#Isaac Bonewits

[queersatanic]

How to spot when you're in a cult

How to recognize that you’re in a cult seems so obvious and therefore unnecessary to ask that most people never even bother to do so.

Consequently, it should not be a surprise so many people continue to find themselves in cults and not realize it till years later, if at all.

Let’s get a quick, short definition out of the way, borrowed from the French Interministerial Mission for the Fight against Drugs and Addictive Behaviors:

"A cult is an organized group or a solitary person whose purpose is to dominate cult members by using psychological manipulation and pressure strategies."

A couple of misconceptions: we are not talking about New Religious Movements (NREs)—at least not exclusively. To begin with, those are not necessarily cults, and more importantly, cults are not exclusively "religious" movements.

From Heaven's Gate to Scientology to for-profit face-to-face canvassing, you cannot rely on the self-description of an organization to accurately describe what it does, and like with NXIVM, it usually isn't the supernatural or religious aspects that are actually problematic.

A cult may never have explicitly supernatural or spiritual aspects; they may define themselves by their strict adherence to materialism, even. Thus, if those are the red flags you're looking for, you're not going to notice when no one is talking about god, reincarnation, or quantum pseudoscience.

Cults are a normal part of modern society, not something only at the fringe.

Considering the likely audience of this, it may be tempting to say, “No gods, no masters,” or “obviously capitalism is a cult.”

But this is a feature that appears within the radical, anticapitalist left as well.

The abusiveness of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) or Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party USA, or Gazi Kodzo's Black Hammer organization and its rapid turn toward failed Colorado commune and predation of unhoused people in Atlanta — it is not just “those people” who can fall into this. A Maoist transbian polycule with a central node who controls the sex lives of her partners while leading the “self-crit” sessions — this is only tangentially the faults of capitalism.

No one is immune from this, no one is safe. Because while cults can express themselves in all of these various ways, they are not only taking advantage of the weakest or worst of us; they don’t even always take us in our weakest or worst moments.

Cults also will, like a cordyceps fungus, repurpose your strengths and talent to their own ends. Your incredible intelligence and reasoning abilities will be turned to explaining why you should continue to support this particular cult despite all evidence to the contrary. Your empathy will make you care about others still in the cult that leaving it would mean leaving behind. You will convince yourself that reform is possible and you just need to go through the proper channels that the abusers just happen also to control.

To review: a cult can like anything and anyone can find themselves in one.

But most cults by their nature do not lead with the weirdest shit first. Some go as far as to have front companies recruiting people to one thing, then slowly introduce this other thing when a target is thought suitable and their defenses are down.

For most people, there won’t be a clear, sudden indicator because they will be surrounded by others who treat these power dynamics as normal and good. Peer pressure is not just something middle schoolers fall victim to but something all of us experience.

Even if you leave, all that does is reinforce the survivor bias and culture of those who remain, feeding the narratives of exclusivity, elitism, and persecution to keep members cleaved from the outside.

Back to the question: how do you spot that you’re in a cult?

It’s crucial that you actually bother to ask. It’s crucial that you have the humility to assess your surroundings, your choices, and be willing to walk away from stuff you’ve invested in when you realize your mistake, sunk costs be damned.

There are various guides you can use, but a pretty robust if still subjective one is Isaac Bonewits’ Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (ABCDEF), rating 18 categories to score from one-to-10.

There are others. ABCDEF works best for new religious movements; Gwen Snyder taking business cults to task highlighted some issues Bonewits did not.

Certainly, neither person is themself infallible. Consider both nothing more than starting points.

So far, we haven’t talked much about anarchist groups or dynamics, and you may assume that’s because we are not power worshipers, fascists, Marxist-Leninists, so our praxis inoculates us.

That is bunk.

It is true that anarchist critiques of hierarchy apply to cults as well. An anarchist may not always be able to recognize a hierarchy, but we ought to have a good idea of our response when we do.

Yet anarchists are not immune from becoming cult leaders. Those who exploit others this way are not uniquely evil or a different species from us. A cult leader may be wholly sincere and actually believe they are just that special, that irreplaceable.

If you are an anarchist, you should always be thinking about and planning for your replacement. You will die one day. You may be disabled before that, or jailed before that, or "canceled"; don't think you are not capable of being an abuser, including in ways that meant almost nothing to you but everything to who you hurt.

Anything you're doing should not rely solely on you to not fail. The group you are part of should not require one person, you or anyone else, who is so essential that others are tempted to give them a pass because the work is so important and they are so valuable to the work.

Having said all this, is the vaccination against hierarchical cult abuses a panacea against all abuses? Clearly not.

A cult is one kind of hierarchy.

It is often starkly hierarchical and dangerous but not the only way for an organization or group dynamics to be abusive. We have to work very hard to guard ourselves against these, too; that is anarchism.

We need collective action from non-blood relations willing to work together and help one another. We need to radically re-imagine and embody different ways of living, different possibilities of seeing the world. The taboos of the status quo are not extant always because they serve most of us or benefit any but a few.

And still, attempts to create alternatives to what we have inherited are not guaranteed to be improvements, and in our desperation at the state of the world or just our own lives, we can pursue groups—usually new groups—that lack the protective guardrails erected by necessity to keep a collective functioning since, without them, the group implodes.

How do you spot you're in a cult?

Think about what power is and who has it, and never stop looking or talking to other people about what you see.

Interrogate yourself, don't make excuses for your friends, and kill your heroes so you can meet real people worth knowing.

[mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea]

Autumn Asks

frost, lantern, bonfire

frost - if you could give some advice to your younger self, what would you say?

