Thefollowing article appeared in Web of Wyrd #8.
You know, I'm not too sure that it's safe for me to be associating with
you guys all things considered: "We have allowed the legalising
of abominations like witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion."
And to think I was fooled into believing that you were mostly
harmless except for an interesting approach to sing-songs 'round the
camp-fire and a strong attachment to strange jewellry. But no, my
immortal soul is apparently in grave danger from "demonic powers
behind the evils that we have allowed into our land." Oh how
could I have been so blind? Woe, woe and thrice woe!
I paid a visit to my friendly neighbourhood xtian bookshop ("We
give a Bible message to everyone who comes into the shop") and
came away with a bunch of one page factsheets warning me about the
dangers that dwell in the world, and wait to entrap me in mind, body
and spirit, and well warned I am. For instance: "Hallowe'en is
the night when the spirits of the dead and demons visit the earth.
That is why people dress up as witches and other frightening
things." If these leaflets are typical of the modern xtian's
world view, then there is much to be afraid of. The first two quotes
come from, "An Introduction to Intercession and Spiritual
Warfare", where the believer is exalted to, "stand in all
the armour of God and wrestle in prayer." It may be just a
coincidence but I kept thinking of Reichian Body Armour and the
joyless life its possession entails.
In "Hallowe'en" we are warned against Hallowe'en parties and
encouraged, "to find a wholesome alternative and to warn others
of the demonic background of what is too often seen as just a
harmless bit of fun." Having been raised a Puritan, I'm well
aware of the dangers in harmless bits of fun, like Playing Cards.
Were you aware that, "The first deck of playing cards was
invented in 1392 for King Charles of France who incidentally was
insane." Oh well, say no more; anything done for a loony must be
suspect. The Puritans called cards "The Devil's Picture
Book", and that's all that we need to know after being told of
"The Brothel Game", where people talk dirty with each other
using a secret code in the cards, and how the Holy Family are
blasphemed in hideous jest; we are then asked if we could then
"go on playing with a sinful pack of cards?" But, I ask
myself, how can 52 pieces of printed card be sinful? How do we
measure sinfulness? What does it look like? What's its weight?
Colour? You get my drift?
However, this is nit-picking in the face of faith, especially when,
"Witches and those closely associated with the occult use cards
to trick and delude men and women into vice, error, deceipt, and
finally into Hell." And that brings us back to Hallowe'en,
doesn't it? By convincing our kiddies that this blasphemous Pagan
ritual is harmless fun, you evil witches trick them into dressing up
as witches and lure them thuswise into sin and perdition:
"dressing as a witch you could open the way to being involved
later with the real thing ... Many young people have already been
deceived in this way to their cost." I must admit that I'd
always assumed that it was commercial exploitation by the business
world that has added Hallowe'en to the list of religious festivals
that are prostituted in the name of consumerism, and thus enter the
public realm. Maybe Satan is a businessman? Why not? It seems
imperative that the xtian sees the hand of Satan everywhere; "The
attraction in witchcraft is the power that it offers even though
this is from Satan." But how is this conclusion arrived at?
Well, we know for a start that, "A witch is something that is hateful
to God." and we know that God feels this way because He tells us
so in Leviticus 20:6. Now, applying the logic of "who isn't for
me is against me", we arrive at the situation where if God gets
the hump with someone, they are automatically against him. Remember,
there is no third way with Jahweh. By all accounts Satan is some else
who's had a falling out with God, and this means that, "Since a
real Christian is someone 'Born Again in the Spirit of God' (1 Peter
1:3-4, John 1:13), Satan is his enemy, and so are witches and all
their activities." It boils down to saying, "All my enemies
are ganging up on me in a conspiracy", which may turn out to be
an existential definition of paranoid delusion.
You may, or may not, be pleased to know that witches are not alone in
being hateful to God. In fact, I ran out of money before God ran out
of people to hate. Spiritualism really rubs God up the wrong way, and
again we have this on the authority of Leviticus 20:6; but probably
worse in the eyes of the xtian is the possibility that "If there
is no judgement then what sort of God do we worship who would consign
us to have to live in the presence of tyrants and murderers like
Hitler, Stalin, Herod and the like on the other side?" The
problem that we have here is our belief in the mythic Just World,
where goodness is rewarded and badness punished. And if things don't
work out that way, if St Augustine has Vlad the Impaler as a next
door neighbour in the hereafter, then the rhetorical basis of
xtianity would appear to crumble. The argument that if you are good
(ie, do as I tell you) you will go to heaven, and if you are bad (ie,
don't do as I tell you) you will go to Hell, no longer has any
validity. It could be argued that this Just World belief underlies
much of modern society which seems to be coming increasingly under
threat as the arbitrary nature of reality becomes apparent.
Needless to say, Satan is behind all aspects of spiritualism. Satan, the guy
who "knows the Bible better than many Christians", and who
sees to it that, "we remain in spiritual darkness".
Spiritualism is hopelessly in error in its attempts to communicate
with the dear departed; such things are forbidden by God and yet
again we can thank Leviticus 20:6 for this information. As for those
shades who are 'all very happy here', "Demons can impersonate
the dead". Why should they bother? Simple, it's all, "to
keep man as he is, and lure him into a false sense of security before
destroying him." And as for those healings, "What of the
healings that occur in Spiritualist meetings? Those who have
experienced them will admit that they do not always last."
