bagley - Archived Blog Posts

[bagley]

Some one posted a movie clip from "Jeff Palmer 2 Bareback" and the clip made me woozy. The large muscular "daddy type" black man really knew how to FUCK....His powerful body was rhythmically pounding the white boy into a state of pure bliss. ( I know almost all porn is staged and take a lot of editing and all that) The big black daddy had big silver nipple rings and they were flopping up and down in time to the pounding he was giving his bottom man. The black daddy wasn't just fucking with his cock...he was fucking with his whole body. Here is the link http://www.huge-gay-cock.com/Jun05/19xxx0311/FUGMS48.html There was a real sex magick aura on the part of the muscle daddy. I can see he could have been one of the ancient black kings...with a whole harem of sexual devotees....male and female. Female partners for procreation and male partners for energizing

We are all familiar with the purpose of heterosexual sex, the big procreational act and all. But, from a magickal prospective heterosexual sex is a grounding experience...it brings the male sex energy to a place in the material (earth) plain where it produces something....mainly fertility. Known to magickal/pagan people as "the great rite" . Less realized Gay sex magick is in a different place and has a different function and is not grounding. It is used to bring forth new energies...new ideas. From direct experience I can say that that ideally the sex energy of the top man...circulates in the body of the bottom man which then builds into a power vortex to send out into the universe for what ever purpose for good or ill. One reason why gay sex magick is maligned is because it has been used in the darker arts.

Most ST8 people learn about sex from members of the other sex while going through puberty....In my generation most of my knowledge has come from watching or looking at gay and ST8 porn....mags and then movies. So I think Gay porn is important, not only as an outlet, but also as a teacher. Gay porn also gives a message...There are people , men who have similar sexual feelings and desires and for me that is a positive thing.

 

[bagley]

There is a great deal of historical writings from early Christians outside of the New Testament which is virulently anti homosexual. Almost from the word go, Christian apologists began attacking gayness. When they gained power in late Roman times they used this power to criminalize or destroy anything that was remotely associated with "gayness". Some of the intuitions they closed were the baths, the gymnasiums, the theaters and yes, the universities. They also closed all the temples. Christians didn't convert with love or argument, they used the force of law and power of the sword. The use of power in the conversion of Europe is a well known fact. For example, the conversion of king Clovis converted all the Franks. These powerful Franks then went on to convert other barbarians with conquest.
These early Christians really hated fags. The Christians hated the physical body(just read some early monastic writings if you don't believe me). They believe that sex was evil and could only be endured to fulfill God's command to "be fruitful and multiply". Homos even in late antiquity were worshiping the body beautiful.
Another reason why early Christians hated fags was the religious roles queers played in the so called pagan religions. One only has to mention Antonius to see that queer people were integrated into the total fabric of late Hellenistic religion. Queers of all genders served as priests, diviners and also sacred prostitutes. In other words queer people where rivals to the body hating Christians.
If memory serves me the Christian Emperor Theodosius the great outlawed homosexuality. But for sure in the time of Justinian homosex was outlawed and this crime had a very brutal punishment. Homosex and Heresy have been linked in the Christian mind ever since.

My natural inclination in religion has always been toward magick. As a teenager I burned candles and cast spells ( I had a Christian period during the Jesus movement in the 60's/70's.) What can I say...I feel a great chain of connection to late pagan Hellenism. I believe that the rise of the LGBT community is a rebirth of this ancient (pagan) Hellenism. The most pagan celebration I have ever seen is the huge Halloween party in WEHO. IO EVOHE
My prayer to Dionysus


Evohe!
Bromios! Bull-Thunderer!
You've shown me the gate to the labyrinth
You've poured sweet wine down my throat
You drive me mad in the wilderness
You enter me when I think I cannot hold you
You tear me apart like a sacrifice
I have gone to the dark with you
I will go to the dark with you
I will chase you down the labyrinth's corridors
I will dance in the fire with snakes for hair
I will call your name, Persephone's child,
Dionysus!
Zagreus!
Eubouleus!
Iakkhos!
Evohe! Evohe! Evohe!

 

[bagley]

There seems to be no real medical research to support the non religious practice of circumcision. Here in America the surgery is done on a majority of boy infants with out much thought. The whole idea of routine circumcision for non religious reasons can be traced to Victorian England and America. It was thought that circumcision would stop masturbation. Masturbation was thought to cause mental illness and various nervous disorders. If a boy was a chronic masturbator, circumcision was a offered as a cure. When it was realized that masturbation wasn't that awful...the reason for circumcision took a hygienic approach. Uncircumcised penises became the cause for all sorts of cancers and infections. (rare penile cancer and cancer of the cervix) No proof offered.

I think there are three reasons for the routine circumcision in America:

1) Circumcision makes the glans of the penis less sensitive. I believe it is an attempt to control male sexuality/sensuality from the "git-go" . As the twig is bent so grows the tree...I think American men lack a certain sensuality and that universal circumcision may be part of the reason for this lack. No one knows the long term effect of the [emotional] trauma on the infant male.

2) It is a quick and easy operation. Lots of $$$$$$$$$ to be made. I don't remember the costs ..but times that by a million operations a year...that is a lot of swimming pools.

