The similarities between Qaballah and modern Wicca are probably due to Gerald Gardner having been heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley, who in turn had numerous elements of Qaballistic mysticism incorporated into the Ritual Magick that was practiced by The Golden Dawn.

Religion was the first strong political structure. A tribal chief could just cave your skull in, but the shaman could make your life a living hell and keep you out of the afterlife.

Religion strengthened the viability of groups by bonding them together. It's hard to give up the inertia of believing in something that isn't necessary anymore.

To quote Ghandi, "Someone who doesn't believe that religion and politics aren't related doesn't understand either."

I like this point. The mere thought of someone 'powerful' enough to able to exert control over you even after you've died can make for a good nightmare.

I could be wrong but wasn't he some kind of satanist with tenuous links to scientology? I seem to remember that name coming up in scientology research I did a while back.

Imagine trying to motivate people to not eat their cow because they'll need the dung and the milk down the road, as opposed to saying that you can't kill the cow god because you'll miss out on heaven...

It's the Jewish version. Sort of. It's actually not intended for the masses. You're only supposed to study Kaballah after you've attained a particular level of maturity and have deeply studied both the Torah and the Talmud.

It's the end-all and be-all of Jewish Philosophical thought.

Apparently, if you don't have the appropriate background, the intricacies of studying Kaballah are lost to you ... without the context, it's similar to attempting to read War and Peace in Swahili, a language which you know not one word of, and which doesn't have the necessarily expressive vocabulary to tell the story anyway.

No...

http://www.cix.co.uk/~mandrake/crowley.htm

He was a spectacular oddball, though, and delighted in shocking polite Victorian society at every opportunity. Crowley was no Satanist, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have called upon Satan if it suited his needs. I would call him sort of a "religious anarchist", but his basic tenets had far more in common with ancient, earth-based practices than anything else.

http://www.factnet.org/discus/messag...tml?1095841346
http://www.mt.net/~watcher/crowleyhubbard.html

It appears there was a link - hubbard ripped him off.

Organized religion makes me crazy. I was cleaning the bathroom over the Thanksgiving weekend and this fascinating interview came on the radio. Its a show called "Speaking of Faith" that a friend of mine works on, so I'd been meaning to catch it and gave it a listen. Interviewed was Karen Armstrong who calls herself a "freelance monotheist" . She was a nun, hit a crisis and turned against religion then found a way to make some sense of things. She found her spirituality in the study of poetry and literature- which is really what religious books are. She was particularly moved to spiritual understanding by TS Elliot.
She became very interested in comparative studies while in Jerusalem- here's the link if anyone is interested. Made me want to read some of her books.
speakingoffaith.publicradio.org

I have no doubt that the charlatan Hubbard ripped off the charlatan Crowley.

Crowley was a populizer of the occult, and is mainly notable because of that. However, he certainly does get considerable credit for beginning the trend of opening the public's eyes to alternative forms of ritual, energy, religion and ritual.

Calling Crowley a Satanist simply does not take in all that the man did and was. Like I said, I've no doubt he would invoke Satan if he felt like it, but that scarcely made him a Satanist. As for all that "incarnation of the Beast", etc, again, pure shock value.

I never said he wasn't an enormous flake. He was. But, he did shake loose some pretty deep foundations, and the ever-growing Pagan movements in the world probably wouldn't have gotten started without him.

Interesting, i've never really known much about pagan stuff in general so it's interesting to get your perspective, thankyou. I've only come acros crowley because I keep an eye on scientology stuff in general, I didn't have any background.

Yeah, but does this Crowley guy know Zuul?

I'm sure he probably thought himself to be both the Gatekeeper *and* the Keymaster!

That DNA Heritage testing is getting popular amongst two groups ... one is people trying to prove Native American Ancestry to get in on some of the casino money ...

The other is White Supremacists, who want proof of pedigree.

Why would someone want proof that they were a pure-bred moron?