Satan in the Public Square Part I

"The devil is still alive and active in the world. The evil that surrounds us today, the disorders that plague our society, man’s inconsistency and brokenness, are not only the results of original sin, but also the result of Satan’s pervasive and dark action."

It was during a visit to the Italian sanctuary of St. Michael the Archangel, Satan’s mighty nemesis, that the Holy Father made this statement. I doubt if he has made a more incisive declaration in his long pontificate. Today, Satan’s "dark action" perpetrated through human instruments is indeed "pervasive." To the point where he has boldly emerged from the depths to take his place as an influential player in the public square on his own terms: notions of objective evil now viewed through a warped materialistic lens as passe as the devil himself.

This unprecedented freedom now enjoyed by Satan owes much, of course, to a decadent Church mired in sin, heresy and indifference. Local Churches have long ignored this Pope, but the devil even longer. They would run a mile rather than publicise and explain an unequivocal papal statement like that above, let alone tie it to public events.

In March 2002, for instance, I attended a meeting on Satanic Ritual Abuse at the House of Commons (as one does). Alleged survivors and the psychoanalysts who treat them were lobbying, in the face of widespread ridicule and scepticism, for official recognition of the reality and extensiveness of such abuse in Britain. The subject matter was topical and harrowing; the claims extraordinary - e.g. "There are children born for the purpose of [satanic] sacrifice who would be kept until their time came. They would be put in cages and some couldn’t walk or talk."

It was telling, therefore, that only two Catholic writers were present: myself, and freelance journalist and author Jim Gallagher.

One might have thought that serious allegations surrounding preternatural activities would have been meat and drink for the mainstream British ‘Catholic’ press. "Newsworthy evangelical opportunity" is a phrase that springs to a Catholic mind. The matter had even gained considerable publicity in the secular media, ever since the findings of a working party set up in 1994 by the British Psychological Society had backed the accounts of SRA survivors, sparking claims and counter-claims as to the reality or myth of extensive networks of Satanic abusers. The police, in turn, had become involved.

This absence and manifest disinterest, sadly noted by the packed conference room, was indicative. The more our decadent Church assimilates to the world, the more its ministers and adherents deny, dismiss, or downplay Satan’s personal role in the pervasive wickedness of daily life and public order. And this despite the fact that Satan has never been more powerful or influential in directing the prevailing currents at every level of human affairs. As exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth explained:

"There is no doubt that Satan’s power is felt more keenly in periods of history when the sinfulness of the community is more evident. For example, when I view the decadence of the Roman Empire, I can see the moral disintegration of that period of history. Now we are at the same level of decadence, partly as a result of the misuse of the mass media (which are not evil in themselves) and partly because of Western consumerism and materialism, which have poisoned our society."

On the evidence of sensational media reports alone, which have multiplied exponentially in recent years, this assessment would be hard for any non-believer to gainsay. The occult sells today as never before, keeping "Satan’s power," a subject many priests would rather avoid, very much alive.

While the ‘Catholic’ press ignored the above meeting, England’s largest selling broadsheet newspaper ran a feature article on SRA in which one of the treating psychoanalysts stated:

"Men and women worship Satan as their god in private houses or in churchyards or forests. They practise every sexual perversion that exists with animals, children and both sexes. They drink blood and urine and eat faeces and insects. They are involved in pornographic films and drug dealing as a means of raising money. They are highly organised, successful in their secrecy, and have the belief that through this pain and abuse they are getting closer to their god." [Daily Telegraph]

Conditioned though they are to lampoon such claims and rationalise perversion, reports of incomprehensible horrors like the following must surely give the public pause to consider if there is more to it all than mere psychiatric illness:

In November 2001, English vampire enthusiast, Mathew Hardman, broke into 90-year-old Mabel Leyshon’s house while she was watching television, "killed her with 22 knife blows, drank her blood, and tore out her heart, leaving her body ritually arranged."

In February 1997, 18-year-old French satanist David Oberdorf, acting on "a satanic flash", stabbed his parish priest 33 times before engraving a satanic symbol on his victim’s hand. Commented the socialist mayor of the village: "In Toulon [the previous June], some youths profaned a cemetery and hammered a crucifix into a corpse in order to attack a symbol of the Catholic religion. Today, another kills a priest. Where will it stop? It is the very foundation of our civilisation which is shaken."

In September 2001, the truncated remains of a well fed and well cared for boy were found floating in the Thames. His body methodically drained of its blood and his corpse skilfully decapitated and dismembered, he was the victim muti - Britain’s first recorded black magic murder. A Zulu word meaning 'medicine', muti is practised in various forms across most of Africa and in the Americas. In the Caribbean it is known as voodoo. Witch doctors use the body parts cut from the victims, particularly young children, for their medicine: powdered human hands for stoke victims, genitals to cure infertility, blood for strength and vitality, and above all the Atlas bone (also severed from the Thames body) the most powerful and prized part. In Africa, muti murders are running at over 500 per year. Pointing out that black magic is omnipresent in the capital, one feature article noted that within North London’s large African community "you’ll find shops offering cures for bad luck and spells against black magic" as well practitioners offering to combat "witchcraft, juju, obeah and voodoo." You can also visit healers in South London who will protect you from jealous enemies and ‘guarantee’ to make your business successful," while the black press is filled with adverts for "spiritual healers" claiming to cure "impotency, infertility problems, illness or pain", bring back "lost loves" and terminate "unwanted relationships."