1. Let Mom teach you how to dance. It's not silly, she knew what she was doing, and you would probably have felt far more confident on the dancefloor and not as insecure about dancing now.

2. Tell your aunts and your cousin to go fuck themselves and to get the hell out of your house (when they came to stay while Mom was in the hospital) when you were 17. Ignore Mom's need for peace and 'getting along and staying quiet to keep the peace' because she was in the hospital as it was, not at the house dealing with their cunt-ass attitude, and they needed to be told off. This will teach you to set boundaries that will save your life and your self esteem in years to come.

3. Fuck high school. Drop out, get your GED, find a job you enjoy, and skip college for a year or two while you're figuring out what you want to do.

4. While you're at it, push for your sister to sell the house and move the hell out of Texas before 1993. First off, you'll be the hell far away from Texas and won't ever have to live there again, and second, you'll still have your brother around.

5. Granted, you'll hopefully be out of Texas by this point, but if not (or even if you are), do NOT go out with this one dude EVER. Don't date him, don't live with him, don't marry him. Use those boundaries you figured out with your relatives to tell that gaslighting narcissist to fuck off and die.

6. Don't be an English major if you do go to college. Definitely take creative writing workshops and classes, but don't major in literature. You can happily keep reading whatever you want without having to write dumbass papers that are nothing more than vomiting up other people's theories to back your own up. Fuck that. Go into parapsychology and creative writing. Or fuck academia altogether and just get your career as a tarot reader going from an earlier point. Take creative writing classes for fun.

lantern - how did you meet your best friend? What were your first impressions of each other?

I have a few best friends, and we each met in different ways.

First best friend was childhood best friend who is still a friend but less 'best' now than before. Still, we met through two of our brothers, and I was like...5 or 6, so I think my first impression was that she was cool as hell, but I'm not sure what her impression of me was.

Best friend that lives on the East Coast - we met through a now-defunct site called WitchVox. She emailed me because of the group/coven listing I had up and asked me questions. We emailed back and forth for a week or two, and then we met for coffee at Kettle. She was married at the time, I was married at the time, and our dudes turned out to be douchebags. We kept each other as besties in the divorces. I know one of my first impressions of her was that "Holy fuck, she's tall!" And she reminded me a lot of my mom but with a much more in your face bitch attitude. I'm not sure what her first impression of me was.

Welsh Bestie - We met through the guestbook (yes we're old) of Isaac Bonewits' website because I saw that he called himself a chaotician, so I messaged him. We emailed and IMed, and we've been friends since January of 1999. Haven't met face to face yet. My first impression was that he was cool. Not sure what his first impression was of me. @chaotic-hypnotic-erotic

Jewish Michigan suburb bestie - We met through the Jay and Silent Bob slash yahoo group back in like...what? 2000? 2001? We read each other's fics first, chatted, I'm sure, through the actual groups, and then one night, @kleenexwoman IMed me because I was awake. I thought she was a weird and fun little 18 year old, and I gave her all manner of advice on how to hoard as much food from the student center as she could in her dorm since the student center closed at a certain time of night. She didn't have a car at the time to leave campus, and being stuck in a dorm that didn't allow hot plates, I made suggestions on how she could keep snack type food around. Eventually, I sent her an electric kettle because she could have that, and she could make ramen or mac and cheese in it as well as heat up water for tea. I know I liked her a lot and thought she was weird and funny and fun. No idea what her first impression of me was. I've talked to her on the phone in the past but still haven't met face to face.

Bestie that I run three bingos with - I think we met through here/AO3 (fics and comments), and right away, I liked @scottxlogan because she's sassy and funny and creative and imaginative. We share fandoms and cheerleader each other on through writing and life's bullshit. Still not sure what her first impression of me was, but mine was that she was awesome, and I have a blast running the bingos with her. We make a really good team, and I can't wait to meet her in person because I think we'll get into some really weird but creative trouble together.

Bestie who spent far too long holding the bowl for a dick who didn't appreciate her the way she deserved - I met @raevynlokidottir through LJ way the hell back, and I can't even remember what community it was through. Firefly, maybe? Some pagan community? But that was probably getting close to 20 years ago maybe. Maybe not quite that long, but it's been a long time. It took a little bit to get the engines really revved on the friendship, but she was there for me through the divorce, and by the time I graduated grad school, her daughter was calling me Aunt T, and we were pretty much family. First impressions fuzzy because it was so long ago, and I've slept since then. If my sister and I can get the fuck out of Texas, we'll get to meet because she relocated to a state close to the one we're going to live in.

Work Sister-Bestie - I met her last year when I went to work at a small retail food-new age shop here in the small-ass town I live in. I worked closer to full-time, and she worked two days a week for three hours a day. She'd been working there longer than me, but from the moment I started, we hit it off so much that, aside from actually having to work, we talked from the moment she walked through the door to the moment she left, and we text quite a bit, too. The job was great (aside from not paying quite enough) - how often can you say that you love 99.9% of your customers in retail? Not often. But out of all of that really awesome experience, she is by far the BEST thing to come out of that job. I know that my first impression of her was that she was nothing like I thought she'd be when I first started working with her and that she's so far away from being as conservative as she looks. @missrobbie73 swears and has one of the best dirtiest minds. I think her first impression of me was that she thought I might not like her because I was loud and weird and that I might not get her at first. (She's not active on Tumblr most of the time, but I talked her into joining because I fun that stone blog on here.)

bonfire - describe your dream house.

