Toward Ecosophy

Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear -- and behold, do ye now complain that ye lack freedom!

--"The Epistle to the Paranoids," Principia Discordia

 

Earlier this week in my Magic Monday open post, the discussion turned to Discordianism, that remarkable metaphysical movement disguised as a prank (or prank disguised as a metaphysical movement). It occurred to me that evening that there is in fact a potent Discordian magical working that might help clear away some of the psychopolitical mess we're in right now. 

 

Look around you, and unless you happen to live in one of the few relatively sane corners of the world, you're probably beset by crazed control freaks who are frantically demanding that everyone has to obey an increasingly ornate list of regulations meant to control what amounts to a moderately bad cold virus. Take the vaccine!  If that doesn't work, take more! Lock down the country!  If that doesn't work, do it again! Wear two masks, three masks, four masks, a hundred at once!  No matter how badly the policies fail, few people in authority are willing to do anything but double down on them. In Discordian terms, what's happened to them has a good straightforward name:  the Curse of Grayface. 

 

A bit of metaphysics may be useful here. The diagram in the upper left is of course the Sacred Chao, and its two sides are the Hodge and the Podge. The Hodge (the one with the pentagon) is the principle of order, and the Podge (the one with the apple) is the principle of chaos. When the Hodge reaches its extreme level, the Podge comes in to balance it, and vice versa. When the Hodge gets stuck in place, you get the Curse of Grayface, and the necessary cure is a dose of Podge. This, in turn, may be administered by means of that classic working of Erisian magic, the Turkey Curse. 

 

You'll find the instructions here. Read them carefully, and if you're minded to, perform this daily at 5:23 pm, concentrating on the intention that the working dispells the Curse of Grayface from the world, and especially from the crazed control freaks mentioned above. (If the time isn't convenient for you, do it when it's 5:23 pm in some other time zone.) Please pay close attention to the cautions given in the text. If you're wondering why I'm suggesting something so self-evidently silly, please read this as well. 

 

With that said --