tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-205197772024-03-19T23:26:23.686-07:00Speak of the DevilNews, information, and commentary about Satanic panic, ritual abuse allegations, anti-occult misinformation, conspiracy theories, and related topics.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-20414833721049983332013-04-02T17:12:00.000-07:002013-04-02T17:12:05.801-07:00This blog has moved...<h3 style="font-weight: normal;">
<b>to <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.wordpress.com/">http://satanicpanicnews.wordpress.com/</a></b></h3>
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<br />S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com73tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-70588002716574584392013-01-14T17:07:00.000-08:002013-01-16T17:27:15.070-08:00A Very Weak Attempt to Link Sandy Hook to SatanismAs discussed in my <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.ca/2012/12/weak-attempts-to-link-connecticut.html">last post</a>, many conspiracy theorists are trying to link the Aurora and Newtown massacres to Satanism. The video below is one of the silliest examples of this effort. It attempts to connect the dots among a perfume commercial starring Lady Gaga (a favourite target of Vigilant Citizen, and others who search for Illuminati/occult symbolism in movies, music videos, and TV commercials), the latest Batman movie, Aurora, and Newtown. <br />
The major flaw with this approach is that any number of interpretations can be made of Lady Gaga's videos. They are artistic, dark, and more than a little twisted. Beneath the video, I've added my own interpretations of some of the imagery in the perfume commercial to show you just how easy it is to bring your own experiences and perceptions to the table.
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<b>The "Matrix-style surgical probe": </b>This is actually just a light mounted on a flexible, snake-like tube. It does not enter the statue. <b><br />The black bodysuit: </b>I doubt this is a nod to Catwoman. Gaga likes bodysuits, as evidenced by the white <i>Where the Wild Things Are</i>-inspired latex bodysuit she wore at the beginning of the "Bad Romance" video. <br />
<b>The "trooper hat": </b>An old-fashioned ladies' picture hat, updated <b><br /></b><br />
<b>The mirror: </b>Clearly a reference to Cocteau's <span lang="fr"><i>Orphée</i></span>, in which Orpheus is transported to the underworld by stepping into a mirror with a liquid surface. We know that Gaga admires French culture; she speaks French at the beginning of the video for "Papparazzi". We know she likes classic film, because she references Hitchcock four times in a single verse of "Bad Romance". And I'm not the only one who sees a correspondence between Cocteau and Gaga - check out<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd59O53gHGc"> this</a> fan video of her song "Bad Romance", set to scenes from Cocteau's <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>. We are not dealing with Satanism here. The black mirror is a straight-up homage to French arthouse cinema. <br />
[I wrote the passage above before re-watching the mirror scene in <i><span lang="fr">Orphée</span></i>. When I reviewed it, I realized Gaga was definitely, absolutely, beyond any question in the world, re-enacting it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYcWpMDWLQ">Watch it yourself</a>, and note how Orpheus and Gaga extend their arms and place their hands in the same position as they cautiously approach the mirror. Note, also, that Gaga hesitates before the black mirror, while Orpheus allows himself to be coaxed into his mirror by an underworld minion. Give her credit for that, at least! <br />
Fun fact: While Gaga's mirror is CGI, Cocteau filmed someone submerging their gloved hands into a pool of mercury to create the shimmery ripple effect.]<br />
<b>"Portrait: Death of Children (ovum and sperm)":</b> I don't see ovum or sperm in this image, so abortion doesn't come to mind at all. The gold jewelry Gaga wears reminds me of <a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=slime+mold&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&tbo=d&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Bpb0UIDHFISLiwLviYGYDQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAA&biw=1280&bih=641">slime mold</a>. <br />
<b>"Look how they prequel shooting children!": </b>But there are no children in this scene. There is a CGI rendering of a metallic Gaga aiming a gun at a flesh-and-blood Gaga. I don't think the metallic Gaga represents a child.<br />
<b>The backmasking of Lt. Paul Vance: </b>I closed my eyes for this portion of the video, and typed my own interpretation of the backwards words. Someone says, "Let us now...worst-dressed. Now. Worst." Then Vance says, "Excellent. Herb get it done initiate get some I said go. Said the wood A sauce throat dead Sarah the one with oss nitiate.get some mean you left paw. Nnnnasty deep blue knew it he blew it no [or know] me luck. Still when this window go in and out ffth with a maze Gazoo [or kazoo] with your breath. With your breath a syndrome go pull out the waw never been there rash knees bucksters soreth give [gibberish that sounds like "Mickulick"]. Judith or a nay she not pay up. <br />
So from this we can determine that Paul Vance is owed money by a woman named Judith, has an accomplice named Herb, and may or may not like <i>The Flintstones</i>. <br />
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As for production designer Nathan Crowley being related to the infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley was, as Nathan <a href="http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/An-arousing-display-at-the-Met/8583">told the <i>Art Newspaper </i>in 2008</a>, his grandfather’s cousin, but Nathan was "never allowed to even mention his name because we were a very Quaker family.” S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com104tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-91834052610050710002012-12-26T21:23:00.000-08:002012-12-26T21:23:17.474-08:00Weak attempts to link the Connecticut shootings to Devil worshipTabloids, Christian websites, and YouTube auteurs are attempting to link Newtown, Connecticut, killer Adam Lanza to Satanism - on the softest evidence you can possibly imagine. <br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">A <i>Daily Mail </i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250608/Adam-Lanzas-classmate-reveals-Sandy-Hook-gunman-online-devil-worshiping-page.html#ixzz2GCotQJQa">article</a> quotes Trevor L. Todd, a "former classmate" of Lanza, as saying that Adam once had a "Satan worshiping" web page with a banner that featured the word Devil in a red, "Gothic-style" font. This vaguely-remembered website supposedly created by a middle school student is the only evidence presented to suggest that Lanza was a Satanist. To date, the web page's existence hasn't even been confirmed. </span><br />
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article goes on to claim that FBI investigators "strongly believe he made use of devil-worshiping and suicide sites and
boasted of his murder plans on message forums". No source is given for this information. </span></span><br />
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World Net Daily doesn't have any more solid information than the Daily Mail, but the writer of <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/satan-worship-motivated-sandy-hook-killer/#jrfvyAX4B89qwOpi.99">this </a>article attempts to give the story some teeth by throwing in references to other murders committed by "Satanists". Aaron Klein even speculates about a possible Satanic conspiracy: <br /><div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
"Was Lanza part of a larger Satanic or ritualistic subculture locally or
online in which he could have revealed his plans or could have even
received support in preparing for the killings?"</div>
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Then he takes other media outlets to task for failing to report on the Satanic angle of the Aurora, Colorado shootings. "Although largely underreported, Satanic subculture and so-called devil
worship has been a factor in numerous other mass killings, including the
recent Batman shooting massacre." <br />At this point, Klein is forced to concede that James Holmes wasn't <i>actually</i> a Satanist; he just liked the Joker as played by Heath Ledger a lot, and the Joker had Satanic attributes. You know, like every supervillain in every comic book ever. </div>
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Klein goes on to educate WND readers about other infamous "Satanic" murders, starting with the Manson Family killings:<br />
"According to reports, Tate was originally selected to play the main
character in her husband’s <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i>, a film about a pregnant
woman who fears that her husband may have made a pact with neighbors to
use her child as a human sacrifice in their occult rituals. Actress Mia
Farrow ultimately got the role, while Tate did make a brief appearance
in the film."<br />
This is wrong on just about every level. Sharon Tate was never considered for the role of Rosemary in her husband's film. The film itself has absolutely nothing to do with the murders; the Tate/Polanski residence was targeted by Manson and his followers because Polanski and Tate were subletting the house from music producer Terry Melcher, a man Manson deeply resented for failing to turn him into a recording superstar. </div>
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Richard Ramirez is the next "Satanic" killer on the list, and he's the only one who really qualifies for inclusion. Ramirez <i>did </i>identify himself as a Satanist. <br />But Sean Sellers, the teenager who converted to Christianity in jail after murdering his parents? He may have promoted himself as a "reformed Satanist" who killed only because he was under the Devil's influence, but an examination of his criminal appeals tells a different story. Sellers was so desperate to escape the death penalty for crimes he admittedly committed that he pled diminished capacity due to demonic possession, and later claimed to have Multiple Personality Disorder. Sellers was a shrewdly manipulative man who knew <i>exactly </i>what he was doing at all times. <br />
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The last case Klein cites is the murder of Steven Newberry by a trio of teens, led by a charismatic thug named Jim Hardy. The killers practiced some rudimentary form of "Satanism" that mostly revolved around torturing and killing cats. The murder of their "friend" Newberry was a thrill killing that would have been committed with or without their childish attempts at devil worship. <br />Klein's efforts to lay the blame for Adam Lanza's crimes on Satanism are baseless. To call Lanza's evil deeds "Satanic" because he allegedly expressed interest in the Devil in his teens is just as absurd as labelling a murder "Christian" because the killer was once an altar boy. <br /><a href="http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/satan-worship-motivated-sandy-hook-killer/#jrfvyAX4B89qwOpi.99" style="color: #003399;"></a> </div>
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Some Christians don't want to stop at blaming Satanism for the massacre, though. They also want to blame the victims' parents and even <i>God himself</i>, arguing that mass murder of 6-year-olds is God's just punishment for "kicking God out of schools". In the video below, Christian rapper Tireo tells us that God granted Satan permission to "demonize" Adam Lanza so that he would murder children, but the media won't disclose this because Adam was white. Also, the victims were handpicked (by God?) because their parents "had sin in their lives." </div>
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S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-56401854122801955282012-12-26T15:48:00.000-08:002012-12-26T15:49:07.033-08:00"Call Me Maybe" announces the arrival of the AntiChristRemember William Tapley, the dude who calls himself the Co-Prophet of the Endtimes and The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse? His videos about the "Satanic" mural at Denver International Airport went viral last year, strictly because it's hilarious to watch a poker-faced man condemning <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQsvOkkLq4">imaginary penguin erections</a>.<br />
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In his latest video, Tapley explains how a crappy music video for some teenie-pop hit is actually about the arrival of the AntiChrist, and analyzes the New World Order/AntiChrist numerology cleverly hidden in the video for "Gangnam Style", which is basically just a song about South Korean hipsters and their sexy ladies.<br />
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Best YouTube comment: "Thank you so much for counting the number of horses by pointing to each
one with a pencil and saying the numbers out loud. That was very
helpful."<br />
Tapley's reply: "Yes, it's amazing what God requires prophets to do. I'm really lucky!
In the Old Testament, one prophet had to eat manure and another was
required to marry a prostitute!"<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oUbE34XjOgw" width="560"></iframe>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-1967024612577995512012-12-17T21:20:00.000-08:002012-12-17T21:20:31.100-08:00Blaming Satan<br />
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, has <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/wildmon-satan-carried-out-shooting-sandy-hook-elementary-school">stated </a>that Satan was behind last week's murders in Newtown, Connecticut. <br />
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Tragic events like the mass murder of schoolchildren certainly have an evil aura, and it isn't out of line to label the killer's actions as evil, in my opinion. <br />But to attribute the killer's actions directly to Satan, as Wildmon has done, is problematic. First of all, it's entirely possible that Adam Lanza had an emotional or mental disorder that interfered with his ability to feel empathy for others, manage his emotions, or control his impulses. The notion that mental illness is caused by demonic infestation or Satanic influence, promoted by <a href="http://leavingalexjonestown.blogspot.ca/2009/04/jones-vs-schizophrenia.html">Alex Jones </a>and others, is positively Medieval and has no place in an informed, educated society like our own. It will not benefit the mentally ill, their caregivers, mental health professionals, or family members to fob the blame off on the Devil. If Lanza was <i>not</i> mentally ill, then he was fully responsible for his crimes, and no one else (including Satan) deserves even a shred of the blame for what he chose to do. S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com57tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-29606061741663934672012-11-28T22:15:00.000-08:002012-11-28T22:32:58.807-08:00In the News<div style="text-align: left;">
People often ask me, "But haven't you ever come across a <i>real</i> case of ritual abuse?". The answer is yes, I have. And I can tell you this: Almost without exception, that ritual abuse has involved small Christian cults, rather than international Satanic ones. For example, the Hosanna Church cult in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, was originally branded a Satanic cult that ritually abused children, but victims who testified at the trial of pastor Louis Lamonica Jr. mentioned only ritual abuse committed in a <i>Christian</i> context.<br />
Now we have even graver allegations being made against a young Bible study leader in Kansas City, Missouri. Micah Moore, 22, has been charged with the murder of nurse Bethany Deaton, 27, and claims that he was persuaded to kill her by Bethany's own husband, Tyler Deaton. Tyler is an "ex-gay" who has headed a small, tight-knit Christian group for the past several years. Some members are so devoted to Tyler that they followed him from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, to his current home in Kansas City. Tyler and Bethany had been married for just three months when she died.