Dream house would either be on the beach or within a short walk to the beach - obviously not in Texas. Preferably east-northeast. Single story, as I'm getting older and stairs can be a bitch on my knees and ankle. Big wrap-around porch with one part of it facing the beach if possible. 3-4 bedrooms, 2-2 1/2 bathrooms. Big bedrooms, bathrooms, big ass kitchen - maybe open concept kitchen-livingroom-dining room. Tile floors. Living room doesn't have to be huge but cozy enough for guests. I've actually dreamt about this house (or ones like it) for shit...30 years maybe? Wouldn't need a pool but a hot tub would be nice. Maybe a nice outdoor kitchen as well as the big indoor one? Definitely plenty of space to grill and have a firepit on the beach. Doesn't need to be fancy but nice, cozy, sweet. A haven.

Autumnal Asks.

[courtleymanor]

Leslie Fish - Avalon Is Risen (by Isaac Bonewits)

from my Walpurgisnacht music playlist

Hail the day so long expected, when the Gates are opened wide Magicks, old and new collected, have restored the ancient pride Throughout Faerie's wide dominion Hear the trumpets swoop and soar

Avalon is risen, is risen, is risen Avalon is risen, to fall no more

[booksandwitchery]

Definitions of Magic(k)

There are a few definitions of magic (as it pertains to Paganism and witchcraft) that I feel properly counter the stereotypes perpetuated by pop culture (namely that magic involves the supernatural):

"Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will." - Aleister Crowley

Magic is "folk parapsychology, an art and science designed to enable people to make effective use of their psychic talents." - Isaac Bonewits

"Magic is a convenient word for a whole collection of techniques, all of which involve the mind. . .we might conceive of these techniques as including the mobilization of confidence, will, and emotion brought about by the recognition of necessity; the use of imaginative faculties, particularly the ability to visualize, in order to begin to understand how other beings function in nature so we can use this knowledge to achieve necessary ends." - Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

Magic is "using your intentions and the power of your mind to direct your energy and create the changes you desire." - Tonya Brown, The Door to Witchcraft

[infamousbrad]

I wonder ...

How many of the people who want to blame Christianity for all of the evils in the world also know that, in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, there are right-wing Buddhist death squads. (I know it personally came as a shock to me when I learned it!)

I don't think there's ever been a single scripture in the history of the world that preached that it's okay to form or participate in a right-wing death squad. But everywhere that there's ever been a dominant religion, defending that religion gets used as an excuse for right-wing violence.

I used to argue about this with the late Neopagan fundamentalist, Isaac Bonewits, who preached that the only way we were ever going to end war and ecocide was by converting the majority of the world to Neopaganism. I asked him if that meant he couldn't imagine there being right-wing Neopagan death squads, if they were in power and felt their power slipping for any reason, and he said no, of course that would never happen.

I have no idea where he dredged up that depth of self-delusion.

(Currently reading: Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start.)

[sarkos]

In California’s atmosphere of psychedelic medievalism, Eliade’s influence was more direct. The Bay Area was home to a variety of growing movements: the Society for Creative Anachronism, growing neo-paganism, and a lot of people who were into D&D. One of them, David Hargrave, produced a variant of Dungeons and Dragons in the mid 1970s that he published in a series of books known as the Arduin Grimoire. Hargrave built the magic system for his game with the help of Isaac Bonewits, the future Archdruid of the New Reformed Druids of North America. Bonewits shared Eliade’s love of synthesis and sense of adventure—he had a bachelor’s degree in ‘magic’ from the University of Califoria, a major of his own design Bonewits certainly read Eliade, and worked to synthesize the disparate religious systems he read about into a single system. The result, was ‘neo-paganism’ a movement that Bonewits helped found. In fact, in 1978 Bonewits produced the book “Authentic Thaumaturgy” which described how to create in-game magic systems based on how real magic worked. The Arduin Grimoire, RuneQuest, and other games drew strongly on Bonewits expertise with ‘real’ magic when they designed their ‘fantasy’ versions.

(via The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic—The Appendix)

[witchcraftmagazine]

Banishing Snakes, is actually believed to be a metaphor for driving Druids and Pagans out of Ireland. Pagan author Isaac Bonewits called the day “All Snakes Day” 🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍 Knowledge is our power. Let's call Brigid's blessings. www.magicalrecipesonline.com/2012/04/whos-this-goddess-brigid-brighid-sacred.html #stpatricksday #ireland #irish #pagan #paganism #magicalrecipesonline https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp4VWylsEwU/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[minnesotadruids]

The Isaac Affair

This was a time of years-long upheaval in the history of the Reformed Druid movement.   July 18, 12 Y.R. (1974) — 45 years ago as of the date of this post. This unleashed a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the creation of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), the largest organized modern druid order based in America. Here I will condense the debacle into a general overview.

The full debates can be read [here] (embedded page number 58) if interested. This is something I think all Reformed Druids should at least be aware of.

CONTEXT:

Isaac Bonewits (1949-2010) joined the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) in 1966 while he was still a student at UC Berkeley earning a degree in Magic. He was introduced to the RDNA by Robert Larson, one of the founders of the movement. Isaac was ordained to the Third Order of the RDNA in 1968 which then also made him a member of the governing body: the Council of Dalon Ap Landu (henceforth CoDAL or simply “the council”). 

The problem was: In order to pass legislation in the time before the internet, druids of the council had to mail their proposals to the CoDAL chairperson. The chairperson would forward the proposal to everyone on the council for a mass snail-mail debate. Then the chairperson would initiate a vote, and collect, tally, and announce the results. The chairperson of the whole council can only be a current member (and student) of the mother Grove at Carleton College. Isaac never heard back when he tried reaching out directly to the CoDAL chairperson. His set of ideas grew in the interim, and ultimately he wrote to everyone else on the council which started the Affair.

