Break Taboos, Build Totems
Deciding what remains intact and what gets left behind takes wisdom and discernment. But the process is necessary to form an order.
Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.
—Terrence McKenna
To create an empire of the mind, we must break old taboos and build new totems. Yet some taboos must remain intact, and some totems should remain unbuilt. There are deep patterns to civilization, after all, so we must be careful and discerning. Chesterton’s Fence can keep our enemies out or keep us trapped in.
How does one know what to include and what to jettison?
There are no simple answers, but a few super-standards recommend themselves.
Submit to the Law of Consent. All relationships among innocent people must be consensual. This is our Mission’s essence. We will reverse-engineer all things from the Mission, which is our siblinghood’s raison d’être.
Preserve Organic Unity. The dimensions of diversity and unifiedness among our members must be mutually constraining. Too much diversity and we will lose our solidarity. Too much unity, and we will become conformist, like herd animals.
Practice the Twelve Virtues. We operate according to the social virtues and personal virtues to the greatest extent possible. Vices are taboos that should never be broken. Virtues are totems that we must always raise.
Avoid Cult Tactics. If a single leader or small group requires unquestioning obedience to The One True Way, that is not a siblinghood. It is a cult. Despite inevitable disagreement, members should never use shame, guilt, fear, or actual punishment to suppress questioning, criticism, or dissent.
Tolerate Forks and Mergers. Members will disagree, but should not get bogged down in disagreement. If, after a reasonable period, no consensus can be reached on a critical matter, there should be provisions for dissenters to fork, meaning the two sides of a schism may each go their own way. If a branching group resolves its differences with the main corpus, a reintegration process can commence.
As super-standards for the coalescence of our order, these can take us far, but once the criteria are met, it will take wisdom and discernment to tell which taboos to break and which totems to build.
The following are three possible taboos to break:
Explore Your Shadow. Many of us are taught to avoid or repress that which operates in the Shadow. Otherwise, some learn to operate in the Shadow to an indulgent excess. We must break the taboo of avoidance and repression, but we must not indulge to excess. Healthy wholeness lies in the integrated middle between denial and debauchery.
Resurrect Dead Gods. A dead god is no longer worshipped, but once was. All one has to do to resurrect a dead god is summon it. If one or more persons summon a dead god, they must engage in ritual dialogue with the awakened god to learn from it. The point of doing so is not to worship the entity or abandon one’s faith. Instead, the purpose is to understand those who came before us and to understand ourselves in relation to strange modalities. (Thanks to Erik L. for this.)
Use Sacred, Segregated Spaces. Members of the order may designate certain spaces for certain types of exploration and ritual, even if this seems strange. This not only helps us distinguish the sacred and the profane, but also creates opportunities for some members to explore the Shadow communally. Initiatic experiences can occur in these spaces, too. Such might seem cultish, but as long as members use such sancta in accordance with our doctrine, they may challenge taboos here.
Now, consider three totems to build:
Accept Accomplishment and Ascent. Hierarchies of threat, dominance, and subordination are forbidden in our siblinghood, but we recognize tiers of accomplishment and ascending stages. Ascent requires accomplishment and accomplishment requires effort. There are no shortcuts. If one aspires to become a hierophant, then hierarchies of advancement will form just as mahogany towers over saplings. To erect a totem of achievement, we reject errant egalitarianism.
Apply Peaceful, Processual Ostracism. Every organization must have a membrane that controls what comes into the corpus of solidarity and what must be ejected as waste or due to incommensurability. Peaceful, processual ostracism means that, after a reasonable level of deliberation, members decide whether a member is suitable to continue in the siblinghood. To erect a totem of solidarity, we must reject the fetishization of inclusion.
Allow Substances in Caerimonia. Psychedelics have been used in ceremonial settings for millennia across various cultures, often as a means to facilitate spiritual growth, healing, and connection to the divine. In these contexts, substances are administered by trained elders in structured rituals. They can foster introspection, emotional release, and communal bonding. To erect a totem of transcendence, we must reject the tabooization of spirit substances.
The coalescence of our order involves a deep process of determining what comes in and what stays out, as well as who comes in and who stays out. In one respect, this is tautological, as any organization forms based on shared concepts and commitments. In another respect, we must confront this reality at a time when our nascent order might not survive the process.
Editor’s note: Neither bacchanalian hippies nor authoritarian control freaks will usher in the next age. Humans capable of cultivating discipline, self-sovereignty, and virtue are the new vanguard. As such, we must ensure everything we do is legitimate and safe in the relevant area.