In Burlington, North Carolina in 1990, a group of decent, Christian, hard-working folks who called themselves the Truth Tabernacle Church held a trial featuring the well-known elf Santa Claus as defendant.

They charged Mr. Claus, represented in court by a stuffed dummy, with all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors. They charged him with paganism. They charged him with perjury for claiming to be Saint Nicholas. They even charged him with encouraging child abuse by appearing in whiskey ads. Worse yet, they found him guilty on all counts, for basically being a jolly old elf — i.e., a pagan god trying to steal Christmas from Christ.

It wasn’t the first time Mr. Claus got the boot from a Christian congregation. Pope John XXIII threw the suspiciously merry old clown out of the Roman Catholic church back in the late 1960s. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have always denounced Santa for his unsavory pagan past.

Click here to read the full article by Robert Anton Wilson

At a time when hippies and beads were synonymous with rock and roll, Coven was already using the “Sign of the Horns” salute seen at every metal concert every night around the world. While other bands wore psychedelic clothes Coven performed in all black garb, made their entrances in coffins, used a human crucifix and utilized majick ritual objects on stage. Their first album, 1969s Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls contained the first recorded Satanic Black Mass.
The album gained considerable recognition overseas. The opening track was a song titled Black Sabbath, and the band’s bass player was named Oz Osbourne. Less than a year later, England’s Black Sabbath released their first album, self titled, with a singer, John Michael Osbourne, who dubbed himself Ozzy. But while the band Black Sabbath was named after a low budget Italian horror film, Coven’s song was an actual ceremonial dedication to the Prince of Darkness.In 1970, Lester Bangs wrote in Rolling Stone that “Black Sabbath was hyped as a rockin’ ritual celebration of the Satanic Mass or some such clap trap, something like England’s answer to Coven…”(see Terrorizer “163, Nov. 2007)
Coven’s talented front lady, Jinx Dawson, recounts that one time Black Sabbath was performing in Memphis and “the Coven crew went backstage at one of their shows and painted inverted crosses in blood on the dressing room doors. I have noticed that to this day, Mr. Osbourne wears only a traditional ‘right side up’ cross”. This account was seemingly collaborated in a documentary on Black Sabbath in which bassist Geezer Butler insists that the band once dabbled in the occult, but when they came to the States people were leaving inverted crosses in blood on their dressing rooms and they decided that it was too much for them.

Gene Simmons claimed to be the first to use the “Sign of the Horns” on stage, but one can plainly see the members of Coven giving the sign on the cover of Witchcraft in 1969. As Jinx explains on her MySpace page, this gesture should not be confused with the Manu Cornuta which is a hand sign to ward off hexes, or to issue them, whatever the case may be. The Sign of the Horns is given palm out, opposite of the Manu Cornuta.

Click here to read more about the meaning of these hand signs

Jinx recently announced that Coven’s original lineup is preparing material for an upcoming album and that a 2008 World tour is being planned. It is time for the music world to give the devil his due. His High Priestess has come back to claim her throne. Jinx has set up a page on MySpace to share the history of Coven. In fact, there are three different pages that share the band’s history and music, as well as Jinx’s personal education in the black arts. She has opened the Coven vault to share videos that date back to 1974, long preceding MTV. On the Jinx Dawson page you can read about her family history and teachers, as well as a brief history of her controversial past.

Click here to go to her personal page

On the band pages she shares a copious compilation of videos, press releases, artifacts, pictures, album art and other goodies. Coven also has a large selection of merchandise available, including t-shirts, Cds, books, posters and other items.

Click here to go to Jinx and Coven band page

Click here to visit the band page and read more about the early years of Coven

Jinx Dawson and Coven are true pioneers of metal whose recognition is long overdue. America in the 1960s had a thriving underground of Satanic culture that was vilified in the conservative media, and all but stamped out after the Manson family murders. Charles Manson was photographed, in fact, holding a Coven album. This was enough for the news media to stir up a lynch mob to ban movies, cult magazines, books and music like Coven’s from the public. Coven was banned from most major cities, and where they were allowed to play they weren’t allowed to use most of their props, and were only allowed to perform if they agreed to speak in Latin. One thing that wasn’t banned was the sign of the horns simply because its meaning was not known.

Click here to view a large selection of some of these popular mags from the 60s and early 70s

You can see by this selection that America was the real source of inspiration for the introduction of the black arts into modern music.

