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From : Ammond Shadowcraft 25-Nov-90 19:03:00
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Date: Wed Nov 14, 1990 7:47 am MST
From: Dr. Michael A. Aquino / MCI ID: 278-4041
TO: * Michael Morgan / MCI ID: 421-3086
RESPONSE TO TIM MARONEY'S "THE NAZI TRAPEZOID"
by-
Michael A. Aquino, Ph.D.
High Priest
Temple of Set
Post Office Box 470307
San Francisco, CA 94147
MCI-Mail: 278-4041
A correspondent has recently provided me with a copy of a BBS essay
by Tim Maroney entitled "The Nazi Trapezoid" - essentially an
accusation that the Temple of Set's Order of the Trapezoid and myself
are Nazi-sympathetic. [Maroney did not show me the courtesy of
providing me with a copy directly.]
Maroney first appeared as a conversationalist on the Weirdbase BBS,
via which I occasionally offered some comments about magical &
philosophical subjects. In Maroney's case it soon became apparent,
however, that he was simply interested in picking a fight about Nazism
- evidently a personal fetish of his.
After being patient with Maroney's abuse and insults for longer than
I felt courtesy required, I finally declined to gratify his emotional
need for confrontation any further and simply ignored his electronic
vitriol. Thus frustrated, he appears to have channeled his ardent
Naziphobia into this BBS tract of his, to which at least a brief
response is in order:
Within the Temple of Set are several specialized Orders (somewhat
analogous to the departments of a university). One of these is the
Order of the Trapezoid.
In actuality this particular Order is concerned with a great many
areas of research, of which north European [including Nazi German]
occultism is only one. Others include time/space sciences, proxemics,
art & architecture (particularly Expressionism, Art
Nouveau/Deco/Moderne), electronics (Tesla et al.), _film noir_,
Lovecraftian literature, music & the electromagnetic spectrum, mental
sciences, etc.
To the extent the Order is interested in Nazi Germany, it is
essentially with regard to the very extensive research into occultism
conducted by the Ahnenerbe and other groups & individuals during that
period. To study and evaluate such material is not to endorse Nazi
Germany generally, any more than a political scientist who studies Nazi
political culture is thereby an apologist for it. In his selective and
out-of-context quoting from the Order's informational paper, Maroney
somehow neglects to mention the following very central passage:
"The Order of the Trapezoid extracts the positive, the
constructive, the exalted, and the Romantic from the Germanic magical
tradition - and just as carefully avoids and rejects those excesses,
distortions, and cruelties which have made this tradition an object
of the most extraordinary fear, condemnation, and suppression in the
postwar period. The Germanic tradition is also part of the legacy of
the Prince of Darkness, hence is appropriate to an Order within the
Temple of Set, which embraces all manifestations of the Powers of
Darkness in the world.
"Nevertheless the care required in any investigation into this
tradition cannot be overemphasized. Magical and research ability are
not enough; ethical sensitivity and social discretion are just as
important. The prospects for new and wondrous perspectives on the
Black Art are exhilarating, but success will come only if the Order
conducts its affairs with the same dedication and nobility that have
made the Temple of Set a legend in its time."
Maroney's accusation that I refuse to make my opinions on Nazi
Germany explicit is absurd. I have always deplored its premises,
policies, and activities which resulted in savagery and misery to a
great many people. Equally emphatically I have deplored premises,
policies, and activities by other countries which resulted in savagery
and misery at the same time in history [and in other eras as well].
This, apparently, is not enough for Maroney, who froths with fury at
the notion that there could be anything at all about the Third Reich
not deserving of instant and unqualified condemnation - or at the
heresy that its antagonists were not all lily-white angels of racial
equality, religious tolerance, and all-round political purity.
As Maroney spends a great deal of time ranting about the supposed
fascist-sympathy of the Temple of Set's reading list, I suppose a word
or two about that is called for.
That reading list consists of well over a hundred books in 24
specialized categories of magical and philosophical research. Some of
these are well-known books accepted without a blink in current secular
society. Others are books that cause or have caused a good deal of
controversy because of their statement of facts or expression of
opinions distasteful to current secular society.
The Temple of Set agrees with Plato that the search for truth should
not be "democratized": Whether an idea is palatable or not, popular or
not, should not justify its promotion or suppression. All data must be
looked at carefully and dispassionately if a true picture of the topic
in question is to emerge. This is, at least theoretically, the aim of
reputable modern universities - but even they, in light of popular
sentiment, must not dare to question certain sacred cows.
Times change. When my mother attended Stanford University in the
1920s, women students could not be too intellectual or accomplished
without being ostracized. It was taken for granted that women were
genetically inferior to men, just as in this same country it was taken
for granted that Blacks, Native Americans, and Orientals were
genetically inferior to Caucasians. American Jews were routinely
discriminated against in all sectors of society.
Maroney evidently imagines that racism and anti-semitism appeared by
magic in Nazi Germany exclusively in the early 20th century. What the
Temple of Set understands, and what a _comprehensive_ tour of its
reading list demonstrates, is that the impulses behind prejudice of any
sort - religious, racial, sexual, etc. - are present in _all_ cultures.
Show me a person - perhaps Maroney would care to volunteer? - who
believes himself beyond all bias, and I'll show you a victim of tragic
- and dangerous - self-deceit.
Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the Order
of the Trapezoid is so dangerously fascist, where are the stormtroopers
it has spawned? The riots? The revolutions? But wait: If we are to
believe Maroney, it is the very _absence_ of conspicuous neo-Nazism in
the Order's actual accomplishments that makes it all the more
frightful. As for Michael Aquino, Maroney's baleful portrait reminds me
charmingly of an H.P. Lovecraft passage in his _Strange Case of Charles
Dexter Ward_:
"By 1760 Joseph Curwen was virtually an outcast, suspected of
vague horrors and demonic alliances which seemed all the more
sinister because they could not be named, understood, or even proved
to exist."
Sorry about that. But I am not about to cease my quest for the Grail
of Truth simply to appease the private neuroses of the Maroneys of the
World. Indeed I might respond with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, who
during the Civil War was also vilified for being insufficiently
supportive of various popular passions of that troubled time:
"If I were to try to read, much less answer all the attacks made
on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do
the very best I know how - the very best I can, and I mean to keep
doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is
said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out
wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."