Path: Supernews70!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: nagasiva@yronwode.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,talk.religion.misc,alt.magick.order Subject: TMaroney: ToS and Fraternity of Saturn Date: 12 Jan 1998 12:16:37 -0800 Organization: Access Internet Communications, Inc. Lines: 88 Message-ID: <69dtn5$k8q$1@shell.accesscom.com> Reply-To: maroney@apple.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 18220@205.226.156.10 X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: Supernews70 alt.magick.tyagi:14674 alt.satanism:84393 talk.religion.misc:341602 alt.magick.order:1028 [from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: Tim Maroney ] >My German Dictionary has both "Mitleid" for pity and compassion. _The >New Cassell's German Dictionary_. Correct, so far as I know. Since the word is always translated "pity" in Nietzsche it makes more sense to use that for an English-speaking audience. >> His attempts >> to represent this phrase as some sort of prophecy of Aquino's teaching >> about the left-hand path, when in fact it appears to be a reference to >> Nietzsche's doctrines on pity (which use the same German word) and AL's >> own "damn them who pity", seemed silly. >Aquino's teaching about the left hand path?! What?! Check the bottom of page 69 of "Fire and Ice" for the paragraph. Michael Aquino founded the Temple of Set, a splinter of LaVey's Church of Satan, in 1975. The doctrine of ToS, in which Flowers/Thorsson is at least a Magus (word: RUNA), is that all traditional religious paths teach a self-destructive loss of individuality in annihilative union with the universe, and that Crowley's ordeal of the Abyss is an example. This is incorrect as can easily be shown from "One Star in Sight" (in which self and universe are destroyed together, and the newborn or revealed true self creates a new universe), but, well, just try telling that to the Dark Prince's Chosen One. On page 69, Flowers tries to co-opt the Franternitas Saturni into the ToS before it even existed by saying that "Mitleidlose Liebe", a phrase explainable in terms of the Book of the Law and the work of Nietzsche, is actually a statement of the Aquino annihilation doctrine: According to Crowley's theories, if not his own practices, the ultimate act of love should be the act of flinging "ourselves up into the furnace of ecstasy which flames from the abyss of annihilation." To avoid and to deny the desirability of this act of love is the essence of Black Magic -- as the essence of White Magic is self-annihilation. It seems that it was this aspect that the FS wished to clarify with the addition of the phrase "compassionless love." This is pure ToS apologetic and he cites no reason for this odd interpretation. On the next page he brings Nietzsche into this argument in a similarly bizarre way. Flowers says that because of the doctrine that God was dead because of his pity for man, Nietzsche was also a Black Magician or Brother of the Left-Hand Path, who endorsed the Aquino doctrine in "Zarathustra". When I read disguised apologetics like this, I can think one of two things: this person thinks he's clever enough to propagandize me, or he's so biased that he can't even see how clouded his vision is. In either case my confidence in the writer as historian is shot. This has also been my impression from other Thorsson/Flowers books such as "Futhark", which I invite anyone to compare and contrast with Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's scholarly "The Occult Roots of Nazism", the closest thing there is in English to a biography of Guido List. >If I remember >correctly the section of the book which had this Saturnian Law of >Thelema was entitled _Nietzschean Thelemism_, so Flowers is noting the >obvious Nietzschean influence. He subjugates this to the service of his interpretation of the left-hand-path meaning in "Mitleidlose Liebe". Do you agree with his argument about Nietzsche on page 70? >What is all this about Aquino?! (Who? >What? When? Where? Why?) Hope that fills you in a bit. There are a number of ToS resources on my web pages in the esoteric links section of my web page. I have some sympathy for the group and some of its ideas, and I have some personal respect for Michael Aquino (which I would probably hedge with as many reservations as he would his respect for me) but I must admit that willfully bad historians like Flowers really get under my skin. -- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org http://www.maroney.org ____________...oooOOO---thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org---OOOooo..._____________ To subscribe send: 'subscribe thelema93-l' to majordomo@hollyfeld.org To unsubscribe send: 'unsubscribe thelema93-l' to majordomo@hollyfeld.org http://www.hollyfeld.org/heaven -- (emailed replies may be posted); http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi; 408/2-666-SLUG join the esoteric syncretism in alt.magick.tyagi; http://www.abyss.com/tokus