The Cursing Ape Sunday, Sep 6 2009

Four-letter monosyllables replace high invective. "We ARE apes, after all".

We were talking last night in the ol’ embie about the very old saying that Aristasia in Telluria is one long conversation and how the founding of a Lay College has been a natural continuation of that – for a Lay College is a place of discourse and learning, not directed to an end, like the Graduating Colleges, but continuing always as a way of life.

And we spoke of how our conversation was a feminine form of education – for masculine conversation is often about “winning” or “who is right”, while feminine conversation is a search for truth within an agreed world of thamë – a Unanimous Society, to borrow a phrase from Ananda Coomaraswamy.

And one of the things I have always loved about this kind of academic discussion (academic in the sense of the groves of trees [academe] where the pupils of Sappho or Sai Hermya sat in discourse) is that the teacher often learns as much as the pupil (and of course in informal discussion “teacher” and “pupil” may change places instantly), for by examining our subjects of discussion carefully and responding to the questions of our intelligent and thoughtful academiciennes, we refine our thoughts and oft-times learn things we did not know we knew.

Such a moment occurred last night when we were talking about thamë, morality and cursing. The point was made that the Christian concentration on morality and sin can actually be corrosive. Many serious Christians will, for, example, use filthy language in the belief that they are not committing any sin in doing so. Some of these would agree that to offend anyone with their cussing would be sinful, and will reserve it for like-minded “liberated” company. But they do not believe – and even those who are offended do not believe – that dirty words are sinful in themselves.

And, by the narrow Christian definition of sin, they are not. That is why this morality-morality is so dangerously inadequate.

Christians of an earlier generation avoided cuss-words because they did not take the barrack-room-lawyer attitude that “it isn’t actually sin so I can do it”. They understood that impropriety and sin are close cousins – an attitude that is dismissed as “illogical” by the post-Eclipse mind.

And, indeed, it is illogical – because earlier generations of Christians, no less than their more recent counterparts, had lost the doctrine of thamë.

A good analogy would be if the current world had forgotten the germ theory of disease. Surgeons would still go on washing their hands just because “it is better to be clean”. Until a generation of post-modern critics started saying “why are you washing your hands – there is no logical reason for it”. And the surgeons would have to agree, and many would stop washing their hands.

Many also would cling sentimentally to the old, illogical discipline of rigorously washing their hands like the outmoded ritualists they are, but slowly a generation of surgeons would arise among whom hand-washing was seen as the antiquated superstition it clearly is (at least for those who no longer know the germ-theory of disease).

In our case, the germ-theory of disease is the law of thamë. The knowledge that harmony is fundamentally important and that to invoke ordure or coarse sexuality is literally dirty, and as disease-bearing to the soul as physical filth is to the body.

We also spoke of the decline of invective. If I were really angry and wished to state my anger, I should indulge myself in high rhetoric, excoriating the object of my anger. I flatter myself that I have a reasonable vocabulary and a fair-to-middling knack with words. I think I could come up with some pretty scathing diatribes should the need arise.

But for most educated people in the Pit, in moments of extreme anger, their highest invective consists of a few schoolyard monosyllables, endlessly repeated and strung together with semi-articulate prose.

Our reaction to it is not one of shock, but of contempt. That an educated person should be reduced by temper to the mental level of a drug-addled vagrant is simply laughable. “Rhetoric” of this kind is not just offensive, but weak. Having established that they can pronounce the same dirty words that make pre-teens giggle, they have exhausted their repertoire.

Now this is a new thing. In the past anger moved educated people to rhetoric, not to semi-literate monosyllables. What has changed? A friend last night suggested that it was laziness, and on thinking about this suggestion carefully, and feeling it, as it were, I feel sure this is not the main reason.

The main reason, I feel quite sure, is Darwinism. At first this may seem an odd suggestion, but let us consider it for a moment. Miss Trent, in The Feminine Universe documents the huge change that came about in Tellurian culture in the late 19th century, leading Prof. C.S.Lewis to declare (in his inaugural lecture as professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge) that the author of Beowulf has more in common with Jane Austen than we have. A huge watershed took place at the end of the 19th century. And Miss Trent shows that the reason for it was the change in the underlying mythos of the western world from real myths, that convey metaphysical truth, to the pseudo-mythos of evolutionism.

Now I am not going to go into all the ramifications of that myth. Its effect on bad language is one tiny part of a vast change. But it is there and it is obvious.

In the past an angry person would seek to express her anger in terms that were most in keeping with what she conceived herself to be – an intelligent being, ultimately a reflection of the Divine. High rhetoric was her natural mode for expressing passion.

What does the modern person think of high rhetoric? That it is “artificial”.

Why – in the end – will she not use it in anger? Because she feels her hearers will dismiss her anger as “phony”.

The “real” and “natural” way to express anger is in inarticulate shouts, in monosyllabic grunts that refer to irrelevant animal functions.

Why? Because ultimately, we are animals. Any attempt to bring the refinements of civilization to our anger just prove that is not “real anger” because in extremis we should be reduced to our animal base.

That is why pre-Darwin anger was expressed in high rhetoric and post-Darwin anger in monkey monosyllables.
___

See also: The Animal Thesis

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The Philosophy of Dress Tuesday, Sep 1 2009

Insights often come in a flash. What I mean by that is that a very important idea may often be conveyed to one in an instant, as a sudden vision or apprehension of the true nature of things. I suspect that happens to all of us. The difficult part is following up that insight: grasping it between one’s teeth and methodically shaking out the meaning of it. This activity is what is called philosophy. At least it is the feminine and spiritual approach to philosophy: taking the insights or intuitions that are granted to us and diligently teasing out their full meaning.

Such an insight came to me yesterday. There has always been a lot of philosophical work and discussion in Aristasia on the subject of dress and its real meaning, : on why bongos dress as they do, what it signifies about their culture and how it helps to create the spiritual and psychological conditions that are the Pit. Yesterday I accompanied my friend to the post office and I was watching a group of bongos shuffling about in their jeans, soft, floppy clothes and bits of tracksuit, and suddenly an insight came to me. At first it seemed like a very strange one.

“These people are naked!” I suddenly realised. It seemed like an odd thought, because obviously they were wearing clothes. Admittedly that is giving the word “clothes” an exceptionally broad definition, but they were undeniably wearing something. Now of course this insight was not unaware of that. It was saying “These are not clothed people. They are naked bodies with some rags thrown over them. They are essentially naked. And they are not naked like a classical nude in a painting. They are naked in the way that cats and dogs and monkeys are naked.”