3) I was reading an account of a new father who was questioning the circumcision of his new baby boy. The doctor looked up and smiled and said, "You want him to look like you, don't you." If your an American boy and uncircumcised, you are the butt of a lot of joking in the high school locker room. I remember seeing one of my friend's Irish born father, who was uncut at the public swimming pool....I thought the father was deformed. So much for individuality.

 

[bagley]

This is a quote from the wire service AP (Associated Press) on the Israeli Interior Minister's countermand to the ultra orthodox mayor of Jerusalem. The minister will allow the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade.

"Despite antipathy for gays among Israeli religious circles, homosexuality was legalised in the Jewish state in 1988 and since then, the rights of gay couples have been recognised by the courts."

Israel is the only country in the Middle East to recognize gay people as full citizens. Gay's serve in the military. The USA could take some lessons from Israel on that matter. I believe Israel should have secure and guaranteed borders.
I don't believe that an ancient Near Eastern god gave the Israel that strip of gravel. I believe that the United Nations created a legal sovereign nation, albeit poorly.
I also believe Palestinians have a right to determine their own political future.
As to date no Arab or Islamic country has gone as far as Israel in recognizing the rights of gay people.
I have had "friendships" with both Israeli's and Arab gay/bisexual men and recognize the full humanity of both peoples. However, in the Middle East only Israel recognizes the full humanity of gay people.

I am not anti Islamic or anti Arab, but recent anti gay incidents in Egypt and the Saudi Kingdom ( the Kingdom is particularly brutal toward the GLBT community) has pushed me to realize how special Israel is in that region.

 

[bagley]

I had the opportunity to attend a Summer Solstice celebration this last weekend. It was unusual for several reasons. For the past 12 years or so, I was part of a group which conducted Neo Pagan/Wiccan public Sabats. This group concentrated on the 4 cross quarter sabats, which are Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasah and Samhain..these are better known as Groundhog Day, May Day, Lughnasah has no contemporary name...and of course,Halloween. These sabats represent days of power each with a different intent. For example, Imbolc is the time of purification..spring cleaning and dedication. The group I was in also did an elaborate Yule. These 5 public rituals more or less dominated our group life. I am glad to say that the group endures.
Celebrating the Summer Solstice this year was very different for me. I was not in charge of anything. I was merely there. The group that sponsored the Solstice hosted another group who performed the ritual. They were a group of Egyptian Reconsructionists who were celebrating the Ancient Egyptian New Year which is based upon the annual Nile flood, which is heralded by the rising of Sirius. They were more than a month early...but this was an opportunity for them to do a public ritual. Here is the web site of a similar group of Egyptian Reconstructionists: http://www.kemet.org/home.html I don't know if they are connected. It was a very good public ritual. People knew their parts. The chanting and the music was A+. There was a sort of re birthing ceremony at the culmination of the ritual under a canopy adorned with Nuit, the Ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Night sky. That was very refreshing and beautiful. All the ritualists were in pseudo Egyptian drag. The refreshments after were nice...no alcohol..no cigarette smoke...I only comment because ,back East the rituals usually included wine, and the refreshments after always had alcohol of some sort...at some Celtic reconstructionist rituals..lots of alcohol. More smokers back East...The absence of alcohol didn't matter that much to me....I was glad there was no tobacco smoke.
The celebration was in the Valley and that seems strange after living in the basin, near Venice. I am always amazed at the temp difference...

As a queer Neo Pagan magickal person in a new situation I have been searching for a group in West LA. Most of the groups are in the valley or in Orange County. I use Witchvox, which has a lot of contact material here is the address to the gay part. http://www.witchvox.com/_x.html?c=gay I haven't had much luck in LA. I keep trying. I also keep running into right wing homophobic Neo pagan/magickal groups....which never happened to me before. I knew they existed, but I guess Cali brings out the loonies. The gay groups I have encountered on the web, and in person just don't seem to gel. I look longingly to the bay area with all it's queer/gay resources.

My galleries are always being edited and up dated. I delete pics and add pics. I don't understand my interest in uncut cock I don't think it is a sexual obsession. Thick uncut/cut cock is an obsession.

 

[bagley]

I realize that some sort of knowledge will be gathered when "Deep Impact" takes a chunk out of this comet. This comet has wandered around "our" solar system since primordial times. It is a wonder. It is beautiful. "Deep Impact" reminds me of the 19th century scientific expeditions which went out and slaughtered thousands of rare and exotic creatures so they could be classified and studied. Similarly anthropologists looted the graves of living non European cultures and amassed huge mounds of skulls for Western institutions to study. Scientist now have a new place they can carry out their destructo methods, with hardly any protest...out there.

Coming from a Neo Pagan sensibility, I see this act as Scientific Barbarism. As a technological society we have destroyed or devastated vast areas of our own planet. Now we are exporting this philosophy beyond "Terra". I pray the rocket fails and the comet passes undamaged.

 

[bagley]

From 1993 until I move to California in 2004, I was part of a magickal college. We meet once a month and discussed magickal ideas, practiced rituals and perfected chants. The group leader was a Christian Qabalist in the Hermetic tradition and was a Roman Catholic. He was a Roman Catholic with a Jewish maternal grandmother, I might add. I was actually one of the few non Christians in the group and the only open gay male. The leader/teacher had a great deal of insight and the longer I am away the more I miss his teaching. He was a partially closeted gay man in the context of the magickal groups. A lot of Western magickal lodges are quite homophobic. He was quite open in his public life...go figure. We did elaborate magickal workings twice a year and they are still having profound effects upon me.