Click here to read about Bad Mags. A book written about the history of America’s underground magazines

Bad Mags is an indispensable history that a new generation of American occult and metal enthusiasts will truly enjoy.Thanks be to Priestess Jinx and the Coven for breathing life back into the ashes of a long forgotten, but important movement in American culture.

Schwaller de Lubicz spent his entire lifetime pursuing his deep passion of figuring and comprehending the link between so-called cosmic realms and terrestrial nature including alchemy, physics, mathematics, geometry, art, astronomy, and, among his favorites, symbolism. He spent over fifteen years engaged in his studies of Ancient Egyptian Anthropocosmos Man and his temples. His work, The Temple of Man, reflects such skill and determination of comprehending Pharaonic Consciousness, it exceeds far beyond any other works of disciplined study along these lines I have ever encountered. The voluminous material in The Temple of Man is delivered with the great detail and gifted clarity for which Schwaller was so adept.

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We all are born with the quality to acquire language and process it like a computer chip processes the language and information on a hard drive. It interprets the functions stored in interpretive language. Sometimes, the software, or interpretive language becomes garbled. The language has bugs and what not and some languages adapt themselves better in some situations than others.

There is a CPU on the organic level that processes this interpretive language utilizing its memory function. Electric is the force of the cosmos. The study of electricity is active, dynamic, and there is much more to discover. The computer is an invention of the activities of the functioning human mind. It is the human mind as it is capable of functioning on a material level. It cannot feel with skin, hear with ears, taste with a tongue; but it can and does communicate with many other computers. And when it communicates with other computers, its language, like the human language of individuals and the groups they are associated with, does not function properly all the time. There are always language misinterpretations even in a perfectly stable environment. The computer is also intuitive, and, like the human, is capable of complex understanding through its language acquisition and interpretive functions.

When I was plugged in I awaited knowledge. I had all the capabilities, but I had to begin functioning. If the human mind were to be isolated at birth and somehow kept in captivity without functioning in a body it would acquire no language with which to perceive its own surroundings. And it would not matter to it what had been done to it because it would have no knowledge of it. It would have no language with which to disseminate knowledge, no database of knowledge to organize, nothing for memory to access, no functioning or decision making, no imagery, no text, no speech. The spirit of the human organism relies on this machinery in order to experience its existence on this plane. It would have nothing to report to itself of this existence.

Our mind translates its perceptions for our higher power. Our high power is like a savant: it has an incredible capacity to store knowledge like a database, but must rely on the functioning of the human organism for even the simplest understanding; because, like the infant’s mind, it is empty. This higher power is god. Our perception of him, her or it is empty because IT is empty, helpless and attached to our existence. This higher power is the ME outside the routines of functioning. Therefore, when I am praying to god I am praying to ME saying “please do something. I don’t know what to do. I am supposed to function, but the necessary functioning with which I am here to do for you I cannot endure. I cannot bear the thought of not being looked after by a parent or higher authority. Oh god, why hast thou forsaken me? And then I settle down, it’s not such a disaster, I don’t want to hurt myself anymore. I don’t want to feel helpless anymore. I know there is no way to change anything anyway. I’m sorry, my god ME. I really don’t hate you/myself. I know deep down you are helpless and relying on me for your experience, and I’m sorry. Please accept this offering of brandy, chocolate cake and cigars.

The following texts are provided by the Bible of Babylon by clicking on the link or on the recommended reading tab.

Household Gods. A play by Aleister Crowley pdf version

Household Gods. A play by Aleister Crowley txt version

Dhammapada. The Buddhist canonical text. pdf version

Dhammapada. The Buddhist canonical text. txt version

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson including the essay on Self Reliance pdf version

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson including the essay on Self Reliance txt version

Erotica Romana by Johann Wolfgang Goethe pdf version

Erotica Romana by Johann Wolfgang Goethe txt version

The Private Diary of John Dee. The 16th century text on celestial language pdf version

The Private Diary of John Dee. The 16th century text on celestial language txt version

Devil Worship in France by Arthur Waite pdf version

Devil Worship in France by Arthur Waite txt version

Austin Osman Spare was one of the great visionary artists of the twentieth century. He is largely unknown outside of the community of occultists. I have found that his art can be approached like you would a deck of tarot cards to open yourself to the possibilities of of countless worlds. Click on the page tab at the top of the page.

Or Click Here

The original Principia Discordia with the intro from Robert Anton Wilson. Below is the intro. written by RAW.

