A process, not an event...
My work on this project/site/whatever began in late October of 2023. The site became live online a few weeks later, but, of course, is not complete yet. As you can see in the contents, there's a lot more I plan to upload/post. It'll take time! The index shows which sections are complete, and links to the pages (and different sections within each page, too), so check that out first.
Logbook of Changes
- November 28th, 2024 Finally, I've finished mirroring a (nearly) comprehensive collection of newspaper clippings and links to media appearances by Aristasians and their precursors. See it here. Originally curated by Miss Starry on Tumblr, I've uploaded the files to neocities.
- November 27th, 2024 I don’t remember when exactly “discipline-yness” (as the Aristasians quirkily referred to it) was made verboten in the community. I discuss what I remember about its abandonment, the aftermath, and responses, though, on the page about "discipline" in Aristasia.
- November 11th, 2024 Visit this page for my personal thoughts on my experiences with this group, regrets and feels, that sort of thing. Subject to update later on.
- October 31st, 2024 You may disbelieve, but I've posted a small section comparing Aristasia to the cultural milieu of 4chan. What do the Aristasian Poppitops have to do with Pepe? Something seems to have just clicked for me.
- October 28th, 2024 I've uploaded a semi-complete section to the site focused on Romantia. Romantia was introduced to me as a mixed-gender salon adjacent to Aristasia in the early-1990s. Nowadays, with more of their publication materials digitized, a different picture emerges.
- October 12th, 2024 Despite the archive situation, I've updated a bit with some news clippings concerning the court case from the early 1990s involving St. Bride's School. I also made some updates to the Storm Clouds page. Keeping this site has had mixed effects on my emotional health and I'm taking breaks to take care of myself.
- October 11th, 2024 If you are unaware, the Internet Archive, including the Wayback Machine, has been hacked and is not operational. Given the scale of their archival work, they surely have backups. I am told it will be a matter of weeks before things are online again. Until then, browsing this site, which links to a lot of archived material, may be a challenge. Apologies!
- October 10th, 2024 I just want to note that despite the results of the infamous poll on the homepage to the contrary, I may, within a month or so, remove the "frilly layout" from this site and replace it with something less cheerful. It's starting to grate my nerves in the eerie mixture of nostalgia and ugly revelations I'm dealing with. I'll save a backup when I do, so no data will be lost.
- September 13th, 2024 This doesn't relate much, but I'm also working on a gritty cyberpunk spy serial story now, too. It's so different than this and will help me get some (online) balance going on instead of feeling weird about Aristasia. Expect this site updated with the same frequency as before, though...
- September 12th, 2024 I'm currently making some small notes for writing up the section on escapism and how it relates to the development and implementation of Aristasian lore. Are these sorts of occult beliefs ever healthy? What lines do you draw? Some readers may be shocked (and dislike) some of what I say, but this weirdo is going to speak honestly.
- September 8th, 2024 Another addition to the section on Aristasia in Second Life focuses on the "Palais Magazine" article by a former Aristasian from the same era of involvement as me. It's posted just above the very last section, before the start of the part on Operation Bridgehead.
- September 7th, 2024 Have made a significant update to the section focusing on Operation Bridgehead. This portion discusses Sun Daughter Press, and, in particular, the isekai novel, Goldenhead, and how it reflected the group's changing values.
- August 20th, 2024 Added a bit to this section explaining some about BNP boss, John Hutchyns Tyndall. Added a particularly egregious picture from his obituary, but could not find a large version.
- August 19th, 2024 I've rewritten some portions of this page to include quotations from the much-earlier Madrian Literature Circle about it, demonstrating an older interest in the concept. Much thanks to Miss Starry for helping to find these snippets.
- August 14th, 2024 Major update to the section on the early history of this movement. This part, inspired by recent research by Miss Starry, focuses on the spiritual group, Lux Madriana, where much of this got its (public) start.
- August 10th, 2024 I've added a new section to this area, focusing on Aristasia's often complex relationship with the occult (and other "alternative spiritual movements"). Features guys from AOL blathering about occult warfare.
- August 9th, 2024 I must apologize for the lack of updates to this site. I've been very sick, unfortunately. I'm also moving overseas this weekend, which complicates the latter. I am, however, in touch with the amazing T. G. Rowan, who is doing some amazing research into the origins of the language/words used in Aristasian lore.
