From: ................ Tamara L. Siuda ([email protected])
Subject: ........... Open letter to Joseph (was re: Cat and Tom Show)
Newsgroups: ... alt.pagan, alt.magick, soc.culture.haiti
Message ID: ... <[email protected]>
Date: ................ 2002-05-17 14:10:14 PST

Original Copy: ... Click here
Backup Copy: ..... Click here

Em hotep (in peace, and I do mean that), Joseph:

Note the patronizing tone, hinting to the casual reader the presence of a supportive mentality which you, the reader, could easily see was absent throughout my visit to her boards. As you will see, as we go through this, to read Siuda's post alone, one might think that I had been the one who had gone on her board to rant and rave, instead of John. This failure, or refusal to distinguish between reason and ranting, between rational rebuttal and criticism and simple personal attacks, as you have and will see, isn't merely the momentary failure of the House on a non-representative bad day, but a recurring pattern with Siuda and her House of Netjer.

[email protected] wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...

> .. "[email protected]" (on behalf of Tamara Siuda), ie. Craig
> .. Schaefer in all likelihood, wrote the material quoted
> .. below. So, let me respond,

Perhaps in your likelihood, but you must not understand much of my temple's organization. Rev. Craig is the chief priest of the temple and is not one of my personal scribes.

Note : Craig must himself be similarly bewildered, since he has written to us on behalf of Siuda and the House more than once. In fact, the original review consisted of excerpts from one of his efforts in this area. Note the context shifting game Tammy is playing here. The post responded to didn't say "as dictated by the nisut", it said "posted on behalf of" her. Normally speaking, only the higher clergy would have the authority to do so on behalf of the 'spiritual leader' or a church.

I am responsible for the "material quoted below," which I dictated to one of my personal scribes. I'm not going to name that person, because then he or she will just turn into yet another name on your increasingly long list of grievances with us -- grievances I have no idea where they came from or why.

You've seen the pages coming in. Do my criticisms look vague to you? I almost prefer the Reader Circuit's tradition of being openly libelous. Notice how she hints that I'm being paranoid, in a way in which nobody would misunderstand, without actually coming out and directly saying it, leaving her open to being quoted later. Unless, of course, I quote her entire letter, and stick anchor tags in it, which I just did. If you've read the pages leading up to this one, you know that Siuda has just told a bald faced lie in claiming that she doesn't know why these "grievances" are being posted. By her own request, in her own letter, which you've already seen, I went to see the House for myself, so that I could rewrite the review for the House in an informed manner. As far back as 1998, the introduction to the Agora listings site had stated that the purpose of these reviews had been to give the prospective member a sense of what it would be like to belong to the group being reviewed. So, where is the mystery? Nowhere, of course. Having spent more than a little time writing the Agora, I obviously was not a likely candidate for conversion to Kemetic Orthodoxy, nor had I ever portrayed myself as such. Siuda, very clearly, is trying to leave the impression that I am a disgrunted ex-member : again, without coming out and directly saying it. There is a word for what Tamara is doing at this point. It's called "equivocation".

(snipped note to Rev. Craig, since he had nothing to do with this)

> .. You already know that the House is due for a nasty (and embarassingly
> .. well-documented) write up on the semi-revived Agora, because I've
> .. told you this, already. It's just a matter of finding the time
> .. to put it all together. Say, by June 1.

When did you tell us this?

Note: You've seen the letters sent to Craig and Stephanie, which by themselves should have been warning enough, to say nothing of the body of the review, including the passages that Siuda is whining about, which had been mentioned on her boards weeks earlier, and linked to directly from my bio on their site. What did they want, a herald announcing their upcoming panning on our site? In fact, as Siuda herself acknowledges ...

The last we had heard from you was after we asked you and another guest to stop arguing on our public boards, which you took as a personal affront and ran off to post on your own website about how unfair we were.

Note: So, which is it, Tammy? Did you have advance notice, or didn't you? She has just said that she knew about the part of the review that she is complaining about, so, again, where was the mystery?

