From whence cometh catma?

[Lord Quantum]

So yeah, I got bored yesterday and randomly decided that I was gonna write something on catma but I got sidetracked into trying to locate the first appearance of the word (since I didn't see it in the PD). Does anybody know where it started? Just wondering.

[Jasper]

The seventies.

/Thread

[Telarus]

Yes, Johnny Brainwash and I nailed that down during the last KallistiCon. In Thornley's auto-Biography, "The Dreadlock Recollection", edited by Trevor Blake (SubG and a friend of mine), he defines "Katma" thusly:

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=20494.msg695963#msg695963

Ah, you tried a word search, eh? In this instance, he spells it "Katma":

p215

Brunswick, the bowling alley in which Greg and I first disorganized the Discordian Society, is mentioned in the Oracles of Nostradamus, which I only discovered recently. So that is an authentic miracle – especially since it says something about chaos emerging from Brunswick! All bowling alleys are sacred to Discordians – since most of them have Brunswick pin setting equipment. A synchronistic coincidence that proves a dogma like that is called a Katma – a combination of karma and dogma. Actually I'm not a reincarnation of Edgar Cayce, no matter what they say.

I'm a reincarnation of Jean Dixon.

The OP in that thread was about the other Thornley book, the Prankster and the Conspiracy, which is also worth checking out.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm pretty sure Telarus is correct in the first usage. RAW uses it but he uses it more as the opposite of Dogma (My Catma ran over your Dogma).

(From an Interview with RAW)
It was Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley who founded the Discordian Society, which is based on the worship of Eris, the Goddess of Chaos, discord, confusion, bureaucracy and international relations. They have no dogmas, but one catma. The catma is that everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. I found the Discordian Society to be the most satisfactory religion I had ever encountered up until that point, so I became a Discordian Pope. This is done by excommunicating all the Discordian Popes you can find and setting up your own Discordian Church. This is based on Greg's teaching that we Discordians must stick apart.

And from one of his lectures:

Discordians don't have dogmas, which are absolute beliefs; we have catmas which are relative meta-beliefs. And the central discordian catma is, as I said before, any affirmation is true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. And if you repeat this 666 times, you will achieve supreme enlightenment -- IN SOME SENSE!

But Kerry predates both of those with his 'Katma'.

[Lord Quantum]

I like the idea of katma as a "coincidence" that proves dogma. I mean, if you can't use circular reason to prove your religious beliefs, why even bother having beliefs at all?

[The Johnny]

Dogma.

Catma.

Happens when oppositional people get into linguistics.

[NotPublished]

Some people are dogs, some are cats, and some hate them both. Which one are YOU?

[BabylonHoruv]

A ferret

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

A squirrel...

[Telarus]

Don't make me get out the furry pics....  

I'm pretty sure Telarus is correct in the first usage. RAW uses it but he uses it more as the opposite of Dogma (My Catma ran over your Dogma).

(From an Interview with RAW)
It was Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley who founded the Discordian Society, which is based on the worship of Eris, the Goddess of Chaos, discord, confusion, bureaucracy and international relations. They have no dogmas, but one catma. The catma is that everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. I found the Discordian Society to be the most satisfactory religion I had ever encountered up until that point, so I became a Discordian Pope. This is done by excommunicating all the Discordian Popes you can find and setting up your own Discordian Church. This is based on Greg's teaching that we Discordians must stick apart.

And from one of his lectures:

Discordians don't have dogmas, which are absolute beliefs; we have catmas which are relative meta-beliefs. And the central discordian catma is, as I said before, any affirmation is true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. And if you repeat this 666 times, you will achieve supreme enlightenment -- IN SOME SENSE!

But Kerry predates both of those with his 'Katma'.

It's the same phenomena. The Law of 5's is a neurolinguistic game-rule that gets constantly bombarded by the coincidences Kerry refers to. It remains a successful catma because of the reinforcement built into the meme. Everything is related, directly or indirectly to the number 5.

[Lord Quantum]

Everything is directly or indirectly related to anything.

[the last yatto]

in some sense