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How do you know if you've come to the right place? Friend (or foe), you can never know, if you stop in here, if you've come to the right place. You'll never know, quite for certain, when exactly it is that I'm being quite serious and when I'm going out of my way to go off the deep end.

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We are the freaks who hacked the control program on the orbital mind control lasers to give you this insane desire to shout, "Eris loves those little Swedish Fishy Candies!" to the man in black that's been following you. What? You mean to say that you don't have an insane desire to shout "Eris loves those little Swedish Fishy Candies!" to anyone at all and you certainly haven't seen any imaginary man in black that's been spying on you for the past year-and-a-day? Well, Fnord-in-a-Bucket! I guess we aren't those people after all. We'll have to try harder.

We used to be the "Church and Cabal of the Happy Mutant Geek Girl-Cat." But we aren't anymore. Actually, "we" is mis-speaking. It's just me, random9q. I used to offer membership in the Church and Cabal of the Happy Mutant Geek Girl-Cat. I got one member. Conversation was going well, although with long gaps in-between, but since my last letter I haven't heard from them. Check that. I just did as I was updating this page. Now I've told them about the changes and the why, who knows what will happen. It was a little while later that I had some pretty intense experiences in my life, and the title became entirely inappropriate. So did the idea of offering "membership" in something I lead, even if I only got one member. Maybe later in my life I'll offer to lead something once again, but not right now. I'm just getting settled into learning a lot of new things. I used to be the Reverend random9q. Maybe I still am, I'm still ordained, no one has revoked that and I still have the certificate on file. But the title seems extremely inappropriate given my recent experiences. Maybe more about all this another time, once I'm fairly certain that all this is going to stick in a way that's permanent. I'm betting it will, but I'm also extremely caught up in the enthusuasm, and it's difficult to make a good assessment.

First a bit about Discordianism. Discordianism is a disorganized religion based, in part, on a book known as the Principia Discordia. It's also acquired some other ideas along the way. It's a complete joke. Literally. And that's a good thing. Discordianism is an attempt to start a religion based on humor and healthy chaos, as opposed to being unnecissarily staid and deathly static. There's some truth found in being able to laugh. There's a cartoon by Bill Watterson that goes like this:

Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think that it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?

Hobbes: I suppose that if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.

Calvin: <pauses> I can't tell if that's really funny or really scary.

It goes beyond that for me. There's a kind of laugh I do that I've learned to recognize. It's the laugh I make when I recognize something that I believe is true. They can be small truths or the really significant truths. It's the laugh of recognition. The laugh of familiarity. The laugh we give when we notice something that we've always seemed to know. Especially the kinds of things we've always known in the sense that, despite however people may try or however much we seek, no one can seem to teach us something that we don't already know, spiritually. Other people can just remind us of what it is we've always known.

That isn't to say we can't change our minds, or discover new truths. It's a bit like learning to turn the angle of something you're looking at that you can't quite grasp the whole of, and seeing a different way of describing it because of the way it now seems to you. It's probably important to hold in mind both the picture we were given before we added a new perspective -- keep in mind the truths of what we "knew" before -- and to hold in mind the picture we now see, now that we've changed both ourselves and the world around us. It happens everyday, in small and large ways. The more you pay attention to it, examine the consequences of your new experiences, the more you'll gain, the more you'll recognize that you might somehow feel you've always known. (Or maybe it's different for you, I can't presume to dictate your experience to you.)

Rounding back to Discordianism, because I've always found humor to be important, and to have this spiritual side to it, when I read the Principia Discordia, I was immediately attracted. Humor of the absurdist kind also serves me to jar my mind from the normal pace of things and frees me to not only enjoy the moment of being alive and capable of enjoying pure imagination but also to go on and consider the very next thing that comes to me with fresh energy and without the full weight of the assumptions I gather as I go through "normal" life. The idea of a religion based, in part, on a foundation of absurdist humor heartens me. And then there's the other side of Discordianism, the worship of Eris, a Goddess of Chaos. Personally, I've seen the application or intent to apply too much Order into the world do more damage than anything else I've witnessed. A creative balance between Order and Chaos would seem to be the most fruitful for sustaining life and being able to enjoy it, so where I see too much Order, I apply myself as a force of Chaos.

Other Discordians will "worship" Eris. Whether they do so with the kind of reverence normally described as "worship" by other religions or not is a matter of debate. Some other Discordians "worship" Eris as well as an assorted collection of other deities said to encourage Chaos. Me, well . . . I don't believe in worship, period. I can see the point of joking around, as many Discordians do, feigning to "worship" Eris and actually mocking the act of worship with an irreverence. I can actually appreciate that point very well, it suits my sense of doing what is necessary to break away from hierarchical roles, even between what might be described as deity and what might be described as an individual being. But somehow, it grates on me chillingly whenever the idea of being subservient or subordinate to any other being in the universe is introduced, even in jest. Rubs me the wrong way. I am willing to make friends with just about anyone or ally with some other entity whose goals align with my own. But no matter how puny I might be, I will not consider myself anything other than an equal, with the responsibility to determine my own morals and to act on those morals in the best way I can determine with my own facilities. (That's something I discovered in what seems like long ago, in the middle of my adolescence. That was the "final straw" that caused me to leave Christianity. Some would see me as arrogant, I guess. I see it as refusing to abrogate personal responsibility to any degree.)