I fail to understand how well documented would be embarrassing. I do not believe anyone under my direction did anything wrong in that particular instance

Note: Italics mine, mangled first sentence hers. I've cut nothing out of any of these letters. I've merely inserted comments. Take due note, though, that she has come down in favor of what Craig and Stephanie did on this occasion, so let any thought that I did her an injustice by letting them speak for her be laid to rest.

(and, before you even start that complaint, John was not, and is not, under my direction

Note: again, we see the context shifting game. My 'complaint, as you have already seen on this page, was not with John's behavior, but with Craig Schaefer and Stephanie Cass' behavior, as they responded to it. The House, unlike the Shrine, is, by its own account, modeled on the overcentralized theocracy of ancient Egypt, with Tamara playing the role of 'nisut' or pharoah. In fact, the House has added her name to the list of the kings of Egypt! Craig and Stephanie were most certainly 'under her direction'.

-- he like you was a guest at our website, and since we have public boards, he was welcome there just as you were subject to certain expectations of civility).

Note: the surreal response to the earlier complaints continues. As the reader can see for himself, under no sane definition of civility had I been uncivil. I had merely been accused of being uncivil, under circumstance under which confirming my innocence would have been a simple matter of reading a few posts (1 2). Craig himself had directly said that he had no interest in the actual facts of the case, and Cass, through her actions, had displayed the same attitude. Our self-styled incarnation of the spirit of justice is now doing likewise.

> .. Picking a fight in order to cover your (ahem!), politically, is really
> .. tacky.

Clarifying an error you posted here (i.e., that I somehow have something to do with this argument you are having with Cat and Tom) is hardly "picking a fight to cover my (ahem!)," pardon my French.

Note: what an irritating colloquialism. But then, Tammy is trolling. As we have already seen, the act that I referred to was that of claiming that I had misrepresented Siuda's position, not that of pouncing on a minor error which had already been corrected before anybody from the House had ever posted anything in this thread. I wonder if the expression "nit picking" means anything to her?

It is simply stating facts. I have no interest in picking a fight with you or anybody. I DO have interest in not being dragged about Usenet when I don't even normally read it, and have nothing to do with what is being discussed.

Note: except that as you can see, she had everything to do with the subject being discussed, or rather, what she had to say did. But, in a print medium, just how meaningful a difference is this? As a scholar, she should have known that if one writes, one should expect that one will be quoted later. So, what is her complaint? Did she not mean what she said, in her earlier writings and her letter to me?

(snip John rant - again, I am no more responsible for his rantings than yours or anyone else's, as long as I want our board to be public and freely discussed)

Note: again, misleading the reader about what I wrote. My 'complaint' had not been that John was allowed to speak freely, if insanely; my 'complaint' (read : criticism) was that my freedom to speak on her boards without being censored had been denied in response to John's insanity. This inversion of reality has been, and will be, consistent throughout her post.

> .. So, you and Stephanie let reality be defined by a paranoid
> .. schizophrenic who had a violent reaction to the fact that I
> .. wouldn't validate his auditory hallucinations, and denied
> .. that King Tut might have had an electric razor. I've seen
> .. some whacky stuff out of your old enemies over in
> .. the "Reader Circuit" community, but nothing this weird. And
> .. the seldom heard Tamara Siuda is presiding over this
> .. madhouse, which has to say something.

Yes, it does say something. It says I am a very, very busy person at the moment,

Note: too busy to worry about whether she is making sense? The quoted passage should speak for itself; as the leader of the House, she has set its tone. We see as much in her responses. The behavior of her subordinates is a reflection of that tone, and thus, of her. As you can see here, through her behavior, the facts support this view.

with far better things to do than sit on Usenet all day or write websites about how people I don't even know slighted me in some way,

Note: What remarkable logic, even by emotional outburst standards! Again, Siuda knew I was there to review her group; she knew it, because the revision of the old review was being done at her request. If a restaurant reviewer gives bad marks to a restaurant after he eats a bad meal there, is he getting even with the restaurant for giving him a bad meal, or is he doing his job? Should one expect him to write a review without eating a meal there himself, in the interests of "objectivity"? Obviously not, because reviews, by their very nature, must come from personal experience. This simple truth doesn't cease to be true, just because we review groups, rather than books or restaurants. Again, Tammy has been to graduate school - how could she not know what a "review" was?

when all they did was say "hey, you guys are guests here and we'd rather you stopped arguing."

