Caustic Ramblings

Using the analogy of seasonal cycles,

Spring (17th century - mid 20th century) -- The first stirrings of anything resembling a Polytheist revival begins with the popularization of esoteric currents, from the Renaissance on through the early modern period. The Rosicrucian movement gives way to the Masonic current, which coincides with the industrialization and secularization of the Western world. We could say that the so-called "Mesopagan" development which coincides with the Masonic movements; this reflects the loosening up that hard-dogmatic Christianity had on the European soul for centuries prior. Though, the rise of a truly "pagan" orientation doesn't really begin until the European Romantic movement and later Neo-Occult groups; featuring authors/poets like Sir James George Frazer, Robert Graves, Margaret Murray, and Gerald Gardner, among others. During the 20th century, the twin influences of (1) the Occult movement (mainly the Theosophical and Golden Dawn Currents), and (2) the archetypal studies of Carl Jung and his followers, helps flesh out the essence of what later "Neopaganism" would become. A lesser known current, one tied to nationalistic romanticism, would come to influence the later non-left/progressive niche within Neopaganism; usually in the form of far-right identity politics.

Summer (1967 - 1995) -- The 1960s counterculture is what gave rise to a "true" pagan/polytheist revival; i.e. that which is completely free of overt Christian influences (though not psychological, which is a whole different topic). Its "Holy Land" began as the San Francisco Bay Area and not long after, it expanded into the Northern California evergreen forests and up through the Pacific Northwest region. Neopaganism's first generation of luminaries was the likes of Starhawk (founder of Eclectic Witchcraft), Issac Bonewits (of ADF fame), and those who followed in their respective footsteps.

As with other things associated with the 60s counterculture, the spiritual impetus behind this movement was largely fueled by a massive rebellion against the Christian past. Because of the great rejection, we could say the Neopaganism was a political movement from the getgo. The very beginnings were infused with the "New Left" political orientation (the youth-wing of the Neoliberal paradigm) that defined the counterculture. Things like feminism and freedom-of-religion were core values from the start. This political ideology would later morph into what we would today recognize as Left-Progressivism. In fact, the Summer period of Neopaganism directly mirrors the Summer period of late 20th-century Progressivism. During this time, it was the progressives who were the champions of tolerance, open-mindedness, artistic inspiration, critical thinking, free speech/thought/expression, and an opposition to rigid dogma, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Post-Gardnerian Wicca would emerge as the largest "denomination" of Neopaganism.

Overall, for the Neopagan movement at large and the general progressive culture, the future looked bright, though this belief came to be largely based on an investment of blind faith in the power of industrial/technological progress. The Neopaganism of the early summer period more or less reflected the ecological/environmentalist attitude of the 1970s, but by the 80s, consumerism and tech-mindedness certainly shifted the overall mentality of this movement. Pagan festivals/gatherings during this period reflect the general attitude of free-spiritedness and acceptance. It would be a long time yet until this cultural movement would perceive itself as being under attack, beyond the usual opposition of their main foes, the Conservative Christian/Evangelical movement.

Autumn (1996 - 2015) -- Asatru/Heathenry (Germanic Neopaganism) emerges as a major force within the Neopagan fold; it came to serve as the masculine counterpart to the rather-feminine Wicca. In general, a period of both cultural ossification and rationalistic tendencies shapes Autumnal Neopaganism, and really this begins with the mass-popularization of the internet. The growing "Reconstructionist" approach to Neopagnaism becomes its Rationalist wing; whereas the "anything goes" sentiment of the earlier era is now recognizable as the Eclectic wing. By this time, Neopaganism as a whole appears to be a constellation of "fandoms"*, which we could say are consumerist "subcultural" expressions of affluent North American culture. The various currents become interest-cliques. The mentality of the Reonstructionists seems to align with that of the growing "New Atheist" movement; that is, an almost-deification of academia and its academics, and the specialist-oriented empiricist methods of inquiry those types usually favor. For the Recons, archeologists, comparative linguists, and historical researchers become their de-fact high priests. The Eclectic side seems to mirror extreme Protestant tendencies of rejecting ecclesiastical order altogether, and as the Autumn years roll on, they become ever-more shrill about their rejection of hierarchy and order as such things might pertain to their own practices and studies of Neopaganism. This mirrors the evolution of the general Progressive culture in the direction of embracing "politically correct" ideological dogma, shrill moralism, and self-righteousness. Neopagan book sales peak around 2007 and after this there is just a few remaining years of normalcy and calm with the overall movement.

