Second: The always boring AndR, k.s.c. came up with an idea a while ago. While pondering the merits of this idea, I discovered my sign, thus confirming to me that we need more Discordian filk.

Erisomatic Astrology. The POEE calendar, supplied in the first and holiest of Discordian documents, the Principia Discordia, provides ingredients for an easy way to determine a person’s Discordian “sign.” I suggest you simply add the element for the day of the week you were born on with the season you were born in for a total of 25 possible signs. For example: Orange Confusion, Pungent Discord.

Third: The filk.

The Commodes: Sweet Chaos

Show me a Goddess that’s crazy
Show me a clergy so high
I’ll show you chaos that’ll last forever
Flying high so high

Show me a place where thoughts are the thinkers
And all the fnords you see eating you yeah
I’d wish the fnord ate all hateful people
Then there’d be no more illuminating to do

Oh sweet chaos
Oh sweet chaos
Oh whoo sweet sweet chaos

They immanentized the eschaton
High on a hill
Take a ride on the machine mindtrap
And you’ll know nothing is for real

The world is filled with all the cabbage people
Trying to find their way
All they need is a hand to guide them
To a brighter day

Oh sweet chaos
Oh sweet chaos
Oh whoo sweet sweet chaos

Sweet chaos that comes through the ages
Reach out and touch my soul
Give my life no more meaning
And everyone a heart of fnord

Oh sweet chaos
Oh sweet chaos
Oh whoo Sweet sweet choas
You need it: chaos
Oh sweet chaos

I know your searching
I know your searching
For a little chaos
A little order and illumination
And I know it’s been hard
Trying to find your way
But you got to keep on searching
Harder day by day
‘Cause I want you
And you, and you you you you and you and you and you and you
To stand on up, yes ma’am
Put a little chaos in your heart
A little heart in your chaos
Together we can see the fnords
Listen to me
Don’t dogma too hard
On what She’s trying to say
‘Cause this chaos
Chaos is the only way
Nothing but Eris

Oh sweet chaos
Oh sweet chaos
Oh whoo Sweet sweet choas

When you’re down and out
And you can’t see a way
And you need a fnord
Well now just call on Eris

1. Is Eris willing to prevent Order, but not able? Then She is not omnipotent.
2. Is She able, but not willing? Then She is malevolent.
3. Is She both able and willing? Then whence cometh Order?
4. Is She neither able nor willing? Then why call Her Goddess?
5. In conclusion: Eris is a weak, hateful, Order-inflicting bitch.

The Erisian Pentabuttal:

1. Are you saying that the only proof of a woman’s power is Her ability to fulfill your desires? Why should She prevent Order?
2. Are you calling Her evil for not catering to your every whim? Perhaps She isn’t the malevolent one.
3. Even when you admit that it’s not Her fault, you still place the responsibility for preventing Order on Her. Pull your own weight.
4. Respect. That’s why.
5. In conclusion: You’re an unreasonable, spoiled, lazy asshole.

Ask me five questions. I’ll answer anything!

(This post would have been slightly almost-funnier had I found a way to link directly to the rings. Thou shalt scroll down.)

Just knowing that this completely unironically stolen depiction of the atheist’s invisible pink unicorn exists has restored my hope for humanity! Welcome back, goddess worship!

In other news, I’ve been playing with spray-paint in non-ventilated areas.

Radio Free Discordia was started by Mourning Star a while back. It used to host five or six regular shows, but slowly petered out. Currently, you can download a few musical shows hosted by Borderline Simpleton and Narot.

Radio Discordia regularly posts downloadable podcasts from various sources. It describes itself thusly: “…a radio station of unique, diverse and experimental digital audio. Mix-tapes, Mash-ups, Speeches, Audio Books, and anything else we choose to air of Cultural, Social, & Activist significance, and anything just plain interesting in nature. ”

What the Fnord? – hosted by Fenian Timelord, is a Discordian talk radio show. If you catch them doing a live show, call in, they’re really fun!

MadKid Radio is hosted by Principality Kaou-Suu. It’s a musical show with the occasional Discordian PSA, commercial or announcement.

1. “I’m just sick of it. Every time I come to MW there’s a new issue with you and a select group of Discordians. So you worship chaos, big fuging deal. Give it a rest already.”

