Illuminatiprimus—What's with that weird link in your signature?

Great Debates
101

WhyNot, after reading this whole thread, I have to quibble with what you are saying here. Yes, most religions do ask for money one way or another…as you point out, infrastructure and services have to be paid for. But the difference I’m seeing here is that this religion is charging for information about the religion, which is not something I think is typical of mainstream religions. Since I’m most familiar with Catholicism, I’ll use that as my example.

Here is the entire Catholic version of the Bible, free on the US Council of Catholic Bishops’ website.

And here is the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church, free on the Vatican website.

Note that these are offical websites of the Roman Catholic Church, not copyright-infringed versions, as Illuminatiprimus says the online-available PDF of the Vampire Bible is. In addition to the Bible and the Catechism, there are a zillion Papal letters and encyclicals, the General Instruction of the Mass, and just about any other document you would need to understand exactly what the RCC teaches, free online for anyone who wants to read it. Furthermore, you can call up your local priest, tell him you want to know more, and he will gladly meet with you free of charge to talk to you about it. Also, the RCC does not charge it’s members to belong to a Parish, attend Mass, or receive any sacraments.

The thing that throws up the biggest red flag for me is that the religion forbids members from discussing it with non-members. Certainly, the RCC has no rules forbidding any member to freely discuss their knowlege or experiences with the RCC with non-members, or regulating this type of conversation in any way. Quite frankly, this seems pretty clearly to be simply a profit-making venture. They are attempting to ensure that the ONLY path to information is through the purchase of the book, when they could easily and extremely cheaply make the information available for free, or at least let members explain it to non-members.

The RCC certainly does sell books and necklaces (and rosaries and statues and a whole mess of other stuff) for fundraising purposes. But they are committed to ensuring that the information is available. Even before the Internet, organizations like the Knights of Columbus would print catechisms and missals and other pamphlets and give them away for free. I have received many inexpensive rosaries from various organizations. These things are not withheld from you if you can’t afford payment, and that is the key difference.

102

This is an area of great debate within the neopagan communities in general, although I don’t know about this organization in particular. There does seem to be a widespread distaste against selling spiritual knowledge. Many (most?) people have the idea that those of us who spend our time discovering great truths about the universe or ways of helping people consolidate their feces should gladly spend all our time and resources helping other people for nothing but the fulfillment of our higher selves. I suppose it comes from the Catholic push for apparent poverty among their priests and monks - which is actually A) bullshit, in all but the lowest levels of the priesthood and B) only enacted after the church as a whole was fairly wealthy. Part of it also seems to me to come from this view of priests as parents and seekers as children, and what parent would charge a child for his raining? We want our priests and churches to be above such worldly concerns as money and debt collection, their heads in the clouds and their bellies rumbling, I guess.

One response to this, beyond just the “even priests and writers of new religious texts have to eat!” is that sometimes knowledge is not secret because it’s important. It becomes important *because *it’s secret. By making it secret, you make it so that the person has to make an active choice to obtain it. People listen more attentively, follow instructions better, and stick with a plan longer if they feel it’s valuable; if they feel like they’ve invested something in it. That something, in my experience, is either time or money. Can’t afford to pay for the workshop? Come scrub the temple floors for a month instead. But if you don’t have to give something to get it, it gets treated like garbage, no matter how wise it is.

I saw the same thing happen when I ran a low cost alternative medicine clinic. When we made it free, we had terrible patient compliance. People would come ask for help and we’d suggest stuff and they would take the free stuff and never come back, or if they did come back, they’d not have followed the recommendations. Once we started charging $20 for a visit ($10 for hardship cases), and $10 for the herbs, patient compliance and follow-up scheduling *increased *over 400%. Same clinicians, same advice, same products - but paying for it made people value it and follow directions.

True, except that for many new religions, information is all we have at the moment! :smiley: We’re also a bit unique in that we don’t proselytize, we often don’t even have physical churches, and for many of us, there’s a belief that we don’t NEED holy texts or priests or teachers - we can be our own church, priest and congregate all rolled into one, but of course we do want to share what’s worked for us, so we write books and sell them on Amazon or on our own websites instead of preaching to a flock. ('Cause if you think it’s hard to get someone to part with $20 for a book, try getting them to split the cost of renting a church room once a week!)

If Ed Zotti sells a book about his experiences and advice rehabbing a house, why shouldn’t someone else sell a book about their experience and advice rehabbing a life?

I admit, I’m having trouble reading that website as a layperson would. While I’m not a Vampire, I’m so familiar with the style and jargon of Western Esotericism and New Religious Movements that it’s quite transparent to me. To me, it reads like it’s full of information, but I guess it reads like obfuscation if you’re not familiar with it.

103

Ed Zotti is also participating in a forum here on the subject of rehabbing a house, and happily giving out free advice. See, I don’t have a problem with someone selling a book (I bought a copy of the Catholic Catechism at a regular bookstore, and I never stopped to question that it was a scam or I was getting ripped off). My problem is that with mainstream churches, they are happy to give you the information, in hopes that you will find it valuable enough to join the church and then support them. That is, they tell you what you need to know in order to determine if the philosophy is worth supporting with your time and your dollars. There is an inherent difference between that and having to pay to find out if the philosophy is worth your time and your dollars. If I heard of any mainstream religion operating that way, I would be equally :dubious:.

104

Whynot, suppose you wrote a book about your particular flavor of Neopaganism, and I asked you what the main bullet points are. Would you:
A) Give me a short synopsis of your basic idea along with the information that you feel corroborates your thesis?
or
B) Tell me to buy the book.

It’s B that’s the sticking point here. It seems like these vampire people are trying to give their thingamabob an aura of mystery and secrecy. Why would someone do that? The first thing that comes to my mind is because they have nothing else to offer. Since Illuminatiprimus does not seem to be interested in explaining what else this group is about, then I see no reason to change my low opinion of it. Not that I’m really interested in the philosophy of a group that idolized the mythical vampire, anyway.

(Although, I do admit to enjoying the contradiction between Test Everything and Attracting the Undead in Magical Ritual.)

105

I’m not sure. Probably synopsis and a bit of the corroboration, but I’d always be worried I was giving away too much, as that seems to be my particular boundary issue. OTOH, you want to give enough of a sample that people are intrigued and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. I think, as you seem to, that these people erred on the side of too little information to raise interest. Whether it’s because they have too little information to share or because they’re not good at marketing, I just don’t know.

Me neither, to be honest, except that it provides the opportunity to have this conversation - which I normally wouldn’t be able to engage in on the Dope. I’m interested in NRMs as a whole, not this one in particular. I’ve had this conversation with plenty of people in NRMs, it’s nice to try it out with people outside the group. :wink:

106

I think the vampires are real and this is reverse-psychology to fool all of you sheep in to thinking they are not real by promoting themselves as real in such a manner that no same person could believe it. And allowing you to fund it if you so choose.

It is the Théâtre des Vampires of the cyberworld, the Island of Misfit Toys in the center of Rockefeller Plaza, and The Purloined Letter is “U”.

Muahahaha.

107

What is an NRM? (I’m particularly stupid today.)

108

I had to look it up myself- New Religious Movements, I presume.

109

Heh whatever it is, vampirism is evil. Sucking other people’s life energy without any reciprocation is evil, regardless of how it’s done.

110

What information is clear to you, and does it differ from the summation that I posted above?

111

Well there is the nature of how some paths are inherently about action. They are about building on certain fundamental principles and understanding through experience. People who think that every truth in the world can be simply explained get very angry by this.

That’s why you have people ridicule things like Qi Gong of Feng Shui. It’s not so much about explaining the mechanism, as it is about living your life a certain way.

That’s why, “Those who know don’t say, and those who say, don’t know.”

I am fundamentally opposed to anything glorifying vampires because vampirism is demonic ultimately. It is about feeding off of your fellow humans in order to increase your own power at the expensive of theirs. I don’t approve of anything that tries to redact the meaning of the word, ‘vampire’, to be something more happier or fluffier as though they are talking about Rosicrucianism or Sufism. The word vampire has a stable meaning. If you aren’t intending on exacting an unequal exchange of energy from your fellow man, then why use the term vampire at all?

112

This doesn’t really mesh with my ideas. I think a person is entitled to some form of payment for sharing ideas and concepts they’ve come up with - we do so for intellectual works already, so spiritual works are similar enough to me that I have no problem with someone gaining wealth from such an endeavour.

My problem begins when what’s being sold is suggested to be a great boon for all humanity; something that would improve all our lives. Then, to me, asking for payment seems considerably tacky. To try and analogise, a common or garden spiritual insight is like an patented idea that improves efficiency of an engine, let’s say. I have no problem with the creator of that engine reaping the benefits of his idea, nor do I have a problem with the creator of that insight selling books describing it. But if the invention was, say, an effective treatment for cancer, or a new strain of wheat that could help Third World countires, or any kind of great breakthrough that would significantly aid the world, while the inventor is still very much entitled to ownership and payment for that idea, I would think quite bad of him for asking for it in the face of the good it could do if he gave it for free. I’m not sure that the line is all that easy to draw, but I think it’s one I have to stick by.

Sure, it’s the value effect. If it costs the person something, in whatever form that cost takes, they’ll tend to assume it’s worth it. And the opposite is true too; a shop selling brand new top-of-the-line TVs for 25 quid would likely get more suspicious looks than sales. I worry that however this is, in the end, just an illusion; something valuable need not require a cost equal to that value. It may be that setting it up this way only uses that mental “trick” to get the interested person to treat it more valuably; it may make them more interested, but it’s a false interest, one that may bypass our decision-making processes. If one shop sells a great TV for 100 pounds and another for 200, passers-by will consider the second TV more valuable - without actually knowing anything other than the cost. It may be the second TV is more valuable, but those passers-by are still coming to the right conclusion with the wrong ideas.

113

Does this Temple of the Vampire have any connection to, or anything in common with, the Dragon Court? This cite speaks of “vampiric rituals.” (Interview with “Prince” Nicholas de Vere von Drakenberg.) This seems to be different from other occult organizations in that membership is purportedly limited to persons of certain special bloodlines.

114

Yep. Sorry, I used it a couple of times in the text, and then got tired of typing it out. I should have written New Religious Movement (NRM) before I skipped to just the abbreviation.

I think your summation is probably spot on, with the caveat that I haven’t read The Vampire Bible so I can’t be certain. Nothing I see on the website contradicts what you’ve deduced, and there is much to support your conclusions.

115

The “blowjob method” being the least evil, I would think.

116

“Reciprocation”, in this case, being key. :wink:

117

I’ve been away and have just read this thread.

I’d like to say that I started a similar one months ago, but it had no success.http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=472962

I’m glad this has gained some insight into the Vampire Bible.

I’m still on the fence about whether this is worth $20, has anyone read it? Can you précis what it says? Is the “official” version longer or is 20 pages the entire length?

118

I’m intrigued by the fact that you seem to believe it is possible, just not ethical.

Without getting in to discussion of sanguinarian vampires, I wonder if you have read much about psychic vampirism? Many psivampires believe that you can feed off lifeforce (or chi/ka/etc.) from the environment, plants/trees/even solar energy, ambient energy in high-energy crowds (concerts, clubs, etc.), energy released during sexual activity, plus people who have a surplus of energy.

In the last scenario, it is even possible to view it as a symbiotic relationship whereby you complement and improve the other party by helping them drain off the excessive energy they are suffering under. Ambient (human and envornmental) and sexual energy is being released anyway, and is free for the taking without hurting anyone. Some psivampires even counsel specifically against feeding on negative energy, such as produced by fear, or feeding too often or deeply on one person but rather to seek crowds so the dispersed, shallow feeding hurts noone.

The last point I’ll mention as devil’s advocate is self-survival. If someone [believed they] were a true psivampire, would you begrudge them getting the sustenance they need to live? Especially if they were conscientious about their energy supply by using the above example sources? Some even believe they are unwilling empaths forced to feel/feed from the emotions of those around them, and so simply seek high-energy, positive people/crowds to absorb from.

Even if you don’t believe in any of it, and are judging them based purely on [your] morality of [your perception of] what they believe, remember to be careful of broad brushes.

Just some food for thought. :cool:

119

Probably everybody who read it when I posted it in post 45, in this thread, in a link that’s still active. :wink:

Yes.

The PDF I posted is the Vampire Bible.

Oh, and:

It’s not.

Many people also believe that the WTC fell in a controlled demolition that Israel masterminded. :smiley:

I’d again posit that the system, ToV or “psivampire”, or whatever, is simply western mysticism with angels and demons replaced by vampires and absorbing lifeforce, or what have you. Of course a “psivampire” will feel invigorated by being at a party and feeling like they’re loving it and basking in the warmth, for instance.

Crowley defined Magick as “the science of inducing a change in reality in conformity with the Will”. It doesn’t mean that the symbols we use to direct the change have to, also, represent real things, only that they have to be concepts which can motivate and direct emotional/mental energy.

120

Thanks, that’s what happens when you skim read a weeks worth of threads.

My bad.

Will read more closely in future.