THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

[from http://www.radio-free-setian.com/_frontlines/scratch.html ]

Subject: Expelled Temple of Set Priest Tells All
The Return of Mr. Scratch
   (This is a slightly edited version of a message sent to alt.satanism on Dec
   23, 2000.)
   
   To my fellow Setians, via alt.satanism:
   
   Note: My apologies to George Orwell's _1984_ as inspiration for this
   post...and if some of you readers don't get some of the references, go get
   this book immediately.
   Scene: Satanists of Oceania sit before their telescreens, casually watching
   the Two Minutes Hate that is alt.satanism. Suddenly the telescreen blares a
   trumpet-like sound, a glaring black-and-white still image of Dr. Michael
   Aquino appears, and a voice announces, "Attention, attention all INGSOC
   partymembers, this is an urgent announcement from the Temple of Set
   Ministry of Truth. There is to be a confession by doubleplusungood
   thoughtcriminal Mr. Scratch prior to his being condemned as an Unperson by
   the Ministry of Love."
   
   ((*A static-filled image appears on the screen; the face of Mr. Scratch,
   long-absent ToS agent of MiniTrue on alt.satanism. He is under a harsh
   glare that shows his face in sharp contrast of light and shadow.*))
   
   I am Mr. Scratch, former partyleader of the Temple of Set. I am accused of
   thoughtcrime, sabotage, and being an Agent of Goldsteinism. I make this
   final effort to inform you of the inner workings of the Party.
   
   The Temple of Set is in the midst of a purge.
   
   Those of you who are in the Temple of Set, look around. Look at the people
   we have lost this past year. We have seen a number of people -- bright and
   dedicated people -- evicted from the Temple for various "security"
   concerns. Look at the tightening of the Temple's grip on its membership,
   and examine if you ever find yourself unable to talk about certain things,
   or express support for certain people, for fear that you too will find
   yourself in my shoes -- labeled an enemy and traitor to the Temple.
   Remember: FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
   
   Over this past year, under the influence of the Schrecks, and the
   ever-guiding hand of the Aquinos, the Temple has geared up at an increasing
   rate to fend off its "enemies," be they the Church of Satan, SRA
   proponents, rogue anti-Aquino mavericks like Lupo or Filan, political
   jockeys like Jesse Helms, or most especially people like myself -- former
   members who found themselves on the wrong side of the politics. Most
   telling of all are the increasing calls to purify the ranks of the Temple
   itself -- that the insidiousness of the "enemy" has even reached into the
   heart of the membership, and that these people should be rooted out,
   exposed, and eliminated. Don't deny it -- it's happening all around you,
   every time you find a group of people who are suddenly placed on the "no
   longer affiliated" list, or are kicked out and denounced privately or
   online. Every time you see an active Priest who worked strenuously to
   further the aims of the ToS suddenly give his adieu, or simply vanish
   without a word, don't think for an instant that he simply got up one day
   and said, "Y'know, I'm tired of this whole Temple shtick...I'm going to
   take up water skiing."
   
   In his book _1984_, George Orwell touches on the state of Oceania's
   tyrannical government, INGSOC (of "Big Brother" fame), and its continual,
   alternating wars with the nations Eastasia and Eurasia. It is a war that
   can never be won, and the focus on the enemy switches from one to the next
   seamlessly, without the citizens taking notice. In spite of all the fury,
   the boundaries of the battlefields never change. Why go on fighting?
   Because the real war isn't against either Eastasia or Eurasia. The real war
   is against the very citizens of Oceania.
   
   Please note the following passage from Orwell:
   
   "War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but
   accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would
   be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples
   and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by
   producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this
   would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a
   hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the
   masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at
   work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is
   expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow
   limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant
   fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic
   triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality
   appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is
   actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not
   matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a
   state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the
   Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an
   atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one
   goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that
   war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an
   administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to
   know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be
   aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is
   being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones; but such
   knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of /doublethink/.
   Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical
   belief that the war /is/ real, and that it is bound to end victoriously,
   with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world." -Orwell, 1984,
   p.158.
   
   Sound familiar?
   
