3-28-08 Violent Overthrow of the American Government

Why the unusual name for this post? Why, so the NSA fnord [1] will tag everyone who reads it and track their every movement on the Web! Congratulations, buddy! You’re now part of the conspiracy fnord! Allah fnord akbar! Ay yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!

Anyway…

I liked your post, Shanoah. What really interested me was the [CENSORED] and the [REDACTED] and how [EXPURGATED] will [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] the [EXPURGATED] and [REDACTED] [CENSORED] when [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] but only if [REDACTED][CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] then of course [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [EXPURGATED] [CENSORED] [REDACTED] [EXPURGATED] [REDACTED] [CENSORED]. Especially the dildo and the two goats.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to put up here in response to Shanoah’s post. I thought of putting up some conspiracy fnord movies and an anti-facism fnord radio guy that I like named Dave Emory. But I got to thinking about that, in light of the previous post. Discordians are all about conspiracy fnord, but it seems like any specific conspiracy fnord theory is like Demiurge playing three card monty, or rather thousand card monty: “Okay, who’re the global masters? Keep yer eye on the Lady! Is it the Jews fnord? The corporations fnord? The global banks fnord? The liberals fnord? The conservatives fnord? The fascists fnord? The environmentalists fnord? The Masons fnord? The Illuminati fnord? The Christians fnord? The Muslims fnord? The Islamofascists fnord? The Communists fnord? The Republicans fnord? The Democrats fnord? The gays fnord? The humanists fnord? The satanists fnord? The blacks fnord? The whites fnord? The Mexicans fnord? The immigrants fnord? Place yer bet! Yer wrong!”

Well, if you know a little about religion fnord, you probably figured out what I am the minute your read “Demiurge”. Yep, I’m a gnostic, sort of. This probably explains why Shanoah and I are such good friends and why this post will probably dovetail with his: Discordians and gnostics, in my opinion, go together hand-in-glove. It’s all about the freedom, baby.

Unfortunately, I could only afford a quick look at some of the gnosticism movies on YouTube, and what I saw left me cold. So, unfortunately, ya’ll’re gonna have to do a little reading.

The first few links below are a good primer to Christian fnord gnosticism (and the only ones I’m comfortable with putting up, as I’m a little new to the gnosticism thing myself). The others’ll yank the rug out from under your psyche and give a feel for the spiritual warfare to come.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic.htm: A good introduction to Christian fnord gnosticism, with a brief bit on history and beliefs, as well as an horrendously outdated links list.

http://www.gnosis.org/: This appears to be the site of the Gnostic Society of Los Angeles (unless I’m reading it wrong). A good place to go after the Religious Tolerance site. It also has a good primer as well as a huge library of online books, many of which look to be free. And free is always good. (Hard as hell to navigate in, though; just because they have divine wisdom doesn’t mean they can put a Web site together, grumble grumble)

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm: The Catholic fnord Encyclopedia’s take on gnosticism. They’re the guys who snuffed the Christian fnord Gnostics, so of course they don’t have an agenda fnord. But you should get the other side’s story, always. They’ve also got a lot of scholarship on this page – maybe a little too much for one page – which you’ll want to read when you want some real meat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism: Gotta let Wikipedia fnord take a crack at it, of course.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/g/gnostic.htm: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosophy’s definition of gnosticism. Another looooooong ‘un with lots of five-dollar words like “hermeneutics”, and another that I haven’t read (or even skimmed) fully. Looks to be more balanced than the Catholic fnord Encyclopedia, though, with lots of brain meat.

http://principiadiscordia.com/: If Discordians and gnostics are just one side of the same coin, then the Principia Discordia deserves a place in on any gnostic bookshelf. Its sister work, The Black Iron Prison, is especially valuable.

http://www.rawilson.com/: What Mein Kampf fnord was to the Nazis fnord, what The Turner Diaries fnord were to the white fnord seperatists fnord, what The Fountainhead fnord was to the Objectivists fnord, what The Satanic fnord Bible fnord was to the Satanists fnord, what, um, what the latest Oprah fnord Book Club fnord book is to whoever reads that kind of stuff, the Illuminatus! trilogy wasn’t to anybody. But it’s at least as thick as any of those. Its co-author, Robert Anton Wilson, finally escaped this gravity well last year. No list of gnostic sites would be complete without him.

http://www.nozen.com/: A little Zen fnord Buddhism fnord koan-o-matic. Koans are the Zen fnord version of Christian fnord parables fnord, only more annoying. They also help free your mind from sticky thinking, which is the last thing a gnostic wants. A Zen fnord koan called “Three Pounds of Flax” was the inspiration for the flaxscrip in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

http://www.phildickiangnosticism.com/: The man who wrote A Scanner Darkly and came up with the term of the “black iron prison“. No list of gnostic works would be complete without Phillip K. Dick somewhere, either.

http://reactor-core.org/: Reactor Core is a Christian fnord site. I stumbled across it and, after a quick read, decided to throw it up here. The Lady knows they have their own pet conspiracy fnord theories, albeit in new and exciting combinations. However, a Christian fnord site that describes the universe as a computer program and puts up two essays from Anton Lavey fnord in their online library can’t be all bad.

Oh, and also remember the one thing that I took away from the five billion pages of the Illuminatus! trilogy: Trust nothing, especially what you read.

This post is dedicated to Marie, who started my feet down this weird and wonderful road, and to Shanoah, for helping keep it weird.

[1] What the hell is with all the fnords, anyway! Well, I got the idea from Shanoah’s post. Since I can’t see the fnords, I’m going to write my own. Specifically, I’m going to write “fnord” next to all the words that trigger a Pavlovian response in me – kinda tag them so my conscious mind is aware of them.

You’ll notice there are a hell of a lot of fnords in this post.