I knew what I was seeing was true, but it was hard to make rational sense of it. After all, to say a clothed person is a naked person with clothes on is surely a tautology. Cannot one say that of any clothed person from the 1930s or from ancient Greece? No, this insight was saying. Not in the same way. Those people were authentically dressed these people in front of me were not. They were just naked bodies with odd bits of cloth thrown over them. The comparison that had been in my mind when I first saw them was a reference in a Quirinelle book to “the hour at which ladies like to dress for cocktails”. Such ladies dressed; these people did not dress. They just put things onto what they still regarded as mere bodies in the animal sense: essentially naked.

Why was that the case? I asked myself. Was it something to do with their loose and casual attitudes to what they call “sex”? Or was that too simple an answer?

I tried to explain the answer to a brunette friend, partly because having to explain an idea often forces it to be clarified. We started to analyse it. What was the fundamental difference between dressed people — whether in the 1950s at the cocktail hour, or at any other hour, or in the eighteenth century, or in Mandarin China, or in a tribal society — from these “naked apes” with clothes on?

Suddenly it began to make sense. By going back to more ancient societies we were taking the thing back to its roots. We were applying the principles of Essentialist thought. If one looks at the earlier societies, it is clear that dress is a ritual thing. In tribes, adornment may represent what are called “totem animals” (actually the animal embodiments of Janyati or Archetypes), they also represent status within the order of the tribe, which is conceived as a microcosm of the order of the cosmos. The tasselled fringes worn by some Red Indian tribes represent the sun’s rays, with all the metaphysical significance of solarity. Dress in old China was carefully regulated by ritual considerations and those of social function, which — as everywhere else, including the Mediaeval West — was seen not only as reflecting, but as being organically related to the functioning of the cosmos itself.

By the time we get to the Renaissance West, these ritual considerations are waning. We are moving from a Sattwic to a Rajasic society. But as is the case in every aspect of Rajasic society, it continues to reflect, in its outward-directed forms, the upward-directed prototypes of it Sattwic roots. They are increasingly unaware of the spiritual and metaphysical significance of their dress — which is now vestigial — but the thread is still not broken. Even in the 1950s, on the very verge of the Eclipse, women dress for cocktails, men go to business carefully attired with bowler hats and furled umbrellas. Postmen, policemen, cinema usherettes and dozens of other functionaries (and I use this term in the positive and vestigially-Sattwic sense of “performers of functions within the Great Order”) are meticulously uniformed. Evening dress is worn for theatre, opera and dining at good restaurants and hotels, but even at the local cinema and palais de dance (vulgarly termed “the pally”) people are conscious of “going out” and dress accordingly.

What we are saying is that all these people are dressed in the same sense that a tribal dancer, a Chinese mandarin or a mediaeval courtier is dressed. The thread is diminished but as yet unbroken. With the eclipse and the onset of a Tamasic society, the thread, in dress as in most other things, is broken. People are no longer dressed in the true sense of the word. In a Sattwic society, as Dr Coomaraswamy often said, “body and soul are served together”. The objects of craft, whether a drinking-bowl or a chariot, have both functional and metaphysical significance. In a Rajasic society, the ritual (or intellectual) significance of the products of human art and craft is increasingly forgotten; but there is still a sense of rightness that links them back to their Sattwic origins. And of all artefacts, clothes are the closest to us — both literally and figuratively.

If we look at the typical bongo clothes they are, in their own words designed to be “casual” and to reject the element of form (that is why they are called informal). In theory their design is for comfort and convenience and many bongos do choose their dress for those reasons (or at least imagine that they do). In this respect, bongo clothes are precisely “animal” in nature because they are designed to perform the same functions as a non-human creature’s fur or feathers — simply to keep her warm and be as convenient as possible in all ways.

Now as soon as one says this, it is clear that even the term “animal” requires some qualification. The function of bongo clothes does not correspond to the real function of animal skin. It corresponds to the notion of animal skin held by the post-Darwinian mind. The notion that animals are simply “functional units designed* for survival” and that the best functional units are the ones that survive. This is not what tradition teaches us about animals. From tradition we learn what every traditional people knows: that animals embody particular qualities. Thus their fur or feathers, like human artefacts, have both a functional and a symbolic aspect. So when we said at the beginning that bongo dress resembles the nakedness of dogs, cats or monkeys, we were, in fact taking an unfairly low view of dogs, cats and monkeys. They are in fact more dressed in the true meaning of the term, than the bongo wearing what are termed Pit-pyjamas. Their fur is not merely functional. It is part of the expression of the fundamental reality that lies behind dog-ness or cat-ness, while the Eclipse has precisely revolted against the expression of fundamental realities through outward appearance.

This is yet another illustration of the dictum that maid, as the Axial creature of this world, has the power to rise above the earthly state, or to fall below it. Sattwic humanity seeks to express realities that transcend the worldly plane. Animals cannot do this. Rajasic humanity reflects the earthly plane in all its beauty and variety, and, of course the earthly plane is the reflection of the heavenly. This is what animal also do, on a very different level. Tamasic humanity turns away from the earthly plane in the downward direction. Animals cannot do this either. They cannot desert their thamë, their natural worldly function, either by transcending it or by falling below it. In this respect, Tamasic humanity is below the animal level.

So how does Tamasic humanity fall below the animal level in its dress? In the first place by adopting a dress that is (in theory at least) solely functional and stripped of all symbolic depth no animal can do this. Secondly bongo dress often finds ways to fall below even this level: jeans are bought deliberately faded and torn, for example, expressing the desire not for simple functionality but for chaos and dissolution. Clothes are worn with jokes or commercial slogans spelled out across their fronts, not merely serving the functions of comfort and warmth, but also insulting the dignity of the wearer and turning her into something trivial and foolish. Clothes are often unnecessarily baggy and floppy, to a point where they must surely become cumbersome and inconvenient. In the quest for symbolic looseness and degeneration, the actual function of “comfort and convenience is left behind. I am sure the reader can supply many examples of her own, some of which we may be unaware of.

So is it true to say that nobody in the Pit is dressed? No. Businessmen, for example, are still dressed to express their function in a manner that is vestigially Rajasic. But note that this is under attack with “dressing down days”, “informal offices” etc. The Pit has an inbuilt instinct to attack everything that is vestigially Rajasic, and we can expect to see the business suit coming under increasing attack**. It is common for bongos to refer to business people disparagingly as “suits”.

