In the light of book censorship and pagans shunning pagans, James
A. Chisholm, the Ring of Troth Steersman, has written a commentary
addressing the causes of this recent pagan purge. Feel free to
distribute this article to all electronic media.

-Thorfinn Einarsson (_Idunna_ editor)

                      On Fear and Hyperbole

   According to the High One, whose words are sung in the ``Havamal,''
it is wise to drink moderately and be observant and alert, especially
when in a hall full of strangers. Though it is easy, when ripped at a
party, to believe that all who laugh at your jokes are laughing with
you, it is also easy under such circumstances, to fall under the spell
of paranoid fantasies, especially with some of the substances people
are using as inebriants these days. Blind fear is even more useless
and destructive than blind trust. I would here like to discuss fear
and loathing in the new age.

   Folks love to be scared silly. Folks actively seek out things they
think will scare them. The things that scare a person the most are
often among the same things that fascinate a person the most. There is
a variety of reasons for this, the most important of which is the
search for transcendence, for deliverance from the bonds of the
mundane, for knowledge of the awesome unknown---it is the answer to
the call of RUNA. Part of the fun, and part of the danger, is the
temporary loss of control over one's perceptions and the experience
when panic takes over.

   Remember when you were young and you liked to stay up at night
telling ghost stories and holding seances so that the world could
become oh so magical and alive with spirits, yet oh so scary? Do you
remember how some people who were gifted with the talent for giving
folks the creeps would exercise these gifts for the purposes of
manipulation. Do you remember the hook man stories boys used to try to
scare their dates with? Have you been spellbound by such stories
lately? Maybe instead of ghosts and hook men, you hear about evil
government conspiracies, underground Nazis, ufos, space aliens and
satanists. As the Fleetwood Mac lyrics state: ``It doesn't matter if
these stories are right, what matters most is the feeling you get when
you are hypnotized.'' Unfortunately, for many people, the spell
induced in the telling of the stories lends credibility to an
atmosphere of authenticity.

   Some of you may have seen someone get really ripped on dope or acid
and come up with outrageous lunatic ideas that seem completely real to
them until they finally come down from the trip. Some of you may have
experienced this for yourselves. I have heard numerous drug stories to
this effect from some real veterans. As with schizophrenia, all the
data that is received that would ordinarily prove such wild delusions
invalid is filtered and reinterpreted such that their fantasies are
reinforced.

   Most people are constantly in the process of changing their
realities by reinterpreting new information and experience, or
allowing others to do this for them. Usually this is a gradual process
that involves careful weighing of experience and other information,
especially of that which contradicts our current interpretations of
reality. The more aware one is of these processes, the more likely one
is to be able to control them and to create more useful and accurate
perceptual apparatus for oneself.

   Fear is one of those devices, like the powerful hallucinogens, that
can shatter the laws that govern one's ordinary experience in an
instant. The more the ordinary state of consciousness is broken down
the more intense becomes the fear---a snowball effect. The self will
begin reinterpreting experience immediately, and suddenly, presto,
ghosts, ufos, and vast organized satanic conspiracies are as real as
the night is long---and the nights are getting longer.

   It is natural to want to be careful when one makes it one's
business to accelerate society's reinterpretation process and one's
own by practicing unusual religions or living unusual lifestyles.
There is, however, a tendency to exaggerate the danger and to believe
that the powers that be are going to spend vast resources to keep tabs
on and harass one. It is hyperbole to say that if ``the government
finds out that you are a pagan and you are holding a government job
that the FBI, the Secret Service, and other agencies will send spies
to live with and around you and that you will lose your job in short
order.''

