The Anathema of Stos
by Stokastikos

I’m sick of magicians who have harrowed the million spheres but don’t
have the price of a pint actually at the moment.

I’m sick of astrologers with arms in splints who can tell you exactly why it happened.

I’m sick of darkside Satanic wimps who foul their clothes if you raise so much as a fist to them.
I’m sick of Tantric sex goddesses who cannot hold down a steady boyfriend.

I’m sick of Thelemites who have found their true will in a bottle or a
syringe.

I’m sick of Great Beasts whose three successive star goddesses all walked out on them.
I’m sick of shamans who knos less about the wildwood than urban boy
scouts.

I’m sick of Chaoists with dull day jobs and two-point-four children.

I’m sick of people who are so spiritual that being an arsehole on the
material plane is perfectly justifiable.

I’m sick of occult theories that are just longwinded excuses for inability.

I’m sick of witches whose sacred tradition comes third-hand from the
Malleus Maleficarum.

I’m sick of half-baked ideas transferred from one book to another with no intervening thought.

I’m sick of wizards who spend more on incense than clothes – and smell
like it.

I’m sick of crystals that don’t affect anything except ley lines which are not ther and dolphins who are not listening.

I’m sick of clairvoyants who cannot charge a thousand quid a go.

I’m sick of the way occult books always get stolen from libraries.

I’m sick of the deification of personalities that fooled hardly anyone
in the flesh.

I’m sick of psychic fairs – ten different futures at a tenner a time.

I’m sick of books published for no other reason than the sales figures
of the previous ones.

I’m sick of those who build self-importance with the fantasy-bricks of
paranoia.

I’m sick of white lightists who beam love and harmony at imaginary evils
but wouldn’t give a blind beggar a quid ‘cos it’s his karma.

I’m sick of occult beliefs which act not even as crutches for the feeble
but as broken legs for the incapable.

Some of you may have noticed that the postings here have been getting further apart. It was inevitable, given the track record of this site as a whole, and while I would like to claim that it is because we’ve all been busy, hard at work in the lab concocting the weapons to bring forth the apocalypse, the simple fact is that life has intervened.

While on the one hand, it has provided additional inspiration for the rage and bitterness we are about to let loose, it also has done much to monopolize our time and drained much of the energy necessary to deconceptualize and reconceptualize these events into something anyone might care to listen to.

Anyone can write a “fuck ‘em all” song, but this just gets boring after the first handful. Not only for the audience, but for the writers. Which leads me to the main point of this particular rant.

In the thousands of years which mankind has hobbled across the face of this rock you call Earth, the actual variety of human experience has not changed: we get up, forage for food and other resources, get cheated out of it (or fail entirely), fuck, go to bed and do it all the next day. Throw in the occasional natural disaster, illness, and drama that inevitably results from social groups for a bit of variety, and that’s basically it.

The names, places, technology and scale change, but that’s all. There’s really nothing else to it. You and your most primitive ancestors both feel the same rage, sorrow, love, apathy, and joy. And after a few thousand years, its all been done to death.

Makes it rather hard for one to give a shit.

The simple underlying “truth” is that those who would be bothered to learn a damn thing, already have, and will continue to do so, with, or without, our help. Those who are too stupid will remain so, regardless of our efforts.

in short, I don’t do any of this for you. I have no problem if you dig it (and buy a t-shirt) and sure, we can all rally together in one big massive pity party commenting on why the world generally blows, but ultimately, I only do it to exorcise my personal demons. So, when life interferes, this slides a bit on my priority list.

An update to those of you playing a copy of our home game:

Interviews and auditions are still going forward, though not with the speed we had originally forseen. We’ve had a fair response level and its been a trying and sometimes tedious process trying to separate the wheat and the chaff.

But don’t lose heart, little ones… they’re only delaying the inevitable.

This is something I’ve been contemplating for a while:

Spending a fair amount of time in the occult/metaphysics sections at every conceivable book store this side of Cocytus, I am always… amazed is not quite the right word, but will have to do… at how many of the shelves are devoted to crazy paranoid Christian bat-shit.

If God (YHWH) is all powerful (not to mention all knowing) and all good little Christians are guaranteed a place in God’s “New Earth” (I suppose arriving once Slartibartfast finishes re-sculpting the fjords), just what exactly is it that the Christian Right is so afraid of?

The Illuminati/Templar/New World Order/Liberal/Masonic/Satanic/Jews/O.T.O/Extra Terrestrial/Music and Film Star/Jesuit/G.D/Catholic/NAZI/Skull and Bones conspiracy is getting (has been) just a little hard to swallow. Being a member of some of these groups, and closely associated with many of the others (I’ll let you guess which ones), and being a practicing magician, I am the LAST person any of these groups would bother hiding their “infernal secrets” from. And I can officially state that this conspiracy DOES NOT exist.

We have others. And they’re more fun.