Bethany's death on October 30 initially appeared to be a suicide (her body was found in a van parked near Longview Lake, a plastic bag over her head). No one suspected otherwise until Moore turned himself in earlier this month. He told police that Tyler has been engaging in "spiritual sex" with several of the young men who share his house, and that he routinely drugged Bethany so that his followers could rape her. Moore even claimed to possess video footage of these sexual assaults. Fearful that Bethany would tell her therapist about what was going on, Tyler approached Micah with the idea of murdering her and disguising her death as a suicide.<br />
At this early stage, it's possible that Moore's story will turn out to be false. Maybe he killed his leader's wife on his own and pinned the blame on Tyler. However, at least three of the Deatons' four roommates have confirmed that Tyler was having sex with them and that he termed these relations "spiritual". The fourth roommate feels he was being groomed to become one of Tyler's sexual partners.<br />
In Texas, Tyler felt that the official student clubs at Southwestern University weren't hardcore enough for him, so he formed his own independent group. Members would spend hours of every day in the campus chapel, praying and singing under Tyler's direction. They also engaged in "holy laughter", and attempted faith healing of severely disabled people on at least two occasions. Tyler preached to his group about the evils of homosexuality, claiming he "overcame" his own gay orientation through the power of Christ.
By the end of the 2008-2009 school year, Southwestern administrators were so troubled by the group's activities that they denied Deaton further use of the chapel. That's when Tyler, Bethany, and several young men decided to relocate to a more sympathetic school, the International House of Prayer University in Kansas City.
In Missouri, Bethany and Tyler attended Forerunner Christian Fellowship Church. They married in August of this year.<br />
If the allegations made by Micah Moore are true, then a murderous Christian sex cult has been active on the campus of a Christian university for the past three years, engaging in ritualistic sex and rape under the direction of a charismatic but deranged leader. Will we call this group's practices "Christian ritual abuse"? Or will we continue to insist that abusive sexual practices are the exclusive domain of Satanists, when all evidence indicates that Satanic crime is, in fact, far less common than Christian crime? When you think about it, this makes sense. There are far fewer Satanists in America than Christians, so the rate of crimes committed by Christians should be much higher than the rate of crimes committed by Satanists. This includes sexual abuse and murder.<br />
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Another Forerunner was in the news this week, when 19-year-old <i>Two and a Half Men </i>star Angus T. Jones <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2012/11/26/angus-t-jones-two-and-a-half-men-its-ungodly-filth/">declared</a> in a video produced by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TheForerunner777?gl=CA">The Forerunner Chronicles</a> that he feels terrible about being on a show that is "filth" and might even be contributing to Satan's plan to subvert humanity. He urged Americans to avoid television altogether, in fact. He has since <a href="http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/11/28/angur-t-jones-apologizes-for-ranting-against-two-and-a-half-men/">qualified his remarks</a>, stating that he has a lot of respect for everyone who works on the show; he considers them members of his family. He has not attempted to explain how a program produced by such good people can be a tool of the Devil.<br />
The man who appears beside Jones in the video is Christopher "Forerunner" Hudson, a YouTuber who believes that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDgUTQYEIas">Jay-Z is a Satan-worshiping Freemason</a>. Hudson also <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/forerunner-chronicles-chris-hudson-angus-394512">buys into</a> and promotes a broad range of conspiracy nonsense: The death of Osama bin Laden was faked, Michael Jackson's death was engineered to distract the world from the Pope's plea for a New World Order, etc. <br />
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<i>Charisma</i> magazine is the most popular Christian magazine in the world. Despite its conservative slant, the articles featured in it are usually timely and concisely written, with little of the bombast you'll see on TV programs like <i>The 700 Club</i> or <i>Jack Van Impe Presents</i>. What, then, shall we make of a recent article titled "<a href="http://www.charismamag.com/spirit/spiritual-warfare/15889-can-you-be-raped-by-the-devil">Can You Be Raped by the Devil?</a>", which claims that the Medieval notion of succubi and incubi invading our bedrooms at night is valid, and that the content of our dreams can be influenced by these demons? The article, which relies heavily on the anecdotal accounts of one former stripper, even suggests that sexual orientation can be altered by sexual demons. Does ancient superstition such as this really belong in the world's foremost Christian publication, read by millions? What is this teaching the younger readers of the magazine - that every wet dream they experience in adolescence is actually a visitation from a demon bent on making them gay? <br />
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S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-36419428160052818152012-04-10T13:30:00.004-07:002012-04-10T13:46:53.787-07:00Pat Robertson and the "Demonic"Media Matters <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201204090006">has a story</a> on Pat Robertson's growing catalogue of things that are "demonic", which includes (but is certainly not limited to): alien abductions, anything having to do with Eastern religions or cultures, homosexuality, and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight</span> franchise. I can't really disagree with him on that last one.<br /><br />Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is still the number one Christian network in the world, and its flagship program, <span style="font-style: italic;">The 700 Club</span>, is watched by about a million people every day.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-64023274646377516872011-08-23T14:36:00.000-07:002011-08-23T14:39:13.757-07:00The West Memphis Three are OUT!
<br />This is a beautiful day: The day that I remove the "Free the West Memphis Three" posters from my blogs. After spending the entirety of their young adulthoods in prison, Jessie Misskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols have been freed after a plea deal. Sadly, the deal prevents them from suing for wrongful prosecution or anything else related to their false convictions, and it is incredibly unlikely that West Memphis investigators will ever admit their mistakes and search for the real killer or killers.
<br />Not just three, but six boys' worlds were destroyed by the murders of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers. Now that the West Memphis Three have some justice, let's see some justice for the three boys who lost their lives. Enough time has been wasted.
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<br />I'm dismayed by some of the media coverage of this. For instance, ABC News posted a <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/west-memphis-three-murder-cult-children-14346067">video</a> with the sub-headline "Three <span class="st"><em></em>men convicted of killing three b<em></em>oys in a satanic cult ritual are set free.</span>" Really? The prosecution couldn't present any evidence of a Satanic ritual, because <span style="font-style: italic;">there wasn't any</span>. At all.
<br />S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-52734892460806137672011-08-03T14:52:00.000-07:002011-08-03T14:55:30.555-07:00Bill Schnoebelen: Former Witch, former Satanist, former Illuminati member...<span style="font-weight: bold;">...and current conspiracy bullshitter.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">space</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuCucRxgDduUQDWravrMetUIiKjuCzrJYKWaQIoR6V2usl6owmIK-JwoIWSXHeA8Rm_AHQyoqVrNMxGVBxwfHWl4THUpV-7iO-0I6yddxquw_vTAjDW6X1A1QFY9vGtGDq0wETcw/s1600/vampire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuCucRxgDduUQDWravrMetUIiKjuCzrJYKWaQIoR6V2usl6owmIK-JwoIWSXHeA8Rm_AHQyoqVrNMxGVBxwfHWl4THUpV-7iO-0I6yddxquw_vTAjDW6X1A1QFY9vGtGDq0wETcw/s320/vampire.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617054856662340786" border="0" /></a><br /><br />So far, most of the ex-witches and former Satanists in this series have either faded into obscurity or died. This is not the case with Bill Schnoebelen. He was one of the very first "Ex-Men" to dominate the Christian conspiracy lecture circuit, beginning in 1984, and he is still with us. He might be with us for a long time to come, too, because he has an uncanny knack for tapping into the conspiranoid zeitgeist, claiming to possess inside info on every new menace that looms up to imperil Western civilization (I call this Forest Gump Syndrome).<br /><br />Schnoebelen claims to have been, at various times between 1968 and the present:<br /><br /><ul><li> a Wiccan</li><li>a "high Druidic" priest</li><li>an Ordo Templi Orientis initiate (2nd degree)</li><li> a channeler</li><li>a Satanist</li><li>a member of the Illuminati</li><li>a Mormon</li><li>a Catholic priest</li><li>a 90th Degree Freemason</li><li>a 9th Degree Rosicrucian<br /></li><li>a Knight Templar</li><li>a Gnostic bishop</li><li>a spiritualist priest<br /></li><li>a vampire</li><li>a naturopathic physician</li><li>a member of Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant<br /></li><li>a fundamentalist Christian/ordained minister<br /></li></ul>Nowadays, he's also a self-declared expert on natural healing and the "medical conspiracy". I'm guessing he's one of those people who takes <span style="font-style: italic;">forever</span> deciding in a restaurant.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOlw20accC60tNCXFBkfexVSU6ufP6gYB1Ti_UX6ObbMkojillVpCEAZLDWSKOVZtflAOD3Llg33sfrfdg00vDAyDc2LJCyhs78BTakSS3TgPlNeYcZs0XMNhYrssj58LeCYxdDw/s1600/kitchensink.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOlw20accC60tNCXFBkfexVSU6ufP6gYB1Ti_UX6ObbMkojillVpCEAZLDWSKOVZtflAOD3Llg33sfrfdg00vDAyDc2LJCyhs78BTakSS3TgPlNeYcZs0XMNhYrssj58LeCYxdDw/s320/kitchensink.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617055365543797890" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">He worshipped everything but this.<br /></span></div><br /><br />There is evidence that Bill Schnoebelen actually did do many of the things he talks about. But like <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">John Todd</a>, he smeared Mormons, Freemasons, and many other groups as closet Satanists, and made some claims that are profoundly absurd.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Road to Everything</span><br /><br />Schnoebelen was born into a devoutly Roman Catholic family in 1949, the only child of a tire shop co-owner and a housewife. He was raised in Jessup, Iowa. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br />Bill says he was a faithful Catholic throughout his young adulthood, and even aspired to the priesthood, but was always prone to the dark and mysterious forces of the world. Trick-or-treating at the age of 8 or 9, he saw leathery, bat-like creatures filling the night sky. At 12, near his family's lake cottage in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, he saw a gigantic black figure rise up from the horizon to "bestride the heavens". It walked over him and vanished beyond a hillock. He believes this was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo">Wendigo</a>. He also had more typical childhood fascinations like UFOs and haunted houses, but someday he would consider these further manifestations of evil in his life. (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br />After high school, Bill still intended to become a priest. First, though, he enrolled at a small Catholic school called <a href="http://www.loras.edu/">Loras College</a>, in Dubuque, Iowa. It was here, in that crazy year of 1968, that a few New Agey professors and the counter-fundamentalist influence of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council">Vatican II </a>persuaded Bill that man can become Christ. Christ, his liberal teachers taught him, was basically a magician or ascended master who had studied the occult. So, Bill began studying the occult to become more Christ-like. This was his first step into a revolving door of religious traditions that would keep him walking in circles for over 15 years. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 1: Witch</span><br /><br />After some occult study, Bill decided to become a witch. He wrote to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Sanders_%28Wiccan%29">Alex Sanders</a>, the self-proclaimed "King of the Witches", who referred him to a Massachusetts-based coven. Bill ultimately reached the third degree of Alexandrian Wicca. Note, please, that his initiation didn't involve roosters or blood like the bizarre rites supposedly experienced by <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-i-doreen-irvine.html">Doreen Irvine</a> and <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Mike Warnke</a>. Note also that Schnoebolen has not mentioned any Satanic scripture, like most of the "former witches" we've seen so far.<br /><br />Bill graduated from Loras College in May 1971 with a major in music and a minor in education. (He claims he received his Masters in Theological Studies degree from the <a href="http://www.oakdiocese.org/pastoral/SPM/">St. Francis School of Pastoral Ministry</a> in 1980 and his Master of Arts degree in counseling from Liberty University in 1990.)<br />He says he took a leave of absence of absence from seminary in the early '70s. He taught music at a Catholic school for a couple of years, and met his future wife while volunteering as a counselor at a drug rehab clinic. Sharon Mullen, apparently one of the clinic's patients, was a married mother of two. Like Bill, she was deeply into witchcraft and the occult. Around 1973 she left her husband and kids to be with him. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br />That summer, the couple traveled to Hattieville, Arkansas, to study under the "Grand Master Druid of all North America". Bill doesn't name this fellow, but he was Barney "Eli" Taylor. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>) Taylor ran something called the Mental Science Institute and taught herbal magic in the druidic witchcraft tradition. He made Sharon and Bill a high priestess and high priest, which basically means he issued them a certificate similar to the ones dispensed to <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">John Todd</a> and <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/05/prodigal-witch-part-vi-tom-sanguinet.html">Tom Sanguinet</a> by Gavin Frost in the '70s. It is incredibly unlikely that Bill and Sharon "learned all the mysteries of hermeticism and metal magic and natural medicine and more" in three months, as he claims. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>) Occult study is not a cram course.<br />They also saw hovering UFOs every single night, as they studied under the stars. Schnoebelen later contradicted this claim by saying he has seen UFOs about three times in his life. (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br />Bill and Sharon returned to the Midwest to "spread the gospel of witchcraft" (something witches generally don't do). They had a handfasting ceremony in Zion, Illinois, supposedly attended by 200 witches. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />They settled in Milwaukee to teach witchcraft and establish covens. Bill claims they drew in hundreds of eager followers, but one of those followers, Frater Barrabbas Tiresius, begs to differ. He claims the Schnoebelens founded just two covens in Milwaukee, containing 30-40 members. By this time, Bill had legally changed his named to Christopher Pendragon Syn, and Sharon called herself Alexandra. They both appeared to possess a great deal of occult knowledge, and at first the covens operated smoothly. According to Frater Barrabbas, things turned sour when Bill and Sharon formed complex romantic entanglements with their followers and began playing them against each other. He attributes the mental collapse of one of Bill's lovers to these cruel mind games. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 2: Warlock, Mason</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">and Illuminati Member</span><br /><br />As a result of his occult studies, Bill was a spiritualist priest and a trance channeler. He often consulted numerous spirit guides, the highest of which Frater Barabbas identifies as Ambrosius and Parlemanon. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>) Bill read Anton LeVey's <span style="font-style: italic;">Satanic Bible </span>at the suggestion of one of these spirit guides, and promptly joined the Church of Satan. He reached the second degree, "Warlock", before realizing that LeVey's brand of Satanism was harmless "kid stuff". He aspired to what he calls "hardcore Satanism", and to enter that realm he had to become a Freemason. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>) (The supposed connection between Satanism and Freemasonry was also trumpeted by<a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html"> John Todd</a> in the mid-'80s.)<br />Frater Barrabbas says it was his father who sponsored Bill into Freemasonry. After Bill reached the third degree, his interest waned and he stopped participating on a regular basis.<br /><br />Bill then branched out into esoteric Freemasonry. He claims he reached the thirty-second degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, as well, and in his lectures displayed the certificate issued to him. He says he also became a Rosicrucian (9th Degree) and a Knight Templar. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />Schnoebelen offers up a wealth of misinformation about Freemasonry and the Knights Templar. For instance, in his Prophecy Club lecture (c. 1996), he declared that Freemasonry is "basically Babylonian witchcraft" and is anti-Christian. He said <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_de_Molay">Jacques de Molay </a>was a pedophile (de Molay confessed under torture to homosexual acts; it's not known if he was really gay or not, much less a pedophile). He also talked about Jesuit mind control, claiming that Ignatius Loyola's <span style="font-style: italic;">Spiritual Exercises</span> are "profoundly occult" in nature, and formed the basis of Illuminati mind control techniques. This is absurd. Loyola recommended meditation and daily prayer to achieve deeper devotion to God and indifference to the material world. If that's occultism, then virtually <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> priestly and monastic disciplines are occult.<br /><br />Here's where Bill's story goes seriously off the rails. So far, none of his claims are particularly outlandish. But after he had covered "all the branches of Masonry there are to do", he signed his soul over to Satan in a Black Book (in blood, of course). The contract entitled him to seven years of anything he wanted, at the end of which he would be killed and taken to Hell. This wasn't such a bad thing, he explains, because hardcore Satanists view Hell as a sort of eternal party. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />This nonsense comes straight out of medieval folklore and has no basis in actuality, of course. You cannot sign a pact with Satan any more than you can sign a pact with God, or an angel, or the evil monkey who lives in your closet. Ask yourself, why did Schnoebolen admittedly work at a series of menial jobs throughout these years, if Satan had granted him anything he desired?<br /><br />The silliness hits a new high with Bill's claim that he was recruited into the Illuminati when fellow Freemasons noticed he had an occult background. This is contradicted by Frater Barrabbas, who says the Masons were unaware of Bill's occult interests. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br />Bill implies that his entry into the Illuminati wasn't assured, that he slipped in via some arcane loophole. Spirit guides provided him with the appropriate "secret passwords".<br />He describes three steps that each Illuminati Mason must go through, in addition to learning the arts of tantric sex and opening the third eye with hallucinogens. The first step is illumination. Bill described this as being "deluged in the blinding white light of Lucifer. It felt like my brain was being parboiled in pure light." Step two is communion with the dead, something he had already mastered as a trance medium. Bill claims he had long chats with Jesus, Buddha, Zoraster, Hitler, Aleister Crowley, and others.<br />Step three is sex with a fallen angel, an "appalling and bizarre" process. Bill was formally married to his angel, a ceremony we'll see again in the case of Dr. Rebecca Brown and the "former Satanist" known as Elaine. Apparently this is not considered bigamy, as Bill was already married to Sharon when he became an Illuminati member.<br />To accept this nonsense, one must accept that Richard Nixon and other high-level politicians did these things, too, because Bill informs us that many of the world's elite were fellow Illuminists.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 3: Priest</span><br /><br />Wait, it gets stupider. To "level up" to the hardcore Satanic high priesthood, Bill had to recruit seven people to sell their souls, and <span style="font-style: italic;">become a Catholic priest</span>. He says medieval literature supports his contention that all Satanic high priests are also Catholic priests. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>) However, it isn't required that you become an <span style="font-style: italic;">orthodox </span>Catholic priest; it's good enough just to be "ordained", as both Schnoebolen and <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Mike Warnke</a> were, as a "bishop" of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Catholic_Church">Old Catholic Church</a>. This wasn't difficult. Bill found a "bishop" who was willing to ordain him in exchange for being made a witch priest. Frater Barrabbas identifies this man as Edward M. Stehlik. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br /><br />Bill then became involved with the Patriarch of the Gnostic Catholic Church in Chicago, and was also made a bishop in that church. Oddly, he refers to this church as the Order of Memphis and Mizraim. They are not the same thing. The Gnostic Catholic Church is a branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and is not officially affiliated with esoteric Freemasonry.<br /><br />At any rate, Bill claims to have reached the ninetieth of ninety-seven degrees in the Order of Memphis and Mizraim (never mind that it only has ninety degrees). He was also initiated into the OTO at some point. Now the story reaches its zenith of ridiculousness.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 4: Vampire</span><br /><br />His mastery of Freemasonry in all its forms allowed Bill to "cross the abyss", an occult term referring to a state of enlightenment. Under the system of hardcore Satanism he had chosen, he now had to decide between two paths: Lycanthropy or vampirism. He selected vampirism, because the werewolves he knew had undergone some unpleasant experiences.<br /><br />As it turned out, vampirism wasn't so jolly, either. In the church of a Chicago vampire cult, Bill was made to drink the blood of what he believes to be a fallen angel, and underwent a physical transformation: His blood type changed, he could consume only blood and Catholic hosts, his skin blistered in the sun, and he couldn't be near garlic. He carefully notes that he could not turn into a bat. Whew. For a minute there, I thought his imagination was getting the better of him. I mean, fallen angels and garlic are one thing, but bats? Let's not be silly.<br /><br />A small harem of witches provided Bill with blood, but as time went on he required more and more of it. As a <span style="font-style: italic;">Milkwaukee Sentinal </span>deliveryman, he would see a hooker and "it would be all that I could do not to leap on that woman and rip her throat out and just drink every drop of blood out of her body." Only his love for his wife prevented him from doing it. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />This is quite easily one of the most bizarre and least plausible claims ever made by an ex-witch in North America. It is also profoundly disturbing. I think it goes without saying that Bill Schnoebolen was not physically transformed into a vampire, so why on earth would he tell us about his homicidal fantasies? "Former Satanists" like to exaggerate their evil nature to make their Christian conversion stories as dramatic as possible (<a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Mike Warnke</a> essentially admitted as such on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Jim Bakker Show</span>), but wanting to rip out the throats of prostitutes is beyond the pale. Even inventing such fantasies is indicative of mental imbalance, in my opinion.<br /><br />Schnoebelen also claims to have been a cocaine addict during this period, though he was a peer counselor for addicts before and after his years as a Satanist. How and when he kicked the habit is unknown.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 5: Christian</span><br /><br />As we have seen, all the testimonies of former witches and ex-Satanists feature dramatic conversion stories. This is the ultimate purpose of the testimonies; to show that anyone, even the most debauched devil-worshiper, can be saved by Christ.<br /><br />There are problems with Schnoebelen's conversion story. He claims that in 1984, one of his "tithe checks" to the Church of Satan bounced and was returned to him with a note scrawled on it by a Christian bank teller: "I'll be praying for you in the name of Jesus."<br /><br />This makes no sense in the context of his hardcore Satanism/Illuminati stories. Bill clearly stated that the Church of Satan was "entry level" Satanism, and that he had surpassed it by becoming a real, hardcore Satanist. So why was he still a member of the CoS nearly a decade later? To make a bad analogy, that would be like paying your Brownie dues long after you've become a Girl Scout.<br /><br />The prayers of the unknown Christian bank teller triggered a chain of events that ultimately led to Bill's salvation. First, he lost all his magical and vampiric powers. This was a major setback, as he was "probably one of the most powerful warlocks on the west coast of Lake Michigan." This was when he decided he needed to become a Mormon. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />Yeah, you read that correctly. He had to become a Mormon. This is because the LDS church was founded "by witches, for witches", as a sort of deep cover. Schnoebelen later wrote a book about it: <span style="font-style: italic;">Mormonism's Temple of Doom.</span> (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />There is a minute grain of truth in this assertion. Certain practices of Joseph Smith, including the use of scrying stones, are indicative of folk magic. But to call Smith a full-fledged witch would be absurd in the extreme; he was a Christian, not an adherent of any earth religion or occult belief system. The modern-day beliefs and practices of Mormons in no way resemble witchcraft.<br />The allegation that Mormons secretly practice witchcraft or worship Satan is not unique to Schnoebolen's testimony, unfortunately. For instance, prominent conspiracy theorist A. True Ott, a former member of the LDS Church, <a href="http://www.exposingsatanism.org/mormons.htm">claims</a> that Mormons ritually sacrifice humans in their Salt Lake City temple. It is a smear intended to utterly discredit Mormonism, a sect that has been despised and feared by mainstream Protestants since its inception.<br /><br />Schnoebelen also claims he belonged to Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT), a cult-like New Age sect. CUT is currently based in Montana, but in the '70s it operated out of California. So it's not impossible Schnoebelen had some dealings with Prophet's followers. (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br />Like all the other people in this series, Bill portrays witchcraft and Satanism (falsely) as the exact same thing. He also claims that one of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, Elder <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Faust">James E. Faust</a>, personally told him that Lucifer is the god of Mormonism.<br /><br />In a <a href="http://www.prophecyclub.com/">Prophecy Club</a> lecture given around 1996, Schnoeblen openly encouraged Christians to fear, reject, and disdain Mormons and Freemasons. At the same time, he displayed a disdain for homosexuals, and a total lack of knowledge about the nature of sexual orientation. "If you've got one Mason in your congregation...you're gonna end up with a kind of bad apple spoiling the whole barrel routine...You never have one of these dudes in a church, 'cause they start recruiting. Masons are like homosexuals, they can't reproduce themselves naturally - yeah, amen! - they can only <span style="font-style: italic;">recruit</span>." (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />Though Mormonism was just another one of Bill's spiritual dead ends, it led him to true salvation by spurring him to read the Bible for the very first time (rather strange for a former seminarian!). He realized that St. Paul could never have been a Mormon - he doesn't explain why he reached this conclusion - and finally gave his life to Christ on June 22, 1984. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />As a Christian, Bill penned many books and tracts about the alleged evils of witchcraft, the occult, UFOs, Satanism, Mormonism, and Dungeons & Dragons. He <a href="http://www.chick.com/articles/dnd.asp">claimed </a>the creators of D&D consulted his Satanic coven in the late '70s because they wanted to make their game "authentic" (Dungeons and Dragons was created in the <em>early </em>'70s, and it's about as authentically Satanic as Taco Bell food is authentically Tex-Mex). His article "Straight Talk on Dungeons and Dragons" is <a href="http://www.chick.com/articles/dnd.asp">still available</a> on Jack Chick's website, along with the nonsense of <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">John Todd</a>. Chick is a strong supporter of Schnoebelen, and offers his book <a href="http://www.chick.com/catalog/books/vampire.asp"><span style="font-style: italic;">Lucifer Dethroned</span></a> for sale.<br />Though he knows perfectly well that witches are not Satanists and Mormons are not witches, Schnoebelen continues to spread this misinformation via lectures, DVDs, and his <a href="http://www.withoneaccord.org/">With One Accord </a>ministry.<br /><br />In 2006, Schnoebelen sat down with Stephanie Relfe for a 9-hour interview that was packaged as a DVD, <a href="http://www.exvampire.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Interview with an Ex-Vampire</span></a>. I've <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2008/05/hazards-of-magical-thinking-ive-talked.html">mentioned</a> Mrs. Relfe on this blog before; she and her husband, Michael, used kinesiology to unlock Michael's buried memories of being a U.S. government slave on Mars. Both Relfes, back on Earth, experienced extensive contact with aliens (Michael was also repeatedly abducted by military personnel). Their first child was teleported out of Stephanie's womb by Reptilians.<br /><br />Mrs. Relfe uncritically accepts Schnoebelen's stories at face value, even the most absurd and fantastical ones. She listens patiently as Bill describes how a fellow Satanist summoned a mighty demon in his garage. Bill was a scribe at this ceremony, so he witnessed everything. The man successfully summoned a slithery, tentacled monster that filled the room, but made the mistake of stepping outside his magic circle to answer the phone. As it turned out, the ringing was a demonic illusion and the man was whisked away to another dimension by the demon. Because the story wouldn't be believed, Bill said, he and the man's wife never bothered to alert the authorities to his disappearance. He doesn't provide names, a date, or a location.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 6: Naturopathic physician </span><br /><br />"Naturopathy" is an extremely loose term that encompasses a broad range of alternative medicine, holistic health practices, and quackery. There are a few institutions that offer real degrees in naturopathy, but as Schnoebelen has not revealed where or when he received his, we have no idea if it's valid or not.<br />As the alternative health biz is hot these days, Schnoebelen gave another Prophecy Club lecture on the "medical conspiracy", explaining how the evil pharmaceutical companies are suppressing miraculous natural cures and whatnot. (<span style="font-size:85%;">4</span>)<br /><br />In the '90s, Schnoebelen said he was working as a counselor specializing in addictions treatment. This is a bit alarming, as he doesn't have any formal education or training in this field. Even more alarming is the fact that he believes there are about two million victims of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) in the U.S., and treats some of those victims. In the '80s and '90s, even many fully-qualified professionals who treated SRA patients used highly questionable methods of treatment such as recovered memory therapy. I don't even want to imagine the psychological damage an amateur therapist like Schnoebelen could do. But then, I <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2010/08/wednesday-weirdness.html">don't have to imagine it</a>.<br />Schnoebelen says Dissociative Identity Disorder is caused by "scientifically inserted demons". This medieval notion - that mental illness can be attributed to demonic possession - has no place in modern therapy. Even if deliverance has some limited efficacy in alleviating a patient's symptoms, it doesn't address the underlying cause(s) of the condition.<br />Schnoebelen is also of the misguided opinion that once a person becomes a Christian, he/she is fully healed of all psychological trauma resulting from childhood abuse and has no further need of therapy. Therefore, his goal as a counselor is probably just to convince emotionally vulnerable people that they must accept Christ as their personal saviour. Using "therapy" as a cover for proselytization is unethical in the extreme.<br /><br />Schnoebelen's take on history is equally mangled. He believes Josef Mengele was brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip (he wasn't; he fled to South America with a Vatican-issued passport). He says Mengele had experimented with mind control and cloning in Germany (he had nothing to do with either).<br />He says we've been successfully cloning animals since the 1940s. Dolly the sheep was just a cover.<br />As evidence that a UFO crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, in the year of Aleister Crowley's death, Schnoebelen produced an artist's rendering of a "long-range photo" showing two military policemen walking a tiny alien on a leash. Since the object that crashed in the desert was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul">not </a>extraterrestrial, this drawing-of-an-alleged-photo is obviously a crude hoax. No sane, rational person would accept it as evidence of anything.<br />Schnoebelen also gives credence to Eisenhower's supposed meeting with aliens, Betty Hill's <a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/show/over_the_hill_on_ufo_abductions">"map" of Zeta Reticuli</a>, and Reptilian sightings in malls beneath Salt Lake City. He speculates that aliens are really fallen angels, paving the way for the Antichrist. He wonders if SRA victims and alien abductees have implants that are really "tiny remote-controlled neutron bombs". (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />His Biblical exegesis isn't much better. Schnoebelen believes that in <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+11%3A2-16&version=NIV">I Corinthians 11:2-16</a>, Paul seems to be warning women to be under the headship of men so they won't be screwed by fallen angels. He suspects Adam and Eve may not have had blood until they ate the forbidden fruit, and that fallen angels must drink human blood to become sexually functional. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />When it comes to witchcraft, however, Schnoebelen shows himself more knowledgeable than his peers. He acknowledges that witches are just ordinary people, capable of love. He admits that Wicca is probably not ancient; Gerald Gardner's New Forest coven was, in all likelihood, fictional. He knows that the Druids had no written language, and that our knowledge of their practices and beliefs is limited. This is quite a contrast to <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">John Todd</a>, <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/04/prodigal-witch-part-v-irene-park.html">Irene Park</a>, and <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/05/prodigal-witch-part-vi-tom-sanguinet.html">Tom Sanguinet</a>, who attributed all sorts of evil deeds to the Druids. (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Some (Very Obvious) Problems with Schnoebolen's Testimony</span><br /><br />Why was he studying for a Masters degree in theology at a pastoral school and practicing Satanism at the same time, four years before he was saved?<br /><br />Mormons are not witches. Mormons do not worship Lucifer. Witches do not worship Lucifer. If Mormons are <span style="font-style: italic;">secretly </span>worshiping the Devil, why would Elder Faust confide this to two relatively new converts?<br /><br />Freemasons are not Satanists, and Satanic high priests are not required to become Freemasons. Though rumours and hoaxes have attributed all manner of evil doings to Freemasonry, it is generally a benign fraternal organization.<br /><br />Satanists are not required to become Catholic priests. Catholics are not permitted to be Freemasons. It is far more likely that Schnoebelen, like <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Mike Warnke</a>, was drawn to the Old Catholic Church for reasons of his own, such as receiving the grand title of "bishop" without having to earn it.<br /><br />Schnoebelen likened the Illuminati to Communist cells, compartmentalized in such a way that each member knows only one or two others. How, then, can the members engage in tantric sex with each other? How do they oversee and instruct one another? Who performed the ceremony in which he married his fallen angel? How can you even be sure the Illuminati truly exists, if you only know two of its supposed members?<br /><br />Schnoebelen identifies Aleister Crowley as the key figure in his occult life, but gets many of the details about Crowley's life and work seriously wrong. He claims Crowley was "probably the most highly honored Mason in the world". In the recent Crowley autobiography <span style="font-style: italic;">Perdurabo</span>, however, author Richard Kaczynski states that Crowley was not recognized as a Mason at all. Nor was Crowley a raper of children who "boasted of slaughtering 150 boys in a single year." Crowley did write of child sacrifice in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Magick in Theory and Practice</span>, but made it clear that not everything in the book should be taken literally. There is no evidence that he ever physically harmed a child. On the contrary, most children enjoyed his company.<br />Schnoebelen also blames Crowley for Hitler, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event">Tunguska explosion</a>, and "<a href="http://www.necfiles.org/schnoeb.htm">Transyuggothian magick</a>". Like John Todd, he suggests that H.P. Lovecraft had access to secret knowledge about demonic/alien entities. He says the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Necronomicon">Simon </a><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Necronomicon">Necronomicon</a> </span>contains about half of the "real" <span style="font-style: italic;">Necronomicon</span>, which is <a href="http://www.necfiles.org/">utter b.s.</a> He points out that in both "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Dunwich Horror", human women breed with nonhuman creatures. "I believe these stories are absolutely true..." (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br /><br />Schnoebelen claims the Royal Secret of Scottish Rite Freemasonry is the sodomy of young boys, which occultists believe allows them to access a realm of "trans-Plutonian space" and gives them an illusion of immortality. He says even "good" Masons can be drawn into pedophilia and homosexuality. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />Again, he's betraying a total ignorance of sexual orientation and attributing atrocious crimes to an organization that is, for the most part, benevolent. Predatory pedophiles are not over-represented in Freemasonry, and no occult tradition requires one to rape children.<br /><br />Schnoebelen makes similar allegations against Michael Aquino, founder of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Set">Temple of Set</a>. He says Aquino was charged of child abuse three times, but the charges didn't stick "probably because of government involvement." (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>)<br />First off, it was the government (the military) who investigated Aquino in the first place. Secondly, he was never charged with any crime. The investigations dead-ended, not because of government intervention but because the allegations were made by hysterical parents who feared that Colonel Aquino, an out-of-the-closet Satanist, was the child-raping, virgin-slaying devil of modern legend. It is <span style="font-style: italic;">very </span>interesting that Aquino was never accused of a single crime until he outed himself as a Satanist.<br /><br />In addition to his ridiculous stories about Catholic mind control and the Illuminati, Schnoebelen pulled out some of the same discredited conspiracy myths used by John Todd, such as the factoid that Freemason Albert Pike was a Satanist (a feature of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxil_hoax">Taxil hoax</a>). Also in common with Todd, he criticized <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span>, soap operas, and romance novels. He told his Prophecy Club audience that because the U.S. government treats its citizens like "idiot children", they turn to drugs and booze and fantasy (<span style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span>, soaps, etc.). "As a result of this, most people end up on the dole, or in mental hospitals." (1)<br />Excuse me? <span style="font-style: italic;">Most </span>Americans are welfare recipients, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> is responsible for this? <span style="font-style: italic;">Since when</span>?<br /><br />If Schnoebelen legally wed a fallen angel, then I suggest he produce a marriage or divorce certificate to verify his story. Or at least pull out some wedding photos.<br /><br />The stupidest and least tenable of all his claims, of course, is the assertion that he was a "real" vampire. Though Bill would have us believe that lycanthropy and vampirism are real supernatural phenomena with physiological manifestations, there is zero evidence to support that. No one needs to subsist on human blood. Blood type cannot change under any circumstances. If you are born AB positive, you will die AB positive. <span style="font-style: italic;">Faux</span> vampirism and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_lycanthropy">delusional lycanthropy</a> certainly exist, but real vampires and werewolves do not. Duh.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4WNH89edQBAWdKc4F7ro-D05n6ZhokvxS523xltmzJZ182QLfH7muaxxMZ78dZacJsepcrdij8nfYpwbnaG9d8bhyyUm8s4Vbdli46dZX60odEAcCuwLBLllUlJZZxIFnMrJ6CQ/s1600/are-you-wizard.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 241px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4WNH89edQBAWdKc4F7ro-D05n6ZhokvxS523xltmzJZ182QLfH7muaxxMZ78dZacJsepcrdij8nfYpwbnaG9d8bhyyUm8s4Vbdli46dZX60odEAcCuwLBLllUlJZZxIFnMrJ6CQ/s320/are-you-wizard.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617054078738369394" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sources: </span><br /><br />1. Schnoebelen's Prophecy Club talk "Exposing the Illuminati from Within" (c. 1996)<br />2. "<a href="http://www.exvampire.com/">Interview with an Ex-Vampire</a>" (Schnoebelen's 2006 interview with Stephanie Relfe)<br />3. Frater Barrabbas Tiresius' <a href="http://fraterbarrabbas.blogspot.com/2010/02/bill-schnoebelen-and-coven-from-hell.html">4-part blog series </a>on Schnoebelen @ <a href="http://fraterbarrabbas.blogspot.com/2010/02/bill-schnoebelen-and-coven-from-hell.html">Talking About Ritual Magick</a><br />4. Schnoebelen's Prophecy Club talk "The Medical Conspiracy" (date unknown)S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-9356575487253947612011-04-08T21:29:00.000-07:002011-04-08T22:44:01.325-07:00John Todd, "Former Witch" and "Illuminati Insider"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrETqcuA4J7aPlWxttLNYpnM3iILYZsyIh9XUqvInBoXsbVLQveMU5kdujUL4a8KfvCB5G73dWNb8raJdSSeXrEQsLkx2D4_-y8D2XzsbAqkGsgBH6EAE1C_2HWo5WE3ghdyAqw/s1600/John_Todd.