Why must people portray Harris as an "unsung heroine?"

Aeon418 said:

This sort of junk has been floating around for decades now. I've said this before, but I see it as a feeble attempt by certain "new age" types to try and assimilate the Thoth Tarot into the new age (Borg ) collective. Unfortunately for them Aleister Crowley was such an outrageous character that he can't be given a coat of new age white wash and welcomed into the fold. He simply has to go! *snip!*

Click to expand...

Ah, another who is dubious about New Age "ecumenism." Since it dissolved into so much tepid bathwater, I've been calling it "the False Spring" and the "Piscean pipe-dream." I doubt Crowley would have given it a nano-second of his attention. Maybe after the world-wide "spiritual awakening" (wink,wink) - in a couple of weeks now, isn't it? - there will be a renaissance. Must go recalibrate my BS filter . . .

closrapexa said:

.......Now, I know this was not the case, she didn't die in poverty (he did), he didn't collect the royalties (there were none to collect) and it is all in all an article filled with annoying inaccuracies and outright lies. Perhaps most infuriating of all is the insinuation that they were romantically involved. But this isn't the only one, so many articles online make the same point that Harris was a weak and foolish woman seduced and manipulated by Crowley, who then discarded her when he had no longer any use for her.........

Click to expand...

This is an example of the straw man fallacy. If you want to discredit Crowley, set up a fictional Crowley who is clearly a thoroughly despicable character, and then shoot him down. (Unfortunately, Harris also becomes a fictional casualty.) This type of argument can be very convincing to those who don't bother to think it all the way through.

LRichard said:

This is an example of the straw man fallacy. If you want to discredit Crowley, set up a fictional Crowley who is clearly a thoroughly despicable character, and then shoot him down. (Unfortunately, Harris also becomes a fictional casualty.) This type of argument can be very convincing to those who don't bother to think it all the way through.

Click to expand...

If the principals in this tale were still alive, this would be called "character assassination" (and maybe "libel"). How many times do you have to shoot the dead before they stay down? And, frankly, what does it matter? Their monumental achievement stands on its own merits; how they lived their lives is immaterial. Pandering, sensationalism and, in Mel Brooks' memorable phrase, "the soitch for more money" is how I see it. Dirt still sells to the gullible, even if it's just so much "fertilizer."

Barleywine said:

And, frankly, what does it matter? Their monumental achievement stands on its own merits; how they lived their lives is immaterial. Pandering, sensationalism and, in Mel Brooks' memorable phrase, "the soitch for more money" is how I see it. Dirt still sells to the gullible, even if it's just so much "fertilizer."

Click to expand...

Because the Truth is our only defense against the onset of the barbarians and Doublethink.

ETA: Yeah, sorry for being so cryptic, I had just woken up from an afternoon nap. What I meant was that while neither the deck nor the book are missionary by any means, it is still quite difficult to separate the message from the man. Degradation of this message into what Scion called in the Angeles Arrien thread "bourgeois caftans-and-coffee blather" castrates it, and takes the sting out of it.

closrapexa said:

Because the Truth is our only defense against the onset of the barbarians and Doublethink.

ETA: Yeah, sorry for being so cryptic, I had just woken up from an afternoon nap. What I meant was that while neither the deck nor the book are missionary by any means, it is still quite difficult to separate the message from the man. Degradation of this message into what Scion called in the Angeles Arrien thread "bourgeois caftans-and-coffee blather" castrates it, and takes the sting out of it.

Click to expand...

When I was young and foolish, I used to think that Truth and Beauty were Absolute, but I increasingly find them to be relative. The apocryphal "most people" seem to be content with an approximation of the truth, and approximations - as in this case - are vulnerable to manipulation.

Or, as Walt Kelly's Pogo once said: "We have met the enemy and he is us!"

Oh, and thanks for the clarification, I just saw it.

Barleywine said:

Maybe after the world-wide "spiritual awakening" (wink,wink) - in a couple of weeks now, isn't it? - there will be a renaissance. Must go recalibrate my BS filter . . .

Click to expand...

I hope for your sake it's battery operated. The imminent coronal mass ejection will most likely destroy electricity grids worldwide.

No wonder the Hall of Records will be discovered in secret. The lights will all be out!

Yes, I'm joking. I think.....

Although I've always had a soft spot for 2 Peter 3:10.

Aeon418 said:

I hope for your sake it's battery operated. The imminent coronal mass ejection will most likely destroy electricity grids worldwide.

Click to expand...

As a worker in the electric power generation field for over 30 years, I'm not convinced any interruption will be more than momentary, unless the discharge is as severe as the one in 1859. The good news is that some utilities have replaced the resistors and capacitor banks in their switchyards with more robust components. The bad news is that many haven't, or are just now coming to realize that they ought to. The peak year for this 11-year sunspot cycle is 2013 (but, of course, if the world ends on 12/21/12, we won't care ). An extraordinarily powerful electromagnetic surge could wreak havoc, certainly. But I don't see it causing cars and trucks (or nuclear power plant emergency diesel generators) to stop in their tracks, as some people say. I think that's just so much doomsday fear-mongering.

Aeon418 said:

Although I've always had a soft spot for 2 Peter 3:10.

Click to expand...

As a devoted "bible-dumper" (the antithesis of a "bible-thumper,") I had to go look that one up. (Although my wife does have a rather fabulous red-leather-bound 1966 edition of the "Salvador Dali" bible. I don't read the words but I love to look at the pictures. Dali should have crowned that achievement with a <gasp!> tarot deck. Oh wait, he did . . . ) My apocalyptic inclinations lean more toward the last verse of The Hollow Men: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper." Especially if all the lights go out first.

The world is an illusion. My "end of the world" is when I croak or otherwise can no longer sustain a perception of the illusion. "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man..." [Mark 13:32] Maybe some doomsday folk are just attempting to inject a little excitement into their otherwise humdrum lives.

Come on guys ..... the end of the world is near ... even our Prime Minister says so !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtj3gDaE64&list=UUd2KNtfphz8HvYzM4pwtHmg&index=1

(Remembering Australians DO have a sense of humour ( and our great past prime miminster Bob Hawke used to hold the world beer drinking record! ) ;


Eventually he was awarded an Oxford PhD for his drinking efforts:

"Qui si memoret sponsione provocatum lagenam ampliorem cervisiae plenam breviori temporis spatio quam quivis alius exhausisse," Professor Jasper Griffin intoned at the ceremony in the historic Sheldonian Theatre. Literally, that means: "He records that on a challenge he once drank off a sconce pot of beer in unbeaten record time" _ one of Hawke's proudest boasts in a career that began 50 years ago as a Rhodes scholar from Western Australia. Hawke entered the Guinness Book of Records for his feat and said he was not surprised it was brought up at such a formal occasion. "In a political sense, it was one of the big advantages I got out of my time at Oxford," Mr Hawke said. "It endeared me to a large section of the Australian voting population that I had a world beer drinking record."

Cheers, Dr Hawke, 05 July 2003, The Daily Telegraph

Why has no one come up with this idea yet (well, maybe they have? Anyone heard any secret plans? )

Post Summer Solstice 2012; The streets are flooded with sandwichboard wearing New Age 'marketeers' dressed in ancient Mayan costumes with bundles of scrolls under their arms, proclaiming in loud voices; "Get your new Mayan Calenders here ...."