In March 2000, the brutal murder of a 50-year-old father at the hand of his two young daughters as part of a satanic rite shocked Argentine society and raised concern about the proliferation of satanic and other cults in Buenos Aires. The mutilated body of Juan Carlos Vazquez was found surrounded by his two daughters, who stabbed their father 100 times and ate part of his face. According to the police, the father and daughters apparently engaged in a ritual that ended with his murder, his body also being marked with cuts forming a strange figure. The killing took place in the living room, after the furniture was moved to one side. In the place were found cups with strange liquids and a book of "alchemy rites." When the police entered the home, the two daughters were screaming in a state of shock, one invoking Satan, the other one saying that Satan had finally left her father’s body.

These and countless other sensations trumpeting occult-related atrocities are a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, they distract attention from the big picture: Satan’s far more subtle methodology and his real agenda.

On the other, after the fashion of The Exorcist (which apart from some special movie effects dealt very soberly with the problem of evil and reawakened interest in exorcisms) one hopes that they serve to counter the ecclesiastical silence and deconstruction somewhat: to keep the possibility of the devil’s actual existence alive in the minds of an unchurched public for whom the term satan is folkloric, and diabolic and demonic mere synonyms for "shocking."

It is the fiercest of ironies and perhaps Satan’s greatest source of amusement that while the godless secular media unwittingly fulfils this useful de-facto preaching role, the very men charged by God to perform that function are either missing in action or defusing the whole issue.

The sad fact is that many priests today have simply buckled under the weight of a suffocating neo-paganism, adopting a superficial or dismissive attitude to dominant trends in popular culture which encourage dangerous familiarity with the occult.

A Vatican "spokesman," British priest Father Peter Fleetwood, for one, declared the Harry Potter books a good read, posing not the least danger to children. "I don’t think any of us grew up without the imaginary world of fairies, magicians, angels and witches," he told a conference at the Vatican. The Potter books "are not bad or a banner for anti-Christian ideology," he said. "If I have understood well the intentions of Harry Potter’s author, they help children understand the difference between good and evil."

Cosseted in the Vatican, Father Fleetwood clearly floats above the surface of modern life, inhabiting a kinder, gentler Christian universe of yesteryear. In fact, shaped by the same materialistic, relativistic moral vacuum as her readers, author J.K. Rowling is no more equipped than any of her literary peers to "help children understand the difference between good and evil." She can only further neutralise and diminish the reality of evil - understood as a personal, malign force in the world - which she does through a seductive, gnostic message of ‘will to power and control’ through magic and the casting of various spells.

At this elementary level there is no malicious intent and the ridiculous demonising of J.K. Rowling by some evangelical Protestant groups only serves to undermine serious objections.

But it is telling that Catholic clergy like Father Fleetwood, as tragically malformed and clueless in their way as Rowling, make no distinction between the godless materialism fostered by the (highly derivative) Harry Potter series and the uplifting supernatural Catholic themes underpinning Tolkien mythology or classics like the Narnia books and Darby O’Gill and the Little People.

While these latter instil a healthy understanding and fear of evil within a distinct or strongly implied Christian theological framework, Harry Potter merely exploits the inherent weakness of an irreligious generation titillated by the esoteric, fuelling the curiosity of young and old alike and acting as an entrée to the occult. A fact well understood by Father Amorth, the veteran leader of the six exorcists in the Diocese of Rome.

With more than 50,000 exorcisms of one degree or another under his belt, including 100 or more involving demonic possession, Father Amorth is amply qualified to comment. It would be reckless and foolhardy to ignore his assessment.

In an early December 2001 interview with Italian ANSA news agency, he plainly stated that Satan is behind the phenomenon: "Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of darkness, the devil."

Father Amorth explained that J.K. Rowling’s books contain innumerable positive references to magic, "the satanic art." He noted that the books attempt to make a false distinction between black and white magic, when in fact, the distinction "does not exist, because magic is always a turn to the devil." And he also criticized the disordered morality presented in Rowling’s works, noting that they suggest that rules can be contravened and lying is justified when they work to one’s benefit.

Perhaps Father Fleetwood read the North American coverage of Father Amorth’s comments about Potter, which significantly downplayed the warnings? The New York Times coverage which was carried in many other media outlets left out most of the information in the European coverage quoted above. It only quoted Father Amorth as saying, "If children can see the movie with their parents, it’s not all bad." The Times report also fails to mention that the movie version has significantly cleaned up Harry’s image, making it less troublesome than the books.

Then again, maybe Father Fleetwood just needs to get out and about Italy a bit more. Father Amorth writes: "When I was invited to speak at a few high schools I was able personally to verify how great is the influence of those tools of Satan on the young [i.e. satanic rock music, books and TV shows on witchcraft and spiritism, the satanic twist on sex and violence in the media, as well as yoga, Zen, transcendental meditation etc.]. It is unbelievable how widespread are witchcraft and spiritism, in all their forms, in middle and high school. This evil is everywhere, even in small towns."

