The Thelemic Mass - Daughters of the Sangraal
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Absolutely stunning.
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Beauty and Joy!
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93,
I just redirected this comment from the facebook page here..."David Richard Jones wrote on the Thelemic Mass Facebook page:
I have been doing quite a bit of research on Mother Theresa and I for one am shocked that you would have inserted her into the Saints' list. Do you realize that she was one of the biggest supporters of some of the biggest human rights violators in the world. Refused to return money stolen by Charles Keating and had abysmally poor medical standards, hoping that the poor were better off dead. Is this really what we want to promote as a Thelemic Saint? I'm surprised you all seem to just buy into the media hype and make her a saint, even the Catholic church is more careful than that. Compare: www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html for just some of the shocking truth about Mother Theresa, she would by the way have all of us destroyed by conquering angels for the ultimate victory of the Roman Catholic Church."
I know that Mother Teresa is a controversial figure, but perhaps somebody can add to the comments either way. BTW, it's not the first time I hear negative assertions about her.
93s
~Juan -
These controvies are growing. It's possible that she wouldn't be added today. (She was originally added a decade ago.) Some of the allegations may indeed be true, and some may not.
The bottom line is that she was an embodiment of the spirit of compassion, the Vice of Kings.
Though, given allegations still unresolved, she might not be added today, that's a different matter from removing her once added. Face it, as Thelemites and successors (in some sense) of Aleister Crowley, we're hardly dissuaded by accusations and smears. As with Crowley, some of these facts may turn out to be totally accurate, some not. I'm open to an evolving list as our understanding of facts change.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Face it, as Thelemites and successors (in some sense) of Aleister Crowley, we're hardly dissuaded by accusations and smears. As with Crowley, some of these facts may turn out to be totally accurate, some not. I'm open to an evolving list as our understanding of facts change."
Mother Theresa was a true Saint if you ask me. I think that what bothers so many people so much is that a poor woman outta nowhere actually accomplished so much through her individual effort against seemingly insurmountable odds, which makes them feel like giant hypocrites... (if the shoe fits...). They much prefer to relegate helping the poor to some government agency so they can get vicarious satisfaction of pretending to be collectively helping others. Yes, the smears will continue. Note how the accusation was made "Refused to return money stolen by Charles Keating" but when you read the article it says, "The court had asked Mother Teresa to return Keating's donations, which may well have been stolen, but she never replied to the request. "
So it may NOT have been stolen but for the giant hypocrites out there any smear in a storm...
I was reading the complaints from one ex-nun who left Mother Theresa's order and went on a whining jag about how some nights they had no bread to eat with their soup. {Hey, Lady?... what part of your VOW OF POVERTY did you not get when you entered her order?...?!}
Mother Theresa took her vows of poverty seriously and probably could not have returned any money anyway because she did not have the money. She did not hoard or keep large bank accounts. The large donations that went her way were either spent quickly or forwarded on to other Catholic Charities that did keep large bank accounts, like the World Catholic Food Fund and such.
Anti-Catholic bigotry is raging across the globe, even today.
Check out "The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice" by Phillip Jenkins to read more about it. -
This article just appeared on the Huff
www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/mother-teresa-one-of-the-_b_694017.html
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Thanks Metzareph. That was a really good article.
I think that the way she pressed on with her mission despite being wracked with doubt and enveloped in darkness will be one of the key inspirations of her life for many.
"Her having accomplished so much on earth in near-darkness, without the benefit of the fruits of prayer that were enjoyed by almost all the saints, places her, in my opinion, among the very greatest of saints in the church. For many of the saints did what she did -- founded a religious order, served the poor, led a life of heroic virtue. Few, if any -- perhaps none -- did so without any fruit in prayer"
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Hang on chaps and chapesses, all this holey-moley stuff about struggling on without results doesn't seem quite pukka to me.