Try replacing Discordians with Wiccans and Chaos with Triple Goddess and let the accusations of persecution flood in. Also, hilariously, this was in reply to a post by TGGR parodying the views of select forum members, to a degree.

2. “Yeah, I have seen alot of it popping up on the boards. I also noticed that every time I see one [a Discordian], it seems to be laden with arguments and negativity. Something as simple as an introduction, turns into mayhem!! I’ll pass on those threads and posts thank you, they take the enjoyment out of conversation. I have never seen as many arguments on the boards as I have since those posts have started.”

3. “We didn’t set out to hurt Discordianism. We set out to rid our community of trolls. We hope our community will be a better place as a result.”

90% of those “trolls” ‘just happened’ to be Discordians.

4. “Someone hacked into my ebay account. Loverly. Very mature. Guard your butt Ssanf, you’ve just painted a big old target on it.”

Incidentally, none of us were behind the hacking.

5. “I think a couple of bad apples came in here, calling themselves Discordians (and I don’t have any way to judge whether they really were or not) and they started baiting people and trying to cause more chaos than is strictly natural, and when the shit hit the fan they rallied some of the other Discordians around them because they were “being persecuted.”

6. “Congratulations. This isn’t the forum for Chaos. This is a sanctuary, not a factory.”

Because Discordians…like factories? I don’t get it.

7. “The most fatuous, manipulative, and venomous people to be found here are all of the discordian genre.”

8. “A successful and a good discordian, is one who gets others angry, upset, and is skilled at mocking and belittling them.The better they are at it, the more they are respected by thier peers.”

Partially true, but hardly the whole story (also, fixed for spelling and grammatical errors).

9. “A True Discordian does not spend all their time making sarcastic posts on internet forums. In fact, a majority of “Discordians” you see online are not really true Discordians, but nothing more than attention seekers.”

Apparently reading the Principia once makes you an expert on what other people really believe too, at least going by the above poster.

10. “I’ve always, always regarded the Discordians as being people who chose to be Discordians because they can’t be arsed to actually do any work to develop a relationship with a specific deity, they were too wishy-washy to choose just one path, and they just want to be a mishmash of everything and not have to work at learning about rituals or traditions or any such thing as that. “Oooh, I’m a Discordian! I can do whatever I want! Which means I can just SAY I’m a pagan but I never bother doing rituals or studying any kind of sacred texts or developing a relationship with deity, etc! I can go around and not be Christian, but I won’t quite be anything else either because I just can’t commit and I can’t be ARSED to commit!”

Spoiled brats of the pagan world, I thought. I really don’t have a lot of respect for Discordians. They just strike me as spiritually lazy.”

Too hilarious to comment on.

11. “Just out of curiosity are any of you discordians raising or will raise your children in your beleif system?…I know silly question, of course you would, but with my experiences with Discordians and Chaos Mages lately I would be concerned for the child.”

12. “mmm, it’s like a troll breeding facility isn’t it. Maybe there’s an undergound complex like Area 51 where the genetically engineer them?”

Said in reference to EB&G forums

13. “In other words, Discordianism, like postmodernism, means never having to say your sorry.”

14. “I’m starting to think discordian is just another word for annoying. It certainly doesn’t seem to have any hallmarks of a consistent or coherent belief system.”

15. “At least Satanists HAVE a worldview. After reading this thread, I’m convinced that discordians not only don’t, but will actively mock anyone who does.”

16. “Followers of Eris…I will not allow you to spread ‘discord’ in my forum just like I won’t let Christians proselytize.”

Because its practically the same thing, right?

Poor Ned.

Ok, so since we have people here who are barely familiar with the argument, I’ll lay out some etymology and terms.

The whole free-will/determinism language basically stems from a radical philosophy response during the ‘Enlightenment’ era to the prevailing dogma of the “Geocentric Crystal Spheres of the Creator God” theory/model of the Solar System/Universe refined by the church from Antiquity to the Renaissance (shades of the Egg of Mithras model).

Hold on folks….

The Celestial Spheres:

The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus and others. In these celestial models the stars and planets are carried around by being embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial transparent fifth element (quintessence), like jewels set in orbs.

