Cute.

I understand what you're saying Thorn. I wasn't thinking of you as much as others that we know that had much more visibly emotional (and angry) reactions concerning the revelation of Bey's NAMBLA past. I still admire so much of his work while also being disgusted by aspects of his personality and beliefs. It is very much a mixed bag but so many influential people are (as this blog posts mentions) that I tend to just take the good where I find it unless I find that the "good" preached by the person was simply and only a mask to hide a nastier agenda. Even then, if it is misused as positive inspiration by others, so be it. TAZ had such an amazing affect on my life and my early association with a bunch of the Moors in Seattle really did change my life for the better.

You've quoted Noble Drew Ali? Sweet! I didn't know that though I've never found many of his writings (outside of the Circle Seven Koran). I've been reading Michael Muhammad Knight's work on the Five Percenters recently.

Tell this to all the people who want to remove references to Hakim Bey from their work since they found out about his NAMBLA history.

I recommend sitting on a cushion and staring at a wall. Your ego needs a check, Michael.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the subcontractor in question is subcontracted by the AIRPORT, not United. United uses the subcontractor that the airport provides. This has nothing to do with United really. Complain to the airport.

You're not going to get a reply from him on this. He cherry picks his topics and responses.

That isn't actually what happened. I recommend reading some Japanese history. It wasn't a religious issue that drove their extermination, but a political one.

Not only have a I read it, I cited it in papers that I wrote for my Master's degree. I used to have those papers online on my blog but took them down a few years ago. I never published them and I've never met Dr. Hangegraaf in person though since he didn't come to the Western Esotericism conference at UC, Davis in 2006 and I didn't go to the one following it (or the European conference).

I completely agree that modern paganism is rooted in Western Esotericism. Being rooted in something has no effect on the fact that the actual religions involved as wholly modern creations and institutions. His thoughts are not a refutation of them being, almost entirely, within the category of New Religious Movements. Wicca was started in the 1940s (we can quibble back to the 30s, in some senses maybe) and other pagan religions are almost entirely post-WWII. This is the same failed logic that says because some person reads a book of Plato's and one of Proclus' and then founds a esoteric philosophy club, he's practicing ancient paganism instead of the reality that what he's doing is completely contemporary.

So, I'm not sure how your comment actually refutes what I said.

Is American culture effectively European or something else? After all, we're not in Europe so, by your logic, ours is not a European based culture (which is obviously untrue).

Why should "Euro-centric" make anyone's skin crawl? Do you hate your own culture that much? I know that you're of European descent, Apuleius.