She may have done some good things, but she also did some rotten things - if Christopher Hitchens is to be believed, she actually treated some people far worse than Crowley ever treated anyone, and was in fact quite a revolting person. Also, her care was often conditional on her helpees acceptance of her pushing of Christian dogma on them. That alone, if true, totally disqualifies her.
She really ought to be removed pending thorough investigation - I suspect some corruption has crept in if she was introduced, some sort of mindless kow-towing to the old Egregore of absolute ethical altruism.
Let's not nod off completely.
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@gurugeorge said
"She may have done some good things, but she also did some rotten things - if Christopher Hitchens is to be believed, she actually treated some people far worse than Crowley ever treated anyone, and was in fact quite a revolting person."
If you look anti-Catholic bigotry up in yer Funk n' Wagnall, that is the sort of phrase that pops up first.
Christopher Hitchens?
You actually take that man's opinion seriously?! He refers to Mother Theresa as a, "mediocre human personality".
Yo, Gurugeorge... if you don't mind... perhaps you could give a few examples of how, "she actually treated some people far worse than Crowley ever treated anyone". How does she qualify as "revolting"? Please explain.
I am all ears.
Do the sheer multitudinous numbers of orphans, sick and infirm that she helped count at all in your book?
Does every humanoid that crossed her Path have to have a positive opinion of her in order to make up for the fact that she was openly Catholic?
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@Labyrinthus said
"You actually take that man's opinion seriously?! "
Well, certainly more seriously than yours. Here are some **(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missionary_Position:1z1wns2v)and piecesabout it. From the former:-
*Hitchens condemns Teresa for having used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing a teaching hospital, the latter being what he implies donors expected her to do with their gifts. He claims that Teresa was no "friend to the poor," but rather that she opposed structural measures to end poverty, particularly those that would raise the status of women.
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If Hitchens' accusations are true (and you'd think people who place a person as a Saint in the Thelemic Canon would want to make such an investigation before plonking her in there), then this should be sufficient to disqualify her.(Btw, are you at all familiar with a text called The Book of the Law?)
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@gurugeorge said
"Hitchens condemns Teresa for having used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing a teaching hospital, the latter being what he implies donors expected her to do with their gifts."
How would he know what donors expected? That doesn't make sense anyway. Here is a poor woman who opens a convent and ministers to the poor. People give her money and she opens more convents to minister to the poor. I expect she didn't take all that money and open 150 convents overnight. Obviously she established a pattern of behavior over time that donors would come to know and recognize as something they would support.
Hitchen's idiot accusations sound like a bunch of crap.
Just because her True Will did not match up with Hitchen's fantasy of a teaching hospital does not justify going around blowing negative crap about her. Why doesn't Hitchen shut his yammer and get busy on the hospital himself?
Why would anyone take these lame accusations seriously? I guess anti-Catholic bigots would eat this stuff up but it looks like the powers that be in choosing Thelemic Saints have the ability to see past the smears and give credit where credit is due.
@gurugeorge said
"(Btw, are you at all familiar with a text called The Book of the Law?)"
Yes.
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@gurugeorge said
"If Hitchens' accusations are true (and you'd think people who place a person as a Saint in the Thelemic Canon would want to make such an investigation before plonking her in there), then this should be sufficient to disqualify her."
First, I'm not sure he's to be taken seriously. (It seems not.) Second, I don't know that I have the whole story, and even more unsure that I should second guess her decisions on that particular matter.
Also - I thought I mentioned it before, but perhaps not - her addition to this list preceeded any of these allegations by many years. (In case you're still trying to figure out how it ever could have happened in the first place.)
Your recommendation that she be suspended from the list pending a thorough investigation is noted and rejected. That might have carried weight prior to adding her, but not now. To repeat, the standard I will follow is to make no change until such time as there may be a clear determination that the basis for her inclusion is invalid.
If I were to exclude people based on undersirable behaviors, quite a lot of those names - including names Crowley added - wouldn't be on there. One name is listed because he was the one of history's best recorders of authentic gnostic information, despite the fact that he did this in order to fortify his legal accusations against them. There are more than a few personal scandles in the list.