- August 1st, 2024 I've posted significant updates the Storms section concerning Aristasia's apparent ties to fascism in the early 1990s, their use of fascist iconography, and I provide some speculation about this. Expect more on this. Also of note is a small section on their usage of Aristasia Pura to justify things, and about use of occult tropes in this.
- July 30th, 2024 Please consider peeking at the Virtualia section, which has been updated with a section on bonded servitude in Second Life. What on earth do I mean by that? What was a paxit, and what was up with all the funny name games? Have a look!
- July 28th, 2024 For completeness sake, I’ll mention that a podcast called Redfem did an episode on Aristasia. Redfem, eh? Must be Marxists, so they’ll focus on dismantling the fascist aspects, right? Right? Doesn't seem like it. They’re TERFs, pushing a (false) narrative about feminization fetishes. They purposefully misgender people involved on Twitter. I won’t be paying for the podcast itself.
- July 23rd, 2024 Please consider taking a poll about this site's layout. It seems silly, but I believe it is worth bringing up. Changing it by swapping the stylesheet may well be possible if I try hard enough, but I'm still vacillating on the decision.
- July 22nd, 2024 There's been a lot of additions to the page about Aristasia online, the era of the group when I was most involved. An expanded section on Virtualia (Second Life) has been added as well.
- July 20th, 2024 I've added (what seem to be) full playthroughs of the majority of the games produced by the Silver Sisterhood, accessible here.. I'm having trouble following the plot of some of it, to be quite honest....
- July 9th, 2024 I've made some additions focused on the London Embassy in the early 2000s, Avenbridge School, and related endeavors; I plan to update that section more later. Perhaps more substantially, though, you can find a discussion of early Aristasian internet communities, "lightgames," worldbuilding, discipline, and my early interactions with it all.
- July 5th, 2024 Sorry for the lack of updates: just got out of the ICU last week. Emily Louise will be doing the second part of her livestream series on Aristasia today at 7pm EDT. Watch it here, during or after. I believe Emily will do an excellent job with this, which focuses on the online era of Aristasia in particular. I plan to watch it live. I'll try to update more over the next few.
- June 11, 2024 Some tentative updates have been made to the Storm Clouds page, addressing unsettling but nonetheless frankly relevant topics, racism primarily.
- May 19th, 2024 I finally got around to uploading the section on "age games" as they were part of Aristasia. Were we all running around dressed as schoolgirls? What was a "plenary teenie" and why does it matter? What role did age regression seem to play online?
- May 16th, 2024 I've added a small page curating recent media coverage of Aristasia. There are likely lot of smaller videos and articles floating around about Aristasia that I might've missed in this, so do contact me with any that might be of interest!
- May 14th, 2024 If you've an interest in the science denial aspect of Aristasia, I've posted about it now. You may find it surprising that it didn't play a major role, but did cause controversy amongst members while I was around. Discusses the inception of ideas such as their anti-evolution sentiment, which began as far back as the Rhennish days.
- May 9th, 2024 It turns out that the service I was using for my askbox/guesbook for this site (123Guestbook) is slowly shuttering its doors. Until I find a replacement, please use the contact form or the chatbox on the main page to get in touch.
- May 3rd, 2024 The new page typing up loose ends contains a discussion of Aristasia's complicated and checkered relationship with otherkinity. It also discusses a big question: are Aristasian personae anything like plural systems?
- April 23rd, 2024 I’ve decided to add a small area of the site dedicated entirely to sweeping around and tying up loose ends, so to speak, things that, while important, don’t quite fit in other areas. It’ll include a page covering cultural connections that Aristasian sought, formed, or drew from. I also want to add a page specifically about Eduard Gerhard’s pseudohistorical notions of matriarchal prehistory, and a page that will take a more personal tone and discuss (as anonymously as possible) some personal regrets and feelings I have about my time spent participating in Aristasia; those might surprise a lot of people.
- April 11th, 2024 After some time (about a week) I've managed a small answer to a question on the askbox about the relationship between Aristasia and trans women - were there TERFs? The answer, unfortunately, varies depending on who one asks, and I'll explain that, with references both to appearances by Miss Martindale in the media, and the Aristasian manifesto itself. Please remember - slurs and bigotry against trans people will not be posted on this site (askbox, etc), nor will personal info. Don't send it - I won't post it.
