“Discussion: Is Richard Bandler a Satanist?” tries to link Richard Bandler, satanism and Aleister Crowley.
“After discussions I have been privy to about NLP training I am bound to ask if the creator of this technology Dr. Richard Bandler is a satanist. I further note the question on this forum about Mr. Alistair Crowley. What can we assume is the overlap between NLP and the occult? I am not aware of ANY mention of this matter written in the sales pitch but perhaps that’s not surprising.”
Some people seem to have this disorder where anything different is evil, and will make the weakest correlations to prove it, usually by a simple ritual formula of rhetorically collocating their target with Aleister Crowley and/or Satanism and then concluding by equating Aleister Crowley with Satanism, or visa versa. It’s like the Godwin’s Law of Occultism.
“But on a more serious note, the fact that you ask that question makes me wonder, do you actually have any knowledge of satanism at all?
Or NLP for that matter”
That meme is just as out of control as the Nazi analogy ever was, don’t you think? [see] So, it’s time for the lesser banishing ritual of the analogy: Griogair’s corollary to Godwin’s Law is “Once a discussion of some topic reaches a comparison between Satanism and Aleister Crowley, its usefulness is over.”
Update 28oct2010: It might be catchier, and therefore totally acceptable to call this The Crowley Corollary instead. And, the corollary to the corollary is: “The person guilty of The Crowley Corollary knows nothing interesting or useful about Aleister Crowley or Satanism, if anything at all.”
I think I’ll start using as a subset of “hysteria” a new tag “The Crowley Corollary” for articles I find which demonstrate this phenomenon.
Update 28oct2010: I’ve also thought of this as something like a Six Degrees of Rhetorical Satanism … that when someone finds some way to connect any given topic to either Satanism or Aleister Crowley, then the other is immediately invoked to end the usefulness of the conversation.