After 9/11 we began to discuss GWBush as his pronouncements grew more bizarre. One session we began to talk about "black magick" and sorcery. the teacher pointed out that sorcery is in part based upon non sequitur and "breaks". These are also used in brain washing.
Madison avenue uses it all the time. For example, your right brain only sees images. Madison Avenue flashes all these disjointed images at you in quick succession on TV. These images over whelm your defenses and then the product is slipped in. This happens over and over hundreds of times a day to most Americans. GWBush use of image and non sequitur has become his art form. The flag, the image of the military, his disjointed speeches. Most people don't realize when your watching TV ,most likely your brain is in an Alpha state. Your already partially hypnotized and here the "lie" is slipped in. Magickal people call this state the Astral state and this is where a lot of magick is done. His repeating 9/11 = Iraq War 5 times in rapid succession, with the flag and the troops is his "tour de force". This show wasn't performed to convince anti war people or Democrats. It was performed to solidify pro war people and the Republicans.
The modern Republican party has become masterful in this manipulation of images and of the non sequitur. These pundits realize the American attention span = 16 seconds and modify all their sound bites accordingly. We saw this in the 2004 elections. Dems were re-living the Vietnam war and trying to appear hawkish to no avail. All the Republicans had to do was say ,"liberal" or "gay marriage" combined with certain images and the faithful ran to the polls like lemmings. So yes, I think GWBush is smarter than you would think, or someone behind the scene is a master. (Sorcerer). I for one believe GW is in charge.
Here is a bright note, nothing built on a lie can endure.....The Course In Miracles (paraphrase)

 

[bagley]

Beside, being very much involved in Queer Neo Pagan thought and practice, I collect as much Gay religious and spiritual literature as I can cram into my cramped book cases in our small cramped luxurious West LA apartment. Before I moved to California I was hard pressed to cull my book collection and habitual buying.
In our 3rd floor walk up, shotgun apartment, in Ghent, Norfolk, Va I had accumulated way over 3,000 books and hundreds of quarterlies, magazines and files full of clippings. I sold a chunk of books to a book dealer for a $.50 a book, hardback and $.25 paper. I still had to jettison quite a bit. It was very painful, but the weight of the books was way beyond our weight limit.
I came to Cali with my queer and spiritual/pagan book collection, diminished but still pretty vast. I now buy author signed 1st editions, or rarer, "small house" books. However last month , I began culling again and sold a lot of magickal/New Age books, but no Gay books, unless they were dupes. During this cull I ran into a book which I bought "new" and as far as I remember, never read. It is called "Gay Soul" an anthology of Gay spiritual interviews conducted by Mark Thompson. One of the article is by Andrew Harvey. I have a hate/love relationship with this man. Not a personal relationship, but a reading relationship. I love his ideas and hate his "U" Britishness...I realize it is the old Yankee puritan in me that loathes the lushness of his upper class accent. Upper class Britishers have always talked down to Americans since 1735. I had the wonderful opportunity to do overseas studies in Britain, and took a course in which any and all "Americanisms were" counted incorrect in red ink and points taken off. This is where I truly learned that Britain is indeed an Island. I've hated the Brit accent ever since.

In the Andrew Harvey interview, Rumi is quoted. "Conventional knowledge is death to our souls...live where you fear to live, destroy your reputation, be notorious." As I read this quote I knew it was germane to queer magickal life and to queer life in general. The object of my queer magick has always transformation. There is a desire with in me to become a volcano of spiritual energy. A desire to build a new land of queer ideas and sensibility. A place where I can stand and say ,"Eureka" or "This is the Place."

Queer magick is not about stoking the pale flame of ancient rituals and rites, although that maybe a part of it. Queer magick is not about the gaining of power over "other" on the material plain, however fun it might seem. I feel Queer [sex] magick is about taping into the liquid world of the Mystery of Dionysus and allowing that mystery to expose itself in your flesh. Paglia talks at length about the Apollo/Dionysus rift. To me she exposes one of the flaws in the Gay male gestalt, if gestalt is the right word. The gay male drive to soar to perfection seems like a hollow goal; always seeking the external perfection, the perfection outside. This arc to the sun, at least in the myth of Icarus is deadly....perhaps this idea is tied into what Rumi said. Sometimes in reading Paglia I feel she secretly wants to be a gay male (at least in her book "Sexual Personae.")

For me the idea of soaring to the Apollonian heights must be fueled by something. To me it is the liquid of Dionysus. Dionysus was the lord of all liquids, save salt water. His liquids are Sperm, milk, oil, piss and wine..lubrications of life. To practice Queer magick is to be open to liquidity and liquidation. You will find yourself swimming outside of the "norm" and the "mean". Your queer soul can start to live. Queer magick or any magick is a lot of work .

Evohe!
Bromios! Bull-Thunderer!
You've shown me the gate to the labyrinth
You've poured sweet wine down my throat
You drive me mad in the wilderness
You enter me when I think I cannot hold you
You tear me apart like a sacrifice
I have gone to the dark with you
I will go to the dark with you
I will chase you down the labyrinth's corridors
I will dance in the fire with snakes for hair
I will call your name, Persephone's child,
Dionysus!
Zagreus!
Eubouleus!
Iakkhos!
Evohe! Evohe! Evohe!

