Jediism
Jediism is the ancient faith of those who experienced "Star Wars Media" in the 80s, and subsequent decades. The faith is divided into various sects of "Jediists". Jedi Realists, Force Realists, and Dialectical Meta-Jedi-Anti-Realists predominate. Each sect consider themselves to manifest the true spirit of George Lucas's message in his films and apocryphal literature. As of yet, there have been no military conflicts between these sects nor between Jediists and other super-natural faiths - which is fortunate as Jediists are known to pull some pretty big hissy fits. But in reality, they're pretty much the same thing, separated only by what they want to call themselves, which is to say that they keep changing the names they use because of trying to avoid the amazing lameness associated with making reality out of science fictional meta-philosophy.
There is also a movement of Sithists, but they smell like poo and so they're way outside of what we mean to talk about here.
There are no female Jediists, because the male Jediists drive them all away with their wacky almost-geeklike quality. But they aren't even good enough to be geeks, because they lack the basic drive and focus which makes geeks do cool things, like inventing an operating system nobody ever used or cared about, or perhaps starting a company that never delivers on anything it ever promised. Instead, they are merely collectors of Star Wars memorabilia and are beginning to realize that their lives have been wasted without much to show for it, so they have written a book on Jediism so that everyone can see how utterly wasteful it is.
History of Jediism[edit | edit source]
Jediism is the world's third-lamest religion (after Scientology and Christianity), started in 1977 by George Lucas, who then gave it to Daniel Jones in 2007 because he was too busy with his thriving fraud investigation business. Jones immediately fucked it up by appearing in a hoodie at a supermarket and claiming religious intolerance for not allowing his gang affiliation to be known. Since the takeover by Daniel Jones, Jediism's numbers have dropped from 500,000 to just under 9,000 in the world, and Daniel Jones then sold it off to an anonymous buyer. Now, it's a sad religion that only the most devoted fans of Star Wars can tolerate, because it requires people to dress up in lame-ass robes and recite meaningless lines from the script of Star Wars or one of the dozens of episodes of Star Wars which have gone under misleading names, like Clone Wars (a cartoon which has nothing in common with the original films), or The Phantom Menace.
The Early Years[edit | edit source]
Before 1977, Jediism had no name, and its history goes back decades thousands millions of years, back into prehistory. The first practitioners were probably early humanoids which resembled Wookieees, covered in hair and growling at each other. The un-religion was then corrupted over time, and became the Catholic Church, which then split off to the Methodist Church. As Buddhism was made up by some fat, laughing asshole 2,500 years ago, it seemed like the perfect addition to Jediism. So then George Lucas studied religions and came up with the word "Jedi" while he was stoned off "the Force", and used it because nobody had ever thought up such a cool name for a religion before. But because he wasn't sure if it would take, he decided to make a fake religious council first, with a very young Samuel L. Jackson, who he at first called "Darth Sam: Son of Sam's Father" but later renamed to "Mace Windu" when he created the Dark Side for all the people he kicked out of Jediism.
With the fake religion an instant success, George Lucas then tried to see if he could convince people that the little green men could teach people about the Force, since they had a tradition reaching back over 9000 years. Master Yoda was hired, but refused to leave his swampy home for the plush comforts of the Lucas Galactic Empire, because with his mental issues he couldn't stop speaking backwards and thought that all the Stormtroopers would make fun of him. As it was, audiences of the films made fun of Yoda because of his similarities to both Kermit the Frog and Frank Oz. Because Lucas couldn't afford the lawsuit from Jim Henson, he later had Henson killed, then tried to convince Kermie to come back to the swamp.
Back at the Ranch[edit | edit source]
Meanwhile, back at Skywalker Ranch, Jediism fans Kevin Mitnick and a sub-cult called "Ryan and Dorkman" began to plot against the evil corruptness of the Empire, who kicked out Lucas because they're assholes like that. With their own Emperor Palpatine, they crushed the rebellion. In disgust, Mitnick left Jediism and was subsequently imprisoned for hacking the Death Star so that someone in a small fighter might actually be able to destroy it. He then built R2-D2 to assist whoever it was that might want to destroy the Death Star, and then used it to hack Darth Vader's space ship, stealing the plans and setting Star Wars into motion.
Needing a new person to call Kevin, Lucas then recruited Kevin Smith, but has had issues because of Smith's inability to speak. Also considered were McCaulay Culkin and James Earl Jones, but Silent Bob won the toss by calling "heads" 100 times in a row and being more than 50% right--thus proving his ability to use the Force.
Frickin' Way[edit | edit source]
About a year after this, Emperor Palpatine was replaced in elections by Emperor Frick, who was kicked out of Lucas's Empire due to some issues with intellectual property in which Lucas lost some kind of ancient relic (probably a Stormtrooper helmet). With the Dark Side complete, Lucas has spent recent years fleshing out the Light Side.
Jones Takes the Lead[edit | edit source]
The most recent leader of Jediism was Daniel Jones (appointed by Lucas) and an anonymous party, who has also tried to patent the name "Anonymous" and the word "Jedi". Jones was also part of the "Fishing for Jedi Jesus" campaign, and came up with the logo for this effort. However, Jones ran out of money and so was forced to sell Jediism rather than to re-appoint George Lucas to its leadership.