By 2012-2013, most of the Neopaganisms suddenly become very politicized; the annoying "PC" rhetoric of prior years devolves into the "woke" phenomenon we know of today; which is an totalitarians cult of extreme "us vs. them" dichotomization of everything under the sun. Sadly, since Neopaganism was always tethered to the progressive culture, it was destined to follow along with its trajectory of growth, flourishing, and decline. If we're to take a glance of the most prominent Neopagan blogs of the Autumn period, we could see that posting activity seems to peak between 2010 and 2015, with that last year being the lash hurrah of normal posting activity. After this, blog activity appears to sharply taper off or else become way more about politics than about spirituality.

Winter (2016 - Present) -- This year marks the emergence and ascendancy of the Big Bad Orange Drumpfler to the US Presidency. The Progressive culture, and the Professional-Managerial Class in general, goes into full panic mode as the ideology of progress seems to no longer be following up on its old promises. All of Progressivism feels itself under attack since its now apparent a sizable portion of the American population wholly rejects this pseudo-religion. Well, no actually it was because Orange Man Bad!! In fact, Orange Man is so bad that previously-denounced practices like Demonolatry become commonplace among Wicca practitioners. So we see Witches becoming Literal Witches, i.e. the Straw-woman of old that the term Witch used to mean to the average person.

So I already pointed out several times above how Neopaganism and Progressivism were joined at the hip since the beginning, it's only natural the downfall of Progress would also be the downfall of Neopaganism. The so-called "inclusiveness" of the Neopaganism becomes quite the opposite; it's "inclusive" only of people and ideas that are in 100% agreement of whatever the prevailing Progressive orthodoxy of the month happens to be. Ironically, the Wild Hint became the age-old Witch Hunt, as Neopagans begin to see "Fascists" and "Nazis" and "Racists" and "Sexists" everywhere and under every couch cushion, reminiscent of the way McCarthyite conservatives would see communists everywhere during the height of the Red Scare; and reminiscent of "Satanists" being hidden during every nook and cranny during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. A movement that once staunchly opposed ideological inquisitions and intolerance of differing opinions now became the a movement of inquisitions and intolerance; this closely mirrors the Progressive Left's takeover of major social, cultural, and governmental institutions on the US. The "oppressed" becomes the opressor. Old Boss, meet New Boss.

From 2016 onward, Neopagan blogs, forums, and other online groups become a lot more about politics than what was once a strictly-religious and cultural focus. Joining many of these groups would require new members to voice repeated loyalty confessions and denunciations of perceived enemies. There was no longer much of a focus on Deities, unless we're to consider Progress and Pathological Inclusion to be the Patron Gods. Finally, I should mention here that these types of ideologies are those who have remained within Neopaganism. In reality, the numbers of people engaged in this fandom-cluster have dropped off precipitously since the 2020-2015 period. Overall interest shifted from the religio-cultural to the political sphere. The charred remnants of this movement seem destined for the dustbin of history; we can even say now that Neopaganism has ceased to be any meaningful cultural force here in the industrialized West. Its final death is probably not far off on the horizon.

Of course, the Gods are not going anywhere. But we should ask, what comes next, as far as any organized movement of recognizing and venerating the Holy Powers?

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* Here I call Neopaganism a "fandom" instead a religion-proper, since membership tends to have very little to do with nuclear families or local communities consisting of whole families. It's typically only one member of a biological family that would have any interest at all in the polytheist revival; the rest of the family either remaining Christians and secularists/atheists of some variety. In this sense, Neopaganism is no more a religion than the anime subculture, or comic book collectors, or Trekkies, or Furries, or....well, you get the general idea here. Yes, there were in fact a few "pagan families" but these constituted an extreme exception, not the rule.

Note: this list isn't originally my own creation, rather I adapted it from a post on a libertarian blog and modified some of the wording to fit a more general organization description.

1) Leftist ideas are introduced into a growing organization or movement through a few vocal members. Leftists are able to penetrate and gain influence in the organization according to O’Sullivan’s Law, which states that any organization or enterprise that is not expressly right wing will become left wing over time.

2) Through heavy use of emotional manipulation and guilt-tripping, more and more members, and eventually entire affiliate groups, and larger networks of interrelated groups become leftist. The founding organizational, aspirational, and ethical principles are no longer applied. Free speech, open discourse, or differences of opinion will not be tolerated. Non-leftists will be labeled and ostracized.

3) Conservative and moderate leadership acts only after leftists begin taking over leadership positions, and the Marxist claim ownership of the organization and call the conservative, moderate, and otherwise insufficiently-leftist members “entryists” or even claiming they are alien or hostile to the original purpose of the group, when in fact this is a clear case of projection.

4) Initial resistance gives way to retreat, as conservative and moderate members decide to cut their losses and leave the organization for a new and smaller splinter group free of the leftist elements they just fled. The general public begins to associate the original (now-subverted) organization with leftism in general.

5) The new splinter group expands and eventually starts to grow and prosper.

6) Meanwhile, the successfully-subverted original organization hemorrhages membership, as there are not enough leftists interested in the founding purpose of the original organization, nor are there enough leftists interested in the founding purpose of the original organization to keep it alive after the conservative and moderate exodus.

7) As the conservatives and moderates re-organize and grow in strength, the newly burgeoning organization becomes the new target for leftist subversion.

8) The cycle repeats.

Regarding all of the wanton 'woke' craziness and apparent mass-psychosis that's painfully apparent right now to anyone even barely paying attention to unfolding events, it does really seem like the whole Progressive Liberal ideology is on its loud and abrupt way out. When any dogmatic belief system is on its last legs, the inner core of its true believers tend to behave crazier and crazier until the craziness of their whole mode of thinking is impossible for outside observers to ignore.

And might this signal the twilight and gradual decline of materialist-liberalism as a whole? (which of course has been established long before the shrill-moralistic and 'woke' variants escaped from the lab). Perhaps. This could really be the beginning of the end for the liberal project which has been going on for the past four centuries in the Western world. In practice, Liberalism served as the secular replacement of the medieval Christian worldview. At its very core, any liberalism unaccompanied by adherence to an established religion, constitutes a worldview devoid of metaphysical coherence. And thus Secular Liberalism had to adopt other 'gods' once the Christian concept of divinity was wholly jettisoned into the void. The main 'gods' of this pseudo-religion are Progress, Materialism, and the Hedonistic-Utilitarian view on what exactly constitutes happiness and 'good.'

Liberal-Progressivism worships these principles, but it's not the only version of liberalism which does. There are other sects of the so-called 'Church of Progress.' And I believe that all of them will be making their exit-stage-left-and-right right after Woke Progressivism finishes imploding. These other sects will probably each take their respective leave with a ton less fanfare though.

One in particular has been on my radar for quite some time: the mostly-apolitical ideology I call "Consumerist Americanism." Which is, the idea that if you as an honest and hard-working American do your part in being a dutiful wage slave or cubicle serf and worship every new consumer trend and techno-gizmo that hits the market, then the 'American Dream' of our collective mythology just might land in your lap. Before American popular culture started shifting to 'culture war' politics around 2014-2015, it was this Consumerist Americanism that was the default mode of being across most sectors of America.

We see now especially on the new Populist Right (and maybe among some principled left-leaning people too), people turning against many facets of Consumerist Americanism: Hollyweird celebrity culture, cynical 'woke' corporate PR, Corporate Karen busybodies who populate the HR departments of the largest corporations, the mainstream media as a whole, a monstrously-bloated and irredeemably corrupted academia, and especially the Silicon Valley tech giants and the soy-fed 'woke' technocrats who run them. Sure, there are some aspects of Trumpist Populism that echo some of the old Consumer-Jingoist sentiments, but as a whole there seems to be a real shift away from that underway.