In the early 1970s, Carleton Grove was experiencing an organic lull in membership and activity. With the RDNA being founded at Carleton College in 1963, the first-wave druids: founders and members who were there in the formative years had graduated by 1967. The second-wave druids were those who likely knew some of the first-wave druids and kept the movement going on inertia, but they would have all graduated by 1971. The third-wave druids of Carleton Grove were a bit more detached from the legacy they had inherited and they faded for a few years. It’s also generally difficult to contact or hear back from Carleton Grove druids, even when they’re active. After all, they are busy college students.

OUTLINE OF THE ISAAC AFFAIR:

In a relatively abrasive letter titled The Book of Changes (1974), Isaac proposed the following controversial proposals for “...those of you who give a damn about Reformed Druidism, or would like to see it survive and even grow.”

The RDNA should admit to being a Religion

Declare “That the RDNA is an Eclectic Reconstructionist Neopagan Priestcraft”

Declare that “We worship the Earth-Mother as the feminine personification of Manifestation,”

Declare “Be'al as the masculine personification of Essence”

Make writings available to all 

Publicize location and mailing addresses of Groves in Neopagan media

Traveling members of the council shall meet other Neopagans and ordain them in shortened timeframes for the purpose of establishing more Groves, especially “individuals who are already Priests and Priestesses in other Neopagan traditions based upon similar philosophies”

Carleton Grove seems to be defunct; the chairperson of the Council of Dalon Ap Landu seems nonexistent; “Do we really need the Council?” “...Was it really that wise to have the election of the head of the Council left to the caprice of any one Grove, especially a Grove whose membership changes every four years by 100%???”

“Let the office of the Chairperson of the Council rotate from year to year among the heads of genuinely active Groves (i.e., holding at least one meeting per month)”

“I will nominate Robert Larson... Archdruid of the Berkeley Grove and an original Carleton Grove member as the First Chairperson”

Nonresponsive members of the council shall be dropped from voting rolls until they contact the chairperson. “This would solve the quorum problems so that we could actually get some work done now and then.”

Change the restrictions on the higher orders of the priesthood or abolish the higher orders entirely

“Declare The Chronicles of the Foundation to be our 'old Testament' and will rewrite those portions we consider objectionable”

Incorporate in rituals: music, poetry, enchantment, and the seeking of oracles

“...every Druid and every Druidess should be a poet”

Respond by September 15th, vote by Samhain, otherwise “Robert and I will take our Groves and leave the RDNA to found a new group to be called the SDNA or Schismatic Druids of North America”

This proposal was sent to all 33 other members of the council, some solo and others in the following Groves: “Carleton, Berkeley, Chicago, Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan, New York, Stanford, Twin Cities, Vermilion and others.” A slight majority of the responding councilors approved of Isaac’s proposed changes. One response was neutral (Norman Nelson, one of the founders) but all other responses (the slight minority) were vehemently opposed, including the other founders.

Per Isaac’s report, the majority were in favor of a coup d’etat and changing the Reformed Druids of North America on a fundamental level. The minority strongly urged a schism: that Isaac create a separate and new druidic order. Ironically, part of what saved the RDNA from these changes were the non-voting members of the Groves of Isaac’s faction who urged their Arch-Druids to vote for a schism rather than a coup.

AFTERMATH:

In 1976 Isaac announced a new semi-autonomous branch of the RDNA and another that separated a bit more: The New Reformed Druids of North America (NRDNA) and the Schismatic Druids of North America (SDNA)

The NRDNA was for Neopagan Groves who wished to continue to acknowledge the Council of Dalon Ap Landu and retain voting powers

The SDNA was for Neopagan Groves who wanted to break away from the Council of Dalon Ap Landu

The SDNA council was named the Provisional Council of ArchDruids (PCoAD)

Robert Larson became the first chairperson of PCoAD

The Higher Orders in the NRDNA and SDNA were made separate from the RDNA Higher Orders

The NRDNA and SDNA would retain the basic ritual outline, but added more Neopagan language and segments.

The NRDNA and SDNA still utilized the Third Order Ordination script of the RDNA, which meant all PCoAD members were also CoDAL members

Isaac announced a third offshoot: the Hasidic Druids of North America (HDNA) which consisted of one Grove with members who wished to explore their heritage in Jewish mysticism combined with Reformed Druidism

By 1979, there are signs of fatigue in the offshoot Groves

In 1980, Isaac begins work on a druidic handbook “so that any qualified reader can use the book to start up his or her own Neopagan Druid group... So if you would like to get involved in helping me create a new Neopagan Druid religion, feel free to send me whatever you've got to offer.”

Isaac mentions developing a “Circles” druid ranking system: “We will not instantly invest someone into the Third Circle just because they are a Third Order Druid in some other [RDNA] Grove.” The Circles are now part of the  ADF Clergy Training Program.

In 1981 Isaac leaves his Groves

In 1983 Isaac publishes A Druid's Progress #1 announcing the creation of Ár nDraíocht Féin, or ADF. The Irish translates to Our Own Druidry, and the abbreviation is stated to also be short for A Druid Fellowship. ADF incorporates many of the principles of his schism but was made into something organizationally separate from the Reformed Druid movement. Today the Reformed Druids of North America has 25 active Groves and Protogroves, and the NRDNA has five.

For more info on active RDNA & NRDNA Groves click [here].

