At this point, Antistoicus was still trying to give Miss Siuda the benefit of the doubt. The previous pages, while already written, had not been made available to the public yet, having not been linked to from anywhere else inside or outside this site, or mentioned. The House had been put on notice that a bad review was coming, but before showing those pages to the public, Antistoicus wanted to give Tamara Siuda one last chance to speak for herself. Had she acquitted herself better than she did, he would have been delighted to rewrite those pages, but that wasn't what was about to occur. The House was about to use up the last of my patience. What would be seen out of them would be par for the course, when dealing with the postmodern: self-contradictory statements hidden in the midst of vague rambling, for the same of evasion, should their arguments be rebutted.

We won't say that it was worth the wait, but the Nisut's position on this "issue" was finally heard, on Usenet. It all began in a moment of mistaken identity, as Antistoicus confused Cat Yrwonde with the holder of the pseudonym "Mambo Racine". A minor point, really, as the two were political allies, and both had taken their "Voodoo Community" flamewar onto alt.pagan, where it clearly didn't belong. The post Antistoicus followed up on had the elegant title of "going up a Mambo's (expletitive deleted):

From: [email protected] ([email protected])
Subject: The Cat and Tom Show, Here on Alt.Pagan
Newsgroups: alt.pagan, alt.magick, soc.culture.haiti
Viewing message : <[email protected]>
Original Copy : Click here

Date: 2002-05-13 17:03:01 PST

Yo! Cat! Tom! Could I borrow a moment of your time?

Tom: "Going up a Mambo's (ahem!)" ? I'm really happy that you can be so open about your sexual fantasies, but I'm pretty sure that Cat is involved with somebody, right now. Keep the faith, though, I'm sure your back door sweetheart is waiting for you, somewhere.

Cat : One of your own students, Rev. Tamara Siuda, the "nisut" of the House of Netjer, has stated that traditional African world views differ so greatly from Western ones, that to call an African Traditionalist faith such as Vodoun "Pagan" would be inappropriate. Is it your position that your former student didn't know what she was talking about when she said that - repeatedly? Or, would you agree that discussions of the merits or flaws of "Voodoo" are off-topic in alt.pagan, and should be taken elsewhere? Please note that I've trimmed the followup line in order to remove alt.pagan from this discussion. Would you, and your would-be lover Tom be willing to take that as a request, and honor it?


....................................................... Thanks a bunch,

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

Naturally, Antistoicus' error was soon corrected by one of the regulars on the list. It was one of small importance, as the main conflict had been between "Tom" and "Mambo Racine" (who Antistoicus had mistakenly identitied with Catherine Yrwonde). Mambo Racine was Tamara Siuda's previous teacher. In other words, we're looking at a side issue here, one which the House would attempt to cash in on, in order to damage the credibility of somebody who had already been openly critical of it (Antistoicus), acting as if something that was essentially a footnote had been key to the point that he was making in his little bit of gentle teasing. Tamara Siuda's testimony remained on-point, regardless of what Mambo Racine's actual name was.

That might have been subtle dirty politics, but it would remain dirty politics. In the meantime, however briefly, responses were staying civil, no thanks to the House. Writing in what could only be called a menner respectful of Ms. Siuda, who Antistoicus still held out some small amount of hope for, he replied, explaining why her comments were relevant in this discussion (and, of course, acknowledging his error.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that Antistoicus had already acknowledged his error regarding the identity of "Mambo Racine", a conveniently anonymous member of the House decided to pounce on this irrelevant point, while attempting to claim that he had "put words" in the mouth of the Nisut, which, of course, Antistoicus had not. What he had attributed to the Nisut was an almost word-for-word repetition of something Siuda had told him in person, and said in print in a post which ... yes, you guessed it ... which the House staff deleted before we could download a copy.

This had to be commented on. Unlike Ms. Siuda, and her Wiccan counterparts in the "Reader Circuit" community, Antistoicus placed a high value on his honor, and would never knowingly misrepresent another person's position. Rightly taking offense at this low key attempt at mud slinging, and having a pretty good idea of who was responsible for it, he would reply, first by giving the reader a little context to answer the question "but why would he lie about a thing like that". You've already seen much of this material.

After this, having given the motivations for Craig's dishonesty, Antistoicus then went on to document it. This was not an easy thing to do, given the House' eagerness to erase (and then lie about) the historical record, but not impossible. In their haste to destroy the relevant records, the House had overlooked a paper trail of sorts: a string of posts and writings which, taken together, were logically inconsistent with this position that they were now claiming to not be opposed to. (Or, at least, trying to leave the reader with the impression that they weren't opposed to).