Note: In what sense was this an argument? You've seen my first post in that thread; where is the argument? The only "argument" that occured, came after John and his friends lied about what I had just written, and I posted a rebuttal to those lies. So, in effect, she's saying that it was wrong for me to defend myself against an unwarranted personal attack by John and some of her membership. What an interesting moral inversion! Lying is acceptable, but rebutting lies is not! But then, look at who we're hearing it from.

Asking people to stop arguing is just that. It doesn't validate either side of the argument -- it says stop arguing.

Note: WRONG. John demanded, without justification, that I be censored. That demand was honored, a fact that you've already seen him gloat about, while my side of the story wasn't even listened to. In what sense was this resolution even handed?

> .. You know, Craig, I really wanted to put this gently. I really didn't
> .. want to say, "Mambo Racine, given that you are the person who
> .. initiated that utter nutcase, Tamara Siuda, I think that alt.pagan
> .. would be about 100 times better off without you or your friends
> .. trolling their way through it". I even was writing, and rewriting,
> .. trying to find a gentle way to retell the bizarre events that I saw.
> .. But you just couldn't shut up, and let me be as diplomatic as the
> .. circumstances allowed, could you, Schaefer? Fine, that's your choice,
> .. and you're entitled to it.

Again, "Schaefer" had nothing to do with this,

Note: Sure he didn't. How are we to know this? Take Tammy's word for it? You've already seen how little that's worth.

and he's never done anything rude to you either.

Note: Total nonsense. See previous page.

Nice to know you know me well enough to call me an "utter nutcase." Congratulations, you've now stooped to ad hominem.

Note: an "ad hominem", by definition, is the use of an attack upon the person speaking as a response to a reasoned argument. You know, like we've been seeing out of John, Siuda, and the latter's underlings at the House of Netjer on a regular basis. Or, to put it on the level of Tammy's followers: Pot. Kettle. Black. My reference to Siuda as being an "utter nutcase" isn't a substitute for a reasoned argument, it is the unflattering conclusion of a reasoned argument. As popular as the equating of the two may be on Usenet, the two are not equivalent. If they were, one would have to call for the emptying of the prisons and psychiatric wards, because the conclusions drawn in the course of a criminal conviction or psychiatric commitment are certainly not very flattering; by Tammy's logic, this would imply that the reasoning used to arrive at these decisions was faulty by definition! Absurd. Siuda, as usual, was pandering to the online mob.

Guess it doesn't matter what I have to say in my own defense.

Note: Mirroring, straight out of the Usenet troll's handbook. The reader will not that this has been my criticism of the House' managment, with the difference being that I backed up my criticisms with documentation, not misrepresentation, which Siuda resorts to, here.

And I had no interest in trolling usenet in the least -- wouldn't even have known about it had you not decided to name me in something I have nothing to do with. You can thank yourself for that.

Note: point already responded to, but, again, note the mirroring and attempt to 'blame the victim'. Such are the joys of being a reviewer. I'm reminded of the header we were going to put on the Agora, at one point: "We deal with their garbage so you don't have to".

> .. Now, what did you have to say ? Oh yes, this ...
>
> .. > .. Dear "Evil Heathen,"
>
> .. Oh, call me Joe.

> .. > .. Tamara Siuda has never been a student of Cat Yronwode.
> .. > .. In fact the two have never even met.
>
> .. No, but she is a student of Mambo Racine, who
> .. I had confused with Cat Yronwode.

Okay, then. I was clarifying facts; I do not even know Cat though I do not have any problems with her. I was indeed initiated at a kanzo by Mambo Racine Sans Bout, last summer.

> .. I am far from being the first person on Usenet to have ever
> .. found it difficult to keep the players straight without a scorecard,
> .. and I don't appreciate the all-too-characteristically hostile tone.

What's hostile about "no, Tamara isn't Cat's student, she doesn't even know her?"