The use of the term “suits” is deeply significant. The implication is that the person wearing a suit has simply become the suit. He is no longer a person, just a “suit”. What is the reason for this perception? It is rooted in the Pit’s hatred of Archetypes and of the concept of conforming to what it calls a “stereotype”. It fears that in adopting the dress suitable to a function, the individual will be somehow swallowed up by the function and cease to exist. It has often been pointed out that the bongo in her loose, floppy clothes or her jeans and T-shirt is just as conformist as the most rigidly-uniformed functionary. Her style of dress is dictated from outside and is necessary for social acceptance within particular bongo groups. The illusory “individualism” she has been taught to value is as stereotyped and mass-produced as any other form of conformity. When bongos dress differently from other bongos it is almost always in conformity with some particular group or sub-set within the Pit, often associated with some form of commercially-produced music.

Some might, therefore, be tempted to say that bongo “casual” dress is the exact equivalent of uniforms, suits or real-world fashions — both being the prescribed dress of a particular group or culture. However this is not actually the case. While both are equally prescribed, one is the dress of form, and the other is the dress of anti-form: and while anti-form is just as much a conformity as form, it does not thereby become a form. The “informal” or a-formal bongo is very consciously not “dressed” in the sense that a person from the real world is dressed. She often fears dress as something that might rob her of the looseness she mistakes for “freedom”. Being dressed is a form of mask, and any mask might take away one’s “real self”.

The problem is that this “real self” is illusory, as one can see by looking at any group of bongo type-3s. How different are they from each other in their attitudes, manners, beliefs or behaviour? Among smartly dressed real people one finds far more variety of personality, far more distinctness. By rejecting form, one becomes a rootless, unfixed creature that can be blown about by every passing wind of propaganda, every new slogan or catch-phrase, every new fad or pseudo-morality. One becomes the perfect, rootless, manipulable proletarian.

NOTES

* Even the word “designed” is only used figuratively, since the theory asks us to believe that there is no intelligent “design” and that a dog evolved from a protozoon by a series of survival-related “accidents”. Actually many biologists now deny this rather extraordinary notion; but we are concerned here with the popular view of animals as derived from what the average person imagines evolutionism to be saying: for it is this that has shaped the current belief as to what an animal is.

** It is possible however, that even some elements in the Pit are aware that a degree of Rajasic culture and formality needs to be retained if bongo administration is to remain functional, which may account for the almost anachronistic survival of the business suit to the present time. Curiously, what is being recognised here is that the “functionalist” view of dress leads, in practice, to dysfunctional behaviour.

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Tea and Universal Sympathy Monday, Aug 24 2009

It has been suggested that there is a particular similarity between Aristasian culture in general (and Novarian culture in particular) and the traditional culture of Japan. Sushuri-chei offers some thoughts on this connexion based on the “structural assumptions” of the Japanese language.

Let us take a very simple example, and you will see that the same principle applies to a lot of japanese constructions.

I like tea = Watashi wa ocha ga suki desu

The two sentences are equivalent, but the Japanese, if I understand correctly, actually means “In relation to me, tea takes the action of being liked”.

Now this is a very important difference. The Western form places the emphasis on the personal human ego as the active entity.

According to West-Telluri philosophy, this is simply correct. To like something is an “action” taken by the liker, not by the thing liked.

Most Modern Japanese would presumably, if asked, take this view too, being steeped in the modern Western rationalist perspective. But their language says something else, and I suspect their real thinking contains elements of both perspectives.

So what are the perspectives, and how far are they “Eastern” or “Western” in an absolute sense?

Without getting too deeply into the “background theory”, let me explain briefly that modern West-Telluria’s rationalist perspective is not “the Western outlook” but a “heresy” base on the legitimate Western outlook.

So in many respects traditional West-Telluria, even as late as the Middle Ages, thinks more like the Tellurian East than does modern Western Telluria.

In Aristasia there was no Rationalist Heresy, but the legitimate characteristics of the West, were still, in subtler ways, “carried too far” in the modern era: which is why Westrenne Aristasians tend to regard Estrennes as their spiritual superiors.

(This is almost the exact opposite of the “inferiority complex” that the Tellurian East feels in relation to the Tellurian West and the corresponding “superiority complex” of the Tellurian West).

Getting back to our tea:

The Western formulation puts maid at the centre. Maid is the “subject”, tea is the “object”. It is egoic. In terms of religion, it develops into the will-centred faith of Christianity, with an emphasis on sin (that is, faults of the individual and collective will). This perspective also exists in Aristasia, particularly in the West.

See this page on the Filianic understanding of “original sin” and its differences and similarities with the Christian concept.

When it is taken to excess this outlook leads to the cultural “malpractice” of individualism (which, in the late Iron Age has happened in both Westrenne Aristasia and Telluria) and when taken even further leads to the outright heresies of rationalism and humanism (as has happened in West Telluria, but not Westrenne Aristasia)

The Japanese formulation – that tea does the action of being liked in relation to a particular person – expresses a quite different perspective, and one that is much closer to the Novarian (and generally Estrenne) outlook. It is a view that modern West Tellurians would be likely to categorize – rather misleadingly – as “animist”.

According to this view maid is not the sole experiencing center. The quality of “amity” exists not only in maid but in the tea itself – indeed more importantly in the tea.

Tea is one of the “ten thousand things” of cosmic manifestation that each express (insofar as they approach perfection) small aspects of the Divine Totality.

Between those aspects of the Divine Whole, and the individual being that constitutes “oneself” (which is really another aspect of the Divine Whole, but in some senses more separated from Her – by her sin or her ignorance, depending on perspective – and in other senses closer to Her, being made in Her image) – between those two aspects of the Divine whole exists an Affinity.

That Affinity is seen in the West from the egoic perspective and in the East from the perspective of the Totality of which an external object may act as the representative.

That is the fundamental reason for the two ways of expressing the liking of tea. And of course similar considerations will apply with many other linguistic formulae.

I have expressed all this in very Deanic terms, of course, because I am a Deanist. But the second of these two outlooks is exactly that of much of the Aristasian East – and in Novaria tends to be that tempered with a certain amount of the Westrenne outlook.

Thus it is very close – in broadly analogous terms, not in cultural specifics, and of course excluding the various errors induced by the adoption of West-Tellurian rationalism – to the position of modern Japan.

