The following is an article I re-found recently.
This is from Chaos International, issue #19. I forget the date, but I'm fairly certain it's
from the 1980s. It ceased publication back then, too. The author is one of the founders
of Chaos Magick.
A CRAP PRODUCT
by Pete Carroll
The recent scandal in Shefield in which a charismatic Christian priest was found to have
been bonking his female followers on an industrial scale should occasion no surprise. The
core teachings of Xtianity, and indeed most religions, revolve essentially around the hot
points of sex and death. Strip away all the mumbo jumbo and the basic message of Xtianity
reads, "avoid sex and thereby escape death." Unfortunately only very simple
creatures such as the unicellular asexual amoeba can actually achieve this, the rest of
us are just going to have to make the best of sex and death until we develop a
technological fix for death, but unless we develop starships at the same time we would do
well to keep any such fixes unavailable for use.
There exists a long and well documented history of Xtian and other cults which begin with
anti-thanatoerotic themes (denials of sex and death), and then progress to sexual
extremism. Finally they evoke death by deliberately inviting persecution from the
temporal or spiritual authorities (this happened countless times through-out the Middle
Ages), or they end up in a mass suicide scenario (more common nowadays as the authorities
are less inclined to fulfill a cult's deathwish). If the Sheffield scene had not been
broken up by the powers that be, it may have eventually progressed to a death rite.
The script for all this was written two thousand years ago. Jesus or somebody whom
"saint" Peter chose to call Jesus set up a small charismatic cult and managed
to get himself martyred. In fact lots of guys were doing this at the time. The late Roman
Empire suffered from a worse plague of mystics, charismatics, prophets, and soothsayers,
than does the decaying US empire in California at the time of writing. Jesus was either
one of many or perhaps a composite character assembled from a number of stories. Paul
never claimed to have met him, although he created a religion in his name. The Romans
were pretty pissed off at the threats to the state religion and social organization from
legions of mystics and visionaries, and so martyrdom became in many mystics' view the
badge of self-righteousness, and remains so to this day.
Undoubtedly sexual licence was as pronounced a feature of cult philosophy then as now.
The psychological mechanism underlying the metaphysics remains simple to identify: if you
start with the theory that avoiding sex prevents spiritual death, then once you have
managed to avoid ordinary sex you can proceed to enjoy 'spiritual sex' (which differs
little from ordinary sex, ho ho ho)). After that, physical death begins to take on a
bizarrely unreal character: on one hand it becomes meaningless because you cannot die
spiritually, and on the other it becomes enticing as it alone can expiate the massive
guilt arising from 'spiritual sex', with a massive dose of self-righteous justification.
We shall never know now whether the initial cult of cults on which Pauline Xtianity were
based had a orgiastic component. What may have happened between Jesus and Mary Magdalene
or between Jesus and his male followers remains a matter of pure speculation. However, an
examination of the human psychology of mysticism and cults strongly suggests that only
those in sexual turmoil actively seek martyrdom. Such people have invariably taken the
theory of no sex=no death to its antithetical extreme and paid the price of the nonsense
enshrined in the original equation.
Such nonsense remains the core product of Xtianity and so many people have seen through
it that it no longer sells well. Only contraintuitive (i.e. stupid) ideas can command
passionate belief. I choose the belief that sexual activity gives me magical power, and
in a modest way I also sell this in my books and lectures. I cannot prove it obectively,
but I enjoy it, and I feel it empowers me. It causes me little harm if applied
intelligently, and if I become impotent before I die, I'll probably think of something
else rather than suicide.
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"I have a hard time with the idea of religion as a sort of moral Viagra."
--Daniel Dennet
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