The amount of sexually explicit, occult … or violence- oriented material available to adults and even children in the modern world is overwhelming. This includes movies, videotapes, television, music, toys, and books. There are also documentaries on satanism, witchcraft, and the occult that are available on videotape. The National Coalition on Television Violence News (1988) estimates that 12% of the movies produced in the United States can be classified as satanic horror films. Cable television and the home VCR make all this material readily available even to young children. … almost all the television tabloid and magazine programs have done shows on satanism and the occult. Heavy metal and black metal music, which often has a satanic theme, is readily available and popular. In addition to the much-debated fantasy role-playing games, there are numerous popular toys on the market with an occult-oriented, bizarre, or violent theme.

As well as the spurious messages and disordered morality of J.K. Rowling’s work as flagged by Father Amorth, the impact of her phenomenally successful series must be viewed within this very dark social context.

Understandably, many parents do not want to isolate children from the "playful" magic of contemporary culture, which may be counterproductive anyway. Dressing up as a witch or a ghoul at Halloween may not send a child sprinting to the nearest graveyard. But these days parents have to be far more careful that normal "playful" interest in purely imaginary works, as even one secular expert in the field warned, does not become "serious" occult interest: where children become "actively dedicated to spiritualism, to organising home-made Satanic rites, perhaps in cemeteries."

Nor is it just about children. The same expert made the point that "if the magic offer is well formulated and presented, almost all of us are susceptible to entering this [occult] world."

This is why, from the outset, sensible Christians made considered critiques raising the alarm about Harry Potter. They were derided by the worldlings, only to be vindicated by disquieting events.

In February 2002, for example, the BBC reported that Australia’s Adelaide University had introduced a 12 week course on the occult due to "growing interest in sorcery and witchcraft generated by the Harry Potter stories." In Utah, to the consternation of many parents, the deleterious Potter-effect saw a primary school pedalling its children The Wizards Handbook, which would teach them how to "cast spells, predict the future and lots more." Such spin-offs are legion.

The only surprise about all this is that anyone should have been in the least surprised: either by the original outcry or the effect. Yet many were, orthodox Catholics among them.

One can only deduce that, inevitably, affluence takes its toll. Even believers become desensitised to the fact that the banality of evil begins right there: at the level of popular culture, aided and abetted by the embarrassed silence or haughty disdain of ‘progressive’ churchmen who have outgrown the allegedly ‘mediaeval’ notion that preternatural forces, angelic and demonic, are active in the world of space and time.

Yet to dismiss or dilute this spiritual reality is to imperil souls and social order. Fifteen years ago there were 20 church-appointed exorcists in Italy. Now there are 300.

In such a world, as one writer put it, evil, blindness and madness evolve into an alternative trinity.

Early this year, as a German court reached a derisory manslaughter verdict in the case of a cannibal who killed and ate a willing computer engineer (the lucky choice from 400 homosexual respondents to the cannibal’s online "gobble up" offer), and as film companies lined up to make a movie of the depraved saga, even Der Spiegel spluttered: "Where are we living? Has all measure of the difference between normal and abnormal, right and wrong, of morality and decency been lost?"

Only a liberal vehicle par excellence like Spiegel, which undermines Christian morality on a weekly basis, could pose such an obvious question without the slightest self-reproach.

And so we have the unspeakable evil perpetrated by an amiable, middle class, legally sane cannibal; the madness of a court that rationalised his cold-blooded murder; and the blindness of a major contributor to the sewer of immorality in which such evil and madness prosper. The "alternative trinity" in microcosm!

Of course, unlike abortion, embryo experimentation and euthanasia, cannibalism is still illegal. Though how long before legislatures react to scare-mongering about ‘back-alley cannibals’ and the need for safe and hygienic "gobbling rooms"?

I jest. But scarcely. For no socio-legal development is too bizarre in a world where the trivialisation of evil and its traffickers is endemic

Just consider the sort of blasé attitude adopted towards notorious and hugely influential satanists like British warlock Aleister Crowley, the "prophet of paedophilia" and self-proclaimed "Beast 666" who Somerset Maugham once described as the most evil person he’d ever met, and to whom the Beatles dedicated "Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band," their paean to L.S.D.

Nearly sixty years after his death, Crowley has 84,000 listings on the internet’s Google search engine alone: providing entry to occult websites and unimaginable perversions at the click of a mouse. Founder of a luciferian Masonic Lodge that claimed the ill-fated 1903 pope-elect Cardinal Mariano Rampolla as one of its members and revered by sexual psychopath Alfred Kinsey, Crowley’s motto "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" has been a destructive influence par excellence on erstwhile Christian societies - most obviously via the medium of rock-n-roll and the stature of disciples like Kinsey, but perhaps most effectively through its undoubted contribution to the vast and catastrophic homosexual infiltration of the Church (in respect of which one recalls the credible charges of satanic abuse made against the late Cardinal Bernadin and his dissolute circle).

All that, and yet in the children’s section of a public library’s website under "From the Reference Desk: Did you Know?", set amidst childish snippets of trivia related to Halloween, I found this benign titbit: "Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), a British author of the occult and magic books, was the founder of Ordo Templi Orientalis. His face is on the album cover of the Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band."

What hope is there when an infamous diabolist renowned for his involvement in ritualistic sexual abuse and sacrificial killing of children is listed on such an innocent library link alongside snippets on Charlie Brown and Dr Seuss?

Skipping from the depravity of suburban cannibalism to this trifling incident could seem to be drawing a rather long bow. But in fact, to a Catholic mind, it’s all of a diabolic piece – as confirmed by ominous statistics on occult dabbling everywhere.

According to a 1997 report in Le Figaro, 12.5% of the French population at that time were said to regularly consult clairvoyants and the like - more than the number of practising Catholics. There were 50,000 clairvoyants, astrologers and magicians (up from 30,000 in 1981 and turning over 21 billion francs per year in consultations) - more than double the number of diocesan priests. Occult literature outsold religious books by six to one.

Outlining the profile of people who request exorcism, the Archdiocese of Paris stated in February 2002 that 31% of the people who request exorcisms have engaged directly in witchcraft, spiritualism or related activities and 18% have problems related to possessions, pacts with the devil, curses and diabolical apparitions. The exorcist of the Arras Diocese said that more and more individuals come to ask for his help, "after having asked for help from sorcerers, gurus and visionaries."

In Britain, the Daily Mail reported last year that "more than 60 per cent of the populace are thought to read star columns in newspapers and magazines, and surveys suggest that a majority of people now believe in astrology, compared with only 30 per cent 50 years ago." A credulity that appears unmoved before the profoundly negative results of the strictest scientific study ever undertaken into stargazing and birth charts.

Released with much publicity last year, the study tracked more than 2,000 people born in early March only minutes apart over a period of 23 years. It confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that astrology is all "guesswork", "its principles invalid" and that horoscopes are mere "exercises in deception."

Yet astrology is still so profitable that "a successful internet site can be worth as much as £50 million." While ‘financial astrology’ also thrives, as "exponents monitor the movements of the planets to help fund managers and stockbrokers predict share and currency movements." Indeed, a friend of mine related how his fellow investment advisors at a major London-based European bank, whose desks were adorned with occult paraphernalia, made high-pressure multi-million dollar decisions on the basis of astrology. On one occasion, exasperated, he picked up a colleague’s New Age crystal and threw it out the window.

It is principally this professional, upper middle class milieu which has reached the easiest accommodation with evil at the populistic end of the esoteric scale.

Massimo Introvigne, director of the secular European Centre of Studies on New Religions and author of the best-selling Italian book The Magic Challenge (1995), told ZENIT newsagency in April 2002 that "According to the most trustworthy data, close to one-fifth of the population, both in Western Europe as well as the United States, goes at least once a year to a magician or other paid "professional of the occult."

"The data demonstrates that it is not a question of a marginal sector urged by poverty: The rich go to a magician more than the poor, among them are diplomats and bachelors. An English research study done a few years ago revealed a high percentage of computer technicians and doctors, among those who take recourse to magic [i.e. at the lowest level, that of popular magic]."

Significantly, he adds that "Our research shows that in Catholic parishes also, the number of people who take recourse to magic is, in terms of percentage, more or less the same as those who are not practicing Catholics."

From this fertile soil has emerged a more serious participation in all forms of sorcery, witchcraft and paganism.

Last year at Stonehenge, the Mecca of paganism, thirty thousand people danced in the sunrise on summer’s longest day, nearly four times the number in 1990. At last estimate in 1996 there were 10,000 pagan witches and 6,000 pagan druids practising in Britain.

A history professor at Bristol University told MSNBC News that there are also "perhaps 100,000 to 120,000 [non-attached pagans] in Britain," adding that paganism had been rising in the UK since the 1950s because "It’s a religion that meets modern needs. Traditional religions have so many prohibitions: Thou shalt not do this or that. But Paganism has a message of liberation combined with good citizenship."

The professor pointed approvingly to the ancient pagan motto: "An (if) it harm none, do what you will" - a deceptive user-friendly version of Crowley’s satanic dictum above, and the antithesis of St. Alphonsus Ligouri’s admonition to "love God and do what you will."

The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids states that it has grown from a few hundred in the late 1980s to 7,000 worldwide today (including the recent induction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr Rowan Williamson, into its ranks. A moment the faithless nitwit described as one of the happiest of his life!).

Much of the growth they put down to the appeal of remote learning via the World Wide Web, the rise of environmentalism in the 70s, feminism in the 80s and the arrival of TV programs like "Buffy," "Sabrina" and "Charmed", about teenage witches and vampires with occult powers, which appeal especially to young girls.

Kevin Carlyon, High Priest of British White Witches said Harry Potter in recent years had continued the trend, helping create what he called "the fastest growing belief system in the world." Unlike our mute clerics, however, Carlyon at least had a paternal warning for teenagers, advising them against joining witch covens too young because: "There are some [very] weird people out there."