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 139px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrETqcuA4J7aPlWxttLNYpnM3iILYZsyIh9XUqvInBoXsbVLQveMU5kdujUL4a8KfvCB5G73dWNb8raJdSSeXrEQsLkx2D4_-y8D2XzsbAqkGsgBH6EAE1C_2HWo5WE3ghdyAqw/s200/John_Todd.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5590423210667017154" border="0" /></a><br />The only positive thing I can say about the late John Todd is that makes a lot of other "former witches" look good by comparison. At the height of his fame as a "former witch", he was a sexual predator, a military <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">impostor</span>, and a practicing witch who used several aliases.<br /><br />John Todd emerged on the Christian scene around 1968, at least four years before <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/mike-warnke-man-who-sold-satan.html">Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Warnke</span></a> (according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone</span> article on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Warnke</span>, he accused <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Warnke</span> of stealing some of his Illuminati material), but never gained the level of mainstream popularity that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Warnke</span> did. His tales of Satanic intrigue were just too dark and outlandish for the average Christian. Frankly, you would have to be either blissfully innocent or profoundly stupid to buy any of Todd's b.s.<br />He was ultimately relegated to the far-right fringe, preaching to militia members and Christian Patriots about the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">endtimes</span> and the need to establish armed strongholds. One of his last known locations before his arrest was Iowa, where he attached himself to a paranoid young couple named Randy and Vicki Weaver. He convinced the Weavers they needed to get away from populated areas and prepare for the end of the world. We all know how that turned out.<br /><br />Even though his anti-occult invective wasn't as appealing as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Warnke's</span>, Todd still has his fans. Old audio recordings of his diatribes have popped up on YouTube, where he is vaunted as an Illuminati insider, framed by The Powers That Be. Henry <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Makow</span> still <a href="http://www.rense.com/general78/ilumm.htm">promotes</a> his story.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Who is John Todd?</span><br /><br />No one really knows. His background is so occluded that even the year of his birth is in doubt. Possibly he was born in Ohio around 1950. He was taken into foster care as a youth. He suffered epileptic seizures throughout his life.<br />He was fairly good-looking and extremely tall (about 6'4").<br />Given his peculiar fascination with daytime television and gay porn movies, I strongly suspect he was a failed actor.<br /><br />Todd first surfaced on the fundamentalist Christian scene in Arizona in 1968, performing as a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Pentacostal</span> preacher. He was about 19 or 20 years old, married to a slightly older woman named Linda. Earlier that year he had been arrested in Columbus, Ohio for malicious destruction of property.<br />He told Pastor James Outlaw of the Jesus Name Church that he had recently been saved at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Pentacostal</span> church service after practicing witchcraft in the Navy, and wanted to be re-baptized as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus%27_Name_doctrine">Jesus Only</a> believer.<br />He then vanished for several years, resurfacing in 1973 as a born again warlock. He again said he had been saved at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Pentacostal</span> church service, and identified himself as an independent Baptist, but preached mostly to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_Christianity">charismatics</a>. He was now married to a woman named Sharon <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Garver</span>.<br />He went on the fundamentalist lecture circuit in Cali, educating churchgoers about the international Satanic conspiracy. His talks were a blend of pop <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">conspiranoia</span>, anti-occult <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">fearmongering</span>, and tell-all braggadocio.<br /><br />Todd said his real name was Lance Collins, and he had been born into a powerful family of devil-worshiping witches with ties to the Illuminati. His mother was so consumed by guilt and shame because of her deeds that she spent her life in and out of mental health facilities.<br />His foster mother was the high priestess of all the witches in California, and his sister had been made the high priestess of Ohio at the tender age of 13. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Collinses</span> were direct descendants of Scottish Druids who posed as Puritans and imported witchcraft to America before helping to establish the Illuminati.<br />Todd was perhaps the first "former Satanist" to come from a Satanic family, but within a few years this would be the norm.<br />The hereditary Satanism he described bears little resemblance to <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.com/2011/03/doreen-irvine-original-witch-who.html">Doreen Irvine's "black witchcraft"</a>, and no resemblance whatsoever to Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Warnke's</span> "third level" Satanism. Presumably, as an Illuminati member, Todd was privy to knowledge that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Warnke</span> never imagined.<br /><br />He was reared on a diet of "occult" teachings: ufology, spells, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis.<br />Witch parents aren't allowed to love or discipline their children; kids belong to the cult. At age 13 or 14, boys are sent to witch schools called Outer Courts to be trained as Satanic priests. Todd was initiated into the priesthood at 14. His sister became such a powerful high priestess that she could summon demons in the form of UFOs.<br />At age 18, while serving as a Green Beret, Todd became the high priest of his coven.<br /><br />The Illuminati Todd describes is a configuration of pure evil represented (in part) by Freemasons, Mormons, international finance, Communists, and - paradoxically - the John Birch Society. He explained that very few Jews belong to the Illuminati, but the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Rothschilds</span> are at the top of the pyramid, totally controlling the illustrious Council of 13. <span style="font-style: italic;">All </span>Illuminati members, whatever their supposed religious affiliation, are actually devil worshipers.<br />He claimed to know a great deal about the inner workings of Freemasonry, yet always called it "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Masonary</span>". He also called the Trilateral Commission "the Trilateral Council", and the Council on Foreign Relations "the Council of Foreign Affairs".<br />Clearly, he was somewhat familiar with John Birch literature. But he never explained why the John Birch Society, as part of the Illuminati conspiracy, would expose all these real Illuminati fronts.<br /><br />Let's move on to the Satanism. Todd was, of course, a high-ranking Satanist within the Illuminati. He belonged to a Grand Druid Council headed by Raymond <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Buckland</span>, the man hand-picked by Philippe Rothschild to head the Illuminati and a professor of anthropology at Columbia. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Buckland</span> revealed to Todd many things known only to high-level witches; lower-level witches were hand-fed disinformation and nonsense. He also received some witchcraft training from Ruth Carter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Stapleton</span>, sister of future president Jimmy Carter.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Buckland</span>, as you may know, was indeed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Buckland">a very prominent witch</a>. But he never taught at Columbia, and wasn't an anthropologist. He was a flight attendant for British Airways.<br /><br />According to Todd, Satanists don't congregate. This is quite a contrast to Doreen Irvine's gatherings, which attracted up to 1000 black witches, and to Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Warnke's</span> San <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Bernadino</span>-area coven of 1500.<br />In Todd's form of witchcraft, Satanists dealt directly with their high priests. They didn't even know the other members of their covens.<br /><br />The central scripture of Satanism is the <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Necronomicon</span></span>, but copies are rare. The only copies known to Todd were kept in St. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Petersburg</span>, Glasgow, and the British Library.<br />In case you're keeping track, that makes three different sacred texts in just three different "ex Satanist" accounts: <span style="font-style: italic;">The Book of Satan</span> (Doreen Irvine), <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Mother</span> (Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Warnke</span>), and a book that doesn't freaking exist (Todd). But hey, at least we've <span style="font-style: italic;">heard </span>of the <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Necronomicon</span></span>. Those other two books don't seem to exist even in the realm of fiction.<br />All three cults were supposedly organized on a national level, and two encompassed the whole planet. <span style="font-style: italic;">So why aren't all these Satanists using the same books</span>?<br />And just for the record, Lovecraft stories never named St. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Petersburg</span> or Glasgow as locations of the <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Necronomicon</span></span>. There were copies at the British Museum, Harvard, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Biblioteque</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Nationale</span>, the University of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Buenos</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Aires</span>, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Miskatonic</span> University.<br />Todd also referred to the book several times as the "<span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Necromonicon</span></span>", just as he called Masonry "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Masonary</span>".<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Sheesh</span>, he couldn't even get his bullshit right.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEW3dCvFHVPYf_Hpd4EO9AXkCYvv2IMCPmke1f56HNav7lh4gGkQ87y3YV7-c4Q_jZ-17EnegWNK9MAmthjGtil7QeqPw_YkgvsZZzPHHqPRU_z1y8akp4cuhsgGk4Psr3tX-TQ/s1600/necronomicon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEW3dCvFHVPYf_Hpd4EO9AXkCYvv2IMCPmke1f56HNav7lh4gGkQ87y3YV7-c4Q_jZ-17EnegWNK9MAmthjGtil7QeqPw_YkgvsZZzPHHqPRU_z1y8akp4cuhsgGk4Psr3tX-TQ/s200/necronomicon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5590430160763022498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Satanic scripture. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">LOL</span>. </span><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Apocalypse Not</span><br /><br />In '69, Todd enlisted in the military. Illuminati witches are exempt from military service, but he wanted to set up some covens in other countries and this was a convenient cover. He served in Vietnam as a Green Beret before being transferred to Germany. One night, in Stuttgart, he got crazy drunk and high and (for reasons known only to him) engaged in a firefight with one of his former commanding officers. The man was killed. From military confinement, Todd phoned his foster mother in L.A. and asked her to cast a spell on the members of the jury at his imminent court martial, to make them believe he was innocent. (It would have been simpler to cast a spell on the commanding officer in charge of the court martial, but what do I know? I'm not a Satanic Illuminati witch.)<br />Instead, someone pulled major strings for Todd. <span style="font-size:100%;"><strong style="font-weight: normal;">A Senator, a Congressman,</strong> and two generals personally escorted him out of his cell. He received an honorable discharge, no questions asked. </span>The Army even destroyed all Todd's military records to help preserve the secrecy of the Illuminati.<br />In reality, Todd's papers were not destroyed. And they tell a slightly different story: He served as a clerk in the Army from February 1969 to July 1970 without ever setting foot in Vietnam. He was stationed in Germany for less than a month and was discharged under a Section 8. You know, that thing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Klinger</span> was always trying to get by running around in drag? I wonder just how unstable a person would have to be to get a Section 8 during 'Nam. I'm guessing "Charlie Sheen".<br />Anyway, Todd had been making death threats and false suicide reports. A psychiatric evaluation conducted in '69 found he suffered emotional instability, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudologia_fantastica"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">pseudologica</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">phantastica</span></a>, and possibly brain damage as well. He was also treated for a drug overdose at an Army facility in Maryland in 1969.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Devil Rock</span><br /><br />Like evangelist/exorcist Bob Larson, Todd claimed to be a music industry insider. After 'Nam, he was a manager at Zodiac Productions (variously described as "the largest music conglomerate in the world" and "the largest booking agency"), so he knew that every rock musician in America had to become a witch before he could get a recording contract, and that every master recording was taken to a Satanic temple to be possessed by a demon. Each major record label had its own temple.<br />In one of his anti-rock lectures, he recounts a conversation he had with David Crosby after his conversion:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Todd:</span> "Do they still bring the master [recording] to the Temple...and conjure demons into the master? Is the purpose of rock music still to use witchcraft, cast spells...?"<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Crosby:</span> "Of course. You know that, Lance."<br /><br />The only moderately successful Zodiac Productions operating in the U.S. during the early '70s was a film company that produced one film (a '74 gay porno called <a href="http://www.freebase.com/view/en/portrait_of_dorian_gay/-/base/gayporn"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Portrait of Dorian Gay</span></a> - <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">NSFW</span>) and several episodes of the '60s variety show <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hollywood Palace</span>. It did not have a music division.