_____

Note:

I was talking to Minami-chei about this rather old discussion and oddly enough I found an interesting sidelight on it the next day. Minami-chei said that the Korean expression for liking tea (or anything else) was exactly equivalent to the japanese, but that she (as a mother-tongue Korean speaker) had never thought of its literal meaning as I have portrayed it (although she agreed that this is the literal meaning).

Now I would not expect the literal meaning to be consciously uppermost in the mind of a modern-educated person from Japan or Korea, but I do suggest that it is in the deep structures of the traditional thought of Japanese and Koreans. I was interested, therefore, to read this in The Japanese Today by Professor Edwin Reischauer:

The word “individualism” (kojin shuji) itself has always been of ill repute in Japan. It suggests to the Japanese selfishness rather than personal responsibility… For a while students used the term “subjectivity” (shutaisei) in the sense of one’s being the active subject rather than the passive object of one’s life.

Now this is surely very interesting. The very grammatical term is used. The whole point of our tea sentence is that the tea is the active subject, taking the action of being-liked. And it is from this precise structure of life that the Westernising student wishes to escape. Japanese tends to relieve the individual of the burden of subjectivity, while Western languages – like the cultures – stress it as a positive value.

As a Novarian I am often told that I am, by West Tellurian standards “unnaturally passive”. I tend to wait to be led, although when I am sure of a principle I can be forceful and even unbending.

Some of this may be my age and my own nature, but I would say that Aristasians – and particularly Novarians tend to be “passive” in the sense of looking for the “right” thing to do and expecting a consensus of some sort. It doesn’t mean we are followers rather than leaders (we couldn’t all be could we?) but rather that in our natural habitat we live by a Norm, or thamë both in society as a whole and then reflectively in any group within it. There tends to be a “way things are done” rather than a “way I do things”.

One is either following that way or administering it – and if one is administering it one is still following it. Being a “passive subject” sounds negative from the Western – or the Westernised – Tellurian point of view. From a Novarian perspective it is reassuring. It is the surety of following the right way rather than having to invent a way for oneself that will probably be wrong. Ultimately, it is the sense of acting in harmony with the universe and its Creatrix rather than against it. Of treading the steps of the Cosmic Dance laid down from eternity rather than ambling in one’s own random fashion.

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Devil’s Advocate – Hindus, Christians, Mormons and Aristasians Saturday, Aug 15 2009

Miss Sakura begins by quoting a lengthy exchange:

I should like to set the scene by quoting a recent correspondence called “The Aristasian-Hindu Connection” on the “ask Miss Iris” pages:

Dear readers: Related to the previously published question (“AMI: Why stay in church?”) I am also bringing up yet another of the most commonly heard questions.

Dear Miss Iris: Often you mention or reference materials written by the so-called “Aristasian” sect when you discuss certain spiritual or theological matters. I am at loss of words for this. When I visited one of the “Aristasian” websites I saw many pictures of Hindu goddesses and uses of Hindu or Sanskrit words everywhere. Are you attempting to introduce Hindu polytheist/pantheist beliefs into Christianity? What you are doing is abhorrent, and borders on cultic. — Rachel, Washougal, Washington.

Dear Miss Rachel: I do not think the Aristasians are pleased by your characterization of them as a Hindu “cult.” Neither is your understanding of Hinduism as a polytheism correct. I would like to refer to an Aristasian religion FAQ page, which states as thus:

Q: Aristasians in Telluria use images of Dea from Tellurian sources, such as Hindu Devis or even the Virgin Mary. Why is this?

Most simply, because we cannot import images from Aristasia Pura! But actually there is more to it than that. Such images — particularly the Hindu ones — go back in an unbroken line to the original worship of the Mother as Absolute Deity. In Christianity, only the image remains (but the image is still very faithful) while the worship of Dea has been “theologised” out of existence. In Hinduism, while patriarchal myths have been woven about, say Sri Lakshmi, there are many within the tradition who still worship Her as Supreme Deity. Thus these are images in which the direct spiritual influence is still living (the same might be said about Kwan Yin bodhisattva, or the Tibetan Tara). We could use reproductions of more ancient images from prehistoric matriarchal times, and while this is not forbidden, it is generally considered that it is better to use images that are still connected by a living thread to the earliest tradition.

This having said, would I recommend the use of Hindu religious imagery or language in support of a feminine traditionalist religion? Not within the context of the contemporary North America. It is important to note that what you call the “Aristasian sect” is largely a British phenomenon, and unlike Americans, there is a healthy respect for Indian culture there thanks to Britain’s colonial past in India and also because of the large immigrant population there from India. This contrasts with our situation here in North America, in which anything that looks, sounds or smells Hindu are products of fringe cults or Westernized “new age” movements. Fortunately, America still remains to be the most religious nation on earth outside the Islamic theocracies, and religion plays an important role in our culture and social values. My opinion, therefore, is instead of looking elsewhere for a foreign religious tradition why not make the best of the heritage we already have in America, specifically Christianity (and to much extent, Judaism). This is why, unlike Aristasians, I refrain from borrowing much from Hinduism (I have no entitlement to exploit a religious tradition I know little about); instead you see me discussing in terms of Christian theology and hagiography.

This is another topic that may be of interest to those who are interested in Aristasian path (without any attempt at dissuading or discouraging anyone from so doing). In her comment to “Why stay in church,” Miss Sushuri stated:

“{i}have absolutely no sympathy or kindred-feeling with patriarchal traditions whatever. I can accept that they are right within their own “economy”. I can accept that you are more fortunate and perhaps more “valid” than I in being able to come to terms with them… I have not an atom of warmth toward patriarchal tradition in general and have least warmth of all toward the Abrahamic traditions. While I fully accept the quotation from Guénon about the necessity of Christianity for Western Telluria, I have no interest in, or love for, Western Telluria, and on a purely personal level, do not care whether it stands or falls. I certainly do not feel myself to be a part of it or of any patriarchal tradition… Equally I feel no attraction whatever to any form of “feminist” pseudo-cultus, all of which are not only part of the Western patriarchal culture but represent it in its final degeneracy. They have all the faults of West-Tellurian patriarchy with none of its virtues.”

Yet, it is impossible to fully liberate oneself from the “Tellurian traditions,” patriarchal or otherwise. Unfortunately even Hindu in present form is a highly patriarchal faith (think of blatant misogyny in India, in which women are treated as mere chattels), and there really is no existent “living tradition” that is entirely free of patriarchy. Much of Aristasian spirituality and practices today are indeed product of many streams of Tellurian traditions and traditionalists, and as much as one may hope that it is “straight from Aristasia Pura” as though they were brought to them by an extraterrestrial on a space ship, the reality is that there are heavy borrowing from Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on. This, of course, is not “wrong” — I believe that all traditions ultimately trace back to one single source, one single root, Tellurian or otherwise. But it would be dishonest to disclaim one’s connection to the Tellurian traditions.

