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TMaroney: ToS and Fraternity of Saturn

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,talk.religion.misc,alt.magick.order
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: TMaroney: ToS and Fraternity of Saturn
Date: 12 Jan 1998 12:16:37 -0800

[from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: Tim Maroney ]

>My German Dictionary has both "Mitleid" for pity and compassion. _The
>New Cassell's German Dictionary_.

Correct, so far as I know. Since the word is always translated "pity" in 
Nietzsche it makes more sense to use that for an English-speaking 
audience.

>>  His attempts
>> to represent this phrase as some sort of prophecy of Aquino's teaching
>> about the left-hand path, when in fact it appears to be a reference to
>> Nietzsche's doctrines on pity (which use the same German word) and AL's
>> own "damn them who pity", seemed silly.

>Aquino's teaching about the left hand path?! What?!

Check the bottom of page 69 of "Fire and Ice" for the paragraph. Michael 
Aquino founded the Temple of Set, a splinter of LaVey's Church of Satan, 
in 1975. The doctrine of ToS, in which Flowers/Thorsson is at least a 
Magus (word: RUNA), is that all traditional religious paths teach a 
self-destructive loss of individuality in annihilative union with the 
universe, and that Crowley's ordeal of the Abyss is an example. This is 
incorrect as can easily be shown from "One Star in Sight" (in which self 
and universe are destroyed together, and the newborn or revealed true 
self creates a new universe), but, well, just try telling that to the 
Dark Prince's Chosen One.

On page 69, Flowers tries to co-opt the Franternitas Saturni into the ToS 
before it even existed by saying that "Mitleidlose Liebe", a phrase 
explainable in terms of the Book of the Law and the work of Nietzsche, is 
actually a statement of the Aquino annihilation doctrine:

    According to Crowley's theories, if not his own practices, the
    ultimate act of love should be the act of flinging "ourselves
    up into the furnace of ecstasy which flames from the abyss of
    annihilation." To avoid and to deny the desirability of this
    act of love is the essence of Black Magic -- as the essence of
    White Magic is self-annihilation. It seems that it was this
    aspect that the FS wished to clarify with the addition of the
    phrase "compassionless love."

This is pure ToS apologetic and he cites no reason for this odd 
interpretation. On the next page he brings Nietzsche into this argument 
in a similarly bizarre way. Flowers says that because of the doctrine 
that God was dead because of his pity for man, Nietzsche was also a Black 
Magician or Brother of the Left-Hand Path, who endorsed the Aquino 
doctrine in "Zarathustra".

When I read disguised apologetics like this, I can think one of two 
things: this person thinks he's clever enough to propagandize me, or he's 
so biased that he can't even see how clouded his vision is. In either 
case my confidence in the writer as historian is shot. This has also been 
my impression from other Thorsson/Flowers books such as "Futhark", which 
I invite anyone to compare and contrast with Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 
scholarly "The Occult Roots of Nazism", the closest thing there is in 
English to a biography of Guido List.

>If I remember
>correctly the section of the book which had this Saturnian Law of
>Thelema was entitled _Nietzschean Thelemism_, so Flowers is noting the
>obvious Nietzschean influence.

He subjugates this to the service of his interpretation of the 
left-hand-path meaning in "Mitleidlose Liebe". Do you agree with his 
argument about Nietzsche on page 70?

>What is all this about Aquino?! (Who?
>What? When? Where? Why?)

Hope that fills you in a bit. There are a number of ToS resources on my 
web pages in the esoteric links section of my web page. I have some 
sympathy for the group and some of its ideas, and I have some personal 
respect for Michael Aquino (which I would probably hedge with as many 
reservations as he would his respect for me) but I must admit that 
willfully bad historians like Flowers really get under my skin.

--
Tim Maroney    tim@maroney.org    http://www.maroney.org

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