   Who are the Temple's enemies, that should warrant this intense bunker
   mentality within an organization that once seemed (to me, anyway) to be all
   about freedom? The Church of Satan is occupied with its own organizational
   problems. Curio has been exposed; her entire system of SRA belief is
   debunked, and generally held as a laughingstock. The extreme right-wing
   political element of our country has been defanged by its own Republican
   party in the new popularity of "moderate" politics (in spite of what you've
   heard from the Democrats). Even the maverick critics don't seem to be
   putting their all into deflating the Temple's hubris. As far as genuine
   outside threats go, the Temple is in the most peaceful, unthreatened state
   is has been in since the 1970's. Yet the membership is being drilled for
   war in an unprecedented fashion. Read the above Orwell quote again. You
   have always been at war with the CoS, just as Oceania has always been at
   war with Eurasia and Eastasia. But the real war is against you, the
   membership. It is a war for control of your minds and loyalties. Remember:
   WAR IS PEACE.
   
   Doublethink, the necessary component of this war, is being exercised by ToS
   partymembers every day. You think one thing, but know you must express
   another in order to appear "loyal." Eventually, as you come to repeat the
   lines the Temple expects of you, you start to internalize them. It is
   simple resolution of cognitive dissonance -- the more you repeat the lines
   expected of you, the more you believe them. You are, after all, not a liar,
   and so when you say it, you come to believe it must be true. Soon you will
   be little more than a spout of Temple-directed opinions, and when the
   process is complete, you are indoctrinated. You are ready for the
   Priesthood. Trust me, I've been there. I know.
   
   I'm reminded of a brilliantly conceived Burger King marketing campaign from
   a few years back: buy one burger, get one free. The catch was, when
   customers placed their orders, in order to get the free burger, they had to
   tell the cashier "I'll take the second Whopper, too -- *It just tastes
   better*." Say this a few times, and pretty soon you've internalized it, and
   it seems like BK burgers really DO taste better.
   
   And when the time comes when someone has not been a good
   doublethinker...they are unceremoniously kicked out. The proper response of
   the conditioned membership when they look upon such an act of their
   organization they might secretly feel to be unfair, is to doublethink
   again..."Oh, they must really have good reasons to kick him out." They are
   only a neuron-firing away from "That person MUST be an enemy of the
   Temple!"
   
   Don't for instant think that this Temple, formed by an expert in
   propaganda, is not using the machinery of such techniques every moment of
   every day. I quote that very founder, in the work I still consider the most
   brilliant magical textbook the world has ever produced, _Black Magic (in
   Theory and Practice)_:
   
   "Lesser Black Magic...is also a useful technique in mass situations. The
   governing principle remains the same: to impel behavior at the subconscious
   level, to control people without their realizing how or why they are being
   controlled. LBM applied to the mass falls under the twin headings of
   politics and propaganda...The only difference between politics and stage
   magic is one of scale. There are certain things you are intended to see,
   say, and do; and the politician's actions are planned and carried out
   accordingly. Rarely will the apparent rationale be the real one.
   
   "Propaganda is the use of political techniques for a variety of
   behavior-control objectives besides those normally associated with
   'politics'...Modern society is engulfed by power-seeking disguised as
   altruistic politics, and by propaganda disguised as information. There is
   no exception, just as there is no free lunch. This is so important that I
   will repeat it: *There is no exception, just as there is no free lunch.*
   The point to be taken is not that you should become paranoid and
   antisocial. The point is rather that you should accustom yourself to
   looking for actual motives and purposes behind the apparent ones."
   
   ...and the Temple of Set is no exception, just as there is no free lunch.
   
   As Dr. Aquino stated in this quoted passage, propaganda and politics, like
   all LBM, consist of little more than stage magic. Stage magic, when you
   aren't aware how it works, is an impressive thing to behold. In the right
   circumstances, it can even be quite frightening. But once you know how the
   trick works, then anyone seriously trying to foist it off on you begins to
   look like a two-bit flim-flam man.
   
   Once the membership wakes up to the fact that so many of their leaders are
   intellectual shysters and run-of-the-mill sleight-of-hand artists operating
   an extended game of psychological three-card monty, then a large portion of
   them might stir themselves to reject the company and leadership of such
   grifters.
   
