So... what's the point?

[je_sais_cequisetrame]

Well, now that it appears like we're FINALLY a little bit CLOSER to finding out what the ceremony might actually be... what about any speculation on what it's supposed to accomplish?

People and religions have ceremonies for a great many things. The Hymn of One, however, doesn't have any core beliefs that have been revealed to us though aside from free will. We don't know anything about who or what they worship, what it takes to become a member, and what you have to do, so what do you think the ceremony might be for?

At first, I sort of believed in the whole fertility ceremony idea, but that was months ago and now I'm gunning for blood sacrifice. (This sounds so morbid, lol). I just can't imagine what it's all to accomplish.

Favour of a deity? World peace? (Yeah, right) Or just simple devotion?

They want Bree really, really bad. So it seems more significant somehow than just your run of the mill 'ceremony'

[gemmacrowley]

I'm gunning for blood sacrifice.

Sorry to disagree with this but there would be no reason for a person to increase protein in their blood stream and to take Iron pills if they were going to end up dead. If all the Order wanted was to Sacrifice someone than just about anyone off the street would do. Plus who goes around sacrificing people in this day and age?

[RedRevolver]

I'm gunning for blood sacrifice.

Sorry to disagree with this but there would be no reason for a person to increase protein in their blood stream and to take Iron pills if they were going to end up dead. If all the Order wanted was to Sacrifice someone than just about anyone off the street would do. Plus who goes around sacrificing people in this day and age?

IMHO, a blood sacrifice doesn't necessarily mean that the person is going to die.

In places where blood sacrifice usually happens they just don't have the medical advantages of saving the person the blood is coming from.

Blood is what they are sacrificing. Not the person.

[JustAnotherLonelyGirl.]

Iron and Protein would be very helpful in the case of extreme blood loss.

[nowherepixie]

Yeh losing blood, not the person.

I can't see any other reason for all this unless she was going to bleed. A lot.

[JustAnotherLonelyGirl.]

Yes, I'm agreeing with you.

Yesterday, Sack said something about them "looking for the cure for death." At the time, I laughed this off as a sarcastic joke. But I was thinking, I wonder if the Order has any belief in immortality? Is it possible that they believe in immortality, or reincarnation? Could this explain the connection to Aleister Crowley? Maybe they feel that Bree has some kind of link to Crowley.. like a reincarnation... or maybe they believe she can be made immortal.. or something. That would be kinda cool. -shrug-

[nowherepixie]

People have done crazy things for the pursuit of immortality in the past...

[je_sais_cequisetrame]

Maybe they feel that Bree has some kind of link to Crowley.. like a reincarnation... or maybe they believe she can be made immortal.. or something. That would be kinda cool. -shrug-

Oooh, I agree, that would be a very interesting reason for the ceremony. I figure it has to be something important like that. Well... it doesn't HAVE to. The ceremony could be for a completely unimportant reason and they're just fixated on it because it's a ceremony. But with all of the attention paid to Bree over so much time, with so much trouble, and still they keep trying, I figure it must be something significant.

I like this immortality theory.

[JustAnotherLonelyGirl.]

Me too! I've been thinking more and more about it.

So I searched Aleister Crowley + Immortality in Google.

I got this website: http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/module-subj ... -130.phtml
which said:

Aleister had made it his life’s mission to f**k with both the Christian authorities and their social values through his own means, occultism.

And I laughed.
But anyway, it also said:

A.C., as he is often referred to, was born as Alexander Edward Crowley on October 12, 1875, just six months after the death of famed occultist Eliphas Levi. Aleister would later stake a claim that he was the reincarnation of Levi

.

Even more interesting, is what I found when I searched Aleister Crowley in Wikipedia:

Ouija board
Little is published regarding Crowley's advocacy of the Ouija Board. Yet, he had great admiration for the use of one and the Ouija board played a passing role in his magical workings.[44][45]

Jane Wolfe, who lived with Crowley at his infamous Abbey of Cefalu, also used the Ouija board. She credits some of her greatest spiritual communications to use of this implement. Crowley also discussed the Ouija board with another of his students, and the most ardent of them, Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones): it is frequently mentioned in their unpublished letters.

Throughout 1917 Achad experimented with the board as a means of summoning Angels, as opposed to Elementals. In one letter Crowley told Jones: "Your Ouija board experiment is rather fun. You see how very satisfactory it is, but I believe things improve greatly with practice. I think you should keep to one angel, and make the magical preparations more elaborate."

Over the years, both became so fascinated by the board that they discussed marketing their own design. Their discourse culminated in a letter, dated February 21, 1919, in which Crowley tells Jones, "Re: Ouija Board. I offer you the basis of ten percent of my net profit. You are, if you accept this, responsible for the legal protection of the ideas, and the marketing of the copyright designs. I trust that this may be satisfactory to you. I hope to let you have the material in the course of a week." In March, Crowley wrote to Achad to inform him, "I'll think up another name for Ouija." But their business venture never came to fruition and Crowley's new design, along with his name for the board, has not survived.

Crowley has stated, of the Ouija Board, that, "There is, however, a good way of using this instrument to get what you want, and that is to perform the whole operation in a consecrated circle, so that undesirable aliens cannot interfere with it. You should then employ the proper magical invocation in order to get into your circle just the one spirit you want. It is comparatively easy to do this. A few simple instructions are all that is necessary, and I shall be pleased to give these, free of charge, to any one who cares to apply."[46]

I also found this: http://altreligion.about.com/library/texts/bl_mtol6.htm
I'm trying to find more information on this "Tree of Life" created by Crowley, but I'm falling asleep. I will try again tomorrow.

Goodnight all.

[Gidget]

I've given up trying to figure it out, but video #200 is coming up! I'm sure it'll be something big - hopefully the ceremony!

[Languorous Lass]

I've given up trying to figure it out, but video #200 is coming up! I'm sure it'll be something big - hopefully the ceremony!

I don't like to burst your bubble, Gidget, but whenever we've fixated on a certain date or video number as when "something big has got to happen," we've almost always been disappointed.

The only time we really got a huge development was in "The Human Ransom," when Tachy swooped in to help Bree and Jonas free Daniel. Otherwise, big dates/video numbers have been pretty much anticlimactic.

[RedRevolver]

Maybe they feel that Bree has some kind of link to Crowley.. like a reincarnation... or maybe they believe she can be made immortal.. or something. That would be kinda cool. -shrug-

Like Stan in South Park when the Scientologists thought he was a re-incarnation of L. Ron Hubbard.

[addmusic3039]

^^Good stuff.

If the ceremony isn't dangerous to the person it's being done to then all of our work is for nothing.

[JustAnotherLonelyGirl.]

I'm not saying it isn't dangerous. I'm suggesting that whatever trait they look for in the Ceremony girl is a trait unique to Aleister Crowley and others, and they may believe it is evidence of a kind of immortality of Crowley. Something like that.

If you look in the Beast Chat, where we are speculating what the "trait" may be based on Bree's note from her father, one person mentioned Crowley's theory of the Moonchild. It is possible that the "moon" trait is what they are looking for.

I don't even understand what I'm talking about. -sigh-

[ziatenaj]

Whatever it is its obviously for some kind of medical purpose. (Yeah I know duh) But its got to be more of a medical thing than a religious thing. That says a lot about the "religon" itself.