<br />To explain why no one recognized this mammoth media <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">conglom</span>, Todd said Zodiac was forced to change its name because of the negative publicity he brought to it. He did not divulge the new name.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">World Domination and Stuff</span><br /><br />In '72, the Grand Druid Council received a diplomatic pouch from headquarters in London, containing an eight-year plan for world domination (culminating in December 1980). It involved economic breakdown, a military strike force comprised partly of prisoners, the execution of millions, and a Third World War that would spare only Jerusalem.<br />Around the same time, a letter from Satanic HQ announced the discovery of a man believed to be Lucifer's son. He would serve as a false messiah to lead the masses astray. Todd later identified this Antichrist as fellow Baptist Jimmy Carter.<br /><br />It was shortly after this that Todd was supposedly saved at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Pentacostal</span> church service. Sometimes he placed this event in California, sometimes it occurred in Texas.<br /><br />After his conversion and defection in '73, the Satanists made many attempts on Todd's life. This campaign of terror echoes the assassination attempts described by Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Warnke</span> and his first wife, and was equally unsuccessful. How is that these international Satanists can pull off world wars, but they can't bump off two regular dudes?<br />Todd wouldn't have been hard to find. He was working at a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Pheonix</span>, Arizona coffeehouse run by Pentecostal Ken Long, a local leader of the Jesus movement.<br /><br />Todd's extant lectures overflow with such stupefyingly retarded bullshit. Just a few examples:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ayn Rand fans are Communists.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Atlas Shrugged</span> was commissioned by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Rothschild">Philippe Rothschild</a> (Rand's lover) as a blueprint for the destruction of the U.S. and the Communist/Illuminati takeover of the world. Rand inserted racy passages in the book to keep Christians away from it. Todd doesn't explain why Rothschild didn't just write it himself. (One wonders, too, why the Satanists concocted an eight-year plan in the '70s if Rand had already produced a step-by-step instruction manual for global domination back in '57. I guess the Illuminati doesn't mind busywork. Also, Rand's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">hinky</span> sex life has been exhaustively documented - I mean, seriously, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">TMI</span> - and it didn't involve any <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Rothschilds</span>.)</li><li style="font-weight: bold;">JFK faked his death. <span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Or not.</span> As "personal warlock" to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Kennedys</span>, Todd met with JFK many times in the early '70s. He never went into detail about this. In his later talks, Todd ignored or forgot this. He said JFK was assassinated in November 1963 because he had been born again and The Powers That Be couldn't tolerate that (a Catholic president was okay because Catholicism and witchcraft are virtually identical, according to Todd).<br /></span></li><li style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Epilepsy is a medical condition, but the seizures are caused by demonic possession and/or medication.</span> Todd actually instructed his epileptic listeners <span style="font-style: italic;">not to take their medication. </span><br /></span></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The supernatural soap opera </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Dark Shadows</span></a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows"> </a>was based on the history of the Collins family.</span> Todd was asked to bring a family diary to Hollywood, all expenses paid, one summer. He spent several months as a consultant to the writers while the series was being developed. I've never seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Dark Shadows</span>, but my mother tells me most of the main characters were vampires and werewolves rather than witches, and there wasn't any explicit occult content other than maybe a few black candles. Episode synopses at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Wikipedia</span> indicate the plot elements were culled from classic Gothic lit and popular novels.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Most of the cast of <span>the </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span> movies were gay men who had slept with the producers, culled from </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Young and the Restless</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span> The <span style="font-style: italic;">Y&R </span>cast contained so many witches that Todd referred to it as an "occult soap opera". But none of the primary <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span> actors were ever in it. Mark Hamill was on <span style="font-style: italic;">General Hospital</span>. Harrison Ford was never on a soap at all. Nor was Alec Guinness. James Earl Jones was on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guiding Light</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">As the World Turns</span>. Billy Dee Williams was on <span style="font-style: italic;">The Guiding Light</span>; even though he still does a lot of soap work, he has never been on <span style="font-style: italic;">Y&R</span> (interestingly, though, Ford and Williams appeared in some of the same films and TV shows: <span style="font-style: italic;">The Conversation</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The F.B.I.</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mod Squad</span>). All of these men had considerable acting ability and would certainly not have to sleep with any producers to get work. Aside from Guinness, who was reportedly bi, not one of them appears to be gay. Maybe the Modal Nodes were gay warlocks?<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Actress Cindy Williams (<span style="font-style: italic;">Laverne and Shirley</span>) and her boyfriend started a witch cult. </span>I suspect Todd singled out Williams because she and Penny Marshall co-wrote a screenplay about the Salem witch trials, <span style="font-style: italic;">Paper Hands</span>. She was also in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Conversation, </span>the tale of a man who lets paranoia and his imagination get the better of him. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">Hmm</span>.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Most Israeli license plates contain the number 666.</span> Todd was taking a big risk with this one. Any listener who had traveled to Israel would know he was full of it.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Illuminati gave him $8 million to start the Christian record label <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maranatha%21_Music"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">Marantha</span> Records</a></span>, to corrupt Christian youth via Satanic rock music. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">Marantha</span> would later produce such hardcore Satanic albums as <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Psalty's</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">Funtastic</span> Praise Party</span>.<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">Dunwich</span> Horror</span>, starring Sandra Dee, was the most accurate representation of witchcraft on film. </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">LOL</span>. I've seen this movie, and about the only thing it accurately represents is Grade B cheese.</li></ul><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Move the f*** over, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Burzum</span>...</span><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ENGsE-axveQ" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="480"></iframe><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVGC5CeZzK0ighkafqqOK5LXHVoFAWtbM4ZUJJgosV5CKAEA_FsoM9TtJ9HgQ2PAZH9Yo7buz8CbfPBacZqNR4Xou__V-cJTzvdx7VetWqf1g7BDxFOlKUVY46rWb30GfHINWdvw/s1600/toddspellbound.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVGC5CeZzK0ighkafqqOK5LXHVoFAWtbM4ZUJJgosV5CKAEA_FsoM9TtJ9HgQ2PAZH9Yo7buz8CbfPBacZqNR4Xou__V-cJTzvdx7VetWqf1g7BDxFOlKUVY46rWb30GfHINWdvw/s320/toddspellbound.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593392357682134242" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">John Todd as a character in the Jack Chick comic <span style="font-style: italic;">Spellbound?</span></span><br /></div><br /><br />continued from <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">Part I</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Big Time</span><br /><br />In August 1973, Todd married Sharon <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Garver</span>. He was preaching and performing faith <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">healings</span> on the road, having been fired from the Christian coffeehouse for allegedly hitting on teenage girls.<br />This was the year that Todd first snagged the attention of Christians outside Arizona by giving his dramatic testimony on a Christian TV program. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>He announced he had been the "personal warlock" of the Kennedy clan, that JFK had faked his death, and that he had just returned from visiting JFK on his yacht. He revealed that many fundamentalist churches had been infiltrated by Satanists. For instance, Jerry Falwell had been "bought" with a check for $50 million. He described watching George McGovern stab a young girl to death in a Satanic ritual sacrifice. He claimed his wife had been seduced into witchcraft as a teen, and he rescued her.<br /><br />Pastor Doug Clark heard Todd's story and invited him to appear on his <span style="font-style: italic;">Amazing Prophecies</span> TV show. Todd became an overnight sensation among charismatics in southern California. He and Sharon promptly vacated Arizona for Santa Ana, Doug Clark's headquarters. They hosted weekly Bible studies in their home, and Todd appeared at several of Clark's Amazing Prophecy rallies.<br />Clark and leaders at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodyland_Christian_Center"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Melodyland</span> Christian Center</a> soon heard reports that Todd was hitting on teenage girls who attended these Bible study sessions. Todd angrily denied the allegations, and thereafter named <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Melodyland</span> as part of the Illuminati conspiracy.<br />Clark decided John Todd wasn't such a credit to his ministry, after all, and denounced him on his TV show.<br /><br />His ties to Doug Clark severed, Todd moved to his wife's hometown of San Antonio and promptly impregnated her teen sister. In '74, the couple split. Todd north went to Dayton, Ohio, and found a third wife, Sheila <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Spoonmore</span>. He decided to become a witch for real - whether he had ever been one before is debatable - and with his wife opened an occult bookstore called The Witches <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Caldron</span> [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>]. The couple gave courses on witchcraft. Once again, there were complaints from teen girls.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Todd Meets the Crusaders</span><br /><br />Todd's drivel intrigued Jack Chick, the guy who produces all those wacky rectangular pamphlets you see in Christians' bathrooms. Chick immediately realized that Todd would make a nice shiny new cog for his <a href="http://www.chick.com/default.asp">misinformation machine</a>, and enlisted him to provide "inside information" for several anti-occult tracts.<br />Todd collaborated with Chick at the very same time that he was running an occult bookstore and persuading teen "witches" to disrobe for "ceremonies".<br /><br />The first Chick booklet based on Todd's information was <a href="http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/0102.asp"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Broken Cross</span></a> (1974). Todd is described in the intro as an "ex-grand Druid priest".<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbrZUU0YvSkzm9p6NhRqXl92nUDSopZJAxGSeIwI72-hEQhBmRmxO1KZQoznrSoS10IQGqVcgHNdzEFLb_RYGqUHgerI2pwsNiNdjhUTTJx4RmH9FQVcey4ERuDIkgqqd1dlL4w/s1600/brokencross.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 224px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSbrZUU0YvSkzm9p6NhRqXl92nUDSopZJAxGSeIwI72-hEQhBmRmxO1KZQoznrSoS10IQGqVcgHNdzEFLb_RYGqUHgerI2pwsNiNdjhUTTJx4RmH9FQVcey4ERuDIkgqqd1dlL4w/s320/brokencross.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593391588196835762" border="0" /></a><br />In the comic, a 14-year-old hippie girl leaves home to escape her Christian parents. Hitchhiking, she is picked up by a young couple in a van. She rejoices in her <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">newfound</span> freedom, not realizing that two Satanists are hiding in the back of the van, ready to drug her unconscious. She is taken to a Satanic ceremony and ritually sacrificed on an altar. We're told that such murders occur eight times per year in every Satanic coven.<br />Chick's equivalent of comic book superheroes, <a href="http://www.toonopedia.com/crusadrs.htm">The Crusaders</a>, show up to investigate. They uncover the cult, which turns out to include nearly every prominent citizen of the town, even the local pastor and an elderly librarian. The Satanists practice cannibalism, kill dogs, and spy on non-Satanists. One of their symbols is the peace symbol - a broken, upside-down cross.<br />Chick states that Wicca, a form of devil worship involving child sacrifice, began during the Roman Empire. Wicca was later absorbed by the Illuminati, also known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriah"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Moriah</span></a>. This organization bankrolled the production of <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Godspell</span></span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Jesus Christ Superstar</span> to undermine Christ.<br /><br />A witch named Jody cheerfully informs the Crusaders that Lucifer is the power behind both white and black witchcraft. "Satan is one neat dude...I <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> crave the power!" The Crusaders easily convert Jody, and she is abducted by the Satanists for betraying them. Jim saves her seconds before she is sacrificed. Confronted by a Christian, the Satanists begin vomiting uncontrollably.