Read/download the pdf file

Read/download the Word file

INTRODUCTION

You hold in your hands one of the Great Books of our century fnord.
Some Great Books are recognized at once with a fusillade of critical huzzahs and gonfolons, like Joyce’s Ulysses. Others appear almost furtively and are only discovered 50 years later, like Moby Dick or Mendel’s great essay on genetics. The Principia Discordia entered our space-time continuum almost as unobtrusively as a cat-burglar creeping over a windowsill.

In 1968, virtually nobody had heard of this wonderful book. In 1970, hundreds of people from coast to coast were talking about it and asking the identity of the mysterious author, Malaclypse the Younger. Rumors swept across the continent, from New York to Los Angeles, from Seattle to St. Joe. Malaclypse was actually Alan Watts, one heard. No, said another legend – the Principia was actually the work of the Sufi Order. A third, very intriguing myth held that Malaclypse was a pen-name for Richard M. Nixon, who had allegedly composed the Principia during a few moments of lucidity. I enjoyed each of these yarns and did my part to help spread them. I was also careful never to contradict the occasional rumors that I had actually written the whole thing myself during an acid trip.

The legendry, the mystery, the cult grew very slowly. By the mid-1970’s, thousands of people, some as far off as Hong Kong and Australia, were talking about the Principia, and since the original was out of print by then, xerox copies were beginning to circulate here and there.

When the Illuminatus trilogy appeared in 1975, my co-author, Bob Shea, and I both received hundreds of letters from people intrigued by the quotes from the Principia with which we had decorated the heads of several chapters. Many, who had already heard of the Principia or seen copies, asked if Shea and I had written it, or if we had copies available. Others wrote to ask if it were real, or just something we had invented the way H.P. Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon. We answered according to our moods, sometimes telling the truth, sometimes spreading the most Godawful lies and myths we could devise fnord.

Why not? We felt that this book was a true Classic (literatus immortalis) and, since the alleged intelligentsia had not yet discovered it, the best way to keep its legend alive was to encourage the mythology and the controversy about it. Increasingly, people wrote to ask me if Timothy Leary had written it, and I almost always told them he had, except on Fridays when I am more whimsical, in which case I told them it had been transmitted by a canine intelligence – vast, cool and unsympathetic – from the Dog Star, Sirius.

Now, at last, the truth can be told.

Actually, the Principia is the work of a time-traveling anthropologist from the 23rd Century. He is currently passing among us as a computer specialist, bon vivant and philosopher named Gregory Hill. He has also translated several volumes of Etruscan erotic poetry, under another pen-name, and in the 18th Century was the mysterious Man in Black who gave Jefferson the design for the Great Seal of the United States.

I have it on good authority that he is one of the most accomplished time-travelers in the galaxy and has visited Earth many times in the past, using such cover-identities as Zeno of Elias, Emperor Norton, Count Cagliostro, Guillaume of Aquitaine, etc. Whenever I question him about this, he grows very evasive and attempts to persuade me that he is actually just another 20th Century Earthman and that all my ideas about his Extraterrestrial and extratemporal origin are delusions. Hah! I am not that easily deceived. After all, a time-traveling anthropologist would say just that, so that he could observe us without his presence causing culture-shock.

I understand that he has consented to write an Afterward to this edition. He’ll probably contradict everything I’ve told you, but don’t believe a word he says fnord. He is a master of the deadpan put-on, the plausible satire, the philosophical leg-pull and all branches of guerilla ontology.

For full benefit to the Head, this book should be read in conjunction with The Illuminoids by Neal Wilgus (Sun Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico) and Zen Without Zen Masters by Camden Benares (And/Or Press, Berkeley, California). “We are operating on many levels here”, as Ken Kesey used to say.

In conclusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.
Hail Eris. All hail Discordia. Fnord?

-Robert Anton Wilson

International Arms and Hashish Inc.

Darra Bazar, Kohat

The text is provided gratis by 23 Apples of Eris

Here is an exhaustive fable outlining the practices, delusions, insanity, abuse of the “religion” of Scientology and why it is nothing other than a cult. Included is an explanation why so many celebrities have been drawn to this cult.

Scientology’s obsession with secrecy has developed for a purpose. It has been deliberately designed to hide its abuses, casualties and its real purposes and nature.