No doubt about it. The trouble is, they are no longer confined to covens! Nor are they limited to the professionally weird celebrity world, where occult fads have progressed from the Beatles’ psychedelic ’60s skirmish with the Maharishi to the present craze for the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition embraced by the likes of Madonna which is based upon astrology and the study of occult interpretations of the Old Testament and other texts.

No. Today, weird is de rigueur, omnipresent, Establishment. Even the highest public figures in the land shamelessly sup with the devil, parading their occult proclivities without a dutiful thought for the commonweal.

Take the British Prime Minister and his seriously weird wife: the condom-promoting, sodomite-crusading, IPPF-supporting, women priest-advocating, sacrilege-condoning, serial-dissenting, seriously-Socialist, pseudo-Catholic Cherie. Her case is as instructive in its way as the dumbing-down of Aleister Crowley.

A leading barrister, getting fat off EU human rights legislation conveniently promoted by her husband, and with the unseemly habit (for a PM’s consort) of putting her opinionated foot in her not inconsiderable mouth, Mrs Blair’s elevation to the judiciary seems frighteningly inevitable. And yet her ever-deepening involvement in dangerous or simply crackpot occult practices has been widely reported.

Summarising her bizarre behaviour, Guardian Unlimited recalled that "when the Blairs moved into Downing Street, a feng shui expert rearranged the furniture at Number 10. Cherie wears a ‘magic pendant’ known as the BioElectric Shield, which is filled with ‘a matrix of specially cut quartz crystals’ that surround the wearer with ‘a cocoon of energy’ and ward off evil forces. (It was given to her by Hillary Clinton.) Then there have been inflatable Flowtron trousers, auricular therapy and acupuncture pins in the ear."

We laugh. But it’s not a laughing matter (...well, OK, I’ll give you the inflatable trousers!). Father Amorth insists that "If we venture on enemy territory, we fall into his power even if we act in ‘good faith’." He says that rather than warding off evil forces, those like Cherie Blair who wear ‘magic pendants’ will do the reverse. "Instead, these individuals will bring upon themselves such a negative energy that it will damage not only them but also their entire families." He adds that even occult objects like hairs of badgers and teeth of wolves which one finds churchgoing Catholics in Italy wearing along with crucifixes and sacred medals, though not charged with "negativity", have ties to Satan through the sin of superstition.

Mrs Blair is egged on by her close friend and "lifestyle guru," former soft-porn model and Exegesis cult member Carole Caplin, through whom she has become embroiled in one corrosive controversy after another, even to a cover up involving a family real estate investment deal which forced the infamous New Labour spin machine into damage-limitation over-drive. These ongoing troubles smack of Father Amorth’s familial warning above, especially as Caplin’s spiritualist mother, Sylvia, regularly communicates with the dead for Cherie.

According to a 2002 feature article, which has never raised the slightest protest from normally super-sensitive Downing Street, "There was a particularly active period in the summer when Sylvia was channelling for Cherie over two or three times a week, with almost daily contact between them. There were times when Cherie’s faxes [seeking answers from the dead] ran to 10 pages" [Daily Mail, 11 November 2002].

A charitable soul close to Mrs Blair might draw her attention to this additional warning from Father Amorth: "Mediums and spiritualists invoke powerful spirits or the souls of the dead, without realising that they have given themselves body and soul to demonic powers. Even if it is not immediately evident, these powerful spirits always use their minions for destructive purposes."

In 2001, The Times documented the Blairs occult fling on summer holidays at the luxurious Maroma Hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. At dusk, inside a steam bath enclosed in a brick pyramid where they stripped down to their swimming costumes, the couple underwent a rebirthing ceremony (a most dangerous practice). A New Age therapist informed them that the pyramid was a Mayan womb in which they would be reborn. The Blairs saw the shapes of animals in the steam and experienced ‘inner-feelings and visions’. They smeared each other with melon, papaya and mud from the jungle, and then, bowing to the four corners of the earth, let out a primal scream of purifying agony.

This troubling report was not followed up by the media. And it is troubling because Mrs Blair, who like Mrs Clinton is a more doctrinaire socialist political animal than her opportunistic and vacuous husband (her teenage ambition was to be the first woman prime minister), is not only headed for the bench but is not without influence in Downing Street. As Guardian Unlimited reported, ideas have consequences:

"New Age Labour has spilled out of Downing Street and blighted public policy. In January 1999, for instance, the Government recruited a feng shui consultant, Renuka Wickmaratne, to discover a magical way to improve inner-city estates without raising taxes. ‘Red and orange flowers would reduce crime,’ she concluded, ‘and introducing a water feature would reduce poverty. I was brought up with this ancient knowledge.’ Three years later the Government announced that, for the first time since the creation of the NHS, ‘alternative’ remedies could be granted the same status as conventional treatments, despite the absence of evidence that they might cure the sick. According to the Sunday Times, ‘The inclusion of Indian ayurvedic medicine, a preventative approach to healing using diet, yoga and meditation, is thought to have been influenced by Cherie Blair’s interest in alternative therapy’."