[queersatanic]

"My Satanic Adventure or 'I was a Teenaged Satanist!' " by Isaac Bonewits

The [preceding] was first published in 1975 c.e. in response to a

In the city of Berkeley, California, there is a large T-shaped intersection at the main southern entrance to the campus of the University of California, where I enrolled as a sophomore in the fall of 1967, at the tender age of 17. Here, where Telegraph Avenue runs north into the east-west Bancroft Avenue, there is a large expanse of brick sidewalk between the traffic on Bancroft and the short cement pillars that mark the entry into the plaza between Sproul Hall (the administration building) and the Student Union. It was on those bricks that I spent many leisure hours heckling the preachers who held court there in the late 1960’s.

On a small soapbox (yes, a real, genuine soapbox), “Holy” Hubert Lindsey, gap-toothed, flaming-haired and loud mouthed, would hold forth to the multitudes about how sinful they all were. Mr. and Mrs. Tieman, a middle aged couple, would hold up large white posters covered with alternating lines of red and black magic marker, that told us how sinful and evil we were, while they sang hymns over a small loudspeaker. Off to one corner, the Krishna Consciousness devotees would bang away at their drums and chant on and on and on. Various “Jesus Freaks” would wander around accosting students and subjecting them to impromptu sermons (all carefully memorized). Scientologists would hand out tracts and Marxists passed out picket signs. It was all marvelously exciting.

Naturally, the favorite sport of many Berkeley students was “Let’s heckle the religion nuts!” As a new transfer student with an already strongly developed interest in magic and religion, I jumped right in with my fellows (almost all male) and started bugging the preachers. However, I noticed after a few months that our heckling had very little effect except our own diminishing amusement. The evangelists were immune to all the standard methods of heckling — the catcalls and philosophical paradoxes rolled off them like water off a duck’s back. The evangelical, gospel-spouting approach seemed impervious to all logic and reason. It was in my third quarter at Cal that inspiration hit me.

On a beautiful Spring afternoon in March 1968, I arrived at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph with a small platform, painted black, a small loudspeaker, also painted black and a piece of black posterboard with alternating lines of red and white lettering. The top line on my sign said “The Devil’s Advocate.” It is impossible to adequately describe the horror and dismay of the preachers as I stood up on my platform, dressed all in black, and began a loud, long, sonorous sermon in my best southern accent — on behalf of the Christian Devil.

What I was preaching that afternoon was what I have since come to call “Liberal Heterodox” Satanism. I preached the Devil as Lucifer, the “Light Bearer,” champion of the intellect against repressive tyrannies on the one hand, and the original “party animal” on the other — sort of a combination of Prometheus, Bacchus and Pan. I had a “Hell” of a good time flaying my audiences for not being sinful enough, and for listening to the preachers. Inside of five minutes there was an audience around my platform larger than any of the evangelists had every raised. Some of them pretended to “heckle” me (and a few Jesus People actually did), but all their arguments were swept aside by classic preacher-think.

That day, and for many days thereafter, I practiced the art of improvisational street theater, using all the standard evangelical lines and parables to ridicule and confuse the preachers. I had been at my platform less than a week when a young woman came up to me and said, in a deliberately erotic voice, “Hi. I’m a Witch. Would you like to join the Church of Satan? You sound like you’d be perfect.”

Since she was rather pretty I quickly replied, “Hi. What’s the Church of Satan?”

“It’s the famous Satanic Church run by Anton LaVey in San Francisco,” she explained.

“Never heard of him,” I replied brightly.

“Well, you’ll like him. He’s into just the same things you are. Why don’t you go see him?” she said, handing me a card with his address and giving me a smoldering look that promised much.

So I went to see him. His hokey black house with the gothic furnishings has been described so many times by reporters that I won’t bother. Suffice it to say that I met the man and liked him very much. He was friendly, smooth talking, played the organ beautifully, and promised me much assistance in my endeavors to torment the campus evangelists. I was invited to join the Church, membership fees were waived, and I was invited to attend his lecture series for free! (The waiving of those fees, as well as those for the weekly meetings, I learned later was almost unheard of.) He handed me a bunch of literature from his Church to hand out and I went back to Berkeley bemused and intrigued by what I was getting into.

Well, three months went by. One of the members of the Church made me a more powerful loudspeaker and thousands of LaVey’s tracts were printed up and handed out. I eventually built a large black throne on wheels, with a tape recorder, microphone and umbrella holder to keep the sun off my head. I called this my “Sinmobile,” and wheeled it across campus every day to the evangelical corner, so that I could preach in comfort. In short, I really had a lot of fun that spring.

During this time, I became a regular at the Church of Satan. I attended LaVey’s lectures, went to his Friday night rituals, and quickly became one of his regular altar boys and a “Satanic Minister.” I’ll never forget the evening when I decided to ad lib some fake “Enochian” invocations during one of the ceremonies. I dramatically intoned a lot of gibberish, using the same guttural tones that Anton always used, and everyone in the ritual acted very impressed. Afterwards, I asked Anton, “How’d you like my Enochian?” and he gave me a look that would have melted sheetrock. He did not, however, warn me of the dangers of mucking with this ceremonial language, as any real Enochian magician would have done out of sheer self-preservation (since they all believe that it is a terribly powerful magical tongue), nor did he complain that I had ruined his magical intent, as he would have done if he had actually been doing any magic. It was at that point that I realized two important things about Anton: he really didn’t know very much about Enochian and he wasn’t actually trying to do magic in his supposedly magical rites. I began to wonder if he even knew how.

But I continued to hang out at the Church, discussing magic, philosophy and Satanic theology with Anton and the other members and trying (unsuccessfully) to seduce some of the rare young women in the Church. Occasionally I would even flirt with Anton’s teenaged daughter — which really flipped him out, despite the fact that she wouldn’t give me the time of day. I never was able to figure out whether he was jealous, worried about protecting her virtue, or concerned that my “commie” attitudes might be contagious.