- April 5th, 2024 I've uploaded a sort of placeholder page for the section focusing on Chelouranya, also known as the Daughters of Shining Harmony, the final incarnation of this movement which took shape in the early 2010s. It includes a brief summary and such, in order to give passing visitors an idea of what Chelouranya actually was in the meantime. I hope to work on the page itself, but it is taking a backseat to other pages and topics.
- April 4th, 2024 I've finally uploaded (a skeleton) of the article on Aristasia's online operations in the 2000s, when I myself became involved in the movement. You can, as the screenshot implies, read short summaries of events such as the existence of the "Aristasian Embassy" in London, the ultimate move online and building of spaces and properties in the video game Second Life, and something we called Operation Bridgehead. Expect this page to be fleshed out eventually.
- April 1st, 2024 Upcoming pages still to be completed and uploaded include one called “But I Wanted to Aristasia…”. This will cover my brief and tentative thoughts on present-day Aristasian “subversive revival” attempts and noises about them - is that worth doing? Is it productive and safe? This will also touch on the potential consequences of the personae games they played, and how it matters today, but I also want to write more about that elsewhere.
- March 31rd, 2024 The section on St. Bride's School is uploaded in its (current, though tentative) entirety. This includes discussion of the abuse situations that apparently went on at the school, as well as a section on the group's fascist connections. I plan to talk about the latter more fully when able.
- March 23rd, 2024 After much consternation, I went ahead and uploaded what I can (so far) of the section about St. Bride's School. I don't believe I've done a good job on the topic of St. Bride's School itself, and was planning on tackling it later (after more deliberation). I started compiling it after finding some clipping I really wanted to include. Unforchers, the section is unfinished and not edited very well yet, though...
- March 23rd, 2024 I watched a livestream called The Aristasia Cult, which you can probably now stream yourself after-the-fact. We get far more to chew on here than you'd normally see from a YouTube about Aristasia, including a lot of new information. Expect to be utterly disgusted at the behavior of some within this movement as a whole.
- March 23rd, 2024 Given that the guy's livestream on The Aristasia Cult happens later today, it occurred to me that more people might be searching DuckDuckGo or whatever for "Aristasia," so I'm doing some updates so that things are as descriptive etc as possible.
- March 20th, 2024 Well now, I'm "down with the sickness" pretty severely, to the point of not being able to do much given my existing illnesses also being a factor. I'm working a bit on the sections focused on the disturbing world of St. Bride's School, but am struggling with HTMLizing it.
- March 19th, 2024 A video called The Aristasia Cult is streaming this Saturday (March 23rd, 2024). It seems like the work of an independent historian sharing his research into early Aristasian groups and their (quite real) right-wing ties. It remains to be seen if this will be a good analysis with new info, or the usual YouTubery, but I’ll definitely watch.
- March 11th, 2024 Did you know the site has an askbox for sending questions? It does! Visit the askbox here, where we're talking about Aristasia's interaction and overlap with the otherkin community. I've plans for a small section about that topic on the site eventually, too.
- March 10th, 2024 I've significantly expanded the section on what the Aristasians believed about gender. It now includes more about their views on essence versus substance and how this relates to things like gender and the mind. It also talks about aspects of misandry with regards to that.
- March 4th, 2024 I've added quite a bit of information to the page about Aristasian "discipline" and Miss Martindale. The page is still unfinished, by which I mean that the rest of it, while written, has yet to be HTMLized. I can be long-winded and am unapologetic about that.
- March 3rd, 2024 For reasons unknown, I've added a chatbox on the main page where one might leave a small message or ask short questions. Longer messages can be posted to the askbox or sent directly.
- February 25th, 2024 I've been very sick this month, and I apologize for the lack of actual, worthwhile updates. I hope to upload the "Discipline" page in full later this week, though, and after that, to tackle a discussion of St. Bride's School.
- February 20th, 2024 You will now find that the site has a rather nifty Table of Contents located on a page separate from the rest of the site...
- February 6th, 2024 I want to remind everyone that I do want to hear from you about Aristasia, your experiences with it, thoughts, etc. I especially want to hear marginalized and unique perspectives. Public comments or inquiries may be posted in the guestbook.
- February 4th, 2024 I've done some alterations behind the scenes, which should help users navigate this site more easily on mobile devices by improving the mobile menu and some other features. I'd like to thank a new(ish) friend, Miss Elspeth Loveton for her help with that, and look forward to learning more from her.