But I digress.

Even if all of these groups were truly working in tandem (no mean feat) to indoctrinate the youth of the world and subvert them away from the “good news” about Jesus and his arboreal suicide, and if they were truly members of this epochs long conspiracy, has it never occurred to anyone that our methods might have been refined slightly over the years, rather than this PR equivalent of a 2×4 to the face? Or that if it really was a secret, YOU wouldn’t know about it?

Lets look at history as the conspiracy theories would write it:

1) The omniscient, omnipotent Christian God turns out to be totally inept, allowing a second rate spector to infiltrate paradise and tempt man and woman with knowledge (of all things). Then rather, than destroying evil there and then, he just evicts everybody.

2) Evil propagates to such an extent that God has no choice but to wipe out evil, for good this time, with a massive flood.

3)Only, evil ISN’T wiped out and continues to have its run of things until Jesus is forced to come down, do his human pogo-shtick to finally rid the world of evil. Oh, but he’s late for his flight and has to dash, but don’t worry, he’s coming back soon to finish the job.

4)Fast forward some 2000 years and now, no sign of God or Jesus, but Satan’s running around, currently master-minding the largest social event ever conceived, with such flawless precision that EVERY moron and their dog has heard of it, thanks to hack writers ranging from David Icke to Dan Brown.

5) We, here in the evil grand conspiracy, work to imanitize the eschaton and bring about the Apocalypse (wait… wouldn’t that make us the good guys? You know… fulfilling divine prophecy and all that? Anyway…) through the cunning use of… wait… what? Pepsi logos and comic books?

Shit, man… you’re telling me the most sinister and vile minds behind the Council of Foreign Affairs, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Trilateral Commission are sitting around the Pentagon (apparently) chanting from the Clavicula Solomonis and the best the infernal powers can muster is the Matrix movies?

Maybe I DID join the wrong side.

It would seem to me that rather than some “cosmic battle for our souls”, we’re witnessing a 6000+ year long episode of Laurel and Hardy… and it stopped being entertaining around 15 minutes in. Either God and Satan are equal (and equally incompetent) or they’re not. If they’re not, either God is stronger or Satan is. Logic and history seem to indicate that if either actually exists, Satan at least beats God in endurance, if nothing else.

Of course, being an arrogant little asshole, I refuse to take any of them too seriously and laugh equally hard at the Christians and the Satanists.

It just convinces them all that I truly am one of the damned.

Care to join me?

I’ve been contemplating “the future” a lot lately. Not any specific future, mind you, rather, the way that we as a species tend to conceptualize it.

There are, functionally, three camps of futurists and I honestly can’t decide which one irritates me more.

On the one hand, you have the utopians. Those well-meaning and idealistic fools convinced that one day, very soon, we will wake up and the world will (for some as of yet undiscovered reason) suddenly turn 180 degrees, conquering aeons of inertia, and suddenly be this all ’round groovy place. Humans will stop being humans and Mother Nature will give us her blessing, eliminate natural instinct and disease, leaving us a group of “enlightened” beings playing harps, singing songs and generally not being eaten by anything with sharp teeth, and there may be jet packs.

On the other hand, you’ve got the apocalyptics. Those well-meaning and idealistic fools convinced that one day, very soon, we will wake up and the world will (for some as of yet undiscovered reason) suddenly turn 180 degrees, conquering aeons of inertia, and suddenly be this all ’round terrible place. The asteroid will hit, the bomb will fall, or a temperamental deity will go all etch-a-sketch on our asses.

Then on the other, other hand (a foot, perhaps?) you’ve got the ambivalent. Pretty much convinced that inertia will prevail, the earth will continue to orbit the sun (at least for a few billion more years), H. Sapiens will continue to generally suck, with the occasional reprieve where we suck a little less than usual or develop some new, mildly entertaining technology, but otherwise, life continues as is, at least for the rest of their lives, so why think about it?

Perhaps its my border-line psychoses, but none of those options really do it for me.

First off, while I dig the poetic irony of the human race, having worked so hard to over come our susceptibility to nature and the elements being smacked out of existence in a game of galactic billiards or some other fluke natural disaster, I just don’t really see it happening.

Second, people, are fundamentally lazy pussies. Utopias (if even possible outside of the Brave New World model) just don’t “happen”, and a bunch of hippies waiting for someone to do the work and thinking for them just won’t cut it.

Third, while we may not be there yet, inertia will inevitably give way to entropy and life will not just “go on”. And its not going to be (relatively speaking) that much longer.

So, what’s left? And will there be jet packs?

Every day we march inevitably toward our own individual destruction while our species stands poised at the verge of mass evolution. Old models must be raized and the crumbling facades of the old ways must be torn stone from stone before they collapse on top of us like an Haitian city.

You can either fear this next phase of human evolution and cower in hallucinogenic doomsday prophecies like John of Patmos or another 2012 fanatic, embrace the “dawn of a New Age” and prance around like a flower child, blissful in your ignorance, or join with us and prepare to ride the wave.

