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kultcha 19
#19-1986
Part One: THE ROOTS OF REVOLUTIONARY VANDALISM
"Times were I would complain to him (Brother-in-law) about the
irrational brutality of the Nazis, or their authoritarianism, and he would
remind me that 'the German family unit, with the importance of the
German father -- its patriarchical structure -- is probably to blame for
much of that.'
"'Maybe so,' I said.
"'The original European tribalists did not even worship a father-god as
their primary diety. Why do you think the Mother of jesus is so much more
important to European Catholics than Christ or Jehovah? The Church could
never have won their ancestors over without the cult of the Virgin. And
with the Church came Roman imperialism, Kerry -- so it was imperialism
that introduced patriarchy to Europe.'
"What excited possibilities came top mind! Druids forming ancient secret
societies to combat the foreign oppressor from Rome, leading to the
organization of alliances between tribes of Visigoths and Vandals --
gradually surrounding the heart of the empire with raging colonial peoples
who would bring it crumbling to its foundations.
"Witches against the Caesars!"
--Kerry Wendell Thornley, THE DREADLOCK RECOLLECTIONS
Famine Digest Edition, p. 13 ($5 from FOLK-WRITE: 2981 Lookout Place,
Atlanta, Georgia 30305)
"How, we might ask, did this word Pagan come to include newly emerging
nature religions? Until the late 1960s the word had been used to designate
either an ancient or indigenous tribal religion or an irreligious, immoral
approach to life.
"The change may have been due largely to Kerry Thornley, a man who
appears in the next chapter in a most amusing role. Thornley, under the
unlikely name of Omar Ravenhurst, helped found a complex of delightfully
bizarre and surrealist Neo-Pagan groups -- among them the Erisians, the
Discordian Society, the POEE, the Erisian L:iberation Front -- all devoted
to the Greek goddess of chaos and strife, the Lady Eris. In 1966 a
communitarian group called Kerista. He noted that B.Z. Goldberg, in his
book THE SACRED FIRE, had observed that one function of primitive
religions had been to provide refuge and relief; to lift temporarily the
taboos of the society. Goldberg, according to Omar, wrote: ' What was
forbidden at large in the bush not only was permitted, but in fact, became
a duty in the temple of the gods.'
"Taking off from Goldberg, Omar said that since the Jewish and Christian
traditions were not credible in this age of science, they should be
abandoned. He wrote: 'Let us forget them. Instead, let us look at the jobs of
the far less intellectual, but far more constructively functional religions
of old. These were the "pagan" religions -- the religions that survive to
this day in England and the United States as "witchcraft."'
"Pagan religions 'both stabilized and overthrew the social structure.'
Modern psychotherapy, sensory awareness workshops, and existential
games were attempting to do the same things..."
--Margot Adler, DRAWING DOWN THE MOON, p. 275-76
(Beacon Press, Boston, 1979)
c 1986 Kerry W. Thornley
Available from:
Illumi-Net
(404) 377-1141