In this spirit, I am not going to throw out the entire crate of apples just because a few — even the super-majority of it — apples are rotten and infested with patriarchal bugs. I would at least like to make my best effort at salvaging what is left of the Christian heritage, and (being an optimist) reform what is in my hands. I am in no way a radical reformer of Anabaptist or Puritan kind; I am more of a reformer along the line of John+ Wesley and ++Thomas Cranmer. To me, any meaningful reformation requires a preservation of continuity and precedence, or I would be inventing a new religion out of thin air and that would be meaningless.

- Miss Iris

Miss Sushuri said…

Rayati.

I think few comments need to be made here. As Miss Iris has said, Aristasia is not in any sense Hindu, neither is Aristasia (or Hinduism) polytheist or pantheist according to the Western understanding of those terms. It would be much truer to say that we are monotheists with a strong angelology. No orthodox tradition is polytheist in the sense of believing that there can be more than one Absolute, since this is a metaphysical and thealogical absurdity.

Miss Iris writes:

Yet, it is impossible to fully liberate oneself from the “Tellurian traditions,” patriarchal or otherwise. Unfortunately even Hindu in present form is a highly patriarchal faith (think of blatant misogyny in India, in which women are treated as mere chattels), and there really is no existent “living tradition” that is entirely free of patriarchy.

So many points are raised here! In the first place Aristasians have been the first to point out the patriarchal nature of the modern Hindu tradition. We see Hindu images of Dea as being images of the Universal, Primordial Mother God. We see (iconographically correct) Christian images of Our Lady Mary in the same way. The difference is that the Hindu images can come with a correct thealogical interpretation – that these are images of the One God. They can be doctrinally as well as iconographically sound, whereas (at least by the more usual understanding) Christian images cannot.

Christianity, while granting hyperdoulia to Our Lady Mary, denies Her latria because it denies that She is God. In this sense, Hinduism is capable of adopting a thealogically sound position (in Aristasian terms) whereas Christianity is not. This is to say nothing of the patriarchal nature of Hindu society. That is their affair. We are not Hindus.

Now Miss Iris says some rather strong words:

Much of Aristasian spirituality and practices today are indeed product of many streams of Tellurian traditions and traditionalists, and as much as one may hope that it is “straight from Aristasia Pura” as though they were brought to them by an extraterrestrial on a space ship, the reality is that there are heavy borrowing from Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on. This, of course, is not “wrong” — I believe that all traditions ultimately trace back to one single source, one single root, Tellurian or otherwise. But it would be dishonest to disclaim one’s connection to the Tellurian traditions.

Now a lot here depends upon what is meant by the term “connection”. Clearly Aristasian writers have used Hindu (and sometimes Christian and far-Eastern Tellurian) terms quite freely, and have used images from those traditions. We are not making any secret of that.

But what, exactly, is our “connection” supposed to be? In truth, there have been some efforts to forge a certain degree of spiritual “linking” between Tellurian images and “streams” and our faith. This was in pursuit of the practice of “pontification” – building bridges between our faith in Dea and its practice in Telluria, precisely so that we might have some spiritual “grounding” in Telluria.

In this sense, and in this sense only, it might be correct to speak of some form of “connection”, and we have certainly not tried to disclaim it. However we see “living tradition” solely as a conduit leading back to Our Mother God – we have no interest in the various patriarchal accretions which can only be obstacles between ourselves and Her.

Now if one wishes to see Aristasians purely as “Tellurian dissidents” that cannot be helped. It is a natural enough Outland view. But that is not how we see ourselves and it will give no clue as to why we are what we are and think as we do.

Our perspective is very much Aristasian. We are not interested in “reforming” Telluria as a whole or any Tellurian tradition. Our sole allegiance is to our Motherland and to Dea.

Any credence we give to patriarchal traditions is because they are remnants of Universal Truth, not because they are patriarchal. Their patriarchal nature is only an obstacle placed before their Truth. It is only because of their Universality that they can have any value as pontifications.

We are the first to admit that our approach is completely useless for anyone looking for Tellurian “reform”. We are not concerned with it and have no interest in it. Our aim is to love and serve Our Mother God within a feminine nation.

Miss Sakura then comments:

Well I don’t think my position is much of a secret. I am a Filyana and will die a Filyana.

But let’s play Devil’s Advocate for a minute. Princess Mushroom said it is good to play Devil’s Advocate because we can test our position against the hardest arguments.

So, you know, I think a lot about my religion and I understand about the Filianist Controversy (see the third sub-heading here) and how it came about because of a desire not to be “inventing a religion out of thin air”, as Miss Iris puts it.

I believe that discussion is well resolved. There is very much Tellurian precedent and continuing practice of the worship of Dea as Supreme, Absolute, Sole and Almighty God.

If people want to see the Daughter Mythos as “poems” that enhance that traditional devotion, no Filyana has a problem with that.

It is true that we are not in an established religious tradition. But we need to ask what is meant by a continuous tradition? The Tellurian West currently has a conception of the world so utterly different from any traditional view that we may wonder if their understanding of Christianity bears much relation to that of traditional Christians.

Miss Iris as a priest and sometime Bishop of a rather wayward-seeming branch of the Catholic and Apostolic Church might well see the continuity lying in the validity of the Sacraments. Now various questions might be raised by other Christians bout the validity of an Apostolic Succession so far from “Established” norms, and others may wish to question the validity of those “norms” themselves – having strayed so far from Tradition. By no means all would accept the validity of a female priesthood.

So already we are in a quandary about who is “making up their religion”.

But even if we ignore all this and place our faith in the Sacraments, where does that leave all our non-Sacramental Protestants? Are they making up their religion? Or are they guaranteed by the Bible – despite an interpretation of it that mediaeval Christians might scarcely recognize.

And our Mormon friends? Are they meaningless?

In their case I would be hard pressed not to say that much of their religion is not “made up”, but I certainly cannot discount their faith because of that, or believe that their God is no God (despite the fact that they do not see Her quite as I believe they should).

So do we have to accept any and everything that calls itself “religion”? I for one do not accept most “New Age” and “Pagan” constructions. But even there I cannot say that they are not approaching God somehow – however misguidedly. That is for Her to judge, not I.

