, witchcraft was considered evil. ANYONE who heard it thought they were sacrificing babies, etc.

Except that most "Wiccans" I know have as much in common with the practices of pre-Christian Europe as the Maharishi has with authentic spiritual practices of India.

But, the Wiccans fought against the lies. They fought against the misconceptions. They demanded acceptance. Now, you have shows like Charmed on tv.

Dude, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Charmed is one of the most horrible shows on TV. (And even if you like it, you have to admit that it has as many factual inaccuracies regarding the subjects it discusses as it does references to the subjects it discusses, so how is that a victory for understanding?) The people who thought witchcraft was evil and involved baby sacrifice were the same people who eradicated traditional European culture and slaughtered millions of it's practitioners, and the same people that shoot Irish people to this day. Why would any real witch want their respect? I don't want the respect of anyone who irrationally hates me, I want to keep them from hurting me. Why is the assimilation of genuinely awesome things into a mediocre status quo that warps those genuinely awesome things into grotesque and horrendous parodies of those awesome things while the authentic version of the awesome things is left to rot, why is that in any way, shape, or form, an achievement? For example, saying "[Ethnic group X] is awesome because they do nothing but waddle in mud and eat babies" is not an improvement over "[Ethnic group X] is evil because they do nothing but waddle in the mud and eat babies"

Now THOSE are revolutionaries....

By that same logic, Oprah is a sucessful revolutionary because she's a woman and an African-American who's a billionaire even though most black people still live in the lowest form of poverty in America,

Just recently, the army had to back down and allow a pentacle on a soldier's gravestone. It was a long fight, but the revolutionaries won.

How is that a victory in any sense of the word? The people with pentacles are still shooting people.

Thelema is not about scaring people around you. It's a real religion...and it's high time it has its place among the religions of the world.

Why would you want Thelema to be like, say, the mainstream Catholic church? That would be the lamest thing ever.

Okay, there are like a buhjillion different types of Protestantism. And, yes, some of them are kind of assholes about it.

Personally, I was raised Dutch Reformed and now attend a Presbyterian church (both Protestant).

Frankly, the only thing that makes me different from most people is that through church I have learned how to make amazing pie crust.

The Lovely Miss M. wrote:Okay, there are like a buhjillion different types of Protestantism. And, yes, some of them are kind of assholes about it.

There are types of Protestantism with cool elements. I was just speaking generally.

The Lovely Miss M. wrote:Okay, there are like a buhjillion different types of Protestantism. And, yes, some of them are kind of assholes about it.

Personally, I was raised Dutch Reformed and now attend a Presbyterian church (both Protestant).

Frankly, the only thing that makes me different from most people is that through church I have learned how to make amazing pie crust.

I learned from "Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts". She is my own personal Jesus.
edit- I reccomend the Wine Poached Pear Frangiapani Tart and the Macadamia Nut Tartlettes