Among the new populists there seems to be the realization that further advances in tech just means more surveillance and more censorship, and the erosion of freedoms that results from such 'advances.' Basically, tech = big brother and the enslavement of humanity to ghastly machine-things. Maybe within 5-10 years, no one except the most ardent holdout believers in techno-progress will still have an 'Alexa' listening/spy device sitting in their living room? I would wager that as the Boomer generation continued to die off, some kind of sane middle-ground between Tech-worship and Ludditism will become more mainstream.

IMO, the biggest hypocritical feature of this fading, largely-astroturfed Consumerist Americanism is the pseudo-libertarianism of its adherents; the silly notion that one is living a life of "freedom" by spending 9 hours a day doing some form of mindless and/or humiliating bureaucratic paper-pushing, all to enjoy the 'freedom' of living in a poorly-built McHouse in some pre-fab suburban subdivision completely bereft of anything resembling real community; a place an inhabitant will be promtply ejected from after missing just a couple mortgage payments, without many of the neighbors seeming to notice or care.

Hopefully whatever American civic culture or ideology comes to replace the fading one will actually value real freedom and less reliance on faceless bureaucratic entities. My one prediction is that working with one's hands is indeed a fine and honorable way of existing, and living a simpler life with less stuff, will become cherished values.

Many are wondering why leftists and progressives are now on board with the most egregious forms of government tyranny, mass-censorship of any political opinions that don't 100% parrot their narrative, stasi-like spying/snitching on one's own neighbor in response to the Chinavirus/WuFlu Panicdemic, ect.

I think the answer is quite simple. The "Church of Progress" has been in a state of memetic collapse for the past several years and its most ardent and faith believers are collectively going mental because of this. They will believe whatever insane nonsense their corporate media and academic priests feed them.

Basically, humans on average are not all that intelligent; most people can't really think for themselves, and thus they need simplistic narratives to explain the universe to them. And when the narrative a person has spent their life believing in is suddenly exposed as being full of plot holes, contradictions, and inconsistencies, the believer will realize this on a subconscious level, yet on the conscious level they will do everything they can to rationalize away all the chinks in the memetic armor of the belief system in question. This battle between the conscious and subconscious minds will elicit a state of cognitive dissonance and cause the conflict person to behave in all sorts of irrational ways.

Psychologically speaking, the Church of Progress is simply a non-theistic form of Christianity; it's Protestant fundamentalism stripped of its theistic and supernatural pretenses. And this has been the de-facto religion of the contemporary liberal culture of the affluent Western world, since at leas the end of the second World War. It's doctrinal pillars are:

(1) Belief in linear history as a progression from an ultra-barbaric and superstitious past,

(2) Belief in scientific and technological progress as the primary method by which it's possible to eliminate all of humanity's ills and blemishes and thus usher in a technological utopia.

(3) The elimination of any and all other modes of thought or belief which might get in the way of the above objective.

(4) A totally materialist and empiricist worldview, despite the fact that the CoP's core doctrines did not emerge by means empirical inquiry or epistemology, but rather the mere conjecture-based opinions of various intellectuals making declarations on what is and isn't reality based on their own subjective opinions.

(5) Universalist pretensions and aspirations. According to this doctrine, there is "one humanity" which includes all members of the homo sapiens sapiens species on this planet; this can be further subdivided into two main groupings: (a) Good human beings, and (b) Problematic human beings. The former are humans who believe in [or at least publically signal their compliance] all the above doctrines, and the latter are non-believers in the above doctrines; landing oneself in the non-believer camp can happen by merely challenging or being skeptical toward just one or two tenets of the above doctrines.

(6) A belief [often unstated or unacknowledged] that there is no higher human aspiration than the experience of hedonic-type pleasure. And thus the deference to utilitarian logic on what exactly constitutes good and bad according to this worldview.