2001 Census[edit | edit source]
In mid-2000, some witty fucker started a chain email which asked people to write "Jedi Knight" as their religion. But it caught on, and pretty soon (in 2001) there were almost 500,000 of these assholes. But really, who cares? Not even they care. Because really, this is pretty lame. It might even be more interesting if an army of these people tried to raid Parliament or something.
But then the real issue of validity came up when nobody could really account for almost half a million weirdos wearing Jedi costumes and playing with toy lightsabers, because most of those who already did this were actually just drunk convention-goers and Halloween fanatics. So it was decided that someone, somewhere, had actually used an old Jedi mind trick and convinced a shitload of people to say something that wasn't true. Sounds like the Dark Side to me! Either that, or it was the same people who managed to get Brown elected as Prime Minister just a few short years later.
Death Star in Jediism[edit | edit source]
Most Jediists don't really worship the Death Star, except at Christmas-time, when they hang one on their Christmas Trees. And even then, most of them say they're not worshiping the Death Star, they're actually celebrating the death of the sun, which is imminent (only 5 billion years left). But the sacred story of the Death Star has never been disclosed until now.
Some religious nutjobs flew some small craft into the enormous Death Star facility, destroying it. But that's really okay, because the special effects didn't last long, until their update sometime in the 1990's. We should also note that Darth Vader neatly avoided being killed because of a secret pager message from Luke Skywalker, who warned his dad that there was a Jewish plot against it. When Luke showed up, Vader took off and pretended to try to kill him.
This caused catastrophic economic backlash for the Evil Empire, who wasted no time with the mantra: "We will rebuild it." This enabled George Lucas to declare a holy day of remembrance for the Battle of Yavin, which really fucked up the whole Jedi religion. But lest we never forget, the sacredness of Luke Skywalker's winning blow against the Death Star was cause for great jubilation. Unfortunately, it signaled the beginning of the end for the rebellion, which ultimately got crushed by Emperor Palpatine as he fought Jesus.
When asked, Master Yoda was also tight-lipped (as any 900-year-old virgin might be), saying only this cryptic statement:
“Fuck off, you will. Mine, the cookies are.”
This historical statement has become a meme in Jediism to signify the sacred act of kicking someone's ass, or (alternately) being beaten down by someone who is less than 1/10th your size. The latter is referred to as "Death Starred" but doesn't have much to do with ninja stars or anything cool like that. It's just lame.
When asked, George Lucas claimed to have engineered the whole thing, but being dissatisfied with the first catastrophic destruction of the small artificial moon, he then tried to lure the remaining Jediists into attacking an incomplete version of the Imperialist base, relaying to them:
“This is practice for my buddy Osama.”
While nobody at the time knew who Osama really was, we suspect it was actually the later sock puppet for Emperor George W. Bush. The frank influence that this had on Jediism was that most of the members of Jediism were actually listed as terrorists on the no-flight list during the entirety of Emperor Bush's reign. However, because of the subsequent conversion of Obama (see below) the US government now actually recognizes Jediism as a real religion, much to the dismay of most of the Jediists, who are now scrambling to try to figure out how to make money off of it.
But the modern application of the Death Star is for Jediist assassins, who routinely pick on anyone who disagrees with them. However, given the recent green light by Lucas, these assassins have decided to be ninjas instead, which is much more cool than anything in Jediism.
Therefore, the Death Star led to 9/11 and this in turn led to the creation of a new band of ninjas. Maybe Jediism isn't quite as lame as we first thought. But maybe it's just the effect of such radical lameness that we can't help but create the feeling of win to compensate with.
Popularity[edit | edit source]
It is difficult to say how may actual followers exist in Jediism, because there are lots of people who write "Jedi" on their census forms in an attempt to screw up any hope of counting the actual followers. The real Jedi number anywhere from 3 to over 9000 , depending on which language we consider using. There are more websites than there are actual followers, though most of the serious ones take subdomains or subfolders of larger role-playing servers like Yuku.
Financial Support[edit | edit source]
Nobody is willing to financially support Jediism because George Lucas wrote it off as lame sometime in the 1980's, then said it was okay in the 1990's during an interview with Bill Moyers. As such, its credibility has waned dramatically, to the point that people now consider Jediism to be one of those fad religions like Scientology. We can't even fathom the depth of its lameness, and the unfathomable depths of its lameness actually make it seem very win for a short time, but the effect wears off.
Some Jediists are beginning to realize the oversight of not having money, and so are going out and trying to get jobs. But with President Obama recently joining the ranks of Jediism some time after taking office (it's not really clear when), there is a push to make it so that being a Jediist qualifies an individual automatically for disability and a cash award, so that they can have time to go negotiate for the USA and bully other countries' governments. However, George Lucas claimed that this is not in fact what Jediism is for, and asked that the negotiation aspect be curtailed.