<br />Like all the Crusader comics, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Broken Cross</span> is an insane mishmash of cut-and-paste moralizing, scripture, and occult <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">misinfo</span>. It also borders on the homoerotic; Jim and Tim are exceptionally buff and like to take off their shirts for no apparent reason. Methinks the man doth <a href="http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0273/0273_01.asp">protest too much</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Broken Cross</span> was followed by <a href="http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/0110.asp"><span style="font-style: italic;">Spellbound?</span></a>, a screed against rock music. According to Todd and Chick, all rock has "ancient Druid origins".<br />In this comic, Jim the Crusader's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">VW</span> is nearly forced off the road by a rock musician named Bobby Dallas. Dallas is injured in the resultant crash, and Jim saves his life. Grateful, Dallas later invites Jim to a party full of his creepy friends. We're told that the ankh necklace worn by one <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">partier</span> is a symbol of Satan worship, signifying that the wearer has lost his virginity and participates in orgies (a note at the bottom of the page adds that it won't be necessary to burn the book, as witches only use 3-D charms for casting spells).<br />A member of the cult from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Broken Cross </span>sees Jim trying to convert Dallas. The cult immediately murders Dallas to prevent him from "blowing their cover".<br />John Todd himself makes an appearance, meeting with Jim and Tim to educate them about the occult. They're told his family practiced Druidism for seven centuries.<br />Todd explains that Druids sacrificed men to their god <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Kernos</span> with "elfin fire", accompanied by the music of flutes, tambourines, and drums made of human skin. Each Halloween, they would go door to door demanding a human sacrifice (usually a young woman). If the sacrifice pleased them, they left a jack-o'-lantern lit by a candle made with human fat to protect the house's residents from demons. Such ritual murders still take place in the U.S. every Halloween, Todd tells us. And the hypnotic beat of Druid drummers is the same beat used in rock music. The melodies are lifted from "Druid manuscripts". For instance, the Beatles used this Pagan rhythm to draw America's youth into Eastern religions, opening the "flood gates to witchcraft."<br /><br />All of this is pure bunk. There was no "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Kernos</span>" in Druidism. Trick-or-treating did not <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">originate</span> with the Druids. Druids didn't have any written literature, so rock music can't be based on ancient Druid manuscripts. They did not make their drums with human flesh. The magical "elfin fire" is make-believe. Eastern religions and Paganism are very different things.<br />If Todd's teachings about the Druid origin of rock were actually correct, then Celtic music would be more of a threat to society than rock and roll!<br /><br />Todd then delivers a talk to a church congregation, telling them he once had 65,000 witches under his command. Their goal was to "destroy Bible believing churches and make witchcraft our nation's religion." He warns that Christians cannot wield the full power of Christ if they possess tarot cards, regular playing cards, Dungeons and Dragons, "occult" jewelry, country music, romance novels, or rock music. Such things must be burned. He also warns against Freemasonry, saying no Christian has a right to belong to a secretive organization (this is bizarre, as Christianity itself has been an underground movement in various times and places). Not only is Masonry a part of the Illuminati, but Albert Pike ("the pope of Freemasonry") admitted that Lucifer was his god. This, of course, is part of the ludicrous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxil_hoax"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Taxil</span> hoax</a> that attempted to smear Masons in the late 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">th</span> century.<br />As a producer with Z Productions, Todd learned that all rock songs contain coded incantations. There follows a graphic representation of how demons are summoned into every master recording.<br />Todd also declares, "Every Bible believing pastor is on a death list by Satan's crowd!"<br />A deacon's daughter named Penny, hearing Todd, decides to join in the record burning ceremony he has planned for the church. The local media, under the direction of a Satanist named Isaac (presumably Todd's nemesis, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Bonewits">Isaac <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Bonewits</span></a>, who we'll see in the next section), portrays the bonfire as KKK-like activity.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Unbeknownst</span> to Todd, the Satanists are following him, planning to assassinate him at the first opportunity. They shoot at him as he drives away from the church, but God presses Jim and Tim to follow him and capture the two Satanists. Then a cop - clearly in league with the Satanists - lets them go.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Broken Cross</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Spellbound?</span> portray all Satanists, witches, and Pagans as murderous thugs who must be opposed by Christians. Chick also implied that most policemen, some media outlets, and many church leaders are part of the Satanic plot to destroy Christianity.<br /><br />Chick continued to believe and <a href="http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys3/jtc-jtc.htm">defend </a>Todd long after more reasonable Christians had washed their hands of him. He was later bamboozled by another "former Illuminati member" and "ex-witch", Bill <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Schnoebelen</span>, and by the Satanic ritual abuse allegations of a woman calling herself <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Rebecca</span> Brown. We'll see both of them later in this series.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">First Arrest</span><br /><br />In '76, a 16-year-old girl told Dayton police what was going on in Todd's little coven. She said Todd forced her to have oral sex during a nude initiation rite.<br />Todd asked for help from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Frost">Gavin Frost</a>, head of the National Church and School of Wicca, and prominent Druid Isaac <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Bonewits</span>. He said he was being unjustly persecuted by Ohio authorities because he was a witch. After investigating, Frost and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Bonewits</span> concluded otherwise; they concurred with the cops that Todd was probably using his "church" as a cover for sexual misconduct.<br />He ultimately <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">pled</span> guilty to contributing to the unruliness of a minor and served two months of a six-month sentence in county jail before Chick and a lawyer secured an early medical release for him (he was having seizures). He received five years' probation, which he immediately violated by returning to Arizona. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Pentacostal</span> preacher Ken Long once again found a job for him, working as a cook.<br />Todd admitted to practicing witchcraft in Ohio, but was able to turn it to his advantage by declaring he and his wife had backslid and were now returning to the body of Christ. Satan had lost his minion again. Soon, Todd was back to preaching.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don't Think, Just Panic</span><br /><br />Todd hit his peak of popularity in the late '70s. By 1978 he and Sheila had three children.<br />They lived in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Canoga</span> Park, California and attended an independent Baptist church.<br />In January 1978 Tom Berry, pastor of the Bible Baptist Church in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Elkton</span>, Maryland, arranged for Todd to go on a speaking tour. His tales astonished and unnerved Eastern churchgoers. Tape cassettes of his talk were passed around in evangelical circles, and he even managed to snag mainstream media attention. Donations poured in for a rehab centre for ex-witches that he others planned to establish. Sound familiar? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Warnke</span> spoke of opening one just like it, but never got around to doing it. Neither did Todd.<br />His audiences were quite large. One appearance in Indiana drew 1000 listeners.<br />During this series of talks, Todd talked a lot about the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">endtimes</span> and the need for Christians to create armed compounds that could withstand onslaughts from Communists, the military, and other enemies of the faith. He said the U.S. government would soon be compiling lists of church members so that Christians could be rounded up and executed when the shit came down. There would also be a government-instigated "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Helter</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Skelter</span>" of riots and violence. The Illuminati takeover of the U.S. would begin in just one year, so time was of the essence.<br />He warned Christians not to trust prominent Christians. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Melodyland</span>, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">PTL</span>, Jerry Falwell, The Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship. They were all part of the Satanic conspiracy.<br />These revelations were received with a mixture of horror and gratitude. There's no indication that any of the Eastern churches actually took his advice and established fortresses, though.<br /><br />One has to wonder if Todd harbored dreams of starting his own cult. He had some of the vital ingredients: Plans for an armed compound, a desire to isolate people from their trusted leaders, a knack for scaring the hell out of believers, and a seemingly <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">unslakable</span> lust for pubescent girls.<br /><br />Back in California in April '78, it all hit the fan. Todd's pastor, Roland Rasmussen, learned from a church member that Todd had been teaching witchcraft in Ohio as recently as '76. Todd was booted from the church.<br />But Tom Berry and numerous other Eastern pastors still supported him. He began a second speaking tour that summer.<br />This time, the reaction was not as positive. Clifford Wicks, pastor of Grace Brethren Church in Somerset, Pennsylvania, canceled Todd's four-speech engagement after three speeches because he was disturbed by his parishioners' response to the message. Several of them told Wicks they planned to murder their own children rather than see them taken prisoner by the Illuminati.<br /><br />Not surprisingly, a few fringe religious groups were receptive to Todd's teachings.<br />The Family (formerly known as the Children of God), an international church headed by David "Moses" Berg, degenerated into organized sexual abuse of children in the '70s after Berg convinced some followers it was natural and healthy for kids to have sexual relations with their parents and caregivers. Years later his own son, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Rodriguez">Ricky Rodriguez</a> (known as "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Davidito</span>"), would kill one of the nannies who molested him as a child.<br />Berg found Todd's diatribes fascinating, and The Family International published a <a href="http://pubs.xfamily.org/text.php?t=948">transcript</a> of one of his lectures, "The Illuminati and Witchcraft", for distribution to Family members.<br /><br />Another group that appreciated Todd was a violent white supremacist organization called The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">CSA</span>). They also <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=bdGSbDaCQVsC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=Covenant+Sword+Illuminati+witchcraft&source=bl&ots=Q4cQ9guIIT&sig=uGel29T99rqjjcL1fopV2IR3nnk&hl=en&ei=2aGfTeHKEcXA0QGc-o2kBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Covenant%20Sword%20Illuminati%20witchcraft&f=false">published</a> "The Illuminati and Witchcraft".<br />The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">CSA</span> ran a compound in Missouri that was the very model of what Todd had been advocating. It boasted an armed perimeter, a training area for urban warfare drills, and an array of automatic weaponry (much of it stolen). In 1985, the group's founder and several of its leaders were convicted of illegal firearm possession.<br />The group kept a list of possible targets for assassination, including elected officials. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wayne_Snell">One member</a> was executed for killing a State Trooper and a pawn shop owner.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Underground</span><br /><br />In January 1979, Todd announced he was through with preaching. His message just wasn't sinking in with American Christians, he said, and it was time for him to retreat to an undisclosed location where the Satanists couldn't find him.<br />This move was probably calculated to avoid the kerfuffle that would have erupted around him when his predicted Illuminati takeover didn't actually happen.<br />From their new home in Montana, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Todds</span> cranked out alarmist newsletters about the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">endtimes</span> preparations Christians must make; buy gold, stockpile food and ammo, go into hiding. Todd now claimed he was collecting donations for an armed survivalist compound. He said he would accept guns, cattle, dehydrated food, and anything else people could spare. This compound, just like the witch rehab centre, never materialized.<br />The couple subsequently lived in Seattle.<br /><br />In early '79, a few Christian publications, including <a href="http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/todd00.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Christianity Today</span></a>, printed damning stories about Todd.<br />Ironically, the single critical book published about Todd, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Todd-phenomenon-Ex-grand-Illuminati-phantasy/dp/0892210613"><i>The Todd Phenomenon</i> </a>(1979) by Darryl E. Hicks and David A. Lewis, contained an intro by Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Warnke</span> (pot, meet kettle...).