And to round it all up we have them "trapped by the spawn of
Satan's scam", those who have been deeply into Spiritualism have
found it almost impossible to leave, such is its hold. People trying
to do so have experienced attacks upon their lives."
The "Freemason" tract struck me as a master piece of subtlety.
Satan is not directly implicated in this underground cult, although
the odd dark hint is let slip when voicing concern that some xtians,
"are practising Masons, who do not seem to understand the true
nature of Freemasonry. Light cannot have fellowship with
darkness." Masons are roundly attacked for their secrecy, their
lack of "total allegiance and dependence" on Jesus, their
vain presumption that they can achieve anything worthwhile in this
world without cutting God in on the action. Worst of all is the
hideous, blasphemous horror behind the secret of the Great Architect
of the Universe, JAHBULON; that sacriligious inversion of the Holy
Trinity, where JAH=Jehovah, BUL=Baal, and ON=Osiris. But I always
thought that the guy lurking behind burning shrubbery and bossing
Moses about went by the name of Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews?
Never mind that. With "The New Age of Aquarius" we are on firmer
ground, with no need for pussy-footing around. "Christians who
know their Bibles will recognise the New Age as only the old
deception by Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve ... Adam and Eve
disobeyed God and let in a new age of evil in which Satan could
invade their lives on earth." Apparently the New Age of Aquarius
was kept a secret until 1975 when it was formally announced. The
Theosophical Society gets implicated here, but exactly how is left a
little vague. Clearly this is because, "The New Age has no
visible head or organisation (although the Illuminati are probably
behind it.) It is a network of Godless ideas such as humanism,
pacifism, interfaith religion, feminism, abortion, holistic health,
homeopathy, acupuncture, yoga and witchcraft." Goddam! I just
knew that foul Illuminati had to be behind anything so Godless. (Ref
my "The Aquarian Conspiracy Revealed", Children of Sekhmet
Vol 3 No 2). Having said all that, it's claimed that the aim of the
New Age is to unify the world under the Lord Maitreya, and
centralising world food stocks and finance, "in a credit system,
allocating a personal number to everyone." Those who know their
Bible (or who watched Omen III) will know that Revelation 13 tells of
the Anti-Christ who gives his followers a mark (serial number?) which
entitles them alone to buy or sell, and coincidentally, "New
Agers consider the number 666 to be spiritually very powerful."
In case you haven't completely gotten the picture yet, we'll put it a
little more clearly: "The Bible description of the time of the
Anti-Christ and his one world government is beginning to be realised
in our lifetime, and it fits the New Age closely." Whilst the
good xtian is born again through the power of Christ and with a
little help from a Priest, "New Agers are expected to be
re-birthed and receive Luciferic initiation, by their own
efforts." In order to combat this Satanic deception the good
xtian is urged to be vigilant for New Age terms like: networking;
holistic; planetary vision; and finding one's higher self.
But enough. I don't think I can take much more of this hate and horror.
When I entered that xtian bookshop I also deliberately entered the
xtian reality tunnel, and have ended up feeling like Marvin (the
Paranoid Android) who wonders how anyone can live in anything so
small. He was referring to Arthur Dent's brain; I refer to the xtian
reality tunnel, which appears to me to be rather dark and narrow.
To be a good xtian I would have to see Satan everywhere; world peace,
inter-faith harmony, the good life; anything that threatens to bring
happiness is sinful. As a xtian I would be expected to suffer, to
sacrifice, to struggle constantly, to accept heavier and heavier
burdens, to accept calamities as a test of my faith, to give
unthinking obedience, to never once rejoice in the world as it is,
never count my blessings, and always, always see myself as fallen and
sinful. And after all this, to accept that I may not get rewarded in
this life, but have to wait for a putative afterlife for the just
rewards for all that I have given up. As mentioned above, this belief
in a Just World is a core construct of Christianity, and apart from
all that suffering, the only other pleasure of the xtian is gloating
over the fact that their opponents will, "have to face God's
judgement in the hereafter." Spiritualism of course, "is a
dangerous deception from Satan, from which it is extremely difficult
to escape. Its end is destruction." As for the little deluded
dupes of the New Age, all their efforts are in vain, because,
"Even if the New Age does achieve a measure of success, its work
will all be destroyed by fire at the end of the world." As for
the witches who get their power to harm others direct from Satan on
Hallowe'en, eventually they, "are themselves destroyed by the
one who gives them this power." Everyone comes to a sticky end,
and the xtian caught in a web of guilt, fear and passive sadism, gets
a real kick out of knowing that.
Leviticus, who gets referred to as an authority on what God does and doesn't
like, is 27 chapters of commandments, and shows the basis of many of
our current social attitudes; women are of lower value than men;
bodily functions that describe women are unclean, ie, child-bearing
and menstruation, although to be fair, the emission of semen does
make a man unclean for the rest of the day. Coitus, according to God,
is for procreation only, in much the same way it is for the beasts of
the field. After all, coitus with a woman who is menstruating can
only be for the reason of enjoyment, which as far as procreation
matters are concerned is a waste of semen. Needless to say, our
concept of "sin" comes from the "crime" of
wasting semen. Be that as it may, most interesting of all is
Leviticus 16, where description of the scapegoat is given, and how
"all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites - all their
sins" are put on the head of the goat, who is sent out into the
desert to die for their sins. Much like the later scapegoat, Jesu
Christos. Of all the curious details in Leviticus, the one that the
xtians took to their hearts is that of the scapegoat, and there seems
to be no sign of a let-up.