Whether or not there is a God, or Goddess, or a whole Multi-Pantheon of Deities coexisting with me in this universe, becomes not a question of who to worship and how, then, but a question of, "Who do I want to make friends with?" So, my advice to you is: don't worship, just find out if you want to share a friendship. Strike up a conversation. Maybe, if you develop a really good friendship, they'll do you a few favors. Maybe they'll pull a few pranks on you. And maybe some of them aren't the kind of beings you really want to stay more than casual acquaintances with, at most. (By the way, I used to be quite caught up in being an atheist or being an agnostic. Then I stopped bothering, having had too many unusual experiences to be able to dismiss the existance of just about anything. And recently, it's gotten even weirder. However, mind you, I still have a certain kind of admiration for some of the atheists and agnostics that are out there - although some of the atheists and agnostics you will meet have some of the same kind of "knee jerk" reflexes as the most fundamentalist orthodox religious member. I try to keep and open mind, and I appreciate others that do as well.)

So, unlike "orthodox" Discordianism, this Temple does not worship Eris. Or, as I like to call her, Eris-Luna. I'm just good friends with her. She, and her friend. That guy. Him. Over there. Yeah. That "other" one. Goddess and God. (Yes, for those of you that just caught on, I do combine Discordianism and Wicca in my own way. Cat's out of the bag, I guess.) Yes, I do sometimes wonder if I'm insane given some of what I do and how far some of this goes, but I've received certain assurances from people in what I consider a position to know that it is there opinion that I'm not. (You are of course welcome to form your own opinion. If you do think I'm insane, and you do feel obliged to share that opinion with me or in a way that reaches me, perhaps you might put in a bit of time thinking about the kinds of consequences that might arrise should you not do so nicely, after all, you just decided I was not sane, now did you not? ::big grin::)

I am hoping one day to put a bit more up on this site than I have since I first created it. Unfortunately I have been far too preoccupied with many, many things. Any of you who have been coming back here once in a while to look and see if there might have been any changes and been disappointed, I am honestly sorry. But them's the breaks. I'm human, and I certifiably exist for my own amusement, not anyone else's. I've put this out here to be friendly and to share certain ideas, nothing more. Time permiting, I'll have more to share. Still on the agenda: a bit about Dreaming, a bit about Chaos in Magic, more about Discordianism, . . .

Have any comments about what you see here? Just want to strike up a (relatively topical) conversation? I check this web-mail address maybe once a month, so don't expect recieve a prompt reply. OTOH, once you do hear from me, I'm likely to check back a little more often after I've written, and will try to keep the conversation going. No promises other than that I will eventually at least write if you're writing in earnest (or earnest jest).

If you wish to, write me here at this address: random9q@disinfo.net.

This is a very small collection of writings by myself and others that have some relevance to this page.

The Hypertext Edition of the Principia Discordia - I ironically have a copy of this printed out that I made bound and duct-taped to all hell, and scribbled a couple of notes in, intending to make more notes to myself later as I investigated this further. (They made it hypertext so I could have a printed copy?) This is the text, and some of the graphics, of the book I mentioned earlier in this page. You may find it wacky, hillarious, and deeply inspiring, or banal, bland, and just plain irrelevant. I won't recommend it to you in the same way that some people recommend the Christian Bible to everyone they think needs a spiritual experience, but I will say that I enjoyed it immensely and I think some of you reading this will also. A printed edition of this work was created by the printing company Loompanics. I don't have their address, or any reference to them, so if someone else would be willing to kindly supply me with such, I will print it here for the benefit of other lookers-on.

HyperDiscordia (Confusion for a New Generation) - This site is a wonderful site to browse if you know what you might be looking for and a bit about Discordianism. However, I have found the fact that it relies too much on the search function and has no kind of narrative organization other than the site map. I might endeavor to mine it and provide for you later some keywords that would be useful to search for, but for now it's better to read the Principia Discordia and then come here. Excepting that, however, as I have said, it is a wonderful site, and full of ideas.

- My web-page essay, and a follow-up, written to as broad an audience as possible in an attempt to encourage the much needed skill of critical thinking. Something to read, perhaps, regardless of your opinion on anything.

- A literary work in progress of mine. Will it end up as a story which is at times vague and dream-like? Or, will it end up like a dream, which at times implies many greater stories, but only hints at them vaguely? I've done some work on this since I first posted it, but haven't put any of it into an uploadable form.

The Ring of Fnords - Originally and to this day purporting on many sites to be the one and only cyber-cabal of Discordians found on the internet, this link will take you to a random site on the Ring of Fnords, using the transport machanism of WebRing. There's a bit of junk that's not maintained and quite a few "404 - Not Found" 's on this Ring, so if you get something that's not of any use, just hit the "Back" button on your browser and try this link again. There are a few amusing gems, as well as some really interestingly inspirational material to be found here. A small "warning": Some of the sites on this ring are what might be considered "adult content." (1) If you have a problem with that, don't go complaining to me. (2) If you're a minor, and using your school's or parent's computer to browse, and you get in trouble, don't go complaining to me. (3) If you're looking for "porn" and are trying to find it surfing the Ring of Fnords, don't go complaining to me. (4) There's plenty of non-"adult" content there, too. (5) Don't go complaining to me.

All material on this and subsequent pages (C) Copyleft and (A) Anticopyright 1998, 1999 by the author. If you wish to use any material on this page, please feel free. When using material attributable to the author, please make a reference acknowledging the reference. When using material that has been noted as originating from another source, please keep the original reference in-tact, and give that creator the due credit they deserve. Please, when replicating material, preserve this text, or something like it in the spirit of mutual respect..