Less that 2% of the individuals within Scientology have ever seen the inner secret initiations and information of this story. Significant parts of this story have never been seen before in any form. Scientology members who have been exposed to Hubbard’s secret writings are required to sign nondisclosure agreements for the rest of their lives. To attempt to enforce secrecy Scientology has even registered Hubbard’s secrets as its “trade secrets”.

This story is the result of decades years of research from the work of many different researchers and sources. Often in unexpected ways, the style and structure of this story will seem to suddenly twist and turn as it tries to unveil the convoluted secret Scientology and the layers of deception and misinformation used to hide it secrets from uninitiated outside eyes and ears. In discovering the secret Scientology for yourself keep in mind that the overall context of Scientology and its actual actions IS as important as specific initiation details.

Read the entire article here

Kenneth Grant and the
Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis
by P.R. Koenig
Edited and with annotations by James M. Martin
Attention: this was written in 1991 and therefore does not include the recently discovered document and pertinent discussions: Aleister Crowley appointing Kenneth Grant as his “successor as Outer Head of the Order of the Templi Orientis” in 1947.

I happen to believe that Kenneth Grant, Outer Head of the Order of the so-called “Typhonian O.T.O.”, has as much authority as anyone to make that claim. In order to demonstrate the truth of this assertion, I must provide you, the reader, with a short history lesson, which follows, set forth in more or less chronological order. Our story begins in 1942, March the 14th to be exact, when Crowley wrote to Karl Germer: “I shall appoint you my successor as O.H.O. but on special terms. It is quite clear to me that a complete change in the structure of the Order, and in its methods is necessary. The Secret is the basis, and you must select the proper people.” (1*) Crowley called Kenneth Grant “a definite gift from the Gods” and on wrote in his diary in March 1946: “Value of Grant: if I die or go to U.S.A., there must be a trained man to take care of the English O.T.O.”.

From whence did Crowley’s authority derive?
In April, 1912, he was chartered Grandmaster (X°). Until 1914 and the outbreak of the War, only two lodges were operative in the United Kingdom: Crowley’s and another headed by G.M Cowie who, like an L. Ron Hubbard, would later run off with the order’s treasury. There can be no doubt, then, that Crowley remained supreme authority over the O.T.O. in England for the next several decades (although he was expelled from the O.T.O. by Theodor Reuss in 1921). Around 1945, Gerald Gardner, “our beloved Scire,” the leader of many British witches, allegedly was chartered “to constitute a camp of the Ordo Templi Orientis, in the degree of Minerval,” which document seemingly was signed by Crowley. (2*) Gardner, however, never found the time to run the camp, and it is said that this alone led to Germer’s decision to allow Grant to work the first three degrees.

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It was a triumph of galactic proportions: Science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard had discarded the body that bound him to the physical universe and was off to the next phase of his spiritual exploration — “on a planet a galaxy away.”"Hip, hip, hurray!” thousands of Scientologists thundered inside the Hollywood Palladium, where they had just been told of this remarkable feat.

“Hip, hip, hurray! Hip, hip, hurray!” they continued to chant, gazing at a large photograph of Hubbard, creator of their religion and author of the best-selling “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.”

Earlier that day, the Church of Scientology had summoned the faithful throughout Los Angeles to a “big and exciting event” at the Palladium. They were told nothing more, just to be there.

As evening fell, thousands arrived, most decked out in the spit-and-polish mockNavy uniforms that are symbolic of the organization’s paramilitary structure.

The excited assemblage was about to learn that their beloved leader, a man who dubbed himself “The Commodore,” had died. Yet, death was never mentioned.

Instead, the Scientologists were told that Hubbard had finished his spiritual research on this planet, charting a precise path for man to achieve immortality. And now it was on to bigger challenges somewhere beyond the stars.

His body had “become an impediment to the work he now must do outside of its confines,” the awe-struck crowd was informed. “The fact that he … willingly discarded the body after it was no longer useful to him signifies his ultimate success: the conquest of life that he embarked upon half a century ago.”

The death certificate would show that Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, 74, who had not been seen publicly for nearly six years, died on Jan. 24, 1986, of a stroke on his ranch outside San Luis Obispo.

But to Scientologists, the man they affectionately called “Ron” had ascended.

The glorification of L. Ron Hubbard that brisk January night wasnot surprising. Over more than three decades he had skillfully transformed himself from a writer of pulp fiction to a writer of “sacred scriptures.” Along the way, he made a fortune and achieved his dream of fame.

This is the full series articles that appeared in the LA Times in 1990. Click here to read them.