What really happened
From: S.A. Morrigan
June 5, 2024
While I no longer actively follow whatever the chatters may be found among the detritus of the internet as they relate to so-called "Filianism" or "Deanism," occasionally I am alerted of them. I'd like to take the liberty of directly addressing some of the oft-found claims and complaints, as well as questions posed by those who appear to be genuinely curious about the history of the said cybersect and its relationship to the "Aristasian" subculture.
My participation in "Aristasia" and the "Filianic/Deanic" cybersect:
I came across the Aristasia Friends website sometime around the summer of 2005, after I found a mention of it in Wikipedia under the entry for "Goddess worship." At the time, the website had the basic information about "Aristasia-in-Telluria," as well as a primitive web forum and an affiliated external site focused on "Pit criticism" from a British perspective. I ordered my copy of Alice Lucy Trent's philosophical treatise, The Feminine Universe, which was mailed to me directly from England by Miss Marianne Martindale and Miss Priscilla Langford. I read this book with great interest. By the early autumn of that year (2005), I was a more or less regular participant in the web forum then known as the Blue Camellia Club. When the nascent Operation Bridgehead was formed and its presence in Second Life was launched, I was among the first to arrive there, under the name given to my first SL avatar, Fiona Gregoire (this SL account remains still active to this day, and I do log in at least once a month).
In the Second Life outpost of Aristasia (called "Virtualia" by some), avatars Sushuri Madonna (nicknamed the Mushroom, likely the same person later known as Cure Dolly) and Chancandre Aquitaine (formerly called Sushuri Novaryana before SL) functioned as the leaders. I have had some inklings that they may be the same individual representing two facets of her personality (and so was perhaps "Lady Aquila," who was never seen in SL but was very active elsewhere online). Also important to note is that around this time, Miss Martindale was abruptly silenced and made irrelevant. Shortly before the start of Operation Bridgehead, she was regularly contributing a column to The Chap magazine and even gave a live interview on a primetime television show in the United Kingdom. Likewise, some of the core members of the pre-Bridgehead online Aristasia such as Miss Isabelle Trent (aka Duchesse) and "Belladonna" disappeared during this time of transition into SL.
The period between the launch of the SL Aristasia embassy and the reported relocation of the Mushroom from Essex, England, to Rosarito, Baja California, is what I refer to as the "Bridgehead era." This is my frame of reference and may not represent the views of anyone else, but the series of events leading to the Mushroom's moving out of England appeared (based on what I heard from the grapevine) to involve serious interpersonal conflicts at the Essex community, details of which I was not privy to. However, this frame of reference provides a helpful way to tell the history of this peculiar community. (The hijacking of Aristasia by "Lady Aquila" and her group, which included the Mushroom, was widely speculated at the time.)
After the Mushroom's relocation to Baja California, most of the online activities have moved off Second Life, to their own hosted platforms such as Heartbook, an internal Facebook-like social platform based on the BuddyPress plugin for WordPress. The embassy was maintained in Second Life (in the Blumfield sim) for about another decade by an individual known in SL as Adele Poppy, but it was no longer an active community hub.
My participation and presence in the Aristasia community online faded by the late spring of 2006, just because I no longer had access to a computer that could run the Second Life viewer at that time, because of relocation. I only returned to Second Life in 2016, a full decade later, when I finally got a used laptop with enough memory and computing power for SL. I followed online discussions on other Aristasian platforms for a while, but I ultimately lost interest as by then, Aristasia became mostly about anime and kawaii. It was fine when they were still into the Takarazuka Revue, but for me, the beginning of the end was when they began treating the anime called Mari-mite as though it was a divine revelation.
The post-Aristasian development of Filianism and my part in it
In 2006, I was disillusioned by two distinct but intersecting events. First, as I noted above, I was frankly disgusted with how Aristasia went from something that was highly intellectual, philosophical, and refined, to a bizarre mixture of infantized roleplay, naively romanticized Japanese pop culture, and misappropriated Hinduism. Second, shortly (about two months) before I came across the Aristasian website back in 2005, I was ordained priest in a fringe independent sacramental movement (ISM) church jurisdiction. By the end of that year (2005), I was extremely disillusioned by some of my colleagues who espoused far-right and bigoted beliefs. I was ostracized for being too theologically liberal, too social justice-oriented, and too outspoken. I resigned in January 2006, only to be recruited by (or duped into joining) another ISM jurisdiction led by a highly questionable "archbishop." (I put the quotation marks here because he had a series of scandals since then, and although his apostolic lineage may be technically legit, I no longer believe he was a bona fide pastoral authority nor was he leading a bona fide church.) The so-called archbishop appointed me his vicar episcopal shortly thereafter, and by September 2006, he announced that he would appoint me a bishop (even though I was only 31 years old, had zero prior experience in a liturgical tradition, was merely an evangelical bible college dropout, and by then I had largely apostatized from Christianity); it was only after a few bishops complained about this, he (maybe wisely, for once) decided to cancel the scheduled consecration and excommunicate me, less than two weeks before the event.