Note: let's take a look at that closing line, again.

I think you're reading hostility where none exists. The only hostility between us is clearly not emanating from me.

Note: No, what I'm "reading" is an attempt to be manipulative, something that I will rightly feel hostile about.

> .. I even less appreciate the effort to make political
> .. points off of an irrelevant misunderstanding which
> .. has since been cleared up, in public. Cat Yronwode
> .. is one of the combatants and Mambo Racine is another,
> .. both of them opposed to Tom. Not that I object to
> .. them taking potshots at the man, actually I kind of
> .. like the idea, but why do it here, in alt.pagan?

Actually, no, it's not political at all. I was told that someone was claiming I was Cat's student, and I got a copy of the post, and then told one of my people (most people at my level of work do have assistants; it's not some evil conspiracy) to send a note correcting that as well as the statement about Vodou being Pagan.

Note: We have seen, at length, just how political this is, and watched Tammy and her subordinates talk out of both sides of their mouths about whether or not "Vodou" or "Vodoun" is Pagan. The point is addressed here; now she seems to want to count on the reader's amnesia. In fact, as incredible as it is, you will shortly get to see her try to convince the reader that I was claiming that she had said that Vodoun was a Pagan religion. If you're losing the argument, why not try to swipe your opponent's position, and stick your own former words into his mouth? This is basically what Siuda is about to try to pull, beginning her attempt in the final sentence above; compare what I actually wrote, with what one would think that I had written, if one took the above remarks at face value.

Simple statement of facts. I do not read the Usenet, so I apologize if I didn't know that the confusion had already been cleared up. This was the only post I was addressing -- the post that named me when I don't even read these lists.

Note: Again, notice the implication that I'm paranoid, a barely veiled personal attack, offered in this feigned sweet tone of "Joseph, why do you think we are enemies". Why? For one thing, because character assassination is an inherently hostile act, no matter what one's tone of voice is. If you've been paying attention to what has been said on this thread - and Siuda is counting on a failure on your part to do so - you'll see that I never said or hinted that the use of assistants implied any sort of 'conspiracy'. True to form, Tammy has put words into my mouth, clearly leaving the impression with the reader that I has said something, without actually directly saying that I had. How very slick. Almost Clintonesque.

> .. If you decide to be your usual, less-than-straightforward
> .. self, and deny that Tamara ... no, deny that Tammy Siuda
> .. studied under Mambo Racine, I'll be delighted to pull up a
> .. Dejanews url that shows otherwise. Perhaps you've forgotten
> .. that Mambo Racine posts announcements regarding
> .. the progress of her initiates?

Why would anyone lie about that?

Note: Because it's in your nature, Tammy? The reader will note that in the course of this very lengthy review, we've almost never seen any member of the House be honest. It's a remarkable record.

It's in my official biography -- and I am proud to have been initiated kanzo with Roots Without End; I practice Vodou to honor my ancestors,

Note: if you visit the House of Netjer's website, look up Tamara Siuda's picture. The woman isn't just Caucasian, she's an unusually light-skinned Caucasian. (Polish, I believe; certainly, Northeastern European of some sort). She's an Indo-European. Who are these ancestors, that she is honoring? The woman is a pathological liar. Again, note the implication that I've somehow attacked her for practicing Vodoun. Equivocate away, Tammy?

though it is not my primary religious calling, and the House of Netjer does interfaith work with the peristyle even now.

Additionally, I would appreciate not being called "Tammy"; it is not, nor has it ever been, my name, and it suggests a familiarity here that does not exist. I met you in real life one time, and thought you were a pleasant and intelligent person -- not the person deliberately baiting me and being generally rude right now, alas.

Comment: considering the amount of abuse I went through to get the information for this review, I'm not about to apologize for teasing Siuda about that over-inflated ego of hers.

> .. > .. Additionally, the statement you attribute to our Nisut (AUS) would
> .. > .. perhaps better be stated
>
> .. 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?

Not Craig, and quite comprende. I wasn't trying to argue. I was corroborating that I do personally believe that Vodou is not properly considered "Pagan." That is my belief. You can believe I'm wrong; I accept that others have different opinions.

