Priory of Goom

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Once believed to be a splinter group from a Bay Area-based Choco Cult, the group was thought to have ties with several European counterparts involved the creation of golems and homunculi. As it turns out, the links were as the links between parent and child. The European counterparts were definitely the parents.

Oppositional Groupings and Secret Orders

As best as can be ascertained, the Priory of Goom was founded in Prague sometime in the latter half of the 19th century. In its early days, Priory ranks were swollen with decidedly unsavory characters bent on recreating the missing links of human origins. By the 1880s, the Priory was raising funds through the black market sales of “freak portraits”.1  The growing public demand for side shows "freaks" during this era was met by the growing supply of living jetsam cast off the increasing sophisticated experiments conducted by various Priory teratologists. P. T. Barnum, an Elemental Goom of the Priory, used his marketing genius to raise substantial capital for the organization.

Slightly Less Expensive

Apparent imitators of Priory creations were soon thick on carnival grounds where employers found such "self-made freaks" (Bogdan 1988) to be more easily managed. By the mid-twenties, competition from imitators, changing public tastes, and new scientific understandings began eating away at Priory funds and initiatives. Despite this awareness of Priory fund-raising projects, not much is known of its activities until the late-1930's, at which time it surfaced as an underground Resistance movement. Fervently anti-Nazi, the Priory carried out attacks upon the occupying German forces until the end of the war.

A Turn On Of Sorts

During the Communist period the group all but disappeared and was assumed to have either disbanded or been suppressed by the Communist regime. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Priory resurfaced with a sophisticated propaganda machine which seemed to belie earlier theories of its demise.

Monstrous Science

Recently, the Priory has agitated in favor of the Airbus A380, a "yes" vote for the seemingly moribund European Constitution, genetically modified foods and the universal increase of hot dog consumption. Although very few hot dogs can be counted as citizens (and visa-versa),2  they also advocate universal hot dog suffrage. Such a conceit, which is a bewildering hindrance in their quest to be taken seriously, has a purpose which as yet remains unknown.

Queries Resting

Given their other positions, it may be simply, as in the words of Oscar J. Peterson, "another instance of Frankengineering, the hodge-podge of European efforts to form another kind of mongrel: affable yet bland, a shining lie upon which all can agree. Never mind that soup costs more than a mobile phone."

The Priory's most famous branch remains that of San Francisco, where hip intellectuals flock to its now thoroughly pimped conclaves in search of free chocolate.

Organizational Structure

Branches exist in nearly every Western country. Ranks include Shambling Mounds, Googams and Elementals. OTO and JLP man Jack Parsons was certainly an Elemental attached to a Priory chapterhouse operating out of Pasadena.

See Also

Notes

Note 1:   (Bogdan 1988) The Priory's scheme for Kapital involved photographing and displaying some of their horrific creations to the seemingly insatiable appetite of the cartomaniac society of the time.


Note 2:   See, for example, the curious case of "Monica Casts Her Vote".

Desiderata

South Park episode 42, "The Planetarium" contained numerous "coded" references to the Priory of Goom.

Contemporary literary theorists suspect Stephen Crane possessed an intimate familiarity with the Goom.

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