Happy 6/6/6!

Well, I'm going to take all kinds of heat (let's hope not literally) for trying to make a holiday out of today's date 06/06/'06. I grew up reading comic books, occasionally watching TV preachers, and with the Catholic Church on the periphery of my awareness by way of the nearness of the University of Notre Dame (where my father taught and which I eventually attended) and other influences. Frankly, devil stuff scares me. 6/6/6 -- perhaps this will be an especially bad day!

"PISH POSH!" screams the Skeptic side of me. Make that "BU-U-U-L-L-S-H-I-I-I-T-T-T!" as I think, first, that "pish posh" is a really lame scoff, and second, of the tyranny of words and concepts that we live under. Words and concepts are also what get us through life, forming one of the latticeworks that allow us to function as an organized pattern in a universe that is, on the whole, chaotic. Words and concepts are also used in religion and in government to tell the populace as a whole that "a few of us know all the answers and therefore we will guide what you do." But they don't know the answers. Many leaders, particular religious ones and politicians piggybacking on religion, were raised to believe they know the answers, and like any upbringing, they probably came away with a few good ones and some bad ones. But leaders are human beings, who, as youths, were told by other human beings that certain human beings got the answers directly from God. Despite the impolitic screaming of my inner Skeptic, I don't really want to insult anybody's religion. It is just that I trust the intellect that God/the Universe/Whatever You Want to Call It gave me, and it sincerely questions these things. Frankly, I suspect many of the so-called leaders don't believe it either.

Now, this doesn't make me "down" with some counter-deity. Today, I just want to celebrate my freedom from the words and concepts that try to tie God down, and that try to tie us all down. Satanism certainly doesn't come any closer, it just borrows the bad guy character from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, as a target for worship in order to thumb its collective nose at that tradition.

On the other hand, I've been intrigued by a small body of literature that pops up once in a while to personify the Devil as misunderstood. What this says to me is that Satan is the literary personification of all that the churches that created the character feared. Some of what the character personified really should be avoided; other things, perhaps, we just need to get comfortable with, maybe even revel in, because there is beauty even beyond the boundaries of the world of Mayberry so many of us think we are pining for. Forget about the guy with the cape and the horns himself; he is just a literary device.

I don't want chaos in the world. The pattern of our existence is holding to an extent, other disruptions in which the supposedly religious are largely complicit notwithstanding (war, environmental devastation -- and here I'll give some credit to the Catholic Church as an organization for protesting these problems).

On the "shadowy" side of things, the sole commandment "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" has been attributed to Aleister Crowley. Being a proponent of the rights of all people, I never thought that was very suitable, but only because it was too sweeping, for how many people "wilt" wantonly destroy others for their own pleasure or gain. I am also a proponent of great freedom for all people, freedom to do but not to infringe upon the freedom of others. So Crowley's maxim might be modified as a basis for some simple rules from which the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments can also be derived as good rules of thumb, if not absolutes (certainly our mostly Judaeo-Christian government already treats them far less as absolutes than I would):

1. Do what thou wilt,
2. but do your absolute best to do as much good for others, and as little harm to others, as possible;
3. and respect the equal right of others to do the same.
4. It is strongly suggested you take good care of yourself and do not harm yourself, as well.

And that's how I intend to celebrate 6/6/6.

But, due to the side of me that remains a bit brainwashed and nervous, I am definitely not going anywhere near the opening day of the remake of the movie, "The Omen".