 

[bagley]

I just watch a PalmVOD (video on demand) bio on Leigh Bowery. It sort of hurts to watch it. Not because I found Bowery repugnant or disgusting, but because he made me feel sad about my own boring life. He was Art and is Art. "Dress like it matters or don't dress at all." He was possessed by his art. He was the grand Androgyne descending from queer heaven sprinkling glitter and poison all over the drab suburban landscapes. I felt like I should just go out and buy a pair of Dockers and get it over with. here is a wonderful link http://www.leighbowery.com

I first became aware of Leigh Bowery through the paintings of Lucian Freud. Bowery who was kinetic Art became the epitome of Fine Art in his classical portraits by Freud. These portraits are Bowery's apotheosis into history.

I realized I am not really living and that is hard to admit at age 50 +. Nothing I have ever done has sparkled. I have had some small success in the Art world, but I feel like I should just burn everything and quit pretending. I love art and making art, but in the core of my being I seem don't sparkle. Inside me there is just some variation of grays.

Yesterday I also got a book on the Artist Jared French, the lover of Paul Cadmus..both of these artists make me feverish with jealousy.

 

[bagley]

Like most American males, even the expressive gay males, I am really afraid of expressing my inner emotional self. I have had some non traditional therapy and have done a lot of meditations and magickal workings and almost all these processes have centered around my emotional self-hood.

The therapy I had involved hypnotism and started out to cure a three pack a day smoking habit. For almost a year the therapist and I would have hour long sessions twice a month. At first I thought it was "bunkum" except I would come out of the hypnotism very relaxed and with a sense of well being and a great longing to take a drag. In one session my lesbian hypnotherapist found a great chain of emotional events inside me which were filled with a lot of despair and melancholy. I had a serious melt down. (I only tell you my therapist was a lesbian, because I have always felt nurtured and supported by the lesbian community and most of my "gay" friends have been girls.) We probed and uncovered a lot of layers, but the sadness and melancholy never seemed to dissipate. It is and was a huge lump of unresolved issues and traumas. It seems to stretch on to infinity, or if you prefer to past lives. I can go for months or even years and glide along without taping into to this "resource". But it is slithering there just below consciousness. When it emerges it paralyzes me. I can actually feel it coming on. It begins to manifest in the throat chakra/Venus center and there it is. I am fooled every time. It manifests uncontrolled fear and panic. My whole body becomes week and I feel like I am walking around in a world with out color. Something will trigger this fear and out it will come. This week a lot of things in my life triggered this despair monster, but I had felt it coming for a while.

Sometimes in meditation I see this phenomenon as a great seething ball of red/black energy in the pit of my stomach almost with it's own life and will. I link this to my astrological birth chart and recognize the Sun/Pluto conjunction on the Nadir of my chart.

In part it was triggered by some magick work in which I participated. In part it was triggered by some economic issues. And wham I am paralyzed. I am close to tears. Sometimes I can follow it down and try and discover some root issue and sometimes I can't. This time I can't seem to get passed the lump of fear in my throat.

Most of the advice I get is stand up and be a man type, or face your fears, or be strong....but actually no one I know really wants to get entangled in this emotional mess. So I'll just have to go through it. Let it time itself out. After all this is the umpteenth time this has happened.

In 1995 I quit smoking. The hypno therapy was a bust on that very ingrained nicotine habit. In 1995 I was training to be a "trance Medium" in our local Spiritualist Church. For about three months with other people I sat in a circle and practiced "trance mediumship" At one point in the class you would be put into the center and try and manifest an entity. We all had various degrees of success. As we progressed we began to sit in a "Spiritualist" cabinet and it is in that cabinet I had my greatest spiritual experience of my life. As I slipped into trance, I felt an immense power come into my body. I felt radiant. This power began to speak through me and as It spoke I felt a white hot orb moving in my lungs and I felt it was healing my smokers lungs. I felt this orb go through my whole body for what seemed like hours...it withdrew and I returned. I haven't had the desire to smoke since then...ten years. So for one moment in my life I have felt transcendent radiance....

 

[bagley]

I feel the study is flawed as per the reasons stated in "Americablog." http://www.americablog.org/ (you have to scroll down past all the G8 stuff to yesterday's posting...well worth the time to read criticism of Bailey's study) For some reason our society wants males to polarize into an either/or mode. One one side you have real red blooded [ST8] men and the Other polarity is the gay Pansy girly men. The gay segment, of course becomes the evil shadow side of masculinity.
Defining bisexuality as equal sexual attraction to both sexes is absurd. I believe bisexuality can be defined by Eros and by aesthetic. Adult male bisexuals have an erotic (desire) component which encompasses their own sex, expressed or otherwise. The aesthetic component in bisexuality is expressed toward androgyny and the Androgyne.

I once kissed a bisexual man at a party and it was a golden experience.

Some Anecdotal info from my life. As we all know anecdotal info is not scientific...so what.

