–About This Site & the Author

This site supports the endeavors of speculative fiction author Skadi meic Beorh,

and is dedicated to his mother Dorothy, who taught him how to read.

Omnis Verus, Omnis Occuro

________

An Autobiography

I first came to les Mort de Dieu through Oswald Chambers, a profoundly heretical teacher beneath the guise of a 19th century Baptist theologian. Raised a Southern Baptist in Florida, I heard every day of the Crucifixion, of course, but, after having become an apostate from the Eastern Church (where my Christian search led me into my late 20s), and after studying Hinduism (coupled with a pilgrimage to India) and then Wicca and Druidry, and then a mean-spirited chaotic nihilism (which I found was fueled by my great anguish in having lost communication with my mother by the time I was about eight years of age), I, completely exhausted, one night turned to Chambers, and wept, and studied My Utmost For His Highest for three years on a daily basis (after a year-long trip to Ireland), and there with Chambers discovered the Death of the Godhead, not of merely Jesus as a part of some weird ‘trinity’ where only the ‘Son’ dies. In January 2006, disheartened with my theological studies first at Claremont four years previous and then again with studies at the U of West Florida, the hallowed ground of a certain Bultmann theologian (who I never understood nor liked), I randomly typed in “Christian Atheism” into Google, almost as a last-ditch joke to myself, and lo! The New Gospel of Christian Atheism, by Thomas J. J. Altizer, came up. I was amazed, and told my instructor at West Fla., and she knew him, of course, having been a student of Dr. Cobb, a friend of Altizer, at Claremont Graduate University. Four months later I withdrew from the U of W. FL and began my career as a writer in earnest (Summer 2006). But, first and foremost, I have fully reconciled Carlos Castaneda with the Gospel (and have the first draft of a book written)–therefore, my primary teachers are Thomas Altizer, as well as Castaneda, Chambers, William Blake, and W. B. Yeats. I have many more minor influences, as do we all.

-

Thomas J. J. Altizer asks:

Is religious revolution only an academic category, one of interest only in a purely academic inquiry, or, is it in fact occurring in the world, and in our world, even if only occurring invisibly?

-

Skadi meic Beorh answers:

I believe that today true and deep theological inquiry is taking place only in speculative fiction, as it has since Dante and Milton. I, but one author of the many stepping forth in our day, have a novel yet unpublished titled A Lonely Place about a man’s journey INTO the Death of God. I have an anarchic satirical fantasy novel to be published by Wildside Press, a major player in the speculative fiction world, in 2010. Its ironic title is To Be Saved From Witches. Perhaps this quote from another favorite thinker encapsulates why I shy away from theology as a profession, and hide behind the writing of fiction:

-

‘I don’t think the shaman from what I’ve read is really too interested in defining his role in society, he’s just more interested in pursuing his own fantasies. If he became too self-conscious of function, I think it might tend to ruin his own inner trip.’

– Jim Morrison

________

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, 1802

***

“The vision of Christ that thou dost see is my vision’s greatest enemy.”

William Blake