Legality[edit | edit source]
UK Racial and Religious Hatred Bill makes it perfectly legal to bash any Jedi Knight. Of course, this isn't really as big of a deal as it sounds, because the dumb bastards (the Jediists, not Parliament) believe in being martyrs (see "Practices," below). So if you want to support Jediism, go find a Jedi Knight and beat the shit out of them. They honestly like it. Just be sure they're a Knight and not a Master, though, because Jedi Masters have access to the powerful attorneys of George Lucas.
Experts[edit | edit source]
Religion expert Adam Possamai (who adds a PhD to his name, just so we know he's an expert) says that Jediism is doomed to failure. But he said this way back in 2006, in a boring academic paper which is too lame to mention here, not to mention the length of the title would cause a wiki buffer overflow. But Jediism hasn't died yet, though we're not sure just how alive it can be after Jones dropped it.
Besides, I'm more of an expert than that, and I say that Jediism is alive and well, with millions of followers all over the galaxy, just not here on Planet Earth. We know this because George Lucas doesn't actually write fiction, he writes Star wars, which as everyone knows takes place in a galaxy far, far away, and is an historical record from a long, long time ago. That's the only reason that anyone would make it into a religion, right? Am I right? Right? Come on, don't leave me hangin', here. Come on. Okay, fine, fuck you all.
Princess Leia[edit | edit source]
Princess Leia was the only female Jediist ever. But she left because she couldn't stand Mark Hamill's incessant whining about it not being fair that Harrison Ford was better-looking than him. Besides, Mark was always going on and on about how unfair it was to be typecast, even though he was supposed to be this bad-ass religious leader for Jediism. And we know he's a bad-ass, because he killed his own dad, who turned out to be Darth Vader.
But enough of this digressing bullshit. We really don't give a fuck, because we all love how hot Princess Leia used to be, and we lament the fact that there are so many women who are into BDSM who want to copy her example and sleep with some fat fuck of a bad boy who won't respect her in the morning. In the words of some Jedi Masters of Jediism:
“So uncivilized.”
“I think I speak for the whole fucking council when I say: Damn. And I mean it: Damn! Where you get that fuckin' outfit? Dat bitch is HOT! What, you mothfuckas gay or some shit? Damn!”
But the lameness continues because of well-established tradition from decades back prehistory.
Some of the wannabe Leias can be found going to appropriately-geeky comic and game conventions, but part of the Princess Leia Code states that:
“No Leia shall ever sleep with any Jediist under any conditions, whether sexual or platonic, or she shall forever give up her slave robes and shall put on at least 14 pounds so that she shall forever be prohibited from the sexual nature of the Slave Leia. We do this in honor of the original Leia, whose sacrifice of sexual favors shall forever be logged in our annals. But not anals: that would just be gross.”
As such, all you have to do is to be a Star Wars geek and deny that you're a Jediist, so that they can claim you tricked them. But the drawback to this is that they can cry rape, and then you'll be required to join the Dark Side because you had sex like Anakin Skywalker did.
Practices[edit | edit source]
The practices vary widely from country to country, and include harassing local law enforcers, burning effigies of Jar-Jar Binks, dressing up as Darth Vader (and stalking other members of Jediism after drinking heavily), and playing with toy lightsabers. But the real lightsabers are only given out to Jedi Masters by George Lucas, who is so confused about religion that he practices Methodism and Buddhism at the same time as being an atheist.
Many Jediists are required to name their children Yoda (for boys) or Obi-Wan Kenobi (for girls).
George Lucas is the ultimate authority on what is canon in Jediism. All Jediists are required to do what Lucas tells them to. Besides, George is a bad-ass with a lightsaber--he would have to be to make all those kick-ass fight scenes in the movies. Anyone who disobeys George Lucas is immediately kicked out of Jediism and is required to join the Dark Side, which tends to be much less lame than regular Jediism (but still somewhat lame, due to its connection to Star Wars stuff). You can fight George Lucas, but that badass taught both Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, as well as Darth Maul... he would have to in order to make those kick-ass fight scenes I mentioned. If you happen to win, you can keep yourself from having to go to the Dark Side; if you lose, then forever will the Dark Side dominate your destiny.
Jediists are also required to build their own lightsabers in order to be Knights. But they don't have to be real laser plasma swords, they can be high-end electronic toys. And these toys aren't really toys, they're religious icons, because they were more expensive--like ten times more expensive than Walmart!
Holy Days[edit | edit source]
There are a few holy days within Jediism, notably:
- May 4th: May the Fourth Be With You Day (celebrated only by Jediists who have Facebook accounts)
- May 14th: George Lucas's birthday, a sacred day of holy masturbation
- May 25th: Star Wars Day, the anniversary of their sacred scriptures being revealed for the first time
- September 11th: Liberation Day, the anniversary of a large-scale re-enactment of the Death Star's destruction in New York City and Washington, DC
- December 25th: Christmas, a day on which the Holy Market wipes away the previous year's sins through the giving of Star Wars memorabilia
And there are also numerous days of devotional watching of the Star Wars films while masturbating (or perhaps gay sex heavy petting).
See Also[edit | edit source]
- Jedi
- Jedi Order
- Star Wars
- Star Wars Marital Aids
- Star Wars Kid
- Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith