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Editorial:  June 1998 E.V.

This site, Castle of the Silver Star, will soon be a year old.  Many intelligent individuals have congratulated and thanked me for an amusing, interesting and informative site which fulfills a need in the occult community, while there have been a few people who have voiced a different opinion.  One fellow, for instance, e-mailed me simply to say "Your Site Sucks! HaHaHa!" It is worth noting that I had tried to assist this fellow by tactfully pointing out some of his errors, including those in an edited version of one of my Newaeon supplemental Encyclical Letters that he had placed on his site without bothering to ask or inform me, but instead of thanking me for all of my time and effort he chose to be childish and rudely insulting, telling me that the article which he had taken and placed on his site was terrible anyway, and his friends agree.  It begs the question:  then why did he put it on his site in the first place? It is also worth noting that the last time I checked his site, while my EL article was removed, I found that he had left intact the other gross error I had tried to help him with, and the worth of his site does not in the least depend upon his wit or intelligence, but merely upon the number of anti-Crowley articles from old tabloids that he presents.

Recently another "intellectual" e-mailed to tell me that my site "sucks", but his only stated reason for making this determination was that those links to which I have not yet attached files lead to a "Sorry, No File Yet" page.  Of course, the problem is that this site was started badly by a disgruntled female member of the Caliphate gang, she used a WYSIWYG program that created a lot of errors I had to figure out and then correct, and she quit the project early on.  I had absolutely no knowledge of or experience with computers at the time, and was making daily trips to the public library to use their computers to teach myself at least the rudiments.  Thank the gods I have a lot of good friends and associates who have assisted me whenever possible! I still have a lot to learn.  Furthermore, I have over fifty megabytes of material to put on the Net, so far, and because I have many other responsibilities besides this work and there are only twenty-four hours to a day, there is only so much that I can do.  However, I am steadily learning more about computers while gradually building upon this web site.  There are more than a few people who are thankful that it is taking some time to get all of the published Newaeon articles on the Internet!

Back in those days when I was working at the Carnegie Library, a friend by way of e-mail introduced me to http://www.thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org, and for a time I eavesdropped.  Contrary to what one subscriber to thelema93-l thought, I never subscribed.  I had simply slipped in a back door.  After all, these people were chatting it up pretty good about yours truly and saying some of the most asinine things, voicing opinions that they themselves often admitted without rational thought were based upon a complete ignorance of the subject.  Well, they never read anything, of course, but they had heard...yatta yatta yatta.  Needless to say the imp in me just had to play with these people, and play with them I did.  It is no wonder most of them fail to truly understand Aleister Crowley as they have no real sense of humour.  Thelema93-l appears to be primarily a means of ego masturbation, mostly for Caliphate members, some S.O.T.O. people, and their ilk.  A support group for magician wannabes and fantacists.  Every once in a while a sincerely motivated, intelligent person wanders into this little clique, only to quickly grow disgusted with their idiotic and unjustified sense of self-importance and the utter waste of time that it soon proves to be, and then moves on.  Some remain subscribers in the hope that another intelligent individual may wander in, while sometimes keeping tabs on things.  Thus my knowledge of what's going on now even though I stopped playing with them many months ago.

Not long ago someone on thelema93-l recently said that the Newaeon site suffers from "generalized aesthetic impairment".  I suppose that means that it doesn't look good.  Actually, despite her failings, I think the lady that started the site for me did a good job.  Originally she wanted to add a lot of "bells and whistles" and that bothered me, but when she discovered how much work all of those graphics would have been she decided to do what I wanted to do in the first place:  keep it attractive, but clean and simple.  As I learn more about this technology, a touch of techno-sophistication is herein developed, however, I choose to keep the Castle of the Silver Star fairly simple.  Aside from the fact that, working with the Compustein Monster, I have noticed that a lot of graphics can slow down loading time and even choke up a computer, a site that is supposed to possess informative text that is loaded down with blinking and flashing .gif and .jpg files, fancy doodads of all kinds, is generally all flash and dazzle and no substance.  In the Newaeon Castle the flash and dazzle is in the sense of humour and the information presented.

It is worth noting that the same individual who craved the pomp and display I choose to keep out of this site, also noted "haughtiness" in the writings herein presented.  It is, of course, useless to point out to this person that what he chooses to interpret as "haughtiness" is merely a strong sense of humour.

Typically, a young woman, one would suppose, calling herself Rose, again on thelema93-l, said that she had "glanced" at this site, and then she kowtowed to and agreed with one Chris Feldman that the site is bad, to put it in a simplistic nutshell.  A mere glance at the moon caused some people to assume that it is made of green cheese, but the astronauts who visited our silvery satellite, walked upon it's surface, and brought back rock samples to be studied further, were better able to determine the nature of the moon and appreciate it.  The reason many people are attracted to and join the Caliphate pseudo-o.t.o. and other such groups is that they "glanced" at the group, and that was enough for them to make their decision, as usual, based not upon information and careful consideration, but rather upon ignorance.  Meanwhile these people believe themselves so superior to the average fundamentalist Christian who knows little about his religion but accepts its tenents on faith.

In such groups, some individual claims authority, puffs out his chest, and makes his proclamations, and the rest accept his statements with little or no question and doubt, following blindly because it would simply be too much trouble to study the matter for themselves, as I always advise, and make their own decisions.  Besides, a willingness to play follow the leader and accept superficiality encourages and feeds delusions.

Currently in Caliphate circles the phrase "personality cult" is being used in connection with my name.  People like this who have nothing meaningful and substantial to say often rely heavily upon buzz words and catch phrases.  And yet as is usual, the things that such people falsely accuse me of either they or their "superiors" are guilty of! I do not surround myself with yes men and groupies as does, for instance, Bill Breeze, Caliph Hymenaeus Beta of the Caliphate gang, or David Bersson, Frater Sphinx, "Frater Superior of the Entire World", of one group claiming to be the late Marcelo Motta's mostly imaginary S.O.T.O..  It might also be worth noting that I am not collecting membership dues and initiation fees from people to support habits, pay for trips around the country and overseas, and purchase rare Crowleyana for a personal library while giving most of those people in return nothing but an occasional newsletter of dubious worth and perhaps a fancy title or degree of no worth.  "Oh, yes," says the typical critic, "but if you are not the centre of a personality cult, why, for instance, do you post a photograph of yourself in this editorial? Are you presenting an icon for people to worship?" The answer to this is simple.  If I wished to give people an icon to worship I would have chosen an image a bit more mystical rather than one so evocative of our American heritage and thus down-to-earth.  Furthermore, people are naturally curious and they have a right to know certain things, and unlike so many others, I have no desire to hide behind a false image or manufactured mystery.  Mystery is, of course, the enemy of Truth.

The superficial intellect, while accepting one false superior and group as legitimate, considers the rest to be morons scrambling to be king of the hill, and merely glancing at my work assumes that I am one more individual trying to be top dog.  However, anyone who has read my work carefully knows that I have no desire to be king of this hill for it is a stinking dung heap, nor do I want to be top dog.  "Is a God to live in a dog?" The Book of the Law asks in Chapter II, Verse 19. "No!" it then answers, and I have no desire to defile the House of God, mine own indwelling Holy Guardian Angel, Daemon, Genius, as so many others defile their bodies and minds with the filth and useless trash of ego.  I am not, as others are, claiming, without clear and rational support, to be the head of what is now a long dead temporal order.  I am, in fact, claiming nothing!

"Aha!" the critic leaps in (somebody ought to shoot that guy...), "but you have claimed something! You, filthy lying dog, have claimed to be a Magister Templi! Ha! And that proves you are trying to be the top dog! Caught ya!"

What it proves is that I have undergone a certain set of ordeals and passed through them to achieve a certain degree of mystical and spiritual attainment, or at least it proves it to me, and it is really important to no one else, and why should it be? Several insecure, perhaps even idiotically envious individuals harp on this "claim", and it absolutely amazes me in its absurd pettiness.  I do not insist upon reminding everyone every chance I get that "I am a Master of the Temple!" Why would I? Essentially it merely means that I have mastered myself, that I am no longer the slave of ego, that I have found my Centre, my True Self, so that the false self now serves me.  (Recall "The body is the temple of the soul.") The fact that I am (or "claim" to be, if you like) a Magister Templi should not matter to you or anyone else in the least.  It is only a matter of importance to me and my personal journey along the Path of the Wise, the spiritual and intellectual evolutionary path that we all follow as human beings, and whether I am or am not a Master of the Temple matters little in the long run since I am still, after all, only human and as such must possess human failings.  "Then why even mention it?" (You know, I really am gonna shoot that guy!) Well, it is something I hardly ever bring up, but there are times when it is relevant to the subject at hand and a necessary fact to consider in order to view something from the proper perspective.  Otherwise, who cares? Yet my detractors, and for some reason, gosh, I seem to have a lot of 'em! harp on this, obsessed, fixated, incapable of getting past this one thing, maniacally focussed upon the matter as I have never been.

I will continue to be falsely accused, ignorantly judged, slandered and villified.  Such is the fate of an independent soul willing to speak out against injustice and falsehood in defense of something he loves, in this case both the memory of Aleister Crowley and the "philosophy" that he brought to humankind, Thelema.  I am in good company.  Crowley experienced the same thing during his lifetime.

And really, the petty slanders against me are so obviously false and absurd, that no truly intelligent person can take them seriously, although many young and naive people are at least temporarily misled by them.  Take, for instance, Chris Feldman, Christeos Pir and Frater Vitriol (a.k.a. V.) of the Caliphate pseudo-o.t.o..  No, there's no reason you should know him, he's just one of many of his kind.  ("There you go! He says.  You say.  What's the difference between you jokers?" BANG! The difference is motivation and purpose.  I have no axe to grind, I'm not trying to "get even" with someone, and contrary to false accusations made against me, I am not engaged in pointless insults, as is obviously the case with individuals such as Chris.  I am, instead, using the opportunity their inane and rude words and actions have provided to enlighten and instruct others, employing them as examples.) I have written in the introduction to the Simon Iff stories about how, at every given opportunity, for petty reasons, Chris eagerly speaks ill of me behind my back.  (For example: thelema93-l, Subj.:  Duck for cover, From:  Chris Feldman [chris@aeon.nu], Date:  Sat., 2 May 1998 10:06:06 -0400 and Sun., 3 May 1998 11:35:56 -0400.) On thelema93-l he called me a "slanderer" who is misrepresenting him, and as is typcial for these people he did not back up his words with evidence to support the allegations, while I back up what I say very often by quoting an individual's published words.  And yet there he was, bringing my name up in a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with me, to take the opportunity to slander and speak ill of me! How can any truly intelligent person not see the absurdity of that and judge the matter rightly? I smile.  Individuals such as Chris are of great assistance to me, proving the validity of my statements and helping me to give you more accurate and complete information upon which to base your conclusions and...