Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt00876)

I imagine denial strategies probably last a fair while.  

With AMORC, outsiders' understandings of the group have been strongly 
changed over the last fifteen years due to a few factors, among them 
the growth of the Internet - increasing the awareness of Americans in 
particular that there were a number of other groups out there, many 
of which had stronger claims to Rosicrucian primacy than AMORC.  

And helped along by a nasty palace coup that forced a goodly portion 
of AMORC members to look at their own history and to leave and join 
other groups.  

AMORC has always been rather autocratic, I agree it is not as open to 
debate as TS, but in turn, it has not had allegations anything like 
as sensational as the CWL ones to contend with.  

Books like Dr Tillett's on the TS and Robert Vanloo's on AMORC do 
have an effect over time, I agree.  

Certainly interested outsiders are now easily able to access 
critiques of groups.  

I think a strategy of taking such critiques into account is 
ultimately more adult and will probably occur slowly over time, in a 
number of groups from the OTO, to Heindel's odd Steiner-influenced 
creation to the TS groups.  

Nonetheless, I still feel for group leaders, a strategy of denial or 
ignoring critics has more immediate attractions. 

One recent strategy of AMORC has been to partially engage the critics 
by publishing its own history (Christian Rebisse) which makes certain 
admissions but also uses rhetoric and a number of evasions to bolster 
the group's arguments.  

This is at least an attempt to play on the history field, though not 
a very good one, and it is still very much a 'subsidiary' strategy. 

Ben Scanlon


> 
> Ben,
> 
> You've made quite a few points here.  I broadly agree with them, 
and 
> of course I can't tell the future! It's always open to questions. 
>  
> What makes me feel that the denial strategies are "not eternal" is 
> that as I see the last few decades of Adyar's historical evolution -
-
> say, 1979-2006 -- and having studied the rest of it, I see that the 
> whole set of denial mechanisms is, let's say, "making water", 
> sinking, centimeter by centimeter (in such a slow pace that you 
> would swear it is not taking place at all).   
> 
> The orchestra may still play, and desperately so, but the Titanic 
of 
> Illusions has met its iceberg already. 
> 
> The Adyar TS is different from AMORC in that it has been much more 
> open to debate, from its initial moments (1875-1891). 
>