Tests I would tend to apply are those of devotion, humility and purity (which much New Agism does not pass) and of authentic traditional understanding (which much modern Christianity – both “mainstream” [ie liberal] and fundamentalist – does not pass). Our Filyani faith does pass these tests. I am not saying others are “meaningless” if they don’t, but they seem like very important tests.

To take another approach – I saw a book by Marina Warner, called Alone of all Her Sex. This book is about Our Lady Mary as the Christians see Her. Honoured Miss Warner argues that the “deification” of Our Lady Mary only made things worse for women, because they were considered fallen and degraded and Mary was the only pure “woman”.

I don’t want to get into arguments about whether she is right or wrong. And that is the point. I don’t have to. It is not my concern as an Aristasian to get embroiled in all the pushing and pulling over faith and its effect on femini and the patriarchal nature of cultures that worship Dea and whether the half-worship of Dea in the West is even more patriarchal than man-god worship.

Am I being told that for the sake of the highly uncertain advantages conferred by a claimed continuity of patriarchal religion with its fundamental bases (bases, I might say, that if they are valid at all, are valid because they go back toour religion) – I am compelled to plunge back into the ugliness chaos of late Telluria?

Am I really being asked to allow myself to be dragged into the mess and cruelty of the patriarchal world – which I have otherwise rejected – for the sake of religion?

There are many people that want to drag me back to their grubby “reality” on a thousand different pretexts.

But to tell me that is what my Dea wants of me?

Never.

Sushuri Madonna wrote

Oh well said Sakura-chei!

I so appreciated this post and your last one about language and purity. You are so forthright and strong about our Faith, and I remember when you were a teensy new girl that used to ask me questions (pride).

I just wanted to explain that thing I said about not feeling warm toward Abrahamic religions, because I feel it might be misunderstood. It is true that I have no personal warmth and could not imagine following one. They seem very alien and somehow heavy with masculinity and materiality. I recently spent time in an art gallery showing pictures from several centuries of Christian history and I came away feeling almost weighted down by the huge accretion of beards, crucifixions and general heaviness. It felt like a black hole of super-gravity. It seemed to me like a (literal) carnival of masculinity and gross materiality.

But having said that I must state that I feel no hostility whatever toward the religion. I feel much more comfortable in the Southern States of America where there is a general atmosphere of faith than I ever did in the grey, brainless, irreligious emptiness of the Yeekay.

It is not my faith and I think even trying to make it mine would give me the bends. But I respect it in a way that I cannot ever respect the smirking stupidity of irreligion or the callow glibness of New Agery.

However high the fences that separate faiths, they are nothing compared to the oceans that separate us from the faithless.

To which Lady Aquila Responds

Honoured Miss Sakura. Your reference to Mormons raises a perfectly fascinating point with regard to the question of “fantasy” in religion.

Mormonism contains, in my view, considerable elements of fantasy – not in the sense that vulgar atheists attribute the term to anything supernatural, but in the sense of wild imaginings of a purely human nature. Good old-fashioned balderdash. Taradiddles.

I have met Christians who see no distinction between this and Islam (which they see as being equally fabricated by the Prophet) and atheists who see no distinction between this and Christianity.

But I think most of us can see that there is a distinction between revelations of the Christian and Islamic order and the mid-romantic fancies of Mr. Smith Jr.

The question is, how far, if at all, does the fantastical nature of the origins of this teaching invalidate the devout faith of millions?

The question has become clouded to some extent by the emergence of a profoundly anti-traditional “New Age” movement which has led sensible people to even greater caution in these matters.

But I feel – and I believe many others will feel with me – that the oddities of the LDS Church, great as they may be, do not invalidate the path to God trodden by its sincere members. I am no expert on the Church, but I do not believe it incorporates fundamental spiritual flaws, such as the egoism, humanism, and snippets of half-digested and misplaced “scientism” inherent in New Agery.

I certainly do not place Filianism on a level with Mormonism.It does certainly not incorporate flights of pure fantasy. Some people see it as a sort of “feminised Christianity”, but that is mostly because they are unfamiliar with the tradition of the Sacrificial Saviour in its pre-Christian and feminine forms.

A direct Tellurian line of heritage does not exist for Filianism, and its modern doctrinal formulation is quite recent (about thirty years old, as far as we can tell).

As Miss Sakura says, no one is obliged to accept Filianism as Revealed Truth: at its “weakest” we may take it as a “poetic support” to Déanism – the simple worship of Our Mother God.

Filianism is by no means universal in the Motherland, and we do not know how things will fall out in Aristasia-in-Telluria. What we have found is that Filianism seems to work in Telluria. It provides a firm, yet flexible, thealogical structure; an emotionally satisfying and doctrinally lucid approach to Our Mother God.

As non-literalists, unaffected by the rationalist revolution (which profoundly influences almost all West tellurian thinking and controversy about religion), we are less concerned with whether filianism is the Sole Truth than with whether it is an adequate and proper way of seeing that Truth which can never be exhausted by any mythos or formulation.

And if to some people that reduces to “oh it is just a pretty story then” – well, provided they truly believe in Dea, we don’t mind. The One Thing Needful is the belief and worship of Our Mother god, the Sole Absolute and Creatrix of earth and Heaven.

I believe in the daughter as my Saviour. I do not think She is a “pretty story” though I accept that there are other ways of seeing the same Truth, both Déanist and patriarchal, many of which do not specifically incorporate a Saviour (which is only to say that they formulate Her differently).

But taking the worst-case, devil’s-advocate scenario – that Filianism is pure fantasy – it is certainly no more fantasy than Mormonism and no less capable of being a haven and refuge for genuinely devout souls on their way home to Dea.

I don’t take that devil’s-advocate view at all. I think the love of the Saviour is Universal and despite our lack of continuous tradition, we are of Her congregation.

But it is worthwhile to consider that even if we are wrong, we are still calling upon the One Mother who has said:

“None shall call upon Me and be lost”.

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Irrational Rationalism Wednesday, Jul 9 2008

It is important to understand that rationalism is not itself rational. Rationalism cannot be derived from the reason. It is an arbitrary dogma. And yet it is upon this dogma that the outlook of the post 17th-century Western world has based itself.

There is an old story told by Sai Platina in Aristasia and also by the great Tellurian teacher Plato. It tells of people who lie chained in a cave so that they are always looking at the wall of the cave. On that wall they see shadows and they spend their lives watching those shadows. One day a maid breaks free from the cave and goes outside to see the real things that are casting shadows on the wall.

