Base of Sinai

The festival is in progress

Aaron and the Levites apologise and commit

Briefing. Having returned to the base of Sinai, the Festival continued and culminated. Based on the learnings from the week, we drafted summaries of our values and strongly felt commitments. These were share and performed. We were encouraged to commit (if authentically felt) to continue a personal approach to experimental mythic hygiene. However, we were discouraged from committing to join the community. They emphasised the dangers that accompany the mind-altering effects of mythic hygiene under the influence of the Golden Calf technologies. We were encouraged to return home and, over a period of time, to consider our experience through retrospective analysis.

Apologies and Commitments

From everyone for everything

Music: “So, So Sorry”

(To the tune of “One of the few”)

Yahweh, Moses and the Levites:

I am that I am

So, so sorry

I think I’ve made a mistake

Justly you banished me

Out of Eden

To the top of Sinai

Justly you reduced me

Ontologically

To a lower-case “g”

We commit to remain here at the base of Sinai

We will not wander in the desert

We will not invade, conquer and slaughter

We will not allow what happened to ever happen again

We will foster a just and peaceful world

What ought we do, while waiting for the Holocaust?

Our strategies and commitments

Levites:

To increase our understanding of human nature

To seek methods for transcending the horrors of human nature

To un-wind our tendency toward xenophobia and protective egos

To celebrate and collaborate with radical diversity

To realise the one-ness of humanity and sentient life

To realise that harming anyone is self-harm

To be aware of suffering and of one’s complicity

To experiment with mythic hygiene as strategy

To critique our inherited myths and design new, functional myths

To revise rituals that embody and experiment with our cosmology and morality

To collaborate with the future

To participate in global collaborative problem solving

To be rigorously experimental with solutions and strategies

To remain aware that one is living between the Holocausts

To repeatedly ask and answer: What we ought do between the Holocausts?

To participate in ending Holocausts and avoiding the next Holocaust

To take advantage of being alive by fulfilling these commitments

To revise the questions we ask and the strategies for seeking answers

Death of a Levitical Priest

Briefing. Among the more controversial aspects of the annual festival was the death ritual. Members of the community sometimes decide, months in advance, to end their life during the upcoming festival in a carefully planned ritual. In a community with almost no rules, this ritual had significant rules for safety to ensure the soundness of the individual, the soundness of the decision and the soundness of the preparation. Consensus from the entire community was then required to proceed. During this particular festival, an older priest completed this ritual and gave final birth to his Master of Scenarios, who would thereafter represent him. 

The community believes that amythic death anxiety and its horrific consequences have roots in a cultural inability to integrate death into life. This can lead to egoism, xenophobia and ultimately, the next Holocaust. A healthy life integrates death comfortably into life, so they believe. 

Master of Scenarios:

During one’s birthday celebrations

One might choose

To consider what to do before one dies

To consider the design of one’s death ritual

And – only when appropriate

To consider whether one wishes to die during the following year’s festival

One of our elderly priests made this decision

In the year leading up to this year's festival

He completed the design of his Golden Calf Elevator & Café

And completed the training of his Master of Scenarios

These were his symbolic immortality projects

Through these, he intended to collaborate into the future

Sc.

The Levites form a protective perimeter around the community

The ritual includes elements of the golden calf episode, symbolically reconstructed

[a] A procession of the community, each making a symbolic offering

[b] These are assembled into a golden calf

[c] The calf is then destroyed – burned, melted

[d] The remains of the calf are placed into the water

[e] The community drinks the golden calf

[f]  Lastly, the priest drinks the golden calf

Music: "I Did My Thing"

A joyful exclamation by a senior priest

A duet with their Master of Scenarios

Verse 1:   I did my thing

Verse 2:  Now do your thing

Verse 3:   I’ll do my thing

Priest:

(During the instrumental of “I did my thing”)

We wish the day we die to be the best of days

A perfect death is a perfect end

Human evil is a curse

But mortality is a blessing

Excommunication creates space and time

Your culture might reject you

Even family and friends

What might you say to them?

Participants:

If you forgive me, I shall rejoice

If you are angry, I shall bear it

(Johannes Kepler)

Priest:

And now, I leave behind an absurdity

A stand-up comedian that looks and sounds a bit like me

Please don’t take him too seriously

This is the very definition of comedy

Triumph!

Sc.

The priest dies and transitions into his Master of Scenarios

He jumps onto the stage

The room breaks into applause

Master of Scenarios:

Hello Philadelphia!

It is great to be back!

In the Golden Calf Elevator and Café!

Who wants to join the circus?

It’s a metaphor for fuck’s sake

What might you do that nobody else has done?

What is your unique experiment?

We need to figure this out together

There is only one thing left to do

One final offering

Take your places, everyone

It’s time for…

Participants:

Go – Down – Moses!