Those few ramifications are merely indicative of a far more toxic effect of occult predilections on civic life everywhere: the homogenisation of anti-Christian public policy at local, national and international levels.

This is a major component of Satan’s real agenda. And it why the many thousands of influential moneyed and public figures like Mrs Blair who have turned from the light to the New Age shadows, building an unstoppable anti-Christian momentum, is far more decisive from Satan’s long term point of view than the more sensational manifestations of his power to corrupt and destroy as summarised at the outset of this piece.

In last month’s edition, Dina Nanavutty mentioned that "There is an astrologer in Bangalore whose clients include nearly 2,500 industrialists (300 from foreign countries) and 20,000 influential families across the globe." He puts his success down to the belief that "astrology transcends religious and national barriers."

From such revelations we perceive how occultism operates to Satan’s advantage at several levels: not merely through the impact of Harry Potter and daily horoscopes on the mindless hoi polloi, but crucially via a wealthy socio-political elite at a more esoteric level.

The overall effect is the conditioning of souls en masse to Satan’s grand design of a counter-faith led by a counter-elect in anticipation of the Anti-Christ.

This pyramidal conspiracy has proceeded imperceptibly but relentlessly, from generation to generation, in perfect tandem with the biblical deconstruction practised by apostate exegetes for the best part of two hundred years. We are now seeing it’s culmination in the devil’s final battle, being waged by the elite at the level of law and public policy.

"Their occult philosophy," as one writer notes, "is gradually replacing secular humanism in our schools. New Age concepts include exploration of human sexuality, environmentalism, worship of Mother Earth and embracing a different god."

Yet they are only able to achieve this entrée to the pivotal field of education because Satan’s insidious creed - relativism - now suffuses the materialistic West and is being used to legislate his most corrosive weapon - absolute tolerance - onto the statute books of nominally Christian nations.

The universal abortion franchise and institutionalised baby-killing is the most celebrated of Satan’s heinous legislative successes to date. But this reflects his hatred of the Incarnation and the consequent elevation of mere mortals to a superior place in God’s design. It is more of a corporeal, materialistic revenge, waged on the basis of a spurious ‘freedom of choice’.

Diabolic manipulation of human rights and hate crimes legislation, however, has upped the ante, attacking Christianity at its philosophical roots (especially with regard to gender and being), with a view to penalising Christian belief and finally banishing all Christian choices and voices from the public square – clearing the way for Anti-Christ.

The ongoing homosexual onslaught against truth and goodness is particularly relevant here, since sodomy has been synonymous with occultism down the centuries [see "The Occult in Hitler and Nazi Germany" in this edition]. No group has used contemporary positivist law to further their agenda more maliciously, comprehensively and relentlessly than the sodomites. Their obsessive efforts create the legal precedents which increasingly narrow the possibilities of Christian faith and practice. A recent report from the robust UK Life League indicates to what extent they have stolen a march on the Christians in this do-or-die arena of human rights and hate crimes:

"In January, our National Coordinator, Jim Dowson, had several meetings with high-ranking police officers [in Northern Ireland] regarding the Association of Chief Police Officers ‘Hate Crime’ Manual. This extreme politically correct document more or less incites police officers to pursue Christians who merely hold a biblical view on homosexuality. The police informed Mr Dowson that they have had quarterly meetings with the ‘Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender’ groups for years, but ours was their first meeting with anyone holding a Christian viewpoint." [Pro-life News, 9 February 2004]

Conceding this ground has proved costly. Sodomite-instigated criminal charges are tightening the pagan noose around Christian necks everywhere. A Pentecostal Swedish pastor is currently under indictment in Kalmar for daring to proclaim in a sermon that Sacred Scripture proscribes sodomy, which, apparently, violates Sweden’s new hate speech law. This trend is rapidly gathering force and the following case reveals in startling fashion how the courts are using the precept of ‘absolute tolerance’ to intolerantly override the rights of Christians in favour of the anti-Christians.

A few years ago in England, a certain Mr Hammond, an evangelical Protestant wearing a placard which demanded an end to sodomy and immorality, had water poured over him and was pelted with rotten fruit and various other missiles. Instead of his attackers being arrested for assault, he was arrested and imprisoned for inciting sexual hatred. Mr Hammond was fined £300 and made to pay something towards the costs of the case (about £395). He died in the interim. An appeal was brought by his executors in an effort to clear his name after his death.

