Tag: weirdness

The ‘Fifth Branch’ of the Mabinogion & Some Plagiarizing Pagans

On By Chas S. Clifton11 Comments

In 2008, an English academic who works with ancient and modern Celtic languages created “a piece of Iolosim,” in other words, a pseudo-ancient tale in the spirit of the Welsh literary forger and Druid revivalist Iolo Morganwg.

Written in Middle Welsh and “translated” into English, it purports to be a hitherto-unknown section of the Mabinogion, a famous collection of medieval Welsh tales with possibly older roots.

Imagine his surprise when he finds the whole thing—uncredited, of course—on a website devoted to “Keltic mysteries” and the revival of ancient Welsh Paganism, or some approximation thereof.

The ancient ‘Legend of Amaethon Uab Don’ quoted here as evidence for this mystic cosmological bollocks was penned over a month or so by yours truly, c. 2008, while glugging back the diet coke in Jesus College Oxford computer room. The website of this bunch of chumps not only has copied my entire text (in English and Middle Welsh), but also begins with a long and pompous screed about how wicked it is to steal other people’s material.

Anyone who read the “Fifth Branch’s” introduction carefully would have seen some signals that it was bogus—there is no “Judas College” at Oxford University, for one thing—but who reads carefully on the Internet when they are busy cutting and pasting?

Dutch Schultz, Call Your Office

On By Chas S. Clifton6 Comments

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I just pulled that out of the spam-comment folder. How do they do it?  But nothing about French-Canadian bean soup.

A Glitch in the Matrix

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

Via Jonathan Korman’s blog, a collection of “glitch in the Matrix” stories collected through Reddit. Time briefly flowing backwards, apparitions of people who cannot possibly be there, near-death experiences, that sort of thing.

When I was around 20, a few years ago, I kept having dreams about a woman with long black hair named Aroura ( pronounced A-roar-uh) . They were different dreams but for some reason, her distinct face and name always ended up in them. It got to the point where I would wake up frustrated and confused, trying to google her name or find out how I was connected to her. After a few months she stopped showing up and I dismissed it, thinking my brain was just being a “scumbag.”

Fast forward a few years later, Halloween 2009, I’m in the car with a friend stopped at a gas station. . . . .

Prepare to lose some time here.

“My Weirdest Summer”

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

For Erik Davis, it was the summer of 1985, when he took a total-immersion course in Robert Anton Wilson.

It didn’t help that I spent the summer reading Aleister Crowley, Phil Dick, the Principia Discordia, and Robert Anton Wilson, especially the Illuminatus! Trilogy, Prometheus Rising, and Cosmic Trigger. Or maybe this was the only stuff that actually did help — and especially RAW, who taught me, as he taught so many others, to nimbly dodge the gravity wells that threaten to suck us down the various informational reality tunnels that make a Swiss cheese of our consensus trance. A year ago I traded a bunch of books to a Russian teenager who sent me a couple of samizdat copies of my book Techgnosis, translated into Russian. He liked Terence McKenna and wanted me to send him more books that would tug the silly putty of his world with humor and verve. He was about the same age I was when I had my Weirdest Summer Ever. And so RAW — and especially the two indispensable nonfiction books listed above — topped the list. He appreciated them.

For me, it was an earlier summer that I will always remember as my “total immersion course in occult hysteria.” Alas, there are not always hyperlinks to the past.

Polytheistic Predictions are Predictable?

On By Chas S. Clifton7 Comments

At The Wild Hunt, Jason links to some predictions for 2012 from some Cuban Santería priests, whom he describes as “eerily accurate” in the past.

Yes, if you predict “war and conflict,” it is hard to go wrong.

Let’s see, I predict that my volunteer fire department will be called out on a forest fire threatening our community this summer. We fought three such fires last summer, so I too might well be eerily accurate.

Now here is a man calling himself el brujo mayor  of Mexico. He predicts that President Obama will not be reelected, among other things.

At least that is a straight true/false sort of prediction.

But does anyone tally and compare all these predictions, so that you can have something like an NFL quarterback’s pass-completion average?

Asperger’s or Just Garage-Band Religion?

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

My friends who are scholars of new religious movements (NRMs)  theorize about how NRMs develop or do not, become accepted or do not, assimilate or do not. Some engage in a “scholarship of advocacy,” defending in various fora the human right to start one’s own religion without being labeled a dangerous cult.

But in many cases, I think that they also just enjoy the spectacle of religion, the sheer weirdness and variety of what comes down the road.

Rod Dreher, a cultural commentator who often touches on religion, but not a scholar of NRMS as such, put up a light-hearted post recently about “His Royal Highness Prince Rutherford Johnson of Etruria, who is also Rutherford Cardinal Johnson, the patriarch of the recently invented Anglican Rite Roman Catholic Church.”

Some of the comments are quite good and lead to other links about episcopi vagantes  — self-proclaimed or dubious bishops, archbishops, and anti-popes.

One commenter hypothesized an Asperger’s syndrome connection, only with hierarchies, vestments, and churchiness rather than computers, trains, or some of the other intense fascinations that Aspie kids often display.

It all reminded me of my wife’s step-brother. He had a fairly mainstream Roman Catholic childhood in upstate New York, but was always fascinated with orders of knighthood and coats of arms, which he designed for the family. He eventually found some decayed European aristocrat to make him a knight of the “Order of St. Constantine” or something, whereupon he put out a news release about himself, which appeared in his local newspaper.

“Do you think he was somewhere on that spectrum?” I asked her.

“He was always just weird,” she said.

Setting aside the dynamics of her family, maybe some people are just weirdly creative. On a scale of 1 to 5, how much weirder is starting a church than starting a garage band? (Both might have a secondary goal of improving your social life.) Both are creative activities.

Archbishop . . . archdruid . . . arch-whatever. Here comes the parade!

No Snacks? No Class!

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

George Parrott, psychology professor at Sacramento State University, cancels class because no one remembered to bring snacks.

Among the no doubt brain-numbing subjects taught by Prof. Parrott is is “Sports achievement and prediction.”  Is that for coaches, sportswriters, or for bookies—and who needs to go to university to learn it?