Before confusion sets in, let's begin with one simple understanding. By and large, we're not in character on this board, we're ourselves. Café Satan is, as I have said, purely a theatrical exercise, done mainly for laughs. It is not a place for the serious Devil worshipper, or even the serious Satanist. (Yes, there's a difference). If you're here to bash Judaism or Catholicism, please move along, there's nothing for you to see here. What's on-topic in this forum? A few things ...

1. Theatre - not show listings, that would be spam. No, talking about how one approached a particular performance, a play that one liked or is writing, the sort of thing that one might hear in a green room when everybody's sober.



2. African, Carribean or South American culture - art, literature, music



3. Cooking - but let's keep this well above the Betty Crocker level, please.



4. Beverages, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic - making and drinking



5. Religion, up to a point. This is not a place for debating the merits of Judaism vs. Orthodox Christianity vs. Gnosticism vs. any other religion that has a history to it. That would be good for unending flamewars. What is acceptable is exploring in a very abstract, philosophy (or anthropology-class) fashion the implications of the assumptions that one of these religions rests on. Let's say that this world view or that one was correct - then what? In the original conception of the fictive reality of this camp, there was going to be a collision between Gnosticism and some kind of African Traditionalism (probably Yoruba), so this is on-topic.
   
   Being somewhat familiar with the religious demographics of Black Rock City, I know that I'd better emphasize that Neo-Pagan and New Age material is off-topic in this forum. The religions which are on-topic are
   
   
   

   1. Those traditional in Subsaharan Africa (pre-Christian)
   2. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy
   3. Judaism
   4. Christian "heresies" from before the Renaissance; eg. The Gnostics, the Arians, ...
   5. Traditional synchretisms of these religions, eg. Santeria

   
   and no others. The others don't fit into the storyline, and in the case of the New Age and Neo-Paganism, we find ourselves without extant traditional communities to study.



6. Culture jamming - let's never forget that we're doing this all for fun.
7. Fiction writing - build a story around the topics that come up. No, not cooking. Put it, say, in an Ibo setting.



8. The creative choices made at Burning Man - no personalities, no politics, and it's not even permissible for you to so much as segue into these when posting to this board. Artistic disagreements are one thing, but flaming, be it veiled or otherwise, is not allowed, and the decision as to what constitutes that is made by me, unilaterally, so I hope that none of you will even think about trying to play "lawyer" - no, not even in a case where I'd probably agree with you about the person that you're flaming.

Oh, and folks - let's get away from the Tarzan cliches. Even technologically primitive cultures can have a great deal of cultural depth, and at least a few of the pre-European contact cultures were technologically ahead of, say, the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, a civilization that nobody thinks of referring to as having been "primitive". I don't want to see any Rousseauean "noble savages" or quasi-Lovecraftian figures driven mad by drum beating and the drive of primal forces. What I ask of you, as a participant, is that you neither glamorize nor demonise the Africans, as you do your reading, but that you show them enough respect to see them with your eyes wide open as they are, as distinct individuals and differing civilizations, a mixture of good and bad.

When I came up with the concept of Café Satan, I placed the damned souls in an African setting, not because I think that African culture is particularly Satanic, but because I think that it is particularly interesting, and I felt that the Ibo, in particular, would serve as a good dramatic foil for some of the radically individualistic characters we'd be tossing into their midst. How would their culture respond to that presence and how would it come to terms with it? In that, I felt there would be a few interesting stories to be found.

Does this all seem a little dry? Some would say "yes", but I would disagree. Fun doesn't have to be mindless. Let's be clear on this from day one - this is NOT a postmodernist forum, and neither anti-intellectualism nor anti-rationalism will get a warm welcome. Café Satan is a drug-free zone; ravers will not be happy here. Graduate students, on the other hand, may find it to be a pleasant place to hang around.

Because I would like to see the forum stay pleasant, and because of past spamming incidents, I've decided to make it a password protected forum. Getting the password should not be difficult. If you meet me (Joseph Dunphy) in person, just ask me for it. Or you could join a list which I help moderate, and use the Yahoo reply function to send me a message - but be sure to use your primary ISP address to do so, because I won't honor requests sent from free e-mail addresses - those are too easily replaced. As long as you contact me, and I have some way of knowing more or less who you are, and you haven't acted like a twit, I'll almost certainly give you that password. The forum lies ahead.

This page is located on the Cafe Satan site at Bravenet. The Cafe Satan forum is a member of the Alternative Burning Man Forum Network; if you wish to return to a ring that the homepage for that network belongs to, then please come this way.