From: ................ [email protected] ([email protected])
Subject: ........... Re: The Cat and Tom Show, Here on Alt.Pagan
Newsgroups: ... alt.pagan, alt.magick, soc.culture.haiti
Message ID: ... <[email protected]>
Date: ................ 2002-05-16 22:01:24 PST

Original Copy: ... Click here


The World Wide Web may be one of the best things that has ever happened to Usenet. Do you know why? Because when somebody comes on and tells a bald faced lie, a lot of the time one can really smack it to him with a few good urls, and confirmation is no further away than point and click. That reality ends a lot of "is so, is not" contests before they even have a chance to begin.

In a previous post, I responded to Tamara Siuda's spokeperson (who would be Craig Schaefer, the seal bearer for the House) who wrote:

> .. > .. perhaps better be stated
> .. > .. given your current argument with the phrase
> .. > .. "Neo-Pagan" rather than simply "Pagan," as the latter has
> .. > .. different definitions to different people;

to which I replied:

> .. The statement I gave was a repeat of something that came
> .. directly from Tamara's lips, and hand, in conversations I had
> .. with her, and as I am not about to start calling her "her
> .. holiness", I am not about to seek her office's approval
> .. before quoting her, or even hers. Comprende, Craig?

Now, how do you know I'm telling the truth about what Tammy Siuda said? You don't even know me. Well, here's one way to resolve the mystery. Let's go visit their homepage. Oh, and look: here's a post by none other than Craig Schaefer himself, the 'man' whose job it is to be the spokesman for the House of Netjer. You can find it for yourself by visiting the House of Netjer webboard archives at

http://www.netjer.org/forums/showthreaded.php? Cat=&Board=qanda&Number=5134

Note : the House soon deleted this post and (what else) blocked it from appearing in the Internet Archive by setting up a robots.txt file (as you can see by clicking on the link directly above) ... but then you had guessed this already, right?

Don't take my word for it, look for yourselves.

: .. RevCSchaefer Administrator
: .. (Kai-Imakhu)
: .. 02/28/01 09:46 PM
: .. 24.131.164.220
: .. Re: Kemetic Orthodoxy Neo-Paganism Question [re: Mafdet]

: .. > .. Does Kemetic Orthodoxy consider itself a part of the greater
: .. > .. Neo-Paganism (ie Druidry, Asatru, Wicca) movement? Does it
: .. > .. consider itself New Age or perhaps one of the Eastern Traditions
: .. > .. (ie Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto)?
: .. > .. I'm pretty sure it's not considered part of the mainstream
: .. > .. religions. It falls under the definition for Alternative Religion
: .. > .. (catchall term for Neo-Paganism, New Age and Eastern Traditions;
: .. > .. pretty much anything that's not mainstream), but do its
: .. > .. practitioners consider it part of it at all.

: .. We do not call ourselves neo-pagans, pagans, or an 'alternative'
: .. religion, as all three labels are essentially loaded judgments from
: .. an external perspective; nor do we consider ourselves in solidarity
: .. with other faiths who do accept those labels. The only "movement"
: .. we are a part of is the Kemetic Orthodox movement. Insofar as being
: .. mainstream... Why not? Last I checked, Kemetic Orthodoxy is made up
: .. of blue-collar folks and millionaires, moms and dads, children and
: .. elderly...

: .. That looks pretty mainstream to me. If you really want a category,
: .. this is an African religion (or, if you want a broader grouping, an
: .. Eastern religion). Anything beyond that just muddies the waters and
: .. implies connections which may not exist.

: .. Ankh Udja Seneb,
: .. Rev. Craig A. Schaefer, Hem Bast
: .. Sedjauty, House of Netjer

The ellipses are his, the underlining is mine. What you are seeing here, is the entire post.

Hi, Craig, if you're reading this, you seem to be having a few problems with logical consistency, here. (Let's remember that Craig, as the official seal bearer of the House, is authorized to speak on its behalf, and if Ms. Siuda felt that her or the House's position was misrepresented by him, she has had a long time to say something about this).