   This is ridiculous. Of all the people I know of with government
jobs who are openly pagan, I know of only one who experienced any
difficulty over it, and that only under extreme circumstances after
over twenty years of service in the army as an open and avowed
practitioner of a controversial alternative religion. This person is
Dr. Aquino of the Temple of Set. Speaking of army jobs, Gert McQueen,
a Trother and Anglo-Saxon heathen in Watertown, has been working to
get Germanic Heathenism recognized as a valid religion in the army
chaplains handbook and to acquire facilities for Troth clergy at her
base. I hear that Satanism was included a long time ago and that
members of the Temple of Set can make Lt. Colonel, and I know of two
who have as well as a number who are or have been in the armed forces,
then other pagans can sure as Hel do it as well. It might help a good
deal if they quit thinking and acting like they have something to
hide. Gert is very vocal and outspoken and is fully aware of her
constitutional rights and not about to hide in the safety of the
closet of irresponsibility making friends with anxieties and
nightmares that seem to justify trembling and temerity in the face of
the terrible masks shown by their oppressors. In addition to her work
on the base, Gert is widely know in her community as her editorial
letters in the local paper are a constant source of controversy. Most
people I know who are relatively sensible, have encountered very
little friction when they are honest about their religion. Everyone
who gets to know me at all knows of my religion. I have never lost a
job that I really wanted on account of it, nor have I ever encountered
any significant resistance whatever. In fact the most fierce
resistance I have ever received from anybody has come from other
pagans, many of whom are every bit as vehement and determined as
fundamentalists and fascists to destroy ideas that would seem to
contradict or compete with their own. One time the local hof held a
blessing on the shores of Town Lake (Austin, Tx) shortly after the
Matamoras incident. The sight of a line of people in strange clothes
chanting barbarous words and carrying heathen ritual things scared a
pair of lovers along the way who ran away (in the past such folks had
always ignored us) and it was reported to the police that maniacs were
chasing people through the park with an ax. Rather than running away
at the approach of the police as though we were doing anything in the
least bit wrong, which we were not, we explained exactly what we were
doing and what we are about to the officers and there was no trouble,
though they took the ax, which I recovered. If you want people to
accept you as legitimate, you have to be legitimate. You cannot just
go acting like a pack of irresponsible jokers and expect to be taken
seriously. Trouble is, quite a lot of people like the thrill they get
from thinking about how deviant they are being. If you stand your
ground during trouble, rather than abandoning your cause and your
friends, your case may at least be heard. In matters where you are
protected by the constitution, do not be cowards.

   Mass hysteria is always a far greater force of destruction than any
tyrant, political party, or inquisition could ever hope to be. The
Jews throughout Spain were forced to convert, flee, die or live in
conditions of extreme oppression and humiliation in the fourteenth
century by a wave of paranoid hysteria before the inquisition was ever
introduced into Spain. In point of fact, if it had not been for the
stupidity of the masses, the inquisition may never have been
introduced into Spain. The inquisition was introduced to handle
`secret Jews' because people feared that the newly converted Jews were
still practicing their evil rites. Anyone who rested on Saturday or
avoided pork was suspect, if not immediately guilty. Inquisitions and
pogroms would not exist if folks were able to master the irrational
fears and the bogeys they so love to hate.

   It is worth noting that the medieval mind feared the Jews, the
heretics (people with wrong headed ideas), and witches, for the same
reasons inquiring minds are fearing satanists today. Almost all the
crimes currently attributed to satanists today by the mass media and
inquiring minds, including the notion that they comprise a vast
conspiracy that has penetrated and infiltrated the highest stations of
the establishment, were attributed to Jews, heretics and witches in
the Middle Ages. In fact, they had no special category for `Satanists'
since as far as they were concerned, all of the above were satanists
and they all molested and murdered children and others in horrible
ways.

   It is also worth noting that the Romans accused the Christians of
these exact same types of crimes. The Romans were ordinarily highly
tolerant of religious difference and Rome was full of temples to
foreign Gods and tolerated the existence of numerous other salvation
cults. Certain Christians made the mistake of acting like criminals
and traitors---they refused to honor the state Gods---that is like
going out of your way to make a point of not saluting the flag at ball
games and other appropriate events, or even of burning  it at the West
Mall (UT campus). In addition they practiced secret black magical
rites in the night it was said. The current hysteria is nothing new.
The popular imagination will always find some group to serve as the
focus for its fantasies about the anti-society. With the disappearance
of outer threats, such as the commies, Americans are going to start
looking for internal threats and scapegoats. I personally would sooner
be burned at the stake than participate in the idiotic atrocities
against freedom and life of a crazed mob.

   I am a veteran target of defamation campaigns. It is quite likely
that many of the paranoid fantasies about the Troth, Rune-Gild, and
Vanatroth that are holding a number of people in thrall were first
fabricated by an ex-Presbyterian preacher named Rob Meek who was
dabbling in Celtic and Teutonic religions as his body and mind were
dying of a large brain tumor. Mr. Meek became hysterical after seeing
the Geraldo show on Satanism. As an invalid, he spent vast quantities
of time watching videos and the imagery and themes of certain B movies
that he watched a lot blended with that of the the Geraldo show and
before long he was on the evangelical warpath distributing rumors and
lies about myself and my associates through every channel available to
him, which included a couple of New age and occult circles in the
Dallas area, the SCA, the police department, all of our mutual
acquaintances and who knows how many others. Why did people choose to
believe the most outrageous and lurid accounts? Why did every one
start to believe that the Temple of Set was trying to take over their
own group by using the Rune-Gild and the Troth as tools? Because fear
is fun, that's why. Folks pay good money for fear. Fear sells almost
as well as sex. People get hypnotized for the same reasons that they
do most things in this consumerist society---for entertainment. I
respect your right to fear, as long as the destruction of human lives
is not the price of your admission ticket to the twilight zone.


-James A. Chisholm
  Troth Steersman


Ring of Troth
P.O. Box 18812
Austin, Tx 78760