Welcome to C.O.S.M. On-line! This site is devoted to the advancement of knowledge. If you would take a minute to think about that. Knowledge is a very broad term. As the saying goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure." That will ever be the case in nearly everything. Now that is broad. With that vastness comes a certain amount of freedom. That is the freedom to learn, the freedom to give of your knowledge to others, and the freedom to speak your mind without fear of repercussive persecution. I have a few things to say about persecution. I know what it is like, in a way, to be crucified and laughed at, to be hung bare before a crowd awaiting their reaction and thus your decided fate, to be misunderstood and despised simply because they don't understand. They have been told, rather than found out for themselves, what is fact and what is fiction. It has been conditioned in their minds and bred in their genes for hundreds of years. Some are tolerant, while the others are the ones brandishing the torch at your feet. the tolerant ones will either befriend you and stand with you before the inquisitors or they will not go against the majority, fearing for themselves and their own reputation, with nothing to offer you but perhaps a tear touching the corner of their eye as you are set ablaze for macabre pleasure.
This is not a new feeling to me. While I perhaps cannot even to imagine what it was like for the millions of people who've actually been put to death in the name of what some people believed to be "the one True Knowledge", I most certainly can understand these feelings symbolicly. When I was in one of the United States' wonderful public high schools - from which I graduated - I was unjustly put before an "inquisition", both in my personal and my scholastic lives. These "martyrs to the common good" just simply did not understand. I have lost loves and have been looked down upon simply because my interpretations of the divine and the world around me didn't coincide with that of the majority.
Since then, I have looked back on those times with no small amount of frustration. I hold no animosity for these people from my past, but hold a sort of pity for them instead. From the past, one can better prepare for the future. Those who are strong and determined enough can use that prior experience's lessons to alter the future; to prevent this unnecessary torment upon another. This page, as well as the FREE On-line classes and "e-correspondence" courses I teach, is simply my way of trying to bring understanding, and thus knowledge, and hopefully wisdom to the future. Never Again the Burning Times.
Shade & Sweet Water,
- Rev. Cyric Ærin MoonStorm, High Priest
This page was last updated on: 07/21/2002