Note: What a remarkable inversion of reality, even by Siuda's standards! The very comment that I made, that the House had taken exception to, was to cite Siuda as an authority when stating that Vodoun/Vodou was not a Pagan religion (and that, therefore, discussions about infighting with its practitioners was off-topic in alt.pagan). Siuda is now quoting me out of context, and asserting that I have asserted the exact opposite! Unbelievable.

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

> .. I now need your permission to choose a particular phrasing, Craig?
> .. In your dreams, buddy. No, I will not use that phrasing. It would
> .. change the meaning to something other than what was said, as the
> .. Western Traditionalist groups that your organization also objected to
> .. being grouped with, aren't Neopagan, either. In fact, given your
> .. church's stated position that the netjeru have only a
> .. subjective existence, theologically the House is a good deal closer
> .. to being Neopagan than are, say, the Asatruar.

Nope, you don't need my permission (again Craig has nothing to do with this). However, given that people seemed to not understand my original statement, I thought it was appropriate to elaborate on my reasoning. If that's not necessary, then don't use it. We reserve the right to define ourselves. If you don't agree with our definition, that's fine. You don't have to accept it.

Comment: more quotation out of context. As the reader can see by looking at my earlier remarks, I had not denied that the House could reasonably be called a Non-Pagan organization; what I did say was that under any standards under which the House is to be declared Non-Neo-Pagan, the Asatruar and the other Western Traditionalists cited would have to be declared even more so, if those standards are to be consistent. Note the House' earlier assertion on this thread that their objection was to African Tribal religions being called Neopagan, not Pagan, which my remarks came as a reply to. If I'm going to be accused of having misrepresented their position, the inconsistency between their past and their present remarks is certainly on-point.

> .. > .. the Roman Catholic version, i.e., "anything which is not
> .. > .. Jewish, Christian or Muslim," would put Vodou into that category.
>
> .. Um - wrong. The Roman Catholic Church has not referred
> .. to Buddhism as being "Pagan" in living memory.

I will admit to not being up on official Catholic doctrine.

> .. > .. 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.

> .. Vodou? Uh, huh. Please, Craig. If your group wants to claim to see
> .. similarities between Egyptian and Yoruba practice, I will have to defer
> .. to Tammy's greater knowledge in that area, at least until I can
> .. find a good authority to check these claims with. But the Yoruba
> .. don't even predate the English, much less the Romans.
>
> .. That much is high school history. * groan *

It depends on who you talk to; people in modern-day Nigeria go back quite a bit further than the high-school books. And this is my opinion. Again, you are more than welcome to disagree with it. I'm not stating a fact -- I'm stating my opinion.

Note: Sounds strangely reminiscent of the tone that "JeloRoc" used back during the Egyptian Electrification thread, when his arguments were challenged, doesn't it? Remember how when I would corner him on a point, he would try to hedge, and say things like "I just said that this might be true", as if he could magically make inconvenient arguments go away in this fashion? Tammy seems to be playing a very similar rhetorical game, here. I invite the reader to consult a reputable source on African history, and that means offline, and from the History Department of a well-respected university, not from an Afrocentric press, or the "Black Studies" department of Howard University or the New York City College System. You will find that Ms. Siuda's "opinion" is not supported by the facts, as almost every professor in those departments will attest - at least, not the opinion she seems to want to leave you with. Note the evasive way in which she phrased that "opinion": "It depends on who you talk to; people in modern-day Nigeria go back quite a bit further than the high-school books." Taken absolutely literally, this statement would have to inspire the response "so what?". Of course the history books are going to be newer than the people written about; how could the historians write about History before it occurs? But the reader will not take this statement literally, he will read between the lines, as Ms. Siuda knows, and encourages through her oblique writing style. Almost anybody alive skimming that statement online will read it as a statement that people in Nigeria go back further than the High school books say they do. This is undoubtedly true, but the point that Tammy's evasive prose glosses over, is that one has to ask "which people". I am an American, living in Chicago, and people have been living near where my apartment is for how many thousands of years? By the logic which Siuda's indirect comment encourages, we would have to conclude that the city of Chicago is older than the pyramids, and has been occupied by people we would recognize as being Americans during that time. This is utter nonsense, as anybody who is more interested in common sense than political correctness will quickly see: there has been an almost complete turnover in population, and a near complete replacement of the local culture since European colonization began. Yes, there were people here before; they just weren't Chicagoans. The same refutation applies to Tamara's argument regarding Nigeria; to say that tribes of human beings have lived in the lands currently occupied by the Yoruba in no way serves as evidence that the members of those tribes were the ancestors of the Yoruba, or that any sort of cultural continuity exists between those earlier societies and the present day one found in the lands they once inhabited. In logical terms, Tammy is trying to get something for nothing, trying to define her conclusion into validity by confusing the terms of the discussion. This is not scholarship, this is blue smoke and mirrors.

I don't think Vodou needs to be considered "Pagan."

Note: which is in no way incompatible with the position which I attributed to her, and which the House objected to; it is merely a vaguer form of the same. So, why did the House feel the need to reply, if this is so, unless Siuda was looking for a fight, contrary to her earlier claims? (1 2 3 4) Comment : the snippage below is due to Siuda; the only cases in which I've cut material on this page is, as I have said, when it is quoted material which you've already seen, and then I'll tell you what. Once I have the appropriate links in place, you'll be able to check the Googlegroups archives for yourself to see that this is so. I just insert comments.

(snipped)

> .. No, Craig, you dropped by to do the one and only thing
> .. that you and Stephanie ever do - throw your insubstantial
> .. weight around. Your nisut invited me - practically
> .. challenged me - to drop by your group, and make up
> .. my own mind about it, in an informed fashion, and then
> .. write about it. That's a reasonable request, one which I
> .. couldn't deny, but now I've done so, and I don't have to
> .. put up with your passive aggressive attitude any more.
> .. So, get it though your pin-sized head that I'm not one
> .. of your shemsu, and I don't need your permission to
> .. speak about anything.

This letter came from me though it was actually typed and uploaded by someone else -- so I was throwing my own weight around, if any weight was being thrown around at all. However, I think you've really misread the letter. Nothing was intended beyond a simple statement of who I am a student of (or not) and my own position on a statement you have attributed to me. If someone else showed up on Usenet purporting to speak for you, I'm sure you would also wish to make your own statement. There is no "passive aggressiveness" here, there is no hostility here. You don't need permission to speak about anything -- you DO have to realize that other people can and do have the right to clarify the words you put into their mouths.

Comment: And what words would those be, Tammy? Incredible. Having just documented a defense against the complaint made, that I had misrepresented the House' (and Siuda's) position, I now get to see Tammy simply repeating the accusation, after a rambling misrepresentation of my remarks clearly intended to help the reader forget what it was, that I actually said. In case she's succeeded a little, and you've forgotten why you're hear, ask yourself this - would you want to spend time trying to reason with people like this? If the answer is "no", then, as a reviewer, I've done my job. I've given you a feel for what it would be like to drop in on these people.

Tamara PS: You'll have to email me privately if you have anything to discuss; I really do not have time to be around the Usenet.

Comment: And yet she does have time to converse by private mail? A key punch is a key punch, whether you're writing e-mail or on Usenet. One difference is that one has fewer witnesses in private e-mail, making lying about what was said afterwards far easier than it would be in Usenet. What Tammy is trying to do, here, is give herself the last word, in a sense. By firmly asserting that the online discussion is over, she will succeed in getting a number of the more suggestible readers to stop reading, before I have a chance to respond.

Anyone else here who needs anything clarified may also write,

Comment: inviting people to write to her privately, ensuring that I won't know, or be able to document, what she wrote, later on. Also, choosing a manner of response which, in creating a need to repeat oneself to each new person writing in, is more time consuming than Usenet posting, not less, undermining the rationalization above.

though they need to understand that it could be some time before they get a response (since I will wish to respond personally given the current suggestion that I can't answer for myself).

Comment: though she does seem to have some problem with doing so when witnesses are around.

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