Marvelous piece. I know the pull of the occult having flirted with Aleister Crowley’s works in my early thirties. For me it was all about power and wanting to know secrets. Thank God conversion brought me back to reality, after a couple of years in psychotherapy and then Buddhism.
Now I know the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ❤️❤️❤️🎶🎶🎶
Wow! 12 years ago! I wonder what the place is like now? Saw a video of Damenhur last year, but only scenes inside Temple. Your article brings it to life. Very well-written, if biased & jaded & skeptical! But better that way, more balanced view. Great work!
Good adventure. You are right about cult being short for culture. Your story was giving me flashbacks of my own misspent youth. I was surrounded by, but not a member of, communes and newage (rhymes with sewage) communities for a time. There was an initial appeal, but there was usually a sadness and desperation underlying the people. Like you, I found learning about these communities interesting. There was a side of me that I called being a Martian anthropologist = looking at this all from outside.
Jul 22, 2022·edited Jul 22, 2022Liked by Joe Allen
Wow, Joe. Awesome article - I feel like I was on this acid trip with you! Now I gotta look this place up and go relive the Sixties, man! Peace and harmony, bro!😉
😄
Seriously, this is where we went a lot wrong - the Sixties. I thank God now that I had more common sense in high school back then than the average highschool dropout hippie. I knew early on that I wanted to retain my brain cells uncorrupted and maintain my chromosomes undamaged. What a reality warp they sent the world through..... that we seem to have to relive again now. Ugh. No.
I think we see some version of all this in every generation. H D Thoreau (1850s) and the Transcendentalists, Madam Blavatsky in the late 1800s, The theosophists, and their schism with setting up Khrishnamurti to be the avatar of the age in the early twentieth century which spawned the anthroposophists by Rudolph Steiner because he would not accept J Krish. Their Waldorf schools ( still going strong - real familiar with them as there was a school in the town I lived in). Steiner was a member of the same occult lodge as Alistair Crowley. There was also an attempt in the '80s to set up a Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Rajneeshpuram near a town not too far away. Luckily his grift unraveled before it got started. and on and on. :)
Good writing Joe. Funny too. I was very close to being a cultist similar to what you have described in your short story.
If I have learned anything in life it is this - belief is the absence of knowledge. I hold no real beliefs at this point yet I do see that nature reflects the eternal and so I rest easy in this.
That was fun!
Marvelous piece. I know the pull of the occult having flirted with Aleister Crowley’s works in my early thirties. For me it was all about power and wanting to know secrets. Thank God conversion brought me back to reality, after a couple of years in psychotherapy and then Buddhism.
Now I know the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ❤️❤️❤️🎶🎶🎶
Wow! 12 years ago! I wonder what the place is like now? Saw a video of Damenhur last year, but only scenes inside Temple. Your article brings it to life. Very well-written, if biased & jaded & skeptical! But better that way, more balanced view. Great work!
Good adventure. You are right about cult being short for culture. Your story was giving me flashbacks of my own misspent youth. I was surrounded by, but not a member of, communes and newage (rhymes with sewage) communities for a time. There was an initial appeal, but there was usually a sadness and desperation underlying the people. Like you, I found learning about these communities interesting. There was a side of me that I called being a Martian anthropologist = looking at this all from outside.
Wow, Joe. Awesome article - I feel like I was on this acid trip with you! Now I gotta look this place up and go relive the Sixties, man! Peace and harmony, bro!😉
😄
Seriously, this is where we went a lot wrong - the Sixties. I thank God now that I had more common sense in high school back then than the average highschool dropout hippie. I knew early on that I wanted to retain my brain cells uncorrupted and maintain my chromosomes undamaged. What a reality warp they sent the world through..... that we seem to have to relive again now. Ugh. No.
✌❤
I think we see some version of all this in every generation. H D Thoreau (1850s) and the Transcendentalists, Madam Blavatsky in the late 1800s, The theosophists, and their schism with setting up Khrishnamurti to be the avatar of the age in the early twentieth century which spawned the anthroposophists by Rudolph Steiner because he would not accept J Krish. Their Waldorf schools ( still going strong - real familiar with them as there was a school in the town I lived in). Steiner was a member of the same occult lodge as Alistair Crowley. There was also an attempt in the '80s to set up a Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh Rajneeshpuram near a town not too far away. Luckily his grift unraveled before it got started. and on and on. :)
Good writing Joe. Funny too. I was very close to being a cultist similar to what you have described in your short story.
If I have learned anything in life it is this - belief is the absence of knowledge. I hold no real beliefs at this point yet I do see that nature reflects the eternal and so I rest easy in this.
🎵🎶 whata looong strange trip it's been 🎶🎵 Thoroughly enjoyed it!
Thanks Do-dah man. Wait. I meant JoeBot
😉
That was a weird and wonderful story.
...'Regardless of how it looks on the inside or the outside, everything is in divine order'...even you Joe...
Wow!!!
The magic of the imagination of a multidimensional world that remains hidden in the timeless consciousness, very interesting.