Now that cave is the material world, and the shadows are the material things we see about us. Every tradition teaches that the material things we see are the shadows or reflections of higher things. Everything on earth has an Archetype, which is its true and perfect Form, of which the material entity is only an imperfect shadow.

The world of shadows is also called the sensible world because the shadows are the material things that we perceive with our physical senses – we see and hear and touch them.

The real things seen by the maid who left the cave is called the intelligible world, because the Pure Forms, or Archetypes, are not seen with the physical eyes, but with the Single Eye of the Intellect. They are seen by great contemplatives and saints, and they are also told about in myths and sacred books.

Now suppose one of the people still chained in the cave said to the maid who had left the cave:

“You are lying, there is nothing outside this cave.”

“Why do you say that?” asks the maid who has left the cave.

“Because I have not seen it.” replies the rationalist.

That is precisely what the doctrine of rationalism consists of: the illogical and arrogant denial that anything exists outside the material world of the five senses. Has she any rational reason for denying what all tradition tells her to be true? She has not. She merely repeats: “I have not seen it, so it does not exist.”

That is why rationalism is inherently irrational: and, frankly, naughty. A world based on the rationalist denial of higher Reality is like a group of naughty children who have got together to deny what all the grown ups tell them because they have not seen it for themselves and cannot bear that anyone should know better than them.

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Redheads Saturday, Jun 28 2008

Miss Yuffie posted some pictures and asked some questions, particularly about this charming picture.

A topic of interest has been brewing inside myself, and I’m sure, many other of the younger Aristasians. Could there possibly be a red headed point of mind? One that escapes being either Blonde or Brunette? Am I the only one who has been inquiring this? Surely not, I’ve seen an article on this, correct?

Then, what is the general Aristasian opinion? Blonde and Brunette?

Princess Mushroom answered:

Quelles dessins adorables!

The “redhead question” has often been discussed. As is often the case with things Aristasian, one needs to consider the question under two aspects: Aristasia in Telluria and Aristasia Pura.

1: Aristasia Pura: There are two biological sexes, chelana and melini , commonly termed “blonde” and “brunette” because hair-colour is a secondary sexual characteristic, and chelani, even from darker-skinned Estrenne races, are always fair-haired, while melini are always dark haired.

There is no third sex. Girls with dark fox-red hair are melin, girls with pale coppery hair are chelan. Red hair is occasionally associated with hormonal imbalance that can make for traces of opposite-sex characteristics, but there is still no question that a girl is one sex or the other.

2 : Aristasia-in-Telluria: hair colour has absolutely no bearing on whether one is blonde or brunette. Most Aristasian blondes I know in physical life are actually raven-blondes.

Girls are still either blonde or brunette. Where a girl has characteristics in both sexes, she may, and often does, have a persona (or more than one) in each sex. Personae are regarded as separate individuals, and to a surprising extent often are.

Most girls are purely one sex and have all personae (if more than one) in that sex. They are called “plenary blondes” or “plenary brunettes”.

Girls who have personae in both sexes are called “ambis”. Most ambis actually turn out over time to be predominantly one sex or the other. There are a few truly ambiguous ambis, but they are in actuality very few.

Other considerations we may mention here:

3 : Aristasia-in-Virtualia : Avatars, whether full 3D moving ones as in Second Life grid or little pictures as here, should have hair-colour consonant with sex, as in Aristasia-in-Virtualia, our characters are true intemporphs. Ambis can of course have an extra avvie in the other sex with a different name and persona.

4: Pictures like the charming ones here are not usually drawn by Aristasians, and so hair-colour may not match sex. The picture above [which Miss Yuffie described as depicting "a blonde dressed as a brunette"] does look like a blonde to me, but hair-colour is not decisive.

When we use such pictures on our sites and such, we do try to keep the blondes fair and the brunettes dark, as we are trying to build an Intemorphic Virtuality. Quite correctly, faced with a picture like the one above, one would use a “cover story” like “this is a blonde dressed as a brunette” – which in this case does look very likely!

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Queen Mayanna House Monday, Jun 23 2008

Queen Mayanna House represents a typical Aristasian establishment.

Queen Mayanna House is what is known as a Lay College. There are many of them in the West, and the main reason for their existence is the same as the reason for the many Brunettes’ Clubs and in recent times Blondes’ Clubs too as well as small residential hotels and pensions. In times past, and still in the East, when a maid was unmarried (as maids often are in Aristasia since the procreative need is rather smaller for such a long-lived and harm-resistant people) she stayed with her extended family or, if she were a magdalin, with the mistress to whom she was apprenticed. In the West, with the decline – though by no means death – of the guild- and apprentice-system and with so many of the more modern type of unmarried girl preferring to place some distance between themselves and their families, new places grew up in which such a girl might live.

To take a flat alone is not unheard of, but it is very rare. Aristasians have been rather disrespectfully described as pack-animals and it is true that individualism of the late-schizomorph kind has made little headway in the Motherland. Even if they move away from some of the more traditional ways of life, Aristasians require an in-group in which to live and move and have their being.

The Clubs create one such group. They often have particular activities associated with them such as fencing or poetry, and they may meet other like-minded clubs for contests, exchanges of ideas or joint exhibitions of work. Another is created by the Lay-Colleges, some of which have filial ties to the great Universities, others of which are simply small private establishments. As they are primarily living places, their courses of compulsory study are often small. Queen Mayanna House simply requires one essay or major poem per year as a condition of membership: but these essays and poems have often taken their place among the most admired literature in the Western World, for the Annual Opus (as it is called) stimulates the best efforts of some of the finest minds in Trent and Novaria.

Queen Mayanna is a daughter-house of Goldcrest College, Milchford University, and nearly all its members are Old Goldcrestiennes. This gives the college a somewhat cosmopolitan character as girls from all over the Western Empire, and some from the East go up to Milchford, and a few of them move on afterwards to Queen Mayanna House; so while the College has a largely South-Trentish and West-Novarian character, it does contain girls from many different lands.

From Lady Carleon Investigates: The Adventure of the Crystal Staff

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Kaleidoscopes Wednesday, Jun 11 2008

Miss Sushuri Madonna wrote:
I have always adored kaleidoscopes and the way they create order out of chaos. I spoke to lhi Raya about them and here is some of what she taught me: Cosmos means “order” hence our word “cosmetic” because beauty=order (much to the chagrin of the anarcho-bongo). A kaleidoscope is literally a beautiful-form or beautiful-order scope (kalos=beautiful + eidos=form).