My first "real" b/f ,was a bisexual man, and by "real", I mean more than a quick teahouse romance. ( It actually stated in a public toilet) This relationship was in the ancient past..so don't judge me. I still write him holiday greetings. He loves women. He enjoys their company. I shared his bed with several women, it was the 70's. We all had orgasms. He also loves masculine bottom gay men. He was very sensual with me. He gave me long sensual massages and we took long bubble baths together. He eroticized parts of my body which are still "hot spots." Do I think he was a conflicted gay man unable to come to terms with his homosexual nature...no I don't. The erotic and sensual component in my relationship with this man was it's driving force. This driving force lead to a sexual expression.

In the "paelohomo" period of my life I did some ST8 men and the experience was less about Eros and more about my mouth and/or anus being an orifice of convenience. As I have stated before, I don't mind being a cast in the "bitch" role, as long as You understand it is a role.

 

[bagley]

I have spent a great deal of time in the UK and Ireland and have many friends and memories in London, so the attack on London, yesterday caused me a lot of pain. Several of my friends have just returned from visiting in London. One year, I worked out of a West London US government site located off of Oxford street. I supervised a team of technicians doing work all over the UK in the various US military bases in the UK and in conjunction with a team in Italy.. If I was higher up in management, I would have rated a rental car, but instead I had to ride the Tube and buses to do my business, and ride the trains to go to other sites. So my reaction to the bombing was OH My God. ( I hate that phrase, but it just came out) I used that station... At first I thought IRA. When I was in the UK they were the main bombers. In Northern Ireland I missed an IRA bombing at Ballymena by about 10 minutes (1979?.) Then I though, perhaps some sort of Al-Qaeda/IRA cooperation. I spent all day yesterday glued to CNN. This morning I read what was on Salon. I found the article by professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan very informative. His web site is "Informed Comment" and here is the link: http://www.juancole.com

You can view Cole's article in Salon and read it if you watch some adverts. Mine was a survey on French wines..of which I knew zip...as I am a non alcohol type person. What the article gave me was a deeper sense of the history of this conflict. It seems the word "blessed raid" has more to it than some spur of the moment terrorist jargon. Cole's reasoning will be lost on most Americans. Americans want a simple one dimensional explanation to this complex phenomenon we label terrorism. Or in caveman speak, "We be good and raghead Arab be bad."

Salon also has an article by Andrew Brown. I think he's an American ex pat in London...he gives some reasons why this might shake the "House of Blair" and also a feel for the xenophobia of the Britons, not only toward the resident Muslims, but towards Americans, too. I lived and worked in Britain and was acutely aware of this xenophobia. But, I had a mild case case of it myself. I found I didn't like having sex with British men. I played [safe] with a lot of men French..Spanish..Dutch..Germans...Israelis..Italians..Moroccans..nothing heavy. But I found I had a lot of internal resistance to English men with lesser resistance to the Irish or to Scots. (?)

On another note, 2 days ago I read the "Rolling Stone" May 19, 2005 article, "The Quagmire" by Robert Dreyfuss. The header: "The war in Iraq has killed more than 100,000 and cost nearly $200 billion- and now the country is on the verge of exploding into full-scale civil war." Dreyfuss has a little chart comparing Iraq and Vietnam:Two years In...and what surprises me for some reason is the sameness of the Presidential jargon. What a mess...to bad were there.

 

[bagley]

Queerness = Creativity. We all know that. You have to be creative to live in such a narrow defined place. Being queer means you are in a liminal place. To be at a threshold place is to be at a magickal place. Modern Queers are trying to accommodate The ST8 paradigm. The ST8 society is the place of material power. Therefore, if we behave like ST8 people , they will like us. We then can live in peace with them and enjoy all the material benefits of the modern nuclear family...including marriage (tax breaks.)

I believe this accommodation is a false position for queers. The whole foundation of the material hetero culture is procreation and the passing down of ones material wealth to ones progeny. Our very defining sexuality does not produce material progeny. No matter how you try as a queer person you can't be part of this club. Sure you can procreate. But what queers can't do is form a traditional unit. By wanting to form a traditional unit , what Queers form is a parody of that traditional unit.

Queers = Clowns. Our parody of ST8 marriage in many ways fulfills one of "our" ancient roles, that of clown, sot or harlequin. Clowns are scary. I owe a lot of my ideas on Queerness to Judy Grahn and her famous book," Another Mother Tongue", but most of my ideas have been brewed in my own head. Judy's idea of word chains and queer theory has intrigued me for a long time. The clown archetype can be found in the Tarot Card, the Fool. The Fool has "No" place. I want to under line NO . No is the nominal place, the threshold. One could do an interesting word chain study on the word "threshold" and find a lot of queer rich meanings. The Tarot Fool is problematic to the ST8 occultist, (like Waite, Case or Fortune.) The Fool's number has never been stable. It can be 21, or 0, or no number at all. In the Paul Case Tarot Tableau, the Fool hovers above the other cards. Paul Case says the Fool can also be between all the other Major Arcana cards. The Fool is the Androgyne. As an artist I equate the Fool with the Negative Creative Space, or Voidness. Uranus is the Planetary Ruler of the Fool. The revolutionary force of Uranus can match that very interesting symbol Queer People have chosen as one of their symbols, the Lambda.