The appeal was dismissed, and the following official summary of the judgement, handed down on 13 January 2004, indicates how the court of appeal rationalised its decision:

Human Rights - Public order - Sign alleged insult to homosexuals and lesbians - Interference with rights under Arts 9 and 10 European Convention - Conviction was, in circumstances, interference with appellant’s human rights under European Convention justified by pressing social need to show tolerance to others - Not perverse for magistrates to hold words used on sign in public were insulting - No defence of reasonable conduct - Hammond v Director of Public Prosecutions - Divisional Court - May LJ, Harrison J - 13.01.04

Appeal by way of case stated against the decision of Wimbourne Magistrates’ court on 24 April 2002 to convict the appellant (H) of displaying a sign that was insulting within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress within the meaning in s 5 Public Order Act 1986. H was an evangelical Christian preaching in public in Bournemouth. He held a sign bearing the words "Stop immorality", "Stop Homosexuality" and "Stop Lesbianism". A crowd of 30 to 40 people gathered, some of whom were hostile and water was poured over H’s head. The police attended and H was arrested and charged. The magistrates found as a matter of fact that the sign was insulting within the meaning of the Act and that H had been aware of that fact as he had had an adverse reaction to its prior display. They also held that the restriction on H ‘s freedom of expression under Art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, was prescribed by law, had the legitimate aim of preventing social disorder and that there was a pressing social need for such a restriction. In the circumstances there was no defence open to H of reasonable conduct under s 5(3)(c) of the Act.

(1) Whether a conviction under s 5 Public Order Act 1986 was, in the circumstances, a justifiable interference with the appellant’s human rights under Art 9 and Art 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights

(2) Whether it had been perverse for Wimbourne Magistrates court to hold that the words used on a sign in public were insulting within the meaning of s 5 Public Order Act 1986

(1) The magistrates had not erred in holding that the interference with H’s human rights was justified for the reason that they had given

(2) The court had not found it easy to decide whether the magistrates’ finding that the words used were insulting was perverse, however, the sign equated homosexuality and lesbianism with immorality and on balance it had been open to the magistrates to reach the conclusion that it was insulting.

(3) Further, the magistrates had been entitled to conclude on the facts that the offence was made out and in all the circumstances there could be no defence under s 5(3)(c) of the Act.

This whole agenda proceeds not just through the efforts of sincerely deluded secular humanists and Christian apostates but committed occult practitioners who know how to infiltrate and lobby, or both. Like the witch appointed not so long ago to lecture in the psychology of religion at the Jesuit-run Heythrop College, part of the University of London, who doubles as an adviser on selection for British government posts (and represents the Pagan Federation on matters of interfaith dialogue!).

In this regard, a detailed article by Jay Rogers on the growing national connection between the US abortion industry and the religion of witchcraft explains that American Wiccans are highly organised, well funded and politically active.

Conservative estimates put the number of Wiccans in the USA at 200,000. In 1979, there were 350 witches in the Salem area. Today this city alone has approximately 2,400 practising witches in a population of 38,000 people. A major Wiccan leader, Laurie Cabot, has become well-known across the nation and has been featured on television talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Good Morning America, "dispelling the notion that there is anything evil about witchcraft. Cabot contends that the concept of Satan was introduced by the Christian Church…"

Cabot, who extols the ancient Celtic paganism in which fornication, adultery and homosexuality were "normal," lobbies with her league of witches "as a political action group through 15 witches’ councils which cover the United States, Ireland, England and Canada. Cabot’s strategy is to desensitize Americans to the evils of witchcraft and to promote Wicca through a carefully crafted political agenda.

According to Cabot: "Each council head oversees volunteer activities such as letter writing campaigns, monitoring television programs, news reports, and newspaper accounts of Witchcraft, and reporting back to our central office in Salem. In addition to being a watchdog on misinformation about the Craft, we review books and articles on the Craft and recommend the better ones to libraries and schools. We also keep tabs on congressional bills that deal with civil rights and religious liberties."

Any number of examples could be cited to illustrate how this intense effort of a tiny diabolic minority plays out at various levels of public life to its own advantage and the detriment of Christianity. A recent Australian case is illustrative.

The late Father John Hardon apparently said, on more than one occasion, that he believed millions of people in the United States are possessed. In a faithless world it’s the sort of comment that is always going to provoke bemused looks and a thousand Monty Python routines. However, as policies dictated by neo-pagans send the occult-conditioned West deeper into PC delirium, it may soon get you sectioned or prosecuted.

Never mind upsetting homosexuals, Muslims, Druids or cannibals, even stating that possession by demons is a bad thing to be avoided, implying criticism of those who dance with the devil and enjoy his company, could set expensive legislative wheels turning.

The spuriously titled Racial and Religious Tolerance Act enforced in the Australian state of Victoria is a prime example. It enables members of one religious group who object to the beliefs of another, to take legal action against them. Defending accusations of vilification in a special tribunal, which holds hearings under the law, can be costly.

This hate legislation has now been co-opted by a self-professed witch, who has objected to warnings made about occult activity, with the full support of the state government.

A transexual naturopath, the witch stood unsuccessfully as a candidate in local city elections in early 2003. Several months later a Christian councillor issued a statement, in which he named her, raising concerns that local Wiccans may have been involved in a plan to plant someone on the city council who was sympathetic to their cause (to obtain a permit for a place of worship). He attributed recent scandals in the council to the influence of such elements, saying the incidents had "all the hallmarks of being linked to the occult." And he urged a local grouping of church leaders to hold a special day of prayer against "the forces of evil." He was backed up by the mayor, also a Christian.

As reported on CSNNews.com, the witch subsequently took legal action, seeking "an apology and an acknowledgement that I have the legal, moral, ethical, social right to follow an ancient and beautiful faith without being accused of evil." She confirmed she was getting financial assistance from a state legal aid fund to pursue her case.