And since the exposure of the reality than more and more technology and technological gizmos indeed does not make the human condition more tolerable, and the mass-proliferation of Social Just Warrior cultists (c. about 2014-2015), the subsequent election of Donald Trump, and the exposure of liberal and left-leaning politicians and being ultra-corrupt and inimical to the founding principles of the USA, it's become painfully apparent to anyone who isn't totally brainwashed that so-called "Progress" is an empty ideology, and one that has become increasingly divorced from objective reality. Really, any system of ideas that excessive conflicts with nature, is one that is not long for this world.

An un-posted response to someone's post on social media, regarding a claim that Bernie Sanders massive redistribute "proposals" will somehow create jobs and improve the economy. I've found that on this particular social media platform, it's not really worth it to get into the weeds in any sort of serious, principles and detailed manner, as all sort of...let's just say "cheap seats" spectators might throw their tattered hats into the ring and just muddy up the discussion with uninformed nonsense. Anyway, my musings are as follows:

Bernie Sanders is a shameless snake oil peddler who seems to be incapable of doing basic arithmetic (or maybe that's on purpose). And this headline literally makes no sense. Sure, stealing more taxpayer $$$ from the general public to create and expand already-bloated federal bureaucracies might technically "create jobs" in that robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of way. Americans by and large know damn well that socialism is a terrible idea (and please don't give me that stupid "democratic socialism" nonsense) only leads to tyranny and ruin, and thus why he got decimated on super Tuesday; Dem voters would rather have an corrupt, senile pervert than a socialist gasbag who has never worked an honest day in his life as their party's nominee.

I'm going to laugh pretty hard every time people posts links w/ disingenuous clickbaity headlines from these clickbaity yellow journalism rags.

I usually don't weigh in on mundane politics or timely new cycle happenings in general. But there's one hot button issue (person, actually) that I feel I need to briefly jot down my impressions on. It's regarding "Democratic Socialist" upstart Alexandria Ocasiso-Cortez (AOC). She seems to have been getting a seemingly-endless amount of free media attention ever since she first won that freak/fluke primary election in NYC and especially now that's she officially in congress. Of course there's going to be an esoteric spin thrown in here.

As we all know, AOC has become quite the meme as of late. The more psychic energy people keep feeding into her personage, the more her memetic presence grows and thus the more her psychic power levels expand outward. Her brand is what we would call an "egregore" in Occult lingo. An egregore is a sort of collective thought form that may eventually take on a life of its own, so to speak. This is literally how gods and goddesses are created.

On a more mundane level, I would wager that AOC is a lot smarter than how she lets on in interviews (endless daffy-sounding gaffes). And she may or may not have read Art of the Deal. After all, she is now the Left's version of Trump and her trolling A-game is pretty effective for such a young upstart. She seems to have a bit of the trickster archetype in her as well.

Easily-outraged people on the right (yeah, it's not just the left) need to tread carefully with her; the more attention she's continually fed, the bigger and bigger her brand grows. Remember that bad publicity is good publicity. But on a more positive note, we should realize that she may become her own worst enemy and become too bold and overconfident with her radical positions that certainly piss off corporate establishment Dems. If she defiantly refuses to kiss the ring she just might be out on her ass in two years. The more likely outcome however is that she gets a few potent tastes of power and quickly makes a point of coming back for more. She will sell out to the corporate Dem establishment; to the point where her "socialism" becomes little more than a fashion accessory. The establishment will basically use her in an attempt to patch up their own godawful branding problems. She sure has that idiotic youthful millennial appeal; there's no doubt about that.

But yeah, AOC has become a meme. Good thing there's probably nothing in the way of magicians at DNC HQ. Politics in general is a muggle realm.

An internet comment from SCM:

Cultural Marxism: An offshoot of Marxism that gave birth to political correctness, multiculturalism and "anti-racism." Unlike traditional Marxism that focuses on economics, Cultural Marxism focuses on culture and maintains that all human behavior is a result of culture (not heredity / race) and thus malleable. Cultural Marxists absurdly deny the biological reality of gender and race and argue that gender and race are “social constructs”.