Sex and sexuality lies at the heart of queer creativity. As a queer male I have to find a creative sexual solution. Parts of my body have to be sexualized and also sensualized. So, what has happened is that I have gone outside the procreational paradigm and formed my own sexual model. My lips, tongue, mouth and face have become non procreational sexual organs. The deep dark penetration of my anus and the root chakra stirs up Kundalini or serpent energy. It is not me being female or desiring to be a female, that is something different. What queer sex does is stretch taboo boundaries. The last thing the ST8 procreational hegemony wants is for individuals to blur the lines.

The media organs have a vested interest in preserving the American ST8 monoculture. The ST8 media, like all ST8 American institutions seeks to perpetuate itself on the material world. The slightest whiff of queerness is zapped clean in what I will call St8washing. Recently, two well know queer people died. No one mentioned they were in some aspect queers. One was Susan Sontag. She had a long and celebrated relationship with Annie Lebowitz...and the other was Luther Vandross.... To me the most upsetting was the ST8 washing of the very queer artist, Basquiat, on CBS's "Sunday Morning." They could talk about his heroin addiction, but not his bisexuality. (never saw the movie) (MOCA is doing a Basquiat retrospective 17 July-10,Oct, 2005)

On a happy note, queer blogging is destroying the sole source of this ST8 media ST8washing. I say be revolutionary..do something queer and talk about it.

 

[bagley]

http://www.glbtq.com/social-science/william_III.html [The direct link to WilliamIII doesn't work..but will get you to the archive, go to the home, and look at royalty, he is in alaphbetical order, easy to find.] My skill with html is marginal...sorry.

A warm greeting to all my Orange Irish friends and kin on this the Glorious 12th of July. [CHOKE] I lived for several years in the United Kingdom and made quite a few trips to Ulster and also to the Republic. The 6 counties of Ulster within the UK are filled with astounding beauty and wonderful people. The religious/ethnic hatred between the Orange and the Green is something Americans find hard to fathom. Once, I misspoke as a house guest in the home of a militant Unionist family in Londonderry. I called them "Irish", and was loudly and vigorously corrected, "We're British, not dirty F***k Catholics."
I also had some Glaswegian Irish friends who were Irish Nationalists and would recite the lists of atrocities and claim genocide.
Through my interest in genealogy, I discovered my roots contain Catholic Irish, Ulster Scots(Orangemen) and some Anglo-Ascendancy types ( a real embarrassment).
I never was in Ulster during the marching season, where the Orange Prods, march through Catholic neighborhoods, beating huge drums and celebrating the triumph of William III of Orange (Orange was the ancestral French lands of William III), but I was in Glasgow when the Prods marched. It was a visceral and unvarnished march of hatred against Catholics.
As I write the militant Orange, so called Christians are protesting the fragile existence of the Gay Pride Parade in Belfast, NI. Do they know their idol, William was a bisexual Sodomite. So their Orange march celebrating his victory is tinged with lavender.
I admit, as an American I can not fully understand the rage...the history... or the fear of Ulster, but I love it that William III, a very able soldier was bisexual. So a lot of gbltqs have been military geniuses can you say, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".

 

[bagley]

I look with a jaundice eye at modern American Christianity. I was raised on the fringes of that religion, and I admit I am greatly influenced by that culture. However, by 23 years of age I had rejected the Christian religion, at least mentally. In a way it was unfortunate for me that I rejected Christianity. I had earned a degree in Biblical Studies and spent a lot of mental energy in that field and loved the history part. The more I read and studied, the less I believed the party line. I say all this let you know, I am not an unbiased person with regards to Christianity and it's modern American spin off.

Todays American Christianity is family and procreation crazy. Some of the mottoes of the current crop of crazy evangelicals read "God, Family, Country (America)" or something of that ilk. The enshrinement and glorification of modern institutional marriage and the subsequent family is not really found in the New Testament, in the Fathers or in the teachings of Jesus.
James Boswell in his ground breaking "Same- Sex Unions in Premodern Europe" Villard Books, 1994, points out that the NT ideal is celibacy. The founder of Christianity died and was resurrected as a virgin and his teachings glorify the ascetic state. Some Christians use the Holy family as a model for the modern Christian family. But that analogy is filled with mixed messages. Jesus was conceived before his parents were married...Joseph was not Jesus' biological father. Joseph has little presence... In his teachings Jesus says it is blessed to be as a eunuch, but, He never says that about "real men". Jesus blesses little children, but says we should hate our families. It's funny that fundies take all of Jesus sexual teachings with a grain of salt..."he didn't mean that"....or "he really meant this..." Jesus never said a word about queers....

There is actually "NO" ceremony in the NT for marriage. In the 1st 1,000 years The Christian church resisted marriage and elevated the sexless state. Marriage finally became a sacrament in the early 13th century (1215 C.E.) If the Church glorified marriage it was the celibate marriage..some of these couples were sainted. Many of the female saints achieved sainthood by dying, rather than breaking their hymens.

I am at a loss to understand the shift in modern Christianity. A shift from the ascetic anti sex stance to the glorification of monogamous procreation. I think the "Fathers" and writers of the Ancient church would blast this non asceticism. The carnal body and all that.. "who will save me from this body of death......" I think these "Fathers" would label this anti ascetic Christianity a product of Judaizing apostasy. The shift is so radical from traditional Christianity, I find it hard to fathom. I know modern Christianity is still some what sex negative, but not NT sex negative. Jesus gave a lot of anti marriage teachings: "As in the days of Noah....." In other words If your f*cking your not watching for HIS return.