I was quite angry at the time, although in retrospect I regret my arrogance, lack of candor, and my state of deep delusion. Frankly, I now wonder why I was so obsessed with becoming a "bishop," especially since I came from the Baptist and Pentecostal/Charismatic worlds where no such thing existed. I was perhaps overly fascinated by the ritual beauty of the liturgical churches (around that time I was regularly attending an Episcopal parish, although I never formally joined it; and I was awestruck by the consecration service of former Bishop Gregory Rickel of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, which I attended as part of my "archbishop's" delegation); or more likely, I simply needed to feel like I was somebody -- a challenge when I was on-and-off chronically houseless living in extreme poverty. I was back on the street in August of 2007, and I was squatting in a dilapidated, abandoned fifth wheel next to a community garden at the time. Like in the famous children's story The Little Princess, maybe this kept me from going fully insane if I could tell myself I was a bishop, a president, a grand-poobah, whatever, anything but a bum.
The anger and delusion met a desire for revenge. Free from the so-called "archbishop" and his jurisdiction, I decided to go full steam ahead on pursuing what I was interested in: to create a modern, international Filianic church that is not linked to Aristasia, British nostalgia, or kawaii. Hence born the Church of the Divine Heart, which would eventually be known as the Collyridian Filianic Communion.
But it did not develop in the way I anticipated. Despite my efforts (with a very limited budget) no one around me showed any interest. The so-called church never actually met, nor did it have a member. But something else happened: several individuals saw my website and contacted me. They asked me lots of questions as though I was some kind of an expert or an authority on this topic when I too was trying to figure all this out. I was very frustrated that I had very little I could offer but I worked hard to create something based on whatever I had at that point. Hence I collected the Filianic Scriptures and made them available in a book format; I created a small prototype prayerbook (breviary) as an appendix to it, hoping it would prove to be useful and possibly inspire others who develop a richer body of liturgical texts. But honestly, I was getting tired of this. I was looked up and they'd call me "Your Grace" or whatever, then they somehow organized their churches/denominations and they were attracting members. They all went in their own directions, adding all sorts of "foreign" materials such as Egyptian mysticism, occult, Wicca, etc. (although, I was in retrospect guilty of doing just that, mixing elements of Western Christian patrimony into Filianism). So there was no unit cohesion. But they kept calling me "Your Grace" and they'd quote whatever I wrote. Such individuals, including Pamela Lanides, Georgia E.B. Cobb, River Stephens, "Philemon", Glenn King, and R.J. MoChridhe, did this and their visions of Filianism wildly differed from mine. Eventually I was thoroughly burned out by this, as I felt that I was made into a figurehead with no real impact and was merely providing free labor to those who were only there to build their own empires.
Looking for ways to be more effective, I decided that I needed more education and training. I enrolled in (now-defunct) Ocean Seminary College and majored in feminist theology. In retrospect, the intensive coursework at a postgraduate level was a lifesaver. As I mentioned earlier, I was houseless at that time. The study kept my mind off the harsh realities of street life, satisfied my intellectual curiosity and kept my brain from going nuts, and kept me occupied as I spent countless hours in several university libraries late into the night (special thanks to the now-defunct Concordia University Portland and Marylhurst University libraries, which gave me a library card).
So finally, out of utter frustration and desperation, I wrote an open letter (dated July 1, 2012) that was deliberately worded to turn them off -- I simply wanted to get them off my back at that time. While some of my confessions in that letter were genuine, it was exaggerated on purpose for this reason. The historical context in which that letter was written was this: (1) I attempted to reform the excess and disorder that were rampant in the "independent Filianist" movement by proposing a new umbrella organization, in December of 2011, called Metroum: The Reformed Filianic General Association, a federation of lay-led, consensus-governed, and flatly organized autonomous congregations with a greatly simplified worship and no clergy class; this proposal, needless to say, went nowhere. (2) By the summer of 2012, I was very busy in the local activist scene that was booming following the worldwide Occupy Wall Street protests, and I finally found a place where I could use my voice and leadership for good. While I still was interested in Goddess religions and Neo-Paganism in general, I could no longer spend much time on Filianism.
This letter, apparently is still circulating almost 12 years later, and is a source of "controversy." The thing is, all these people who read the letter, got a wrong impression and called me a "snake" or whatever, I have never known them. They are younger folks who joined the Filianic cybersect years after I left. And as far as I am aware, Mrs. Lanides left the Filianic/Deanic faith a few times (only to come back later). As to Mrs. Cobb, I am not even sure if she is still alive given her age.
In short, I was only active in the Filianic cybersect from 2005 to 2012, and by the end of 2013, I had abandoned that fake religion entirely. I have a lot of regret, guilt, and shame over many things I have done in my life, many of which were products of my gullibility, delusional tendency, lack of self-awareness, and autistic neurotype; and this roughly decade-long chapter in my life was one of them.