And, of course, there's that Aleister Crowley fellow who, just maybe, did some financially shady things once or twice in his life and, just possibly, has some nasty articles written about him in newspapers and magazines of his time (and since!). Possibly even some of his students had bad things to say about him. Oh, and the rumors are probably true that he took money he received and applied it to his own religious organization. The toxic reports about him are so enormous, he probably doesn't qualify either.
I'm rarely impressed by smears of people who attempt enormous things, especially if they happen to succeed in them.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Your recommendation that she be suspended from the list pending a thorough investigation is noted and rejected. That might have carried weight prior to adding her, but not now. To repeat, the standard I will follow is to make no change until such time as there may be a clear determination that the basis for her inclusion is invalid."
And will such a determination make itself, as if by magic? Although a natural contrarian and often bombastic, Hitchens was and is a serious journalist, and a pretty deep thinker, by no means a lightweight who makes accusations for the sake of it. His claims bear looking into, especially in such a serious matter as canonization.
The temple does indeed look beautiful and dignified. It would be a shame to smear it with what might turn out to be, in effect (once the fat lady has sung, as it were), a bit of qliphotic excrement. But of course, it's your ball and your game.
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You see, the more I read about Hitchens, the more he seems a bit of qliphotic excrement. His career is based on calculated polarization and bombastic attacks. I don't buy this guy. He strikes me as unbalanced and probably a loose cannon. I can't ignore his approval of the destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition." What is interesting is his flops and flips. He was for Che Guevara, and now he distance himself from him. He hopes for a modern American civil war so that he can participate in it... "(it) would be a great pleasure to take part." The best way to describe him is as "social gadfly" or someone that thrives on making waves and just upsetting people.
Take into consideration his life-long hostility towards any religion and the idea of bringing down Mother Teresa, would had probably been at the time almost irresistible. Of course, selling a hell of a lot of books and much publicity was also tempting.Besides this guy, is there anybody else with a better reputation that has spoken against Mother Teresa?
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Well, I think there are few people who would be willing to risk their reputation criticizing a person who's name has long been a household word for proverbial saintliness.
For some of the charges, it's not about whether they are true, it's about what conclusion we derive from them. For example, the claim that she wasn't interested in improving the lot of the poor. Hitch, being a strict materialist, is referring only to the material lot of the poor. And MT wasn't interested in creating revolutionary change in the material condition of the poor. Her claimed interest was in aiding the poor spiritually. If she actually accomplished this on a large scale, then she was incredible. If she didn't accomplish this, but was sincere, then she was misguided. And if she was insincere in her motives, then she was doing a great wrong.
For Hitchens, since there is no spirituality, she was at least misguided or insincere. Then he finds the records that she had deep-seated doubt for a long time, and that strikes him as insincere.
To me, it doesn't take a great deal of intelligence to realize that the Catholic church's stance on birth control does a lot to inhibit the material progress of entire societies in the developing world. So supporting the stance of the Catholic church in this area is no longer about accepting poverty as it exists, but about creating much more poverty in the world. If she toed the company line on birth control so that she could continue to do her work, then in my opinion she made a grave mistake. But it's hard to imagine that she did so many decades of work for opportunistic reasons (she was unknown for 19 years before the documentary about her was made).
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Only because I have been extremely poor (so poor that many a night I went to sleep with nothing in my stomach and wore clothes until they fell apart) in my childhood do I feel privileged to sound like a monster. Screw those who feel the need to help the poor no matter what reason. "Each man must carve his own path through the jungle..." Most individuals who devote their lives to another are running away from themselves. My charity is myself and I do what I see fit with the donations. I hate the pity parade around panhandlers, tibetan monks that believe that their enlightenment puts them above chopping wood and carrying water, and "oppressed" people to afraid to stand up to the government that enslaves them.
I was raised Roman Catholic, went to catholic school with every last penny the church could milk from my family and endured years of physical and psychological abuse because of it. Screw Catholicism and all Religion for that matter it is an opiate for slaves. Let us live and die without such comforts.