So, Craig, in your post in this thread, you denied that the House took the position that it would be inappropriate for Traditional Egyptian religion, or "Kemetic Orthodoxy" as the House likes to call it, to be referred to as being "Pagan". This is curiously at odds with the first letter which you sent to the Agora staff which, naturally, was saved and will be going up on my House of Netjer review page, for general viewing. It is also curiously at odds with what you just said here. Take a good look at the underlined sentences, and let's repeat them again, shall we?

"We do not call ourselves neo-pagans, pagans, or an 'alternative' religion, as all three labels are essentially loaded judgments from an external perspective; nor do we consider ourselves in solidarity with other faiths who do accept those labels."

Am I to take it that the House is not in solidarity with itself? These are you own words, and they aren't especially ambiguous. Nor is this:

"If you really want a category, this is an African religion (or, if you want a broader grouping, an Eastern religion)."

Now, you're telling me that despite the fact that you've just insisted, in this passage, that the House IS practicing an African religion, and that in the previous one, in effect, that the House wasn't practicing a Pagan one, that the position that Traditional African religions are Pagan is logically compatible with the House's positions? Uh, huh.

I trust that you know what a syllogism is. I'm about to set one up, using some of your own working assumptions, and this new assumption which you say is compatible with those of the House:

All who are Kemetic Orthodox, practice an African Traditionalist religion.

All who practice an African Traditionalist religion, are Pagan

Thus : All who are Kemetic Orthodox, are Pagan

But: You have already made clear that Kemetic Orthodoxy, the religion of the House of Netjer, isn't a Pagan religion.

Therefore: introducing this new assumption, that African Traditionalists are Pagan, creates a logical inconsistency; the new assumption is not logically compatible with the ones which the House had previously expressed.

Craig, you knew that I was a Mathematician. Did you think that I wasn't going to pick up on this? Boxing the opposition into a logical corner is a fundamental part of my job. For God's sake, man, this is Basic Logic 100. Do you enjoy looking foolish?


Craig ended his post by closing on:

> .. Just passing along correct information before you invoke people who
> .. don't even read Usenet into your arguments.

clearly implying that I was lying. Hmmm. OK, let's take a look at Tammy Siuda's own writings from Netjer.org's sister site, Kemet.org. In the House's own "frequently asked questions" file (ie. FAQ) at


http://www.kemet.org/faq/FAQ-01.html

one finds the following passage:

"The concept of Netjer bears some similarity to that of another indigenous African religion: the "Orisha" of Nigeria's Ifa religion, and to the concept of "Lwa" in the Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion of Vodou. ...

Because Kemetic society predates the "Western" mode of thought that is the basis of most modern religions, it is difficult to explain Kemetic religion within a Western framework. Kemetic Orthodoxy falls neatly between a number of dichotomies Westerners commonly draw in discussing religion. It recognizes that the human intellect is inadequate to comprehend Netjer in Its totality. Netjer is both hidden and unknowable, according to ancient texts. Yet, how can humans interact with an unknowable being? The Kemetic worldview, in similarity to some Eastern systems, finds an interesting way around this limitation; the same workaround expressed in Hinduism: monolatry, or the belief that Netjer manifests in countless expressions -- where Deity is one unknowable power expressed in human terms in subjective, plural manifestations we can commune with and make sense of ... It is important to realize that monolatry is neither monotheism (one god) nor polytheism (many gods) oriented -- it permits the believer to focus on the divine either as a singularity (Netjer) or in pluralities (the Names), and sometimes both at the same time!"

Again, this passage is hardly ambiguous. Let's take a look at that underlined section:

"Because Kemetic society predates the "Western" mode of thought"

ie. the Western world view

"that is the basis of most modern religions, it is difficult to explain Kemetic religion within a Western framework. Kemetic Orthodoxy falls neatly between a number of dichotomies Westerners commonly draw in discussing religion."

Craig, it's a little hard to argue that Tammy isn't calling Kemetic Orthodoxy a non-Western religion. In fact, she comes out and says that it is practically unexpressible in terms of the Western philosophical tradition - the very one that was initiated by Classical (Graeco-Roman) civilization, including the very people who coined the word Pagan, by Tammy's own admission. Do I need to try to dredge up her old e-mail, or take another trip through your archives to find a post where you or Stephanie Cass said as much?

Let's squeeze that one down: "Paganism", by Siuda's own words, is a Western Category, which Kemetic Orthodoxy would fit very poorly into.

Tammy Siuda, your nisut, the very person on whose spiritual authority your church and your own individual clerical status rests, has objected to the use of the word "Pagan" to describe Kemetic Orthodoxy. Not New Age, not Neopagan, the specific word she objected to when she wrote to me was "Pagan", at a time when the Neopagan and Traditional Pagan listings in the Agora had already been seperated, and the House being listed along with Neopagan groups would not have even been an issue. And, as I'm sure that you've already guessed, I held onto copies of most of the mail she sent me, and they'll be going up, too.

Let it never be said that I'm not thorough.

In my correspondence with her, I did raise the issue of original meaning, "Pagan" initially referring to Non-Judeo-Christian religions found within the Roman Empire, of which Egypt was a part. If I did not know you, I would be astounded at the breakdown in communications which must have occurred in the House, for you to be denying what your own nisut had said, when speaking behalf of your own group. Tammy Siuda quite rightly pointed out why my initial approach, in defining "Paganism", was a wrongheaded one - it was a category invented by a post-pharaonic people, who didn't necessarily understand, or even want to understand, Kemetic Orthodoxy when placing it in this category.

When I am actually wrong, I do appreciate being corrected, so long as the correction is honest and sensible, two things that Siuda's initial responses were. What I don't appreciate is this online game of "Red Rover", in which you and Tammy write to me, succeed in winning me over to your point of view on a subject, and then use my online support of that position as a pretext for attacking my credibility in public. I even less appreciate the nakedly dirty politics that I'm seeing, when you pull a stunt like this in order to defuse criticism that you've already been given fair warning is coming.

Craig, that stinks. But, then again, in general, so do your ethics, as we get to see at


http://chipagan.freewebsites.com/Netjer/Netjer-idiocy3.html

which follows off of that bizarre incident mentioned at


http://chipagan.freewebsites.com/Netjer/Netjer-idiocy.html

Your cowardly willingness (as well as that of Stephanie Cass) to roll over on somebody, merely for having come under attack, and to let the loudest trolls on your board define reality, could not better be illustrated than it is by the absurd incident chronicled at the above urls. Far from being worthy to claim clerical credentials, you aren't even worthy to call yourself a man.

Anybody who goes through these pages will find that the review page itself is, at this time, half sketched in. But, let me fast forward you to my general conclusion regarding your group. Regardless of the merits which Kemetic Orthodoxy, as an idea, may have, in practice when one removes the manipulative politics from accounts of what one has seen occur on your boards, relatively little remains. These, by your own admission, are the main meeting places for the House, and so they define its character.

Your 'nisut', Tammy Siuda, claims a status which some would refer to as being that of a prophet. She claims to carry within her the "kingly ka", that of Heru, which would sort of make her the embodiment of courage and justice itself. Justice is one thing that I've never even seen attempted on those boards, and as for courage - please! I've never claimed to be especially brave, much less the embodiment of kingly courage, but even I can handle my own e-mail. Judging from what I saw in that incident, Siuda can't, feeling the need to hide between you and Stephanie Cass, the quivering twin towers of jello, in the 'city of God' that is the House.

If a man such as you can be the 'king's' defender, what does that say about the courage of the king? If the spirit of a being like Heru had come anywhere near Tammy Siuda, she would be more like him than the common man, not less. As is the usual fate of a mathematician, as I box the opposition into a logical corner, I find that I am myself boxed into a conclusion, whether I like it or not. In this case, I definitely don't like it, but the facts allow me no escape. Tamara Siuda is no prophet, and if she truly believes she is one, then she is deluded.

"Her holiness", indeed. She's no holier than our paper boy.

> .. You are correct, however, in that our Nisut (AUS) does not consider
> .. Vodou to be a pagan religion as it is founded mostly in traditions
> .. predating the Classical invention of the word.

Uh, huh. Thanks for being straightforward at least once in your life. I hope that it didn't kill you. Why should fate have all of the fun?





........................................................................ "The Evil Heathen"
........................................................................ http://chipagan.freewebsites.com/

........................................................................ When you see what passes for
........................................................................ sweetness and light these days,
........................................................................ it's hard not to long for
........................................................................ the darkness.






Click here to return to the previous page.