Negotiations are once again under way to flesh out our Death Corps and we look forward to soon revealing the patient files for Deophagy’s new guitarist and drummer.

“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”

Sounds like a good time to me.

Stay tuned.

Not twelve hours later and I find myself accosted by accusations of fatalism in response to my last post. Normally, I would probably ignore it. You cannot make the blind see or the deaf hear. But many of the accusations come from people that should know better, so perhaps the mistake is mine. So, allow me to clarify.

Acceptance that one is going to die does not mean that one must wallow in death. There’s no need (and in fact it becomes counterproductive) to get all emo about it. Yes, life is short. Life is (though it makes me nauseous to say it) precious.

You are here now, whether its by chance and evolution or some divine plan. Pointless though it may be, how would you rather spend your remaining time? Afraid and in perpetual misery or awake and enjoying life?

If you WOULD rather be morose and miserable all the time, that’s your bag. But don’t be surprised when my minions and I come rolling through enjoying life and generally ruining your day.

Oh and to all you self-righteous control freaks who feel you have some right to force your misery and fear on everyone else, we’re coming for you.

There’s no gentle way to break this to you: You, in the not too distant future, are going to die. Maybe quietly in your sleep, maybe in a spectacular and fiery explosion on the interstate. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your… never mind.

Call me morbid, but the truth is inescapable: Life is a terminal disease (catch the second meta-pun in there and win a shiny gold sticker).

The tyrannical powers-that-be work very hard to keep you blissfully ignorant of that fact. They distract you with sparkly objects and bad science: new cars, new clothes, Botox, tit jobs, fad diets, miracle creams, dyes, powders, colonics, herbs, crystals, God…

They know that deep down inside, you are afraid of death, afraid of aging, afraid of sickness and violence. We are not so different from our “primitive” ancestors huddling in a cave, trembling at the sounds of thunder and flash of lightning.

And while you’re afraid you’re gullible. You’re suggestible. You’re CONTROLLABLE. You’re willing to buy anything and follow any order that might delay your inevitable personal encounter with the Grim Reaper. So, they’ve created a culture to reenforce every fear and subtly twist your mind.

Fear, buy, fear, buy, fear, buy.

True liberation starts when you understand and accept this:

The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.
The earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
Life has existed on earth for approximately 600 million years.
Homo Sapiens showed up around 200,000 years ago.
Civilization dates back about 4000 years.
The oldest person on record died at 122 years 164 days.

There is not enough time in our meagre lifespans to spend it being afraid. Break free of the oppression and for fuck’s sake, do something.

Oh… and buy a t-shirt.

I’d call the universe 13.7billion; also, that’s just the observable universe, discounting the rest of it we haven’t seen yet.
Earth’s closer to 4.6billion, though not by much.
Life dates back 4.25billion years, including extremophiles found recentlyish in Phanerozoic lava vents.
Homo sapiens date back, yeah: around two hundred thousand.
Civilisation dates back minimally ten thousand years, including cities like Çatalhöyük; people lived in organised groups prior to that, arguably being civilised. Ish.
And, yeah: buy a shirt.
—Gremlin

Whether you’re a hard-core reductionist or a mush-brained new-ager, the world has become a strange, strange place in the last few years. Of course, this particular revolution in thought began a century ago with Einstein and his contemporaries, but technology has finally reached a point now where nearly everyone (state-side, at least) has at least had a casual encounter with the underlying realm of the bizarre quantum world.

My own personal infatuation with this realm of math and physics began almost a decade ago and I’ve been scrambling like mad to try and understand just what the fuck is actually going on.

Could we all really be just one slice of a larger “reality loaf”, with divergent “me”’s running around? Is the seeming unity of the quantum field really the cohesive mass it seems to be and everything we see, touch, hear and feel are merely its manifestations?

Far from being critical questions in any pragmatic sense, they are persistent and do have a tendency to keep me occupied during my 20+ hours of consciousness every day. And suppose they are true? What does it mean? It pains me to think that the fluff-brains might be right, even poetically.

Thankfully, the mathematics involved are more arcane than any classical grimmoire, but the fact remains that what is suggested is a universe in which anything not forbidden by physical law becomes obligatory… That clairvoyance, telepathy and hell even transmutation and pyromancy are required to happen, if only by sheer chance.

Even more “mundane” examples of the weirdness inherent in our mathematical models of reality like black holes are enough to drive one to nearly satori-like states.

What was once a rabbit hole has become a colossal juggernaut that seems to consume reality itself, bending laws of physics past the breaking point. Stephen Hawking may disagree with me, but until he tells me personally, I don’t care much. The universe remains a twisted and fascinating place.

And yet a few million monkeys can’t get their heads far enough out of their own assholes to see it. No wonder I hate you all.