And the order, or beauty, is imposed by mirrors. What is a mirror metaphysically? One thinks of the Mirror of Wisdom, one of the traditional titles of Our Lady. The mirrors transform (perhaps illusorily, but then is not all manifestation in some sense illusion) the apparent randomness or chaos of insensate matter into the form and symmetry that we see wherever the hand of Dea has directly shaped Her creation, in the intelligent design of a flower, a snowflake, a crystal or a bird.

The kaleidoscope also gives the lie to the dreary, predictable anarcho-bongo who claims to prefer disorder to order and thinks assymetry is “more interesting” than symmetry. Not only knows she nothing of metaphysical truth; she knows nothing of her own real mind. For no one finds the random scattering of beads and scraps of cellophane in a kaleidoscope either interesting or beautiful until order and symmetry are imposed on them by the tiny daughters of the Mirror of Wisdom.

Lady Aquila further expounded:
Fascinating. The number 7 is made up of the earthly number 4 and the celestial number 3, so the Seven Great Janyati are sometimes called the three Celestials and the four Terrestrials (not much mentioned in Telluria because “Terrestrial” could be so easily misunderstood or over-literalised).

So often we see the four Terrestrials working together: the Way of Wisdom (Sai Mati), the Way of Love (Sai Sushuri), the Way of Works or ritual action (Sai Thame) and the Guardian of the Ways (Sai Vikhe).

In the Kaleidoscope we see Wisdom (Sai Mati), Order, or Harmony (Sai Thame) and Beauty (Sai Sushuri) in perfect accord. Are they not the three mirrors of the traditional kaleidoscope? But what of Sai Vikhe (A question the warrior will always ask)? Is she not the casing of the kaleidoscope that protects it from the outside influences that would disrupt its temenos or sacred enclosure?

Miss Sushuri Madonna replied:
What a wonderful explanation of Sai Vikhe’s role in this instance.

One sometimes wonders what is the function of Sai Vikhe under peaceful conditions (well, I do, being a shroom of very little brain), but this helps me see more clearly how the general principle of “protecting” may apply in many ways.

It also clarifies for me the widespread devotion to Sri Durga as a protecting mother – I am sure there must be a similar cultus of Sai Vikhe in the Motherland. As a child of Sai Sushuri, that had perhaps been a little obscure to me. But today – well, do you know how sometimes a light just turns on in one’s heart? That is what happened.

Thank you, my lady. I feel I have learned an important thing today.
______________________________
Here you can see how a kaleidoscope works to spin order out of disorder:
Kaleidoscope Toy

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Uniforms Saturday, Jun 7 2008

Miss Barbara admits:
I’m writing to prattle on about how utterly wonderful uniforms are. We all love a nurse in a crisp white uniform, and what blonde’s knees don’t tremble at the sight of an aviatrix in dress uniform or a sailor pette all decked out in her lovely white and blue? We know the joys of seeing pettes in uniforms, but have we ever stopped to think about why uniforms are so thrilling? I think it might be because when we see a girl in a uniform, we see first her archetype and her function, and then we notice the girl underneath, all the more attractive for being a bit hidden by these greater and grander things. We love those girls who give themselves over to their functions because we know that by doing so, they are helping build the civilization to which we belong. Though I personally don’t wear a nurse’s or sailor’s uniform, I do often think of my hat, gloves, makeup, and up-to-date clothes as my Aristasian uniform, which I wear very proudly, of course!

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Deanists and Filianists Wednesday, Jun 4 2008

Caridwen asked:
I read: “The commonest “religious position” in Aristasia is that of Deanism – a broad worship of the mother. The Daughter-Mythos is debated. It is widely loved, but in most cases, the simple worship of the Mother is considered “safer” in the sense of being quite clearly founded [in Tellurian terms] and not an innovation that could be of human origin.”

Why is the Daughter-Mythos debated and considered to be possibly of human origin? I had thought, from reading the scriptures, that it was divinely given – is that not so?

Princess Mushroom answered:
As I understand it that is the core of the debate. The current text of the Daughter-Mythos is clearly [in Tellurian terms] of recent origin. It is about thirty years old.

Some people regard it as Divinely-inspired and as a revelation of the fullness of Deanic faith in a form suited to the current world-era. These are the people we call Filianists.

Others – a greater number – regard these stories as beautiful and valuable and as revealing the Mother in Her aspect of transmitting light to the world.

Others again would accept the Daughter-aspect of Dea in such figures as Kuan-Yin, the Regarder of the Cries of the World but would not see the Daughter-Mythos as having the same authority as a clearly Divinely-established tradition such as that of Kuan-Yin.

The story of the Daughter’s death and Her rescue from the Nether Regions by Her Mother has been regarded by some people as the most powerful and moving Resurrection story available in this world-era, and would take the view that whether or not it is Divinely inspired, it gives us a powerful experience of the true pre-patriarchal death-and-resurrection.

The differences between the various approaches are relatively subtle, since all of us love the same Mother.

Lady Aquila continued:
Her highness puts the matter very clearly. If we wish to speak of “Theological positions” I would identify broadly two:

1: The pure Filianist who takes the Daughter-mythos to be divinely inspired and a sort of revelation for our times.

2: The pure Deanist who rejects the sacrificial element and sees the Mother as pure joy, or else finds the Daughter-mythos too uncertain to place faith in.

However most Aristasians, in my experience, do not feel the need for such strong “positions”. We place our certainty and trust in our Mother; we feel, both from tradition and in our hearts the validity of the Daughter-Principle, and we feel that the Daughter-Mythos expresses this very beautifully.

Like most traditional people who accept the Golden Legends of the saints or the “myths” associated with the Buddha (so much derided by the suburban rationalism of the modernist scholar), our primary reactions are loving and devotional rather than “critical” in the modern Western sense.

For we who call ourselves Deanists, the Mother will always be the centre of our faith and our hearts, but the drawing of doctrinal Lines of Exclusion is of no importance to us.

Let us leave that to the sectarianising and combative spirit of late Patriarchy (whether manifested in conflicting sects or scholarly scepticism). Surely it is all part of the unbalanced Vikhelic tendency with its continual urge to discord and separation.

Let us be united as sisters in the love of the Mother who created us all.

See also: Deanism at the Encyclopaedia Aristasiana

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