In the geocentric model adopted in the Middle Ages, the planetary spheres (i.e. those that contained planets) were arranged outwards from the spherical, stationary Earth at the centre of the universe in this order: the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In more detailed models the seven planetary spheres contained other secondary spheres within them. The planetary spheres were followed by the stellar sphere containing the fixed stars; other scholars added a ninth sphere to account for the precession of the equinoxes, a tenth to account for the supposed trepidation of the equinoxes, and even an eleventh to account for the changing obliquity of the ecliptic.

In modern science, the orbits of the planets are simply the paths of those planets through mostly empty space. For medieval scholars, on the other hand, celestial spheres were actually thick spheres of rarefied matter nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below.  When scholars applied Ptolemy’s epicycles, they presumed that each planetary sphere was exactly thick enough to accommodate them.  Combining this information with astronomical observations allowed scholars to calculate that the distance to the far edge of Saturn (or to the inside of the stellar sphere) was 73,387,747 miles.

Ok, so here’s a secret. Most Mythology is humanity projecting onto things in the universe that they can’t understand.

Haha, only serious.

We do this because as soon as we project part of our ‘self’ out there we can have some degree of control more than blind non-understanding.

This theory was codified into Western culture by the Greeks (remember the ‘indigestion’ and “The classical Greeks did not influence the classical Greeks” quotes?). The Greeks actually calculated the circumference of the earth pretty darn accurately and got a lot right. The Greeks inherited the legacy of the Babylonians  and developed the science of astronomy. By the second century A.D., they had covered most of the main branches of astronomy: They knew what caused and could predict eclipses, they had charted planets, cataloged stars, observed novae, and discovered precession. They had discovered the Earth was spherical (though that knowledge was lost later), and that it moved around the sun (though that model grew out of favor).

Some excerpts from an article on the Greeks:

Thales probably believed in a spherical Earth; Pythagoras and Plato did, as well. However, though Aristotle was grossly incorrect in his model of the universe, he must be given credit for the first study of scientific geography. He gave three reasons for his thinking:

1. Only a sphere could result from the tendency of matter to fall together toward a common center.
2. Only a sphere could through the circular shadow which we always see during a lunar eclipse.
3. Only on the surface of a sphere would a traveler going from North to South see new constellations rising above the horizon on (s)he moved.

…….The Geocentric model held so much sway because of many of the philosophies of the ancient Greeks. They believed that the circle is the perfect form, and that the simplest model that made sense must be the correct one. Since they “knew” the heavens were perfect, everything must move upon a circle, and since the simplest model was that the Earth stood still and everything moved around it, then that must also be true. After all, we can’t feel the Earth moving, so why should be believe that it does without any extraordinary evidence?

There’s one problem with the Geocentric model and it had to do with the motion of the planets. For periods of time, the planets seem to orbit in an eastward direction across the stars. However, for brief periods of time, they switch and go in a westward direction. This is called retrograde.

….

Plato taught that the movements, occultations, conjunctions, etc. of the sky were all calculable, and they only frightened those who could not “work a sum.” However, he did complain that the heavenly bodies did not always use good sense. He was sure that their movements could be understood, and if they did not make sense then it was the theory that was at fault, not the heavenly bodies.

This lead him to eventually accept the theory that the Earth might not be at the center of the universe, and he wrote “the Earth, our nurse, goes to and fro on its axis, which stretches right through the universe.” In Plato’s school, the theory enjoyed a long life, and it was one of his followers that hit upon the heliocentric – sun-centered – model. Unfortunately, Plato’s greatest pupil, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), disagreed.

Aristotle’s heavy scientific words contrasted with light and eloquent phrases from Plato, and they tipped the balance in the favor of geocentrism. It would take nearly 2000 years before main-stream thought returned to heliocentric ideas.

With a geocentric model, one must explain the apparent wandering of the planets in some way. Credit for the theory of concentric crystal spheres with epicycles (spheres upon spheres) and eccentricities is given to Eudoxus, but it reached the highest stage of development in the hands of Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria.