Finally, Tamara Siuda found the awesome courage needed to speak for herself under her own name. Of course, she did so in an online forum where she wouldn't have to face the person she was defaming, but hey, give credit where credit is due ... especially when so little of it needs to be given. Having been confronted with the reality that the position that the House had denied was its own was a simple (and inescapable) logical consequence of positions its hierarchy was still on record as having stated), Miss Siuda responded by misrepresenting what Antistoicus had said earlier in that very thread! Remember the "Dormitory Telephone Game", that the initial trolls on the Geometry thread had resorted to? Our "spiritual leader" borrowed a page out of their book, and reacted to Antistoicus posts as if he had written in opposition to her position that Vodoun was non-pagan, a near total inversion of the position that you've actually seen him take. Finding that her own position wasn't faring well in the argument, she simply tried to swap hers for his in the mind of the reader.

This post had been made on a separate thread. Tammy then felt the need to return to the old one, to continue the disinformation. Some of this will be a rehash, and be left uncommented on, this time; we'll make an effort to keep the repetition to a minimum, or at least under control. A lot of her post was more of the same - Tammy rambled on vaguely in an attempt to confuse the reader as to who said what, while quoting out of context endlessly - memorable only for the skill with which Siuda manipulated her audience. (Note the commentary on how she works her rhetorical magic in the two preceding posts; to know how such word games are played is to immunize oneself against their influence). One of her more memorable moments came after she responded to a mention of the first three pages in this account (1 2 3) by first admitting

"This is the history. I agree, the whole thing was (and your continued distress about it long after the fact is) absurd;"

following that arrogant dismissal of Antistoicus' note of protest, by, in effect, lying to the reader about what he had said had happened in the very account which she had just admitted the accuracy of:

"both of you only needed a deep breath to step back from the argument; after being asked to post productively rather than continue personally attacking another person, you could've continued to be a welcome addition to our boards."

But, as you've already seen, as a matter of objective and undebatable historical fact, Antistoicus had been attacking nobody; at most, he defended himself from a wrongful accusation of having attacked somebody. How does a post helping people find an argument-free discussion about Geometry become a personal attack? To date, the House has still not answered this question. Continuing to posture as the misunderstood voice of reason, Siuda wrote:

"You're still allowed to sign in as well -- we did not ban you, we simply asked you to remember our posting policy."

which Antistoicus had not violated. What good would it do him to sign in and post, however, if even posts as innocuous as the ones which Cass had censored become candidates for deletion any time somebody who wishes to stir up trouble decided to trump up a complaint? The offer would have been meaningless, even had Antistoicus any desire to continue talking with her people, which he did not.

To this piece of spin doctoring, Antistoicus replied (with his post not making it into the archives for the second thread, for some obscure reason) by setting the facts straight. Most of them, anyway: we still harbored the illusion that whatever the House had become, that it had originally been something conceived for the best of reasons. Our naivite on this point would soon be dispelled.

No, he would not take up Ms. Siuda on her 'kind' offer to let me return, at least not for a good long time; why would he? As a reviewer, he had seen what he came to see, and gave the House ample opportunity to cast itself in a better light. This, at a time when they had even been told that they were being reviewed, a fact that they were kept from seeing by nothing more than their own cockiness. He saw no reason to give them another chance, and given how little he had learned on the boards, and how little he seemed likely to learn in the future, had no personal desire to stay.

His opinion of Ms. Siuda wasn't very high at this point, and yet, even so, he was still managing to give her too much credit. Her biography said it all: there was no reason to think that she had even been sincere. Let's take a look at the following quote, which you can easily see was not taken out of context:

"She moved in 1987 to Chicago, Illinois, where She made a decision to pursue academic research into Kemetic culture and religion to assist in honoring Her spiritual calling. Five years after receiving Her undergraduate degree from Mundelein College, one of the last remaining all-women's secondary education institutions in the U.S., Her Holiness entered graduate study at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, receiving Her Master's degree in Egyptology from the University in August, 2000."

The woman had not been lead to her "calling" through her studies, she had undertaken her studies in order to give the air of authority to that which she already chose to express belief in. Her attitudes and her House' attitudes toward freedom of expression and academic integrity suddenly made sense as we read this. She had been prostituting scholarship for her own political ends from day one; those values she sold out, were never ones that she had believed in, herself. Scholarship doesn't move merchandise, or persuade the gullible to donate 10 percent of their incomes to your 'church'. Pandering to the masses does.

Click here to return to "Meeting the Pharoah".