Suffering is a condition of life and I have seen many that have suffered greatly do more with their lives than those who have not. Why then should we "help" any in "need?" It is like unto giving dope to an addict, let them drown if they desire or swim. I do not agree with anything MT did if she did indeed teach the poor to accept their lot and not rise above it. The very notion of such sentiment fills me with disgust.
If you fall I will lend you hand getting up but I will not carry you on my back.
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Thank you AvshalomBinyamin.
You make very interesting points."For Hitchens, since there is no spirituality, she was at least misguided or insincere. Then he finds the records that she had deep-seated doubt for a long time, and that strikes him as insincere. "
Yeah, I remember the article many years ago. I think there were her diaries made public by her spiritual guide? They spoke of this "darkness" and "void."
Yes.In my opinion this is the crux of the matter. Was she going through a "dark night of the soul" or was she just disconnected from god... it would be interesting to know.
(edit) I just found the article... www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html
It's really fascinating. -
@TheSilent1 said
"I was raised Roman Catholic, went to catholic school with every last penny the church could milk from my family and endured years of physical and psychological abuse because of it. Screw Catholicism and all Religion for that matter it is an opiate for slaves. Let us live and die without such comforts. "
I hear you. I was raised roman catholic too and you know what? I'm grateful... because of this, I found Thelema. I had to be so annoyed, angry and disillusioned with it that forced me to look for something real. No the empty shell it is now.
But I wouldn't condone as swiftly all exoteric religion. They have a place and a purpose. The difference is if they stream from corrupted and dated principles or not. -
@AvshalomBinyamin said
"And MT wasn't interested in creating revolutionary change in the material condition of the poor. Her claimed interest was in aiding the poor spiritually."
This BTW is the centuries-old cultural paradigm of India. Without labelling her a Rosicrucian, I nonetheless would take issue with criticizing her from following one of the primary Rosicrucian standards, viz., to adopt the manner of dress (i.e., the local standards) in the course of one's travels.
(BTW2: I liked your level-handed analysis, Av'.)
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@Metzareph said
"But I wouldn't condone as swiftly all exoteric religion. They have a place and a purpose. The difference is if they stream from corrupted and dated principles or not."
I wouldn't condemn all exoteric religion either. Once they've reformed themselves along Thelemic lines, there's nothing wrong with any of the old religions (of course I don't mean they should worship pictures of AC or even have read any of his books! - I mean "in spirit"). The revival of Gnosticism, the "softening" of the stances of the various Christian churches, their acceptance of the validity of other religious approaches - all these are good things. But they *must *reform themselves . However, the Roman Catholic church remains pretty intransigent (indeed, they now have a former "Grand Inquisitioner" as Pope), and for this reason (one would think) ought still to be viewed with a great deal of suspicion by Thelemites.
Restricting people from using birth control methods is evil (Restriction). Inculcation of "Catholic guilt", in general, in all its forms (particularly sexual, obviously), is evil (Restriction).
MT making her help conditional on acceptance of the very dogma that creates these evils, or filtering money given by donors on the basis that it was for the poor, through to her favoured exoteric religious institutions (themselves conducive to the corruption of the spirituality of female seekers), and on top of that, herself not standing in right relation of confidence in what she was doing - these, if true, are very serious charges, or one would think ought to be taken seriously, from a Thelemic point of view. The rejoinder "oh but at least she helped some people, what have you ever done?" and the like, just isn't good enough. Why? Because if these accusations are true, then she was basically doing more harm than good - in perpetuating the very memes that keep people down, that help *sustain *poverty, in the first place.
There's a bit of a smell of "Please like us! Look - we have the same altruistic standards as you, the masses!" about her inclusion, even were she basically decent. But with the suspicions about her on top of that (which aren't just from Hitchens, IIRC, though it's a long time since I read anything about it), well ...
Anyway, I've said my piece on this.