Around A.D. 150, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy (left) (A.D. 85-165) – the last of the great Greek scientists – solidified the geocentric model, elaborating and formalizing the view in a manner that closely approximated the movements of the sun and planets. In Ptolemy’s model of the universe, Earth was in a center sphere, surrounded by eight other spheres, which were, in order, the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and then the “fixed stars.” The idea was absorbed by Arabs and portrayed under the name of “Ptolemaic.”

Angels are Jinn who have surrendered their will to Allah/YHWH.

So the whole point was that they couldn’t quite figure out how to make the “wandering stars” fit into their math, and it pissed them off. These things had seemingly “free will” and thus earned god-titles and reputations. This re-occurs in most mythology about the planets, especially if it isn’t known that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are the same heavenly body. Earlier Greeks did not realize what the planets were, but were quite disdainful towards them. They were referred to as “tramp stars,” which is our word for “planets.” Homer wrote of the morning and evening star (Venus) by two separate names, “Phospheros” and “Hesperos” — he never knew that they were the same planet. It was Pythagoras in 550 B.C. who discovered that Phospheros and Hesperos were the same.

Early Islam shares that confusion, as noted in the wikipedia entry on Satan:

According to the Qur’an, Iblis (the Arabic name used) disobeyed an order from Allah to bow to Adam and as a result was forced out of heaven and given respite until the day of judgment from further punishment.

When Allah commanded all of the angels to bow down before Adam (the first Human), Iblis, full of hubris and jealousy, refused to obey God’s command (he could do so because, as a jinn, he had free will), seeing Adam as being inferior in creation due to his being created from clay as compared to him (created of fire).

“It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels prostrate to Adam, and they prostrate; not so Iblis (Lucifer); He refused to be of those who prostrate.”
(Allah) said: “What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?” He said: “I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay.”

Qur’an 7:11-12

Lucifer, of course, means Morning Star. I love the identification of the stars as Jinn fire-beings with free will, and the Angels as fire-beings with free will that have surrendered it to Allah. Then along comes this punk Lucifer (the morning-star) and says “Fuck this, I do what I want. Sometimes I go backwards in the sky JUST TO FUCK WITH THE HUMANS.”

Venus had a similar reputation, dig. How the hell could you describe the path of a body across the sky mathematically if you don’t recognize it half the time when it shows up. Those rogue-star fuckers are obviously “allowed” to wander from the ineffable clockwork plan of the Divine Watchmaker.

So all of this history bubbles up into the Renaissance Catholic Church as the “Ptolemnaic Geocentrism with Crystal Spheres” model of the Solar System.

And then some wise-ass in the church asks, “A’hyuk, well then what makes those immense solid spheres go round and round-y?” and some other fount of ignorance responds, “Well, GOD’s WILL mannifest as physical FORCE. At the beggining of time, he just PUSHED everything and the Holy Spirit maintains the momentum.”

And then oh shit, if everything in the universe that we can approach mathematically is a manifestation of God’s Will and Glory unfolding into the visible universe, then it’s all PRE-DETERMINED.

But, but, but Lucifer had FREE WILL!, the Qu’ran tells me so, and Adam had FREE WILL, the Bible tells me so, and those fucking PLANETS! have free will, the astronomers tell us so [Fuck you and your heliocentrism, Copernicus. I like my model cuz' it's mine. We's gonna kills you, boy!].

This thread is mired in Cartesean Duality.*

Remember this the next time you see some-one spitting and screaming about Free-Will/Determinism: The model is so out dated, it make you seem crazier than the Cargo Cultists.

Cargo Cults

We welcome the return of John Frum and his CARGO!!!!!!!!!!!

Cargo Cult Plane

*[The same premise that underlies the Crystal Sphere model (that God acts as an imminent yet immaterial source of motive force for matter) also underlies the mind/body split (that the mind is an imminent yet immaterial source of motive force for the body) which is the source of all of the Free-Will/Determinism confusion and yelling. Personally, I don't think these models represent what happens in Reality in the least. The math fits, but the underlying premise leads to delusion.]

For this reason certain fine forms of asceticism are developing quite naturally. This asceticism does not slander love, does not blaspheme against it, does not try to convince itself that love is an abomination from which it is necessary to run away. It is Platonism rather than asceticism. It recognizes that love is the sun, but often does not see its way to live in the sunlight, and so considers it better not to see the sun at all, […]

—P.D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum