PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

Naked Mass

I'm standing there at mass, butt-naked.

I've been to Gnostic Masses before, but never in quite this state of vulnerability. Stealthily, I look around me; no one else seems to care, or even notice.

“Oh well,” I think in the dream. Hey, I've been to my share of skyclad rituals before. Do what thou wilt, right?

“First Mass?” asks the avuncular-looking old guy standing next to me. I'm sure I've never met him before, but there's something familiar about him nonetheless.

“Not quite,” I say.

The Mass continues. He follows along the text of the canon in a beautifully-printed missal.

“We turn to the East here,” he says, and shows me the page. Above the prayer, in red, the rubric says: “Facing East.”

I dutifully turn to the East, with my back to my guide. When I feel his hands cup and part my buttocks, I suddenly realize who he is.

Breathes there a Thelemite without a sense of humor?

Let no one accuse me here of disrespect; actually, as rituals go, I'm rather fond of old Uncle Al's Missa Gnostica. As for this little jeu d'esprit, it's all in good fun, my little pretty.

 All in good fun.

The Gnostic Mass

(Tune: The Monster Mash)

I was seein’ a museum late one night

when my eyes beheld an eerie sight:

a fella from a stele began to rise,

and suddenly, to my surprise

He said the Mass

(he said the Gnostic Mass)

the Gnostic Mass

(It really kicked my ass)

he said the Mass

(he said the Gnostic Mass)

the Gnostic Mass

Welcome to Airy Monday at the PaganNewsBeagle: Aleister Crowley, summer skywatching, Scottish petroglyphs, ancient cultures and a little-known museum beloved by Pagans in the American South. Enjoy your week!

The web is abuzz with images from the Scottish Highlands (blame "Outlander.") If you decide to go, check out these mysterious petroglyphs while you're there.

Sutin, Lawrence. Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 2000.

For better and worse, Aleister Crowley is one of the pivotal figures in the recent history of magic. He is also one of the more inscrutable, and the difficulties of his deliberate misdirections are multiplied by the revulsion that his actions and ideas can create. He proclaimed himself the divinely inspired messenger of a vast cultural shift and a magician of the highest achievement, but was widely reviled and - much worse from his perspective - often ignored. Capturing the breadth of these paradoxes in a single personality is not easy, and Sutin tackles it well in his biography of Crowley, which makes an excellent introduction for anyone trying to gain the necessary perspective on Crowley and his work.