   In spite of their concentrated efforts to bamboozle their membership, don't
   fall into the trap of thinking that the Temple hierarchy is undivided in
   its efforts. The purge is not strictly aimed at eliminating dissent merely
   as an exercise in power. The upper levels of the ToS are a page straight
   out of the history of the Court of Versailles -- with subtle attacks made
   on rivals, accusations centering on manufactured "violations" of protocol,
   attempts to undermine one another's spheres of influence, and to cast one
   another into positions of private disgrace. Your leadership is currently
   locked in a struggle for power, with the Schrecks and the Aquinos vying to
   remove High Priest Don Webb from his position. Who knows why Webb must be
   replaced...perhaps it is because he has stretched out tenuous diplomatic
   feelers to the officials of the Church of Satan, in order to end the
   idiotic conflict that has existed between these two organizations.
   Certainly that would inspire the ire of both attacking parties. Information
   I consider reliable has it that Nikolas Schreck has expressed that he would
   not be opposed to any coup placing him in the position of High Priest.
   Robert Menschel, who has stubbornly fought any such nonsense under his
   watch, may soon find his days as Chairman of the Council of Nine numbered,
   if he isn't removed from the Temple entirely by then.
   
   These statements I have presented will of course likely be met with a great
   clamoring sham of protests from all involved parties, because the most
   important thing of all is that they present a unified front before the
   source of their power, the Setian body politic. In spite of all the
   pettiness and backstabbing, the mystical unity and mystique of the
   hierarchy must be held in place, or all power over their willing
   mind-slaves will be lost. If an attempted coup should fail, the reigning
   leadership must maintain the image that their power and position is
   unshakable. And if such a coup should succeed, the transition must move as
   seamlessly as possible, with a Jerry Springer audience of loyal
   doublethinkers there to cheer on the conquering hero. Remember: IGNORANCE
   IS STRENGTH.
   
   As I've said before, the Schrecks have engineered a loyalist bunker
   mentality within the Temple, comparable to those we've seen in the most
   destructive mind-control cults. It seems that some of the warnings issued
   by former Magister Ronald L. Barrett (before he too was driven from our
   ranks and made an enemy: what an extraordinary man we in the Temple lost
   when he was forced from us, and we should all mourn that loss) were
   correct; that Nikolas Schreck could not give up his fascist leanings and
   techniques; only this time, instead of using the uniforms and the
   monumental trappings of past fascists he used his youth, he merely wears
   the blue medallion, and directs his attacks on those who will not swear the
   blood oath. He will eliminate from the Temple all free thought wherever
   possible, and stride to his position at the head of a formation of loyal
   hacks and yes-men. If I recall correctly, in his younger days he stated
   that the species needed a purging fire to cleanse it. Now, I suppose, he
   will have to settle for purging the membership of the Temple of Set. He
   will eliminate the Temple's brightest and best, and replace them with
   loyalist lapdogs and lackeys. Even now, it is no secret that he is seeking
   to elevate Sasha Lohmeier to the Priesthood -- this is a woman of mediocre
   intelligence at best, but whose oral suction-lock on the rectum of any
   passing blue-medallion-bedecked Setian bigwig would make one think that the
   vacuum of interstellar space is on the other side of her gums!
   
   Should it ever come to pass that the Schrecks do gain the power and
   position they desire, it will be a reign of ineptitude. Nikki and Zeena
   couldn't manage an empty parking lot. If my sources are correct, their
   Hellhouse of Hollywood retail store collapsed from financial incompetence,
   and they may have fled to Germany in the middle of the night to escape
   creditors. If true, they lie there in Europe, destitute, but imagining
   themselves clothed in the wealth of rulership.
   
   This has been the transmission of Mr. Scratch, former partymember of the
   Temple of Set. There will be a great outcry from those within the hierarchy
   who have hitherto secretly betrayed you, and have twisted an organization
   first designed to honor the Prince of Darkness, to suit their own personal
   gain. I am condemned to be an Unperson: my images will be burned; all
   reference to me will become anathema. The very whisper of my name in any
   context but in scorn or curse will be swiftly punished. I will be worse
   than forgotten within the Temple -- I will be reviled for the truth that I
   am telling you here. It is a sentence that I embrace -- I am tired of lies.
   I'm tired of telling lies on behalf of the Temple, and I'm tired of being
   subjected to them without the power to fight back.
   
   ((*Mr. Scratch leans in close to the camera, and smiles his trademark grin
   of jagged teeth*))
   
   And those of you who have perpetrated those lies -- the Schrecks, the
   Aquinos, the Webbs, and whomever else seeks to pervert the minds of the
   Initiates who trusted you: You will not emerge unscathed.
   
   Xeper.
   
   Mr. Scratch
   Priest of Set
   
   ((*end transmission*))
   
EOF