At one point that spring, some friends of Anton’s showed up with cameras and started filming bits and pieces of faked-up rituals. Since I was still an enthusiastic ritualist, I was drafted to play various silly parts in these. I climbed into a coffin with a naked woman while wearing a bishop’s costume, stabbed a poppet with a knife, asked the high priest (Anton, in his Red Devil costume) for Satanic blessings, etc. I can’t remember any of the dialog at this point, but I do recall Anton telling us that what we said didn’t matter much, since everything was going to be translated into European languages for the “documentaries” the men were making.

Well, he was telling some of the truth for once. Parts of these films did indeed wind up in documentaries, such as “The Occult Experience,” but those parts were in English. These are the films that people in the Neopagan community see every couple of years or so, and which shock them so much — apparently they can’t see that I’m only seventeen in them, so they write me letters full of concern or denouncing me for my “betrayal” of Paganism. The foreign translations, however, were done for the bits that were spliced into pornographic movies sold in Europe. His so-called documentary film producers were actually pornographers, though the films I acted in were pretty tame. I don’t know about the “acting” other Church members might have done then or since, though I’m told that LaVey later earned his living for a few years in the European pornography industry.

To me it was all just another part of the adventure. I continued to listen admiringly to Anton’s tales, though I was somewhat shocked when he claimed that his huge library of occult books had been swindled from rich widows. I was more shocked when I realized that he had read only a tiny fraction of them, and that at seventeen I had read far more books on parapsychology, comparative religion and the occult than he had, despite his twenty years’ head start.

These events and insights did not take place in isolation, though. Like many other Berkeley students, I was gradually becoming a long-haired radical. This caused increasing friction between the rest of the Church and myself. My politics then were basically left wing/anarchist with a mild dash of Nietzsche. Anton’s politics, and those of most of the central members, seemed to be quite a bit more conservative. They’d quote Nietzsche or Hitler or Rand and tell me what it supposedly meant. Then I’d give them what I thought of as a more humanistic and intellectual interpretation. The overlap between our opinions became increasingly smaller and I became increasingly uneasy about my fellow Church members.

Some were bringing authentic Ku Klux Klan robes and Nazi uniforms for the ceremonies. I was assured that the clothes were merely for “Satanic shock value” to “jar people from their usual staid patterns of thinking.” Then I would talk to the men wearing these clothes and realize that they were not pretending anything. I noticed that there were no black members of the Church and only one Asian, and began to ask why.

Then I went away for the summer, living with my eldest brother in southern California and converting him to my brand of Satanism. Since he was an intellectual humanist, this wasn’t hard (he became Wiccan a couple of years later). We had an enjoyable summer, I made a few public appearances on behalf of the Church, then it was time to return to Berkeley.

Upon my return, I found that several of the members of the Church were coming to me for magical advice, instead of to their Glorious Leader. This was apparently the final straw for Anton. It was early in October, shortly after my 18th birthday, that I was called aside for a talk by one of the “Inner Circle” members (one of the pornographers), about my “obnoxious and deviationist tendencies.” I had previously been told about “odd” accidents and arrests that had occurred to others who were purged from the Church, so I tried to be as conciliatory as possible. But crewcut right wingers never have brought out the best in me, so I probably wasn’t very convincing. A week later, after the services, I was ordered to go downstairs to the “orgy room.”

When I arrived in the sanctum unsanctorium, I found thirteen people in black hooded robes sitting around a coffin-table. I was told to stand with my heels against the side of a mattress that was on the floor, with my head directly under a strong light. They then began to berate me for my deviationist thinking. The whole inquisition would have been a lot more impressive except for two factors: firstly, I recognized most of the voices as being those of the same flakes, weirdos and losers I had been meeting all along as members of the headquarters crew. Secondly, I had just finished reading a book on brainwashing techniques — the same methods that were now being used on me to force a “confession and retraction” of my “erroneous ways.” My immediate impulse to laugh was stifled, however, by the fact that I was surrounded and out-numbered by several large men, whose voices were getting increasingly loud and fanatic, and my memories of the supposed Mafia and police connections Anton had.

The smart thing to do was convince them that I was small fry and not worth arranging a fatal accident for. I proceeded to faint back on the mattress. Ignoring the fact that I had repeatedly informed them of my activities as a drama club member in high school, they all laughed and hauled me upstairs. Five minutes later I “revived” and left in a very subdued mood.

A couple of weeks later I sent Anton a suitably wimpy resignation letter, offering to refrain from all public comment about the Church and to return the public address system to the man who had provided it to me (something that never happened, though I waited two years, because members had been forbidden to communicate with me — although several later did).

I went back to my previous ways, continuing for two more years the fascinating game of evangelist-baiting. Several other religious and magical groups recruited me and then kicked me out for heresy. Gradually, I became used to the idea that there were damned few groups around who wanted independent thinkers, and that most of the organizations I infiltrated or joined (from even before I came to Berkeley) were likely to kick me out the second I started deviating from their party line. Fortunately, I discovered the Reformed Druids of North America shortly after being purged from LaVey’s Church, and those tree-hugging Zen anarchists were just what the Goddess ordered. I’ve been a Druid and a Pagan ever since.

I’m still amused more than angered by the cyclical attacks against me in the Pagan press and now on the Net. I’m not sure that my foolishness as a teenager is particularly relevant to my present character, opinions and activities, any more than the foolishness of many other famous Pagans during their adolescence. Shall we all investigate what Starhawk, Selena Fox, Ray Buckland, Oberon and Morning Glory Zell were doing when they were seventeen? For that matter, what were LaVey, Aquino, and Flowers/Thorsson doing during their teenaged years? (Pagan computer hackers take note, this could be an entertaining research project.)

I’m perfectly happy now, as I was then, to admit that I was stupid to get involved with LaVey and his Church, and even more stupid to reveal my precocious knowledge of the occult and to advise members of the group behind the guru’s back.

Yet any magically- or mystically-oriented person must be willing to accept that if they experiment or engage in adventures, they are liable to be made a fool of, be ripped-off or have their reputation smeared by those who belong to or sympathize with the Power Elite. I was curious about LaVey and his group and let them recruit me. I find it difficult to be sorry, although LaVey expected me to be, that no new members were brought into the ranks by my efforts — after all, my chief aim had been to torment and fight evangelists and fascists, not to help them.

I said back in 1974 that people desperate to smear me would inevitably bring up those months with LaVey, for lack of anything better to use, and that prophesy has come true several times. The (re-)publishing of The Enemies of our Enemies, however, brings them out of the woodwork every time. Michael Aquino, the neo-nazi head of the Temple of Set, has been especially active in spreading carefully crafted lies (he’s a career military intelligence officer, after all) about my time with LaVey. His professionally written disinformation is precisely targeted to make feminists, civil libertarians and Neopagans disgusted with me, especially if they are unfamiliar with propaganda techniques. Various other Satanic crackpots, some of whom were denouncing me many years ago, join in with equally ludicrous accusations and sophomoric insults.

The primary claim these folks are making (other than the traditional one most my critics use: “Isaac is a terrible person, don’t listen to him”) is that every one of my opinions about past and current Satanism has supposedly been warped by my “bitter experience” with the Church of Satan when I was seventeen. To this very day, I am supposed to be horribly ashamed of having been purged by them, and using any excuse to attack these innocent philosophers. All of which ignores some glaringly obvious facts.

(1) I’ve been kicked out of lots of occult groups over the years. I haven’t spent much of my time denouncing entire theological movements related to them, because most of them weren’t very representative. Anton, however, along with Montague Summers and Adolph Hitler, was a seminal figure in the modern Satanic movement, as even his enemies and competitors (such as Aquino) cheerfully admit. So LaVey provides one excellent example of just how shallow, patriarchal and fraudulent Satanism is.

(2) As I’ve said before, you can’t be in the occult community for six months, let alone thirty years, without meeting a wide spectrum of Satanists, Setians, Luciferians, Gnostic Dualists, Chthulians, and other proud upholders of the so-called “Left Hand Path.” I’ve met scores of Satanists, “black magicians” and other idiots trying hard to impress me with how philosophical, evil, and/or dangerous they were. After a while, the shallowness of their thinking and the repetitiveness of their dysfunctional personalities becomes stunning in its cliche-ridden banality.

(3) I’m a professional occultist and a scholar of minority belief systems. I’ve read plenty of Satanic/Setian literature and found none of it plausible. I’ve studied the historical record of how the Roman Catholic Church invented modern Satanism. I’ve read the work of genuine authorities and found their academic analyses far more convincing than the self-serving clap-trap produced by folks trying to make big bucks out of conning the rubes.

My knowledge of Setanists and Setanism is observational, historical, philosophical, and extensive. Thus, my comments in “The Enemies of Our Enemies” that Satanists and their ilk tend to be “fascists, jerks and/or psychopaths” who don’t care a fig for anyone’s civil liberties except their own, is accurate, historically sound, and rather mild.

Anyone who bothers to read the trash that LaVey writes (or rather that he puts his name on — he bragged to me about how he had gotten various members of the Church to write the different chapters of his first two books for him) will notice certain familiar attitudes permeating the contents. His version of Satanism, like the Christian mythology it is a part of, is racist and sexist. His right wing nonsense is part and parcel of the patriarchal worldview that Goddess worshippers and Neopagans abhor. If Adolf Hitler had decided to publicize his occult beliefs, they would have wound up sounding much like LaVey’s (or Michael Aquino’s) writings — though with dashes of libertarianism thrown in to make it sound oriented towards individuals.

The “philosophy of Satanism” is deliberately designed to appeal to the KKK or American Nazi Party type of mind: all those ignorant embittered failures who are convinced that “there’s a conspiracy” to keep them from their rightful places as rulers of the world. Even the Satanists who consider themselves “pre-Christian Gnostic Dualists” still accept the same patriarchal worldview that lies(!) behind Christianity, dividing the universe into warring armies of Good and Evil.

Members of the Neopagan community have some fairly simple choices about how to react to disinformation campaigns against me:

They can read my writings on the topics of Satanism/Setianism, Neopaganism and civil liberties, and analyze my arguments to see if they make sense regardless of any biases I might or might not have.

They can decide that a man who has spent his entire adult life as a priest of the Earth Mother may be a more reliable source of information than people who glorify the Christian “Father of Lies,” and reject poison pen letters/newsgroup posts as self-serving Setanic propaganda.

They can decide to believe the worst possible stories about me because I’m a pompous, cantankerous grouch and they would like to see me taken down a peg, regardless of whether the tales are true.

They can choose to ignore the whole controversy as requiring too much mental effort to bother with.

These last two choices may or may not lead to

5. cozying up to the Setanists, joining with them in legal and public relations work, helping to improve their public image and confirming mainstream fears that Satanists and Pagans really are the same after all — thus playing directly into the hands of the people who would like to imprison and/or kill us.

No matter what decisions the members of the community may make, I hope that they will respond in writing to the various Neopagan publications, newsgroups, and chatrooms in which the Setanists usually dominate this discussion. Defending or attacking Isaac Bonewits isn’t anywhere near as important as creating a consensus among Pagans as to what relations — if any — we should have with Satanists and other fundamentalist Christians. That requires strong Pagan positions to be articulated, Pagan arguments to be carefully scrutinized in the light of Pagan polytheology, and Pagan hearts to be looked deeply into.

We don’t let Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell dominate our internal community debates. We shouldn’t let other Christian outsiders do so either.

The [preceding] was first published in 1975 c.e. in response to a number of vitriolic attacks against me by various Satanists. In 1992, I [Isaac Bonewits] was once again the target of a Satanic poison pen campaign, caused by the publishing of my essay The Enemies of Our Enemies (which should be read in conjunction with this). In 1996, I decided to update this essay and to make it available once again to the Neopagan community. Now, it’s 2001, we’re on the Net, and I continue to get nasty mail from Satanists/Setanists, only now it’s obscene email!

By the way, for those who never caught the reference, this essay’s title was a take-off on a famous essay by Israel Regardie, called “My Rosicrucian Adventure.”

[pagansquare]

Everyone Wants to be a Radical

When Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in the late 60s, writer and Druid Isaac Bonewits (1949-2010) couldn't wait to see his FBI file. What would it say?

Read more...

[woolandcoffee]

For someone who had a lot of early pagan experiences with Church of All Worlds, it's kind of surprising that I'm only just now reading "Creating Circles & Ceremonies."

[spiral-nature]

Magical Power for Beginners, by Deborah Lipp 

Magical Power For Beginners: How to Raise & Send Energy for Spells That Work, by Deborah Lipp Llewellyn Publications, 9780738751986, 336 pp. (incl. appendices), 2017 This is a really useful resource for anyone wanting to learn more about doing magick — for pretty much any occultist of any tradition. In Magical Power For Beginners, Deborah Lipp has created a wonderfully versatile and comprehensive…

[pagansubmorine]

Oh, Brigid, our heart, oh Brightest Queen, Cast Your blessings unto us. We are Your children, and You are our Mother, So harken unto us. You are the cauldron, now in our grove; Wise Woman, inspire us. Oh, Fire of love, oh, Fire of life, Please, Brigid, come to us!

[carolinescontentment]

God(dess) in Witchcraft: Meditation of an Agnostic Witch

God(dess) in Witchcraft: Meditation of an Agnostic Witch

After a long day of stress at work, stress with friends, and my favorite spin class instructor being replaced by a substitute for the night (the greatest tragedy!); I found myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually drained. Of course, my only cure to such an ailment is a nice long meditation. While the day brought me a world of challenges, I am able to close it with gratitude for…

[minnesotadruids]

FAQ: What’s the Difference Between “Reformed Druidism” and “New Reformed Druidism?”

There are two main branches of Reformed Druidism

RDNA: The Reformed Druids of North America was founded in 1963 to function like an open-source spirituality. The rituals and language in the RDNA are symbolic and are not necessarily meant to be interpreted literally, but you can if you want to. This way, participants interpret things in ways that are meaningful to them. 

It’s more of a philosophy (with rituals and rites of passage) that have appealed to people of numerous existing beliefs including Liberal Christianity, Judaism, Sufi Mysticism, Buddhism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Deism, also Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Soft Polytheists, Agnostics, and more. The list is huge. The RDNA is the oldest form of Neo-Druidry, but isn’t necessarily Neo-Pagan. 

NRDNA: The New Reformed Druids of North America gradually formed from 1974-1976 appearing to lean more Neopagan. They borrowed a few eclectic ideas from other pagan groups. They are still RDNA; they kept the Two Basic Tenets of Belief, they kept the same organizational hierarchy, they kept the ordination lineage to the RDNA’s founder David Fisher, the clergy retained voting rights on the RDNA Council, and they translated a few rituals into Irish Gaelic.

The NRDNA was Isaac Bonewits’ first attempt at creating a worldwide pagan church. When he became a Reformed Druid priest, Isaac wanted to push legislation for the RDNA to declare itself an “Eclectic Reconstructionist Neopagan Priestcraft.” Almost all the non-pagans in the Council vehemently disagreed, and a lengthy debate ensued. He created the NRDNA, but it is still legislatively tied to the RDNA, so he created another offshoot.

Schism! (Bonus Content)

When Isaac created the NRDNA, he was also developing the SDNA: The Schismatic Druids of North America. In this offshoot, Isaac kept the customs and rituals of the RDNA & NRDNA, but detached from the RDNA Council entirely, permitting him to pass any legislation he wanted. He created new bylaws for Groves to report to the SDNA “Mother Grove” (titled Twin Cities Grove) in Minneapolis. Above all, anyone who desired to become SDNA clergy had to declare themselves neopagans or he wouldn’t ordain them. All SDNA clergy still required an ordination lineage back to David Fisher of the RDNA. The small handful of SDNA Groves fell apart and dissolved by the early 1980s. Isaac took inspiration from the SDNA and re-emerged with ADF in 1983 which is in fact a growing global neopagan church, and has zero formal connection to the RDNA.

There are currently no active SDNA Groves or Protogroves, which means whoever creates the next one gets to be the new SDNA Mother Grove, with all due authority. You would just need to find an RDNA or NRDNA clergy to ordain you.

Related post: How Do I start a Reformed Druid Grove or Protogrove?

Related post: Is There a Druid Grove in My Area?