My conclusion is that modern Christians no longer really believe in the immanent return of Jesus. (No matter how much they yell it) Instead these Christians are building an earthly and political monolithic society. This society has no room for people like me. The hatred exhibited against fags and queers in modern evangelical Christianity is the reaction against diversity. They, after all are building a monolithic totalitarian heaven. If they allow a little bit of variation..the whole structure is bound to collapse. ( The Matrix movie trilogy as theology)

Edit Afterword: Other reasons why evangelicals hate queers is because queer sex is only for pleasure or bonding. Queer sex has no external product i.e. babies. Again, the American obsession with material output and the monetary value of that output supersedes any teaching by Jesus.

 

[bagley]

I read a lot in the blog-o-sphere and one of my favs is Informed comment by a university prof from Michigan, Juan Cole. www.juancole.com
Professor Cole is an expert,as far as I can tell, on the Middle East and Islam. His insightful comments on the recent bombing in London and also on Iraq has helped me untangle some of these crazy threads that always seems to appear anytime trouble in the Middle East or Islam surfaces. Never mind the different languages, alphabets, or the religious/political squabbles. As an American I just don't have the mindset to understand why "they just can't get along." My blog today isn't about Juan Cole and Informed Comment, it is however however about the amount of civilian Iraqi deaths in his 15 July, 2005 entry. Cole quotes a NY Times article whose source is an Iraqi health official. The Iraqi official claimed that so far this year 8,000 civilians have been killed each month in what is called "the Iraqi civil war" . This does not include Iraqis killed by US/Coalition forces. The amount of death in Iraq is catastrophic. The figure bandied about last year on the internet was 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the 2nd Gulf War. If one adds the death figures up thats 150,000 civilian deaths. As the article points out, the Baath regime killed about 300,000 Iraqis in 38 years..mainly Kurds and Shiites, I imagine. Here is what disturbs me.... It disturbs me that the report of these Iraqi civilian casualties remains under reported in the Anglo/American media. Iraq is suffering the equivalent of 2.5 nine/eleven attacks per month. In the recent London bombing with the death count at 54 and rising, Iraqis suffer the equivalent of about 130 London Tube bombings a month.

So you ask what is my point here....War IS HELL....and it is the poor who pay the highest price. The American public seem to be callous to this current "Killing Field" in Iraq. There is a parallel here to the Vietnam Conflict. 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in the Vietnam conflict. We can't even remember why "We" went into Vietnam.....but the rhetoric seem the same: Projecting American power and protecting "our way of life". everything and everyone else be damned


On why Gay Americans can't win. http://www.rawstory.com/ One of the most gay hating senator has a gay male aide. This gay male aide fully supports this fag hater. The story is also on Blogactive

 

[bagley]

Hallelujah The vile Homosexual Sodomite can change......The story of Zack Taylor and love in Action has been confirmed by an interview Zack's father gave to Christian Broadcasting Network's. I read it on the New York Blade http://www.newyorkblade.com/ The preacher in charge of the Love in Action aka the Refuge (?) is a guy name Rev. Smid . He is an ex gay...he claims he has been out of homosexuality for twenty years...Praise Yahweh. So why didn't he say, " In my core personality, I am a complete heterosexual and GOD has taken all my evil Sodomite desires into the Lake of Fire.....None of those ex gays will tell you God has changed their core sexual desires to completely heterosexual.
The ex Gays and the Christian Ministries, want Gay people to conform to a certain model of heterosexuality. Most of the "change" from gay to ST8 involves a rigid code of conduct. Unfortunately, the rigid code of conduct they give ex gays hasn't worked for ST8s. I think the Christians need a devilish adversary..a boogie to make their Rube Goldberg theology run. Today the sodomites are the adversary, in the past it was Jews.

I think there is another reason why they parade these tired rigid ex queens around the revival and televangelist circuit. My clue is from "Daggers of faith", by Robert Chazan. Chazan writes about the Christian attempts to convert Jews in the 13th century...C.E. Most of the rhetoric poured out to convert the Jews to Christ was in fact, used to strengthen Christianity. Jewish conversion was only a secondary aim. I feel this is how the modern Evangelicals use Gays and the Ex- gay ministries. The Sodomites have become the Shadow for many Evangelicals. A similar parallel would be Catholics and the abortion issue.

If the Christers convert all the queers, it would be a disaster for them. They need us. Yes Gays can change..but it rquires a Concentration Camp.

 

[bagley]

As I have stated in my blog many times I am a Neo Pagan queer man interested in Queer magick and especially queer sex magick. So I want people to know straight up...I am not a neutral, unbiased source when it comes to Evangelical Christianity and to it's current ugly right wing stance and it's current anti gay pogroms. I don't understand the allure that the right wing has with these American Evangelicals, especially the Pentecostalists. Tongues talking Ashcroft types remain a mystery to me. Don't they know their people were and in many cases Are a persecuted minority i.e. Baptist consider a lot of Pentecostalists demonic. Don't they realize the holy ghost and fascism don't mix.....

