From: ................ [email protected] ([email protected])
Subject: ........... Re: The Cat and Tom Show, Here on Alt.Pagan
Newsgroups: ... alt.magick, alt.pagan
Message ID: ... <[email protected]>
Date: ................ 2002-05-15 21:35:03 PST

Original Copy: ... Click here


Mike <[email protected]> writes:

> .. i think you have a case of mistaken identity dude..

You're quite right. I stand corrected.

> .. Cat afaik doesnt have "students".. she is too busy being a
> .. publisher and a retailer. Manbo Tamara Siuda however *IS*
> .. an initiate of Manbo Kathy S. Grey/Bon Manbo Racine Sans
> .. Bout Sa Te La Da Ginen.

Thank you for clearing that up.

> .. But like someone else pointed out, Tamara's comments
> .. are probably based on her academic Egyptology creds rather
> .. than her Vodou training which is relatively recent
> .. in comparison.

Tamara's familiarity with the subject matter isn't confined to her academic work. She presides over a religious organization of a few hundred people, a number of whom come from West African and Carribean religious backgrounds. When you hear from Rev. Siuda, you're not just hearing from her, but from everybody that she will have consulted with, before writing her reply, some of whom I've met in person. Odd as it may seem, there are apparently striking similarities between ancient Egyptian religion, and modern Yoruba religion, despite the placement of the parent cultures on opposite sides of the Sahara desert, and opposite sides of the continent - or, so some have claimed.

> .. i dont recall seeing Cat discussing anything about the merits
> .. or flaws of Vodou as such in this thread either

Tom sure is, though.

> .. ... her specialty is Hoodoo, aka southern US folk magic.
> .. Whether such a discussion is relevant to alt.pagan is a
> .. matter of individual definition. YMMV.

Your mileage may vary? Sorry, no, though it is interesting to see somebody now arguing the reversed form of Ander's position. While the category, as defined, has burst out of every attempt to contain it in a definition that I know of, including my own

"A religion traditional to one of the cultures native to Europe, the Americas, Africa north of the Sahara, or the Middle East, no further east than Iraq, in which the Divine is worshipped in multiple aspects, each of which may or may not be distinct deities, each requiring seperate worship"

(which would exclude Vodoun and Santeria because of the Subsaharan African element). This seemed to work just fine and dandy, until the Nisut started pointing out the theological differences (and yes, they were pretty glaring, and only got more glaring as I read further). The cult of Sol Invictus, which is considered Pagan, is apparently monotheistic - and so it goes. This is why Anders was wrong. Some words do not admit easy definitions, and this is one of them.

However, this is not the same thing as saying that the word "Pagan" has no definition, and can be legitimately used any way one sees fit, in some kind of postmodernist free-for-all. Even if the dictionary can't define this word, history most certainly can, and has. That's why the word even exists. If somebody wants to call Vodoun a "Pagan" faith then, like the man who wants to call his pet lizard a "songbird", he just needs to get over it. Words exist for the purpose of communication, and if we start granting ourselves carte blanche to redefine words at will, communication is one thing that will break down in a hurry.

Sorry, but sometimes dogmatism is the way to go.

> .. Many old european faiths, such as the Roman, Greek,
> .. Celtic, and Germanic tribal religions, were, like
> .. modern ATRs, land, family, community, and
> .. ancestrally and nature based.

* Wrong * Classical Traditionalism is not "nature based". Your conditions are a little fuzzy, anyway - Roman Catholicism and Judaism alike, have traditionally very much been community based, and as the Romans spread the worship of their gods into the provinces, obviously the worship of the Roman gods was not "ancestrally based".

> .. in fact they have
> .. more in common imo than not.

Then, I'm sorry, but your opinion is wrong. These cultures are radically at odds with each other, and it shows in their religions. There is no Hellenic equivalent of "Wyrd", to take one of the core beliefs of Asatru, and the Asatruar are profoundly shocked when they see a Hellenist questioning the justice of the Olympians.

> .. These old european religions have long been
> .. referred to as "pagan".

Yes, they are, and none of them bear even the faintest resemblence to Kemetic Orthodoxy, in which the individuality of the gods, and even individuals after death, apparently, becomes a blurry matter.

> .. this is in contrast to modern neopagan religions like Wicca
> .. however, which purport to be universal. are not ancestrally
> .. based at least in the popular non-inititory forms, and lack
> .. clear roots to a particular piece of land and community in
> .. the same way that traditional religions possess.

* Shrug * I'm not a Wiccan, even in part, and what are we to make of the Germanic religions, which, in many cases, belonged to tribes which were still nomadic prior to Christianization?

> .. this is all kind of sketchy and poorly articulated but
> .. maybe my point will get through in spite of my haste.

Oh, you're coming through clearly, you're just wrong. You strike me as having been a victim of 1990s era politically correct "classroom reforms", which tried to blur the distinctions between civilizations in the name of avoiding "divisiveness", by leaving out or lying outright about any details that would prove inconvenient. Having the kids read a string of texts from a grab bag of cultures, ripped out of their original contexts, instead of having them learn about their own civilization in depth, has been handy in making them vulnerable to this kind of deception.

> .. but the reason many modern ATR folks dislike ATRs being
> .. referred to as "pagan" is not due to lack of affinity
> .. with [older, traditional] european religion, but in
> .. order to distance themselves from modern, assimilative,
> .. acquisitive, anti-traditional neopagan movements.

Kemetic Orthodoxy is older than any European religion known, and, like it or not, Europeans, Africans and Middle Easterners aren't much alike.

> .. YMMV

I know you mean well, Mike, but lose that acronym. There is such a thing as the truth, regardless of what fashion may now say to the contrary.

> .. mike

...................................................................... The Evil Heathen

Note : As we have already seen, Antistoicus was giving Ms. Siuda's theory, which had been adopted for nakedly political reasons, far more credit than it deserved, having not looked as far through the relevant essay as he would have wished. That, he wouldn't get to, until it was time to start wrapping up this review.

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