Nonetheless, Cultural Marxists support the race-based identity politics of non-whites. Cultural Marxists typically support race-based affirmative action, the proposition state (as opposed to a nation rooted in common ancestry), elevating non-Western religions above Western religions, speech codes and censorship, multiculturalism, diversity training, anti-Western education curricula, maladaptive sexual norms and anti-male feminism, the dispossession of white people, and mass Third World immigration into Western countries.

Cultural Marxists have promoted the idea that white people, instead of birthing white babies, should interracially marry or adopt non-white children. Samuel P. Huntington maintained that Cultural Marxism is an anti-white ideology. Critics of Cultural Marxism have maintained that Cultural Marxists intend to commit genocide against white people through mass non-white immigration, assimilation, transracial adoption and miscegenation.

This is a pretty typical summary of "Cultural Marxism" we might expect from a person on the Dissident Right who can coherently string a few paragraphs together. Except that, few if any people actually self-identify as either this label or the above list of criteria in any sort of conscious manner. Rather, it's a laundry list of agenda items which Cultural Leftist aligned institutions have been pushing for the past several decades. The majority of people, regardless of their ideological leanings, do not willingly embrace this entire list. As a clear example, just go back 10 years in time and you'll find that the average self-identified "Progressive" would not admit to signing onto all that stuff. Many would even disavow a number of those items. However, many of the things listed above are indeed what the current crop of intersectional cultists are indeed advocating, but (in my view) more as "NPC" ideological automatons rather than fully-willing agents. How many SJWs today would willingly admit to holding at least 90% of those positions?

This comment from a youtube user regarding Tim Cook's recent virtue-signalling storm where he bleated on about his amazing powers of censorship:

Being lectured to on ethics by a Silicon Valley billionaire who makes his products using Third World labour and is unanswerable to anyone is such a joy.

This one sentence beautifully sums of the sheer absurdity of the obnoxious moralizing behavior we're starting to see more and more from the heads of Silicon Valley tech behemoths. These statements, usually steeped in the sort of vapid virute-signalling that totally insults the intelligence of anyone who isn't a brainwashed progressive ideologue. It does take a hefty dose of cognitive dissonance and doublethink to unironically believe that giant corporations are anything more than sociopathic money-grabbing machines, much less organizations that act on anything resembling ethical motives.

As Sargon of Akkad (Carl Benjamin) stated in the summary of the video he just uploaded on Patreon's totally arbitrary banning of his account, "The Great White Saviours of Silicon Valley are actively looking for ways to deplatform anyone who is not politically correct, as Patreon did to me."

In no particular order:

-(insert Leftist's boogeyman-fixation)__ist/ism
-Decent Human Being
-People/Women of Color
-Garbage Human
-Diversity
-Bigot
-Equality
-Gender Equality
-Multicultural/ism
-Ignorant
-Progress
-___(Insert victim group) Rights
-Misogyny
-Cisgender
-Trigger/ed
-Problematic
-Nazi
-Hate
-Hate Speech
-Silencing/Erasing
-Allies
-Marginalized
-Privilege/d (based on "oppressor" group status)
-Violence
-Consent
-Woke
-I Literally Can't Even
-Science
-Facts
-Inclusive/ness/ivity
-Diversity
-Empowerment
-Evolve(d)
-Toxic Masculinity
-Shitty Opinions
-Wow, Just Wow
-Patriarchy
-Rape Culture
-Rape Apology/ist
-Microaggression
-Social Construct
-Nonbinary
-Genderfluid
-Critical____(insert whatever BS) Theory
-Body Positive(ity)
-Safe Space
-(anything not hetero/white/male)__phobia/ic
-Mansplaining
-Manspreading
-Genocide(al)
-Words Hurt
-Hurtful/Harmful
-Internalized____ (insert "problematic" condition)
-Normalize/d
-Dominant group
-____(Insert group)Voices
-Inappropriate
-We need to have a conversation
-Gender Identity/ies
-Wrong side of history
-Inevitable
-Troglodyte
-Hetero-normative
-White Supremacy
-Slavery
-Institutional___ (Insert __ism of choice)

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This is by no means complete and I'll probably end up adding in more as they come to mind.