Celebrities on the Fringe

As Robert Anton Wilson said “Convictions create convicts” and it’s true that our beliefs can not only define us but mess us up as well.

This is particularly true of our religious and/or spiritual ones. The slash being there is there because these two not always the same thing.

This is because whether we are willing to admit it or not these beliefs are based purely on what we want to be true, what we are afraid is true, or were told what we want to be true. But have with no real way of proving it one way or the other than dying and finding out there if something else really happens and thus and such is what it’s like, and if my favorite novel about the afterlife Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife by Mick Farren is true than not ever then.

Nope, there is not math or science that can be applied to belief systems, which is one reason there are so many, and why so many of them are so darn silly (ALL belief systems other than mine and yours are silly, and I’m not too sure about yours).

While none of us really have any room to point and smirk those who pick a minority belief system do seem to come in for more of it, which is why those beliefs are often kept close to the vestments, to coin a phrase.

Ahh, but what about celebrities? You know, people famous for being well known… While having become celebrated due to being able to say words in front of a camera that someone else wrote as if there were their own words, or doing something in the realm producing those things that “have a good beat and you can dance to,” in no way means you are qualified to make a hardboiled egg without burning down the house, must less expound on life, the universe and everything any more than the next smoe you meet, or you and me for that matter.

However it does give them a particular boldness in going on about their, at least to the majority, off the wall belief system.

Take for instance these beliefs and the celebrities that love them.

Kabbalah:

Not the “real” ancient rabbinic school of esoteric thought that you had to be A. male, B. married and C. over forty before you could even ask to start studying and that while it may have led to some adherents building or at least trying to build a golem, for sure never got them to wear trendy little red anti hoodoo bracelets! No I mean the David Berg flavor of Kabbalah, there we find.

Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Roseanne Barr, Sandra Bernhard, Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Lucy Liu, Rosie O'Donnell, Naomi Campbell, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, James Van Der Beek, and Heather McComb among others.

Or

Scientologists the only church that I know of that has “celebrity centers” which caters to the likes of Kirstie Alley, Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley (former she left), Priscilla Presley, John Travolta, Edgar Winter, Charles Manson, Isaac Hayes, Chick Corea, Juliette Lewis , Nancy "Bart Simpson" Cartwright, Katie Holmes, Jason "My name is Earl" Lee, Beck, Greta Van Susteren.

And Lastly let’s add Deepak Chopra and his new age groovy take on ancient Vedic wisdom which while it doesn’t have the numbers of the ones above, does with Steven Seagal  who says that he can now heal with his hands, after I assume doing the opposite with them if you don’t watch out, Oprah Winfrey who really ought to just cut it out with the bad cable channels and just start her own religion, and Demi Moore have the chops to run with the first two.

All I can say is thank Goddess I’m a disbeliever!

We may not know any more than anyone else, but at least there are no mandatory fashion accessories, we do smug well, and we can pretty much eat what we want to.