I think The anti gay Christians are duplicitous when it comes to "curing gays" . Salon.Com is running a 4 part series on "the Cure". I think these Reparative Christian therapists and the so called ministries that support them are duplicitous.

At the core of the modern Evangelical movement is the belief that Jesus will change your heart. By heart I think they mean the seat of human desires. You ask Jesus to come into your desire nature and he will make you a new creature....However, with queers it doesn't to work so well. Old fashioned preachers had the chutzpah to call queerness "demonic possession" or even the "Unforgivable Sin". Queer boys and girls knew to get out fast and never come back. I think it is much easier to deal with that type of unveiled hatred.

However, the Christian therapists call queerness a neurosis. It seems the modern Jesus needs about 2 years of weekly therapy to change queers into St8 (acting) persons and about $20 grand. But Jesus in "Reparative Therapy" is not changing the queer desire nature, he instead changes the "homosexual talk and walk". In other words repress the outward manifestations. Conform to ST8 acting norms and you are cured. I think this is duplicitous.

The "Reparative Christian Therapist" use an argument which I find fascinating and somewhat queer. ( Paraphrasing Barry Levy, a Christian therapist quoted in the salon.com article) It seems Sensitive young boys, more delicate, who don't like the rough and tumble play, ARTISTIC is thrown in.....He can't hit a ball or shoot a gun or aim an arrow....Then Levy says..."There is a high correlation between poor eye-hand coordination and same sex attraction." I noticed at the point that the therapist changed the locus of the cause of queerness from the desire nature (heart) to the physical body (eye/ hand coordination) which is probably the result of genetics. So don't get therapy ...just get glasses. It may correct your sexual orientation. So this is double duplicity.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries a lot of medical literature portrayed queers with certain body types...queer boys had large hips and big sensitive nipples. Queer woman had square shoulders and plain faces. I think a lot of the Reparative Therapists use this literature and offer it with out any evidence. So secretly these people believe queerness, or certain aspects of it lies with in the physical body.

The salon.com articles have been fun reads

 

[bagley]

I find it odd that the modern Evangelical Christians rarely mention Jesus or his strange little teachings. I really think Jesus has been side tracked. His messages of love and forgiveness are not red blooded enough for the American Church. In fact, they would probably send him to Reparative Therapy to butch him up...... Over the course of several years I have looked into what I will call the Jesus Mythos. The term mythos in connection with Jesus causes real Christians to foam at the mouth.

To me the life of Jesus is "outside history". The tales of his birth and death, his miracles and relationships are extraordinary. They float outside of verification, thus outside of history. His teachings are poignantly anti 20th century materialist. His teaching would get him thrown out of any normal SBC church, especially his anti family and anti property views. Jesus tells esoteric parables and does so to obscure the meanings to the common man.

Jesus was not loved for his teachings, but for his miracles. Morton Smith, the finder of a fragment of the Secret Gospel of Mark theorized that one of the sources of the Jesus Mythos originated in the traveling "wonder worker" or thaumaturgist. Miracle workers abounded in Late Western antiquity. Several of the teachings of Jesus in the so called canonical gospels reveal he had some some in depth magickal knowledge.

Jesus sayings about " cursing and blessing" are magickal instructions. You can't bless and curse at the same time. This is a true magickal insight. A curse is a negative "wish'' and requires a certain polarity...which will cause the magician to be polarized with that negative energy for some length of time. So, It will take a while for the average joe magick user to do positive magick again, such as healing. There are a lot of other sayings Jesus taught which also have a magician's point of view.

There also seems to be a bit of Queerness hanging around the Jesus figure. Kit Marlowe noticed this and the Secret Gospel of Mark hints at it. Jesus has at one time or another been compared to the boy loving Orpheus and also to the bisexual Dionysus. In many ways I see Jesus as the divine Androgyne, the living philosophers stone, if you will.

I don't think Jesus "Butch" Carpenter ever existed.

 

[bagley]

Monotony, Monoculture and Monotheism are the big death dealing themes in [Post] Modern America. Our great abundance is based upon a system of "interchagable parts" which makes everything and everyone replacable. The food we eat, the clothes we wear and our dwellings all reflect this monotonous Monoculture. Post WWII people accept this condition as a base line for life.

It is ironic that the most individualistic society that has ever existed requires uniform, mass-made goods and services. Paraphrasing Harold Bloom, Americans love being alone in their mass produced identical autos, houses and clothses...communing with god, never looking over to see the other person in an identical outfit, driving an identical car and listening to the same book on tape..driving to some distant identical office.

I believe this monotonous Monoculture has it's roots in Monotheism. As a religious/philosophical system Monotheism has a real problem with diversity. Monotheism requires an all powerful, all knowing creator who is above change. Monotheist Eternety is a place of complete stillness, there is no changing or shaddow. Any divergence from this stillness is labeled evil. As much as the reflected monoculture tries to squelch the variation, it just happens. The variations just keeps multiplying.

An alternate model for society is found in the Hermetic Qabalaist idea of the unmanifested potential. The source of life and creation is point of light, infinitely dense and latent with all possiblities. This potential manifests in the physical (Malkuth) in a bewildering array of manifestations all which somehow express the divine. It allows for diversity. It allows for gay people. It allows Art.

I love this saying..."With the rapid advance of progress evolution will soon be extinct"...David Stairs

spellcheck seems to be gone...?