In a separate action, a national organization called the Pagan Awareness Network (PAN) also brought a complaint against the councillors. The PAN president wrote to the Victoria State government to complain. The Attorney-General responded, suggesting the complainants take their case up with authorities under the new vilification laws. He assured the pagan network that "we govern for all Victorians - and that includes witches, magicians and sorcerers."

The PAN president said: "We see using the [state legal apparatus] as wielding a stick. We’ll bash them with the stick until they listen. I don’t care what their personal opinions are, I don’t care if they don’t change their minds, but I want them to think before they open their mouths ... especially as paid public officials."

A stunned local Protestant pastor in the city responded: "As a Christian, we would say that Jesus is the only way to the Father. If somebody feels vilified by that because they feel differently, am I going to get dragged into court?" He said that religious discussion is meant to be exempt from the anti-vilification law but "doesn’t seem to be in practice."

One of the key complaints being made by the witchcraft practitioners is that the councillor associated them with Satanists. A dissembling pamphlet distributed by PAN claims that "witches don’t support the devil or even believe in the devil." It also says that spells cast by witches are "a means of achieving a desired effect," not unlike prayer or meditation, but are not used to do harm. Potteresque legislators are only too happy to swallow this fiction.

Although Victoria is the only one of Australia’s six states and two territories where witchcraft is still illegal and punishable by a fine, the state’s Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, announced early last year that the law proscribing "witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or fortune telling" would be scrapped soon. "Offences for witchcraft and fortune telling are virtually never used in practice," he declared, "and are out of place in a culturally diverse and tolerant society."

As an indication of how the committed demonic tail is now wagging the nominally Christian dog Down Under as elsewhere, according to 1996 national census statistics, merely 0.02 percent of Australians describe themselves as "Pagans," 0.01 percent put down "Wicca," another 0.01 percent indicated "Nature religions," and a further 0.01 percent "Satanism." In the same year, 70 per cent of Australians declared themselves Christian. And several years later, though diminishing with time, Christianity still remains the statistically dominant faith at 12.8 million followers (nearly 40 per cent of whom are Catholics), in a population of around 19 million.

Commenting that witchcraft and "the whole New Age mix" is becoming increasingly acceptable nowadays, the Protestant pastor summed up this massive capitulation to evil: "Whereas once upon a time people would have reacted fairly strongly to the suggestion that their next-door neighbour was a witch, now it’s almost smiled at."

This "alternative trinity" of evil, blindness and madness at work in a local community can be matched at a national and international level on a near weekly basis.

In February 2003, for instance, the Australian Federal Court turned the very notion of being on its head. In upholding the validity of a marriage between a transexual man and his wife, the court held the question of whether a person is a man or woman is to be determined at the date of marriage, not birth.

Essentially worse than even the legalisation of abortion, it is hard to imagine a more satanically inspired judgement. The couple’s solicitor (also a transexual) said that the court decision had global significance.

In fact, it merely furthers the universal socio-cultural and legislative push to redefine sexuality and destroy the Christian family: epitomised by the chairwoman of Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Suzi Leather, who last January, in calling for legal changes to make it easier for single women and lesbians to receive fertility treatment, stated that it was "a bit of nonsense" and "anachronistic for the law to include a statement about the child’s need for a father."

To strike at the family, "the foundation of society" which reflects the Holy Trinity’s union of love, is to strike at the Creator and his creation in the most profound way. It is an agenda that bears the same demonic stamp as that which marked the influential God-haters of the Enlightenment who publicly cursed God and warred against the human soul made in His image and likeness [see "A Searchlight on the Enlightenment," CO, June/July 2002].

Next month, in Part II, we shall look at their all-powerful neo-Enlightenment successors, revealing the background and reach of occultism at the highest levels of public and corporate life today: including one secretive annual mass gathering of America’s ‘great and good’ which will shock and surprise even US readers.

Cherie wears a ‘magic pendant’ known as the BioElectric Shield, which is filled with ‘a matrix of specially cut quartz crystals’ that surround the wearer with ‘a cocoon of energy’ and ward off evil forces. (It was given to her by Hillary Clinton.)

Get rid of it! Throw it in the Thames or bury it!!

This quote may be referring to the annual July gathering of the elite in the woods of Northern CA. I can't remember what it's called.

Drudge had a story up earlier this evening where a sorcerer in India drugged some youths and young men and then started to ritually sacrifice one of them. The townpeople returned, the victim is barely alive in critical condition in the hospital, and the satanist was burned alive by the townspeople.

Anyone care to draw some parallels?

Here's an interview with Father Gabriele Amorth (entitled "The Smoke of Satan in the House of the Lord") in the same issue of "Christian Order": http://www.christianorder.com/features/features_2004/features_mar04_bonus.html
I found his description of the new exorcism ritual interesting:
"This long-awaited Ritual has turned into a farce. An incredible obstacle that is likely to prevent us acting against the demon."

It seems we have yet another change for the sake of change. When will all the novelty end?

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