the ancient order of fomorians

2022

One can find on the internet mysteries and speculations about who the Fomorians are. They were introduced to me via text message on 2020 August 14 by a friend who is now known as the Ancient Order of Fomorians member A Ghost when, in response to my expressing interest in Irish mythology, he said "I like the Fomorians" and sent me a link to the Wikipedia article.

My initial understanding of the Fomorians is as follows. They are among many types of beings that have bodies which manifest physically but also extend into dimensions of spirit such that, in relationship to human perception, they exist at the fractal boundary between reality and imagination. They are among a mythology of Ireland that has not been documented and perhaps transcends the capacity for documentation. They are survivors of an apocalyptic event at the end of the Atlantean epoch, who were mutated and deformed by the effects of war technology that's beyond the comprehension of current mainstream civilization. Their physical manifestation bears no set of recognizable unifying traits other than being grotesque, abominable, and usually large. The parts of their bodies existing beyond physical dimensions are nightmarish and menacing, yet transmit a strange sinister tranquility like the warm embrace of death after the pain of dilapidation. They enjoy violence and terror and continue to oppose Ireland's assimilation into Christianity, though the alternative they offer is chaotic and confusing.

I wanted to organize a group to wear bizarre costumens and march as fomorians in the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade, and garnered interest from A Ghost and two other friends now known as Ancient Order of Fomorians members The Flayed Monk and The Mets Fan. I learned from my mom, who used to march in the parade as a child with her grandfather, who had been active in the Irish Republican Army, that the event is organized by The Ancient Order of Hibernians, so I reached out to them to inquire about what's involved in marching in the parade, not disclosing my full intentions, and was invited to attend a meeting at the Thomas Cardinal O'Fiaich Division 7 at the Black Sheep in Manhattan, which I did on 2022 March 2. I learned (without asking) that the restrictions of the parade would not permit my idea, for instance they had kicked a guy out the previous year for wearing green socks with beer mugs on them even though he was wearing a suit.

Part of the way through the meeting, it was announced that there were two new people, one being me, who were there to be initiated into the Ancient Order of Hibernians. We were called up one at a time to take an oath, so I played along, which included telling the lie that I was a practicing Catholic. By the end of the night, extremely drunk on whisky and beer, I was berated by the division's vice president, also extremely drunk, for not having active connections to family members in Ireland and not having a better knowledge of the history and importance of the order's role in weapon trafficking. On the up side, I also learned that the group helped set up an exchange program for children between Catholic and Protestant families in Ireland to resolve the remnant cultural tension from the fighting, and that they help raise funds for Hispanic immigration. Nonetheless, overall I found them to be disturbingly obsessed with genetics and drinking, and I regarded my interaction with the group as a cautionary experience preventing me from becoming too fixated on my own familial origins.

I used the membership in the Ancient Order of Hibernians as an opportunity to march with my mom and my friend Marcel in the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade.

2023

In February, I learned from my girlfriend about the St. Pat's For All Parade that began as a response to the exclusion of Irish LGBTQ Communities from the 5th Avenue parade, and suggested to my friends that we march in that as The Ancient Order of Fomorians. The Mets Fan reported, "Lol that's the parade that always goes down my block. It's always a good time. One year I met DeBlasio and then fell asleep under a mororcycle." I made a sign, registered for the event, and we each developed our characters and costumes. A Ghost was unable to march due to a leg injury.

Toward the end of the year, with the help of my girlfriend, I took on some problems I'd been struggling with throughout my life that were caused by sexual repression resulting from my Irish Catholic upbringing. My way of dealing with it culminated in my creating a talisman and sending it to The Pope along with a letter declaring my self-apostasy from all Abrahamic religions. I then told the Ancient Order of Hibernians that I was not a Catholic and not a member of their group and to remove me from their list of members, which they respected.

2024

I had taken a large dose of LSD a couple of weeks before the parade and had not fully processed the information from that experience. I'd damaged some friendships in the fallout from that and was feeling generally threatened and combative. Underneath the latex mask of my costume I put a gas mask painted to look like a mouth with sharp teeth and a strange protrusion, to add a barrier between the people around me and what felt like my inappropriate amount of emotion. The Mets Fan boldly marched beside me. When we screamed, I included some verbal ranting in retaliation to perceived persecution, along with the nonverbal screaming. I felt affected by the negative energy from other people marching in the parade: a lot of it was about fighting things and rejecting things and there wasn't a lot in the way of celebrating alternatives to these things. I felt like we were the lunatic fringe of an incoherent group of pissed off disorganized people, and that it was our role to express a forbidden hatred.

We went to a bar after the event and I said something to someone that pissed him off causing him to try to start a fight with me, pushing me and ripping my shirt, which made me eerily calm and intimidating as he flipped out and got himself kicked out. I stayed at the bar for a long time with The Mets Fan and discussed mysticism and exopolitics. Afterward, I lost the poll that held our banner. It took a while for me to stabilize again but I did.

2025

It was going to be me and The Flayed Monk this year, but The Flayed Monk's mom had to get an emergency heart surgery so instead my girlfriend marched with me as The Green Curmudgeon. In contrast to the prior year, by the date of this year's parade I had been abstaining from all drugs including alcohol for over a month.

I wanted to add a serendipitously recovered Irish hat of sentimental value to my costume but it wouldn't fit with the way the hair is shaped on the latex mask, so I lit it on fire, then wore it inside-out with the hat pinned on top. I added a scarf I'd acquired from the Ancient Order of Hibernians, modified to say "ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS FOMORIANS" and "FRIENDSHIP, UNITY & CHRISTIAN SATANIC CHARITY". 

Again, there was a lot of negative chanting, yelling "Fuck Trump!" and whatnot. Afterward, we discussed what The Green Curmudgeon called incoherence, and I called paradoxes, in the messaging: using fighting words alongside pro-peace words, using Irish culture as an identifier for a poorly defined platform of liberal ideology, and the juxtaposition of All-Cops-Are-Bastards rhetoric with the fact that police-work was a major entry point for Irish immigrants into American culture in New York. To me these are a central themes to which the Fomorians are relevant.

I assert that Irish Catholicism is not a Christianization of Pagan beliefs but a Paganization of Christianity. The "conversion" of Ireland to Christianity was not a hostile take-over but a cultural evolution whereby existing concepts were mapped onto a Christian framework, with their ancient meanings fully in tact. We see this in the role of Catholicism in Ireland's self-emancipation from the British. The rebellion consisted in organized violence backed up by unilateral desire for revenge, held together by a shared working-class culture named "Catholic", the so-called original version of Christianity. Yet the messages of Christ are clear on the themes of violence and hatred: that one is to love their enemy and that one is to "turn the other cheek" rather than retaliate. Christ's persistence through culture is a result, in part, of pacifism at all costs, including torture and martyrdom, with the rewards to be reaped in the afterlife. "Paganism" is a catch-all word for myriad ideas, much of which we have no written record, but whatever it was that held the Irish together empowering them to free themselves from British exploitation, it was not Christian. These concepts are unspoken and unavailable for logical examination among groups like the IRA, the AOH, and my alcoholic mental-illness plagued family... because the concepts operate on the prelinguistic programming of Irish culture, and can only be accessed after extensive self-actualization which very few people put in the work to achieve. In the use of Irish culture to frame liberal beliefs, we see a similar confusion about violence and pacifism.

Then we have the fact that Catholicism reject gays, which is the whole reason why this parade came to exist. One has to wonder, why would a gay person want to march in a Catholic parade? Why would one want to be included in a religion that rejects them? Would a Jewish person want to march in a Nazi parade? The answer is that Catholicism has much more to do with shared ethnic and tribal identity than it does with any organized Christian teaching, and while there's no obvious stance on homosexuality from the ancient beliefs, there is adaptability for queerness among the Irish Otherworld.

As far as ACAB, we figured something out there as well. One shouldn't use the word "Bastards" in this context, for several reasons. Firstly, it's inaccurate to compare a person who takes on the role of a police officer with an inherited state of illegitimacy: putting on that uniform is a choice. Secondly, it's counterproductive to use this word in a slogan that has transgenerational value. How do you explain to a child who, by no fault of their own, was born out of wedlock, what a bastard is and why we would call a cop one? This is needlessly confusing and complicated. But fear not. The Rockabilly Were-Giant and The Green Curmudgeon have the solution, and you can even keep your acronym: All Cops Are Bureaucrats.

The cop issue is relevant to the use of Irish culture to represent the underdog in America. In Ireland, during the time of the Potato Famine (and the reason the potato blight was such a problem is that the British were systematically extracting from Ireland any other source of food), when hoards of Irish immigrants were coming over to the East Cost, a "cop" to them was synonymous with a member of the British military. In America, the Irish were at first considered dangerous criminals but as the politics evolved, the Irish came to gain power by accessing police jobs and, since they looked like the people in charge, eventually joined white America and became just as complicit to institutional racism and our culture of exploitation. This is where the "All" in ACAB is important: Irish cops are no longer rebels, but bureaucrats. Irish families that get wasted and blast the Clancy Brothers while regurgitating racist ideology have misappropriated their own culture. If one wants to go back to the roots of the Irish rebellion, which may or may not be a good idea, but this is important to consider consciously, one must be prepared to give up all the luxuries of American life and participate in an armed rebellion against the ruling class.

To wrap up, it's not so simple as seeking peace and acceptance for all. Someone who habitually financially supports companies like Amazon, Apple, McDonalds, Nestle, Nike, Walmart, etc, has no place calling themselves a pacifist. You can't be a pacifist while financially supporting the rewards of violence. We're indoctrinated with habits that continue an ongoing history of enslavement and exploitation which is invisible from within our sterilized environment, and most of the so-called opposition to this is a mere fashion statement subject to the same type of commodification that perpetuates enslavement and exploitation. A country where it's not just women who are free to buy marked-up designer handbags made by slaves: not the answer. What is the answer? I don't know. Am I advocating violence? I don't know, but if you are going to advocate violence "remaining silent" might be a good idea until you get your shit together. My approach in general, and this goes beyond the pseudonym used for my so-called art, is as follows, and both of these points are crucial: (1) I refrain from having strong opinions about things with which I have no personal experience, and (2) I seek personal experience with things that I care about.

If I ever do find the perfect manifesto for the Ancient Order of Fomorians, they will become obsolete. In the meantime, see you next year.