Oh gawd, indeed. Archangel689, no offense, but this ground is well covered. Just search "ebay" and you'll get all the juicy threads.
GLOdefender, feel free to report them ALL to their national HQs if that will assuage your outrage. Since several of the badge collectors and a handful of ritual researchers are in fact national officers of their respective HQs, I doubt it's going to ruffle a lot of feathers.
In fact, I believe Beta wrote an article in their magazine praising one of their members who collects badges. And in my particular case, it was a national officer of my group that got me started in both these areas of study many years ago.
I don't find myself particularly pitiful, but if you're inclined to sacrifice your valuable time and effort in pitying me, then I'm quite flattered. Pity away!
BTW... If a tell-all book about rituals was my goal, it would have been published years ago, the checks would have been cashed and I would be writing this from a lounge chair outside my beachside hut in Fiji (the island, not the fraternity
). Oh, and for the record, I've never revealed any portion of my ritual to a non-member. That's a vow I take very seriously. And also for the record, I do get a "thrill" out of learning things, though I wouldn't characterize it as a "sick pleasure". GLOdefender, perhaps if you also enjoyed the thrill of learning something then you wouldn't be such a glaring ignoramus.
wptw