FOLLOWING my declaration of independence and credo I have received much support and encouragement, both officially and unofficially, both high and low, from many different corners of the community. However, as is the nature of all things of this temporal existence, there is always a back side to everything. Thus, I have also drawn some quite severe reactions and negative attention, especially from people which I have polemicised with in the past, such as Nick Farrell and Pat Zalewski. The latest round of contention has revolved around my lineages, which I have addressed lately on the Gyllene Gryningen blog. The main vehicle for this polemic has been the anonymous Watcher of the Dawn blog, who has set itself to “reveal the lies of occult leaders”. In a previous blog post addressing the latest eruption coming from Mr. Zalewski, I wrote the following:
I guess, becoming or being a “Golden Dawn leader” makes you an open target from all camps, including the spiritual family that you have once abandoned. I suppose it comes with the territory. But my suggestion to all of you Golden Dawn leaders who feel threatened by my recent actions, or have an ax to grind with me because of past dealings, is very simple: Just stay away from my path and leave me alone. I have no interest in you or your work; we have so little in common that there is no need to feel competition from my side, as we are not even reaching out to the same people with our respecive operations. My ideal candidate is not that of yours. So, let us simply ignore each other and continue with our respective visions of the Great Work. I believe that I have said enough concerning my views regarding that of the general Golden Dawn Community; I have no need to repeat myself. I especially have no ambition to name call anyone or assassinate anyone’s character. (2014-03-09)
I still stand by these words. Now for the last couple of days I have actually started a dialogue with Mr. Zalewski over at the Watcher of the Dawn blog, probably the first since almost six years ago when I had my first encounter with him on a yahoo-group. But my first encounter back then was not a fraternal one. Now six years later it seems that the time is finally ripe for a true dialoge in a more civil manner. It started with Mr. Zalewski asking me the following two days ago:
SR has accused me in the past of doing what he and his group have done and he could bring it here to the watchers site for analysis. I would be only to happy to answer any GD history questions that SR has that I have some how pulled the wool peoples eyes – just as long as they are specific and not generic questions.
My answer to him was published the very next day:
Dear Pat, I have no personal interest in “debunking” any of your lineages, or whatever. If I ever have, that belongs to my past, and I have no interest in devolving back into that kind of mentality. In leaving the HOGD/A+O and the general GD Community, I have tried to distance myself from all of the negativity associated with my former allegiance and with blogs such as the Watcher. Please respect that all I want is peace and to do the Work here with my own Order.
To this Mr. Zalewski responded promptly and in a tone that airs some kind of tentative hopefullness:
If SR wants peace then I am all for that, and he can start taking down his accusation blogs from the “old days: Unfortunately while still clinging to the Bourke lineage and the Bourkon lineage as a source he gives little back as a peace offering. I am an historian, or that is what my Master of Philosophy is in, and I will not overlook concocted GD history that is totally unproven.
To this I responded the very same day and with sincerity in my heart:
Pat, I like the idea of a sanitation of my blog. To show you my good will, I will publish a blog about it, and invite you or anyone else who has felt accused by me in the past, to point out which exact blogs you want to be removed or sanitized, or reedited. However, you cannot ask me to ignore my past and the transmissions that I have received, including oral history. If I am about to censor my blog I expect an end to the name calling. But I will take the initiative and remove the ‘Truth about Pat Zalewski…’ blog, right away.
And I kept my word and took away that original blog post which has been one of the roots for the contentions between me an Mr. Zalewski for the last six years. His anwswer came today and filled my heart with hope of a peaceful co-existance:
ok you have a deal
Now I have fulfilled my end of the bargain, removed the first post that I immediately understood qualified as a “accusation blog”. Following this first peace initiative I have now set up this blog in its stead so that anyone, and in particular Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell, may post requests here on the comments section. Anyone else who have felt targeted by me somehow may also post comments. Just specify what blog post you want to have removed, censored or re-edited. I will try to accomodate you all to the best of my ability, and according to the severity of my previous blog posts, either delete them entirely, or re-edit them to make them appear more tempered and less severe.
However, I must make this abundantly clear: I will not retract from my Traditionalist position on the mysteries and on my analysis of the General Golden Dawn Community, using the Traditionalist School as my frame work. There is and probably will always be an abyss between us as our outlook on the Tradition and such fundamental views as lineage and teachings are and will be in oppositon. Thus you cannot expect me to change my views on these matters. One such example is how S.L. MacGregor Mathers has been treated in the past. I still stand by my opinion and in opposition to the views held by both Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell. I am currently planning to remove these blog posts as well but then again to use the greater bulk of these texts to re-edit and reformat them into a new pdf-document for download over at the Gryendemorgonrodnaden.com web page. In this new form I will take away any unecessary name calling and alleviate the severity of the tone of my exposition. However, I still believe that the main message needs to be accessed by the public as a counter-balance to the views currently held by Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell on Golden Dawn history. These has to be addressed in their specifics.
However, what you can expect of me is that, exept for the re-edit of the MacGregor Mathers apology, I will not focus on this anymore in the future. All that have been said concerning this matter has been said already, both in a general and specific way. Also, if I do address these topics again, I will try to uphold the policy of not naming anyone in particular, only addressing things in a general way, especially in future blog posts. Me leaving the Golden Dawn Flame Wars and previous alliances, means that I have left my preoccupation with other Orders and their leaders, such as Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell. It doesn’t mean that I have forgotten my roots. In my opinion the community, including my former Order, has went to far astray and thus it becomes important for me to search back to the roots of the Tradition. My leaving my former Order and all of the War of the Roses was based upon an inner realisation, a spiritual necessity. My advice to both of these gentlemen is the following:
Leave your obssesion with other Orders and their leaders!
Perhaps my olive branch is the first step in the right direction which will make it easier for Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell to leave me and my new Order, the Hermetic Order of the Nascent Aurora (H∴O∴N∴A∴) alone and to its own devices, to do the Work in peace, once and for all. Like I said in the quotations above, all I want is being freed from all of the unecessary distractions, all of the previous Order politics associated with my former allegience. I know that I have a responsibility for my past actions in this respect, and this blog post is my first effort to repair and to make amends. But the door swings both ways, as they say. I expect something back in return.
For me name calling has two meanings. The first one is obvious, and that is to use denigratory, slanderous and offensive words against someones person. The other aspect is to call out someones name, i.e. target a person directly by mentioning him by his name. I believe that the best conduct for us all in the future, especially on the Internet, is not to mention each other at all by name, not even referring directly to our respective organisations. There are obvious exceptions to this, such as in writing a review of Mr. Farrell’s books I have to mention the title and the name of the author. Mr. Farrell is of course fully entitled to respond to my reviews as well, calling out my name. But standard name calling is totally uncalled for, which has been done from both camps, and thus that is why I will re-edit these reviews and present them in a new and sanitized format. I expect the same from my detractors.
My terms are the following, for me to be able to proceed with this peace process: Anyone of you may have any opinions that you want, concerning anything that I have stated or claimed. You have all the right to address and criticize my ideas. What I ask specifically from you, however, is that you from this day and henceforth (a) stop referring to me directly (as S∴R∴, Sincerus Renatus or as Tomas Stacewicz), or to my Order, the H∴O∴N∴A∴. Do not character assassinate the messenger, but please counter argument against the position or the thought system of that message, in a more general way, and if specifics are mentioned, please be a sport and do not mention me at all. This is my primary request which is a condition for me to proceed any further with this peace initiative.
Furthermore, as my secondary request and because of my willingness, and measures already taken, to sanitize my previous postings, I expect you to do likewise, viz. to (b) sanitize your own previous postings, messages and comments on the Internet, which directly mentions my name or the name of my current Order, either deleting in its entire, or to re-edit them so as to remove any slanderous name calling, or even better removing any references to me and my Order. This is all that I ask from you, the secondary request having a lower priority compared to the first, which is essential to fulfill my own obligations. Now I have taken the first necessary steps. Let’s see if you want to follow up with me in this honest peace initiative. I await your requests on the comments section
Addendum 2014-03-27
It seems that Pat Zalewski is unwilling to follow with me in the peace initiative. Today he categorically wrote on the Watcher of the Dawn blog:
I have posted comments both on both Mr. Griffin’s blog and over at Scribd, and the person calling himself “EhratiEnarzen” who put up the pdf-document, kindly asking them as the author of that text to remove it. However, it seems that “EhratiEnarzen” has removed his account from Scribd, thus I doubt that he himself will (be able to) take it down. Therefore I have sent a report to Scribd of copyright infringement abuse, which they have responded to and promptly resolved my request by removing the article. However, I truly don’t know how Mr. Griffin will respond to this, as he probably has his own interests in keeping that article up and running, but let us hope that he is honest enough and has the decency to comply with the will of a former Frater. But I cannot guarantee it either. If he doesn’t I will contemplate any necessary further actions.
That is all which is in my power to control the visibility of my article. I hope that Mr. Zalewski will recognise my efforts to make amends. But unfortunately, information on the Internet has an ability to have their own life independent of their creator. The Internet is our post-modern Demiurge and it creates a lot of pain and misery in peoples lives. Regardless if my actions up to this point will have any effect on the Demiurge or on Mr. Zalewski, or anyone else that I have hurted with my writing, I will proceed, however cautiously and tentatively, with my plan to sanitize my blog, starting with my “accusations” against Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell concering their opinions about S.L. MacGregor Mathers, make a thorough re-edition and rewriting of the bulk of texts on the Gyllene Gryningen blog concerning this topic, covering several years of writing, and present it in a new pdf-format for download while removing the original articles on this blog.
Now, contrary to Mr. Zalewski, Nick Farrell has had the audacity to set his mind in complying with my demands, which I applaud, as he today informed me that:
Furthermore, as my secondary request and because of my willingness, and measures already taken, to sanitize my previous postings, I expect you to do likewise, viz. to (b) sanitize your own previous postings, messages and comments on the Internet, which directly mentions my name or the name of my current Order, either deleting in its entire, or to re-edit them so as to remove any slanderous name calling, or even better removing any references to me and my Order. This is all that I ask from you, the secondary request having a lower priority compared to the first, which is essential to fulfill my own obligations. Now I have taken the first necessary steps. Let’s see if you want to follow up with me in this honest peace initiative. I await your requests on the comments section
Addendum 2014-03-27
It seems that Pat Zalewski is unwilling to follow with me in the peace initiative. Today he categorically wrote on the Watcher of the Dawn blog:
It appears that my agreement with Tomas is down to hair splitting as while he has taken down his hatchet job on me on his site but it it is still up on Griffins. That is no deal at all and he knew that when he made it and I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It appears that Tomas will be forever linked to Griffin or as long as the net has life. But I will give him one parting gift and that is if he does not parrot on about his supposed lineage claims then he’ll have no problem with me. He is going to have enough on his plate in being tied to Griffin (due to the net) who has now has enough a frequent flyer points for entering the twilight zone for an extended stay. So we go back to square one.Now, I do understand if Mr. Zalewski makes this assumption, that I somehow consciously ignored the fact that my article The Truth about Pat Zalewski... had another existence on David Griffin’s Golden Dawn Reserch Center (formerly owned by Robert Zink and his Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn), hoping to get away with it. And it probably won’t help if I say that by the time when we did the original agreement I had forgot (or repressed) this fact. Reading Mr. Zalewski’s latest statement this morning I immediately did a google search on the title and alas found it there, but that to my distress someone had put up Leonard Stevens’ (aka Jean de Cabalis) old pdf-edition of that article on Scribd as well, something that I wasn’t aware of until today.
I have posted comments both on both Mr. Griffin’s blog and over at Scribd, and the person calling himself “EhratiEnarzen” who put up the pdf-document, kindly asking them as the author of that text to remove it. However, it seems that “EhratiEnarzen” has removed his account from Scribd, thus I doubt that he himself will (be able to) take it down. Therefore I have sent a report to Scribd of copyright infringement abuse, which they have responded to and promptly resolved my request by removing the article. However, I truly don’t know how Mr. Griffin will respond to this, as he probably has his own interests in keeping that article up and running, but let us hope that he is honest enough and has the decency to comply with the will of a former Frater. But I cannot guarantee it either. If he doesn’t I will contemplate any necessary further actions.
That is all which is in my power to control the visibility of my article. I hope that Mr. Zalewski will recognise my efforts to make amends. But unfortunately, information on the Internet has an ability to have their own life independent of their creator. The Internet is our post-modern Demiurge and it creates a lot of pain and misery in peoples lives. Regardless if my actions up to this point will have any effect on the Demiurge or on Mr. Zalewski, or anyone else that I have hurted with my writing, I will proceed, however cautiously and tentatively, with my plan to sanitize my blog, starting with my “accusations” against Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Farrell concering their opinions about S.L. MacGregor Mathers, make a thorough re-edition and rewriting of the bulk of texts on the Gyllene Gryningen blog concerning this topic, covering several years of writing, and present it in a new pdf-format for download while removing the original articles on this blog.
Now, contrary to Mr. Zalewski, Nick Farrell has had the audacity to set his mind in complying with my demands, which I applaud, as he today informed me that:
I have deleted all references I could find to you on my blog.... one post I pulled completely...As an immediate response to his commendable actions I have myself withdrawn a large number of blog post (17 all in all) bearing his name from visible appearance and sanitized another one today removing his name. These are the postings that I will use as the source material for the re-edited and reformatted version of my future Mathers Apology e-book, presented in a moderated format and with tempered severity.
S∴R∴