- January 28th, 2024 I've added a section to the early history page about Oxford University. Is there a connection between Aristasia and Oxford? Clearly, Aristasians lived within the city, but what of the mysterious Hester St. Clare? What's Milchford? Was it real? Includes some discussion of René Guénon.
- January 15th, 2024 I've added the beginnings of the early history page with the very first section, about the Rhennish commune in Burtonport, County Donegal, Ireland. I discuss this group and how it laid the foundations for later groups, including Aristasia itself.
- January 10th, 2024 I've started the Storm Clouds page by adding the first section, which simply focuses on the question of whether Aristasia, in its various forms, can be considered a cult.
- December 18th, 2023 I followed some tutorials from Sadgrl.online about webhooks from Discord. This allowed me to create a new version of the contact form using them, and was a real journey into the arcane world of Javascript. I'm mostly okay, though.
- December 17th, 2023 After learning more about how websites are structured in modern, responsive CSS3, I did my best to make things more friendly towards screens of different sizes by updating the stylesheet a bit. This should improve readability, too, especially for the longer passages of text. On that note, I'm also working on some drafts for the early history section, so I guess that's next.
- December 15th, 2023 You can now read a section about sexuality and love in Aristasian beliefs. I've also updated the videos page to include a list of all the videos in the playlist, and also added a couple new videos about the Rhennish commune and the Silver Sisterhood.
- December 13th, 2023 The page about Aristasian beliefs is now up, but I will be adding to it over time. Of note, the section on gender in Aristasia and how it interfaces with how they saw themselves IRL is taking some time to write.
- December 11th, 2023 Please check out the page about Raihiralan, the Aristasian language. It includes updated information about the connection between that and the language referred to as "Rhennish" in the commune of the Silver Sisters in the late 1970s.
- December 8th, 2023 The (beginnings of) the lifestyle page are now online. I expect to make other further updates to it, but it's mainly missing the section on Aristasia-in-Virtualia (Second Life), which I am still compiling.
- December 7th, 2023 The lore section has been merged with the page about Aristasia Pura into a single page, which has been updated with several new subsections. Sorting through the absolute chaos that is my Ulysses Aristasia project file, I've made significant changes to the site's (planned) structure itself, too. This is reflected in the index if you're curious.
- December 5th, 2023 Am now a Neocities supporter, which will allow me to use more resources. I'm looking forward to learning more about website management and the small web.
- November 30th, 2023 The realness page is now uploaded.
- November 27th, 2023 The Aristasia Pura page has been updated with bits about the calendar and some other stuff. And I've added a page for videos related to Aristasia that I've collected in a YouTube playlist. I also did a lot of neat stuff behind the scenes, like adding metatags to each page.
- November 26th, 2023 There's now the beginnings of an Aristasian essays page, including Raya Chancandre's podcasts. The page on Aristasia Pura got some updates too, and I'm formatting more stuff to add to it.
- November 23th, 2023 Added a page collating Aristasian fiction, including audiobooks. Added my About section too, including a contact page. There is also now a guestbook, just like the olden days. AND AND AND I've achieved a sitewide static sidebar and header using Javascript after many attempts!
- November 20th, 2023 Added the first parts of the Lore and Worldbuilding section, including the part on Aristasia Pura. Added a Raihiralan lexicon as well.
- November 19th, 2023: Added a page for Aristasian music and a general glossary. There is also now a credits page.
- November 17th, 2023: Added note in the sidebar clarifying that this site is not friendly to TERFs, fascists, or assorted bigots. You know who you are.
- November 16th, 2023: Site structure, Table of Contents, and theme (courtesy Foollovers) in place, added sidebar information.
(Whole) Pages Still To Upload (Tentative)
There are a mountain of sections within existing pages yet to complete, about all kinds of things. These, however, are the whole pages yet to be created and uploaded; the ones that will 404 if you try to access them at all. This list is subject to expansion, of course.
Uhh... do you want to help...
Preserving the history of Aristasia, it's lore and problematics, all that, is kinda a huge undertaking. If anyone out there would like to help or has anything to share, or just wants to chat, I'm easy to contact here. I'm particularly interested in preserved resources that may have since vanished from the web, or just tucked away in archives. I am also quite interested in the perspectives of those that issues pertinent here (ie gender, etc) affect more than me, or who just know more about such things than I do. If you're someone with an opinion or perspective to share, I'd also love to talk!