<br />These <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">exposés</span> demolished whatever vestige of credibility Todd still had among mainstream Christians, and he never again made a decent living from preaching. His following dwindled to small groups <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Patriot">Christian Patriots</a>, survivalists, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Millenarianists</span>.<br /><br />But he certainly didn't stop banging the anti-occult In 1980, he authored a comic book titled <span style="font-style: italic;">The Illuminati and Witchcraft</span>. Jacob Sailor, the artist, also illustrated some of the Mo Letters for The Children of God.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS0VrEjt-DHBk8FCAJabVWMW_pSg62hauKHMIopyLjESQXzNqOnvwwCS7Y38CvWf5xGFRFk7iXz78DUT04cRhi5-aIPNnP-vbVBJGom2k6vsKWTH1GGqJmH7oTMZWz9AuqbX9UCA/s1600/illuminati-witchcraft.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 232px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS0VrEjt-DHBk8FCAJabVWMW_pSg62hauKHMIopyLjESQXzNqOnvwwCS7Y38CvWf5xGFRFk7iXz78DUT04cRhi5-aIPNnP-vbVBJGom2k6vsKWTH1GGqJmH7oTMZWz9AuqbX9UCA/s320/illuminati-witchcraft.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593387367475563186" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Road to Ruby Ridge</span><br /><br />Todd's next known location was Cedar Falls, Iowa. In 1983 he was invited to speak at a Holiday Inn there by a young couple who regularly listened to his audiotapes.<br />Since marrying in 1974, Randy and Vicki Weaver had become increasingly religious. By 1983 they were approaching religious mania. Both believed the world would end soon. First there would be a period of violent persecution, initiated by a Satanic government coalition of Jews and non-Christians. Sometimes they referred to the enemy as ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government).<br />Todd's background may have impressed Randy Weaver; he, too, had been a Greet Beret.<br />The Weavers used cash only, because Todd said credit cards carried the Mark of the Beast. They stopped watching TV because Todd said all evangelists other than himself couldn't be trusted. They believed the government wanted to round up and exterminate Christians because that's what Todd said (strangely, though, Vicki remained a fan of Ayn Rand)<br />Vicki also received instructions from God while soaking in the tub every night, and she and Randy both had "visions" of a hilltop fortress.<br /><br />As recounted in Jess Walter's 1996 about the Weavers, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Every-Knee-Shall-Jess-Walter/dp/0061011312"><span style="font-style: italic;">Every Knee Shall Bow</span></a>, neighbors were unsettled, but probably not surprised, to see John Todd pacing the living room of the Weavers' comfortable ranch-style house in Cedar Falls, ranting about government conspiracies whilst gripping a handgun.<br /><br />Not long after this, in the summer of '84, the Weavers sold their home and headed west with a cache of supplies, firearms, and ammo. They didn't have a destination in mind. God would lead them wherever they needed to be to wait out the Tribulation.<br /><br />On September 6, they found a thickly wooded plot of land atop Ruby Ridge in the panhandle of northern Idaho.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Second Arrest<br /><br /></span>Sometime in the mid-'80s, Todd moved to Columbia, South Carolina. He worked construction, did carpentry, and taught karate to youngsters.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>In May 1987, Todd was charged with raping a grad student at the University of South Carolina. I will not give the woman's name here, to protect her privacy.<br />Later, molestation charges related to two of his karate students were added. He served the next 16 years of his life in prison.<br />In an <a href="http://www.kt70.com/%7Ejamesjpn/articles/john-todd-from-prison.html">audio recording</a> made in 1991, Todd explained how he was framed by Strom Thurmond, who wanted to get his hands on his address books and his Christian material. Specifically, Thurmond and cohorts wanted to find the locations of safe houses used by a Christian underground that hid Christians accused of abusing their children. Also, Thurmond was furious that Todd had outed him as a Mason.<br />He hints that he was lured to South Carolina by Christians just so he could be framed. His lawyers were in on the plot, so Todd urged listeners to donate money to his defence fund.<br />After his conviction, an FBI agent and the head of Reagan's Secret Service bodyguards visited him in prison and pressured him to give up the names of Christians in hiding (in exchange for what, I wonder? He had already been sentenced, so there wasn't much the feds could offer him). Todd refused.<br /><br />Todd warns all Christians that they, too, can be framed for crimes they didn't commit. After all, <span style="font-weight: bold;">They </span>own the media and law enforcement. What's more, U.S. concentration camps are standing at the ready to hold huge numbers of Christians.<br />Remember, this recording was made in '91. In the 20 years since then, do you know a single Christian who has been interned in a U.S. concentration camp?<br /><br />Now Todd says he was part of the CIA's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program">Pheonix Program</a> during Vietnam, and his military records were sealed for that reason. As we saw in <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-iii-john-todd.html">Part I</a>, these records were freely available, and they clearly show that Todd did not serve in Vietnam.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fritz Springmeier</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">and the 13 Bloodlines</span><br /><br />Christian preacher and Illuminati "expert" <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Springmeier">Fritz Springmeier</a>, who was released from prison just last month (he served 7 years of a 9-year sentence for armed bank robbery), is Todd's #2 fan (Jack Chick being #1). In his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lines-Illuminati-Fritz-Springmeier/dp/0966353323"><span style="font-style: italic;">Bloodlines of the Illuminati</span></a>, he identified the Collins clan as one of the "13 bloodlines of the Illuminati" and included a jailhouse letter written by Todd.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBfb0aMV5_kfBKaEB_GMQt-RqK90NWA_8z4LigqzItwua5rcNnm8QnWuSlEl4QpaCO6hHrJHLRcf9bfm9O3Dq8a-sn-7HtaRo5Nif8seD2ZyrAb0pXaoilWYFUEHpbfjiC7WqYNw/s1600/FritzSpringmeier.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 184px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBfb0aMV5_kfBKaEB_GMQt-RqK90NWA_8z4LigqzItwua5rcNnm8QnWuSlEl4QpaCO6hHrJHLRcf9bfm9O3Dq8a-sn-7HtaRo5Nif8seD2ZyrAb0pXaoilWYFUEHpbfjiC7WqYNw/s320/FritzSpringmeier.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5593393024319453026" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Fritz Springmeier giving a <a href="http://www.prophecyclub.com/">Prophecy Club </a>lecture before his arrest for bank robbery</span><br /></div><br />The Collins family history, as chronicled by Springmeier, is replete with Satanic atrocities. The Collinses possess more occult power than any other Illuminati's family, including the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. Springmeier cites the testimony of an unnamed ex-Illuminati member (like Todd, a Christian convert) who claimed a Collins woman was the "Grande Mother" of the Illuminati's Grand Council of 13 back in the '50s. This council possessed invaluable arcane knowledge, like the location of the Ark of the Covenant, and practiced a bizarre form of ritual sacrifice in which a child was killed for each new Illuminati initiate.<br />As these meetings supposedly occurred twice a year, with up to seven initiates per meeting, it's remarkable that no one noticed the rashes of missing children.<br /><br />Ironically, the details of this unsourced tale directly contradict John Todd's testimony. For instance, this person stated that the Antichrist had not yet been born in 1955, while Todd said Jimmy Carter was the Antichrist. He also tells us the Todd family split off from the Collins clan before the Civil War, while Todd himself claimed he was born as Lance Collins.<br />Springmeier names one of the Grande Mother's sons as Tom Collins, who later converted to Christianity and went on speaking tours to educate coreligionists about the Illuminati. He was shot to death in a grocery store parking lot as a warning to other whistleblowers. Once again, we must ask why the Illuminati was unable to assassinate John Todd, if another defector from the very same family was so easily eliminated.<br />I can find no trace of this Tom, but the Wikipedia entry for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Collins">Tom Collins the drink</a> is quite interesting. In 1874, "Tom Collins" was a running gag among pranksters. They convinced people that a mysterious man named Tom Collins was badmouthing them, and reported sightings of the gossipy stranger to credulous newspaper reporters.<br />At any rate, we have no reason to believe that Tom Collins and John <span style="font-style: italic;">were </span>from the same family. Springmeier's M.O. is to tick off lists of prominent people with the same last name, without bothering to ascertain if they are actually related to one another. Then he links them to the Illuminati by the most tenuous connections. For example, reporter Robert Collins is implicated simply because the Illuminati "control the press". Springmeier provides no evidence that the Illuminati does, in fact, control the press. Likewise, he ties serial killer Ted Bundy to the Bundy/McBundy families and tells us his sadistic sociopathic condition is quite typical of Illuminati members, even though Bundy's name came from a working class stepfather.<br /><br />Most bizarrely, Springmeier states that the Salem witch trials were "instigated by the Collins family to destroy Christians". His evidence? Some Collinses became Putnams during the Civil War era. Somehow, this means that the Putnams of Massachusetts (central to the Salem witch hunt) were already related to the Collins clan nearly two centuries earlier. Huh?<br /><br />Like Jack Chick and John Todd, Springmeier classed essentially all occultists and Freemasons as profoundly secretive, extremely dangerous people. They all worship the Devil, they all abduct and ritually sacrifice children, and they all commit every manner of crime against decent, God-fearing Americans such as Todd (the rapist) and Springmeier (the bank robber).<br /><br />In an early edition of his book, Springmeier stated that Todd was released from prison in 1994. An Illuminati-owned helicopter picked him up at the prison, and he was never seen again - presumably murdered by <span style="font-weight: bold;">Them</span>. Springmeier later removed this erroneous information, but continued to assert that Todd was framed.<br />The belief that Todd was framed on the rape charges persists today among his fans. "James in Japan", who maintains an <a href="http://www.kt70.com/%7Ejamesjpn/articles/john_todd_and_the_illuminati.htm">extensive website about Todd </a>and other Christian conspiranoids, actually believes that Todd was murdered by the Illuminati and replaced by a prisoner who looked and behaved just like him.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Release and Death</span><br /><br />Todd was actually released from prison in 2004. He was then committed to the Behavioral Disorder Unit run by the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.<br />Under the name "Kris Kollyns", he filed a <a href="http://sc.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.%5CFDCT%5CDSC%5C2008%5C20080417_0000601.DSC.htm/qx">lawsuit </a>against numerous employees of this department, alleging he was being held in violation of his Constitutional rights. Before the lawsuit was resolved, he died in the BDU on November 10, 2007.<br />Sadly, his messed-up legacy of pathological falsehood lives on in audio recordings, Chick pamphlets, and the minds of many Christian conspiracy theorists.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com362tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-66740815780287338382011-03-31T19:21:00.000-07:002011-03-31T19:23:56.453-07:00Mike Warnke: The Man Who Sold Satan<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRTymsXGvt3D9-geipVZ4FiUNLxN7FtDViL_N3ZPHgq59nsTmKJcQUy58r_B0-BvSGWwCX8byy4cvLO7UI-wcQmfi85DxCiKRimT88HXgNxNanJwfIF7ZWQ8Gl9C4wsxogEqIuiw/s1600/warnke70s.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 185px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRTymsXGvt3D9-geipVZ4FiUNLxN7FtDViL_N3ZPHgq59nsTmKJcQUy58r_B0-BvSGWwCX8byy4cvLO7UI-wcQmfi85DxCiKRimT88HXgNxNanJwfIF7ZWQ8Gl9C4wsxogEqIuiw/s200/warnke70s.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585147898043411026" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Warnke</span> (sometime in the '70s, obviously)<br /></span></div><p><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Warnke's</span> Story</span></p><p style="text-align: left;">In January 1972, televangelist Morris <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Cerullo</span> introduced a young man named Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Warnke</span> to the evangelical Christian community. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Cerullo</span> had a rare specimen, indeed: A real, live <span style="font-style: italic;">former Satanist</span> who had found Jesus and wanted to share his testimony with the world. And he had the ability to do it. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Warnke</span> possessed native speaking ability and natural charm, enrapturing revival crowds with no visible effort. And to top it all off, he was <span style="font-style: italic;">funny</span>. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Warnke's</span> blend of true confession, <a href="http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/02/mike_warnke_and.html">Christian stand-up</a>, and born again sermonizing was a winning combination.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Morris <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Cerullo</span> "cures" 4-year-old Natalia <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Barned</span> of cancer in 1992</span><br /><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/c2yG96OqNNo" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" width="480"></iframe><br /><br />So winning that by 1973, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Warnke</span> had broken away from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Cerullo</span> to form his own Alpha and Omega Outreach ministry and published his autobiography (co-written Les Jones and David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Balsiger</span> of <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2010/05/anatomy-of-hoax-incredible-discovery-of_27.html">Noah's Ark infamy</a>), <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span>. It pushed <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Warnke</span> into the national Christian spotlight, winning him speaking <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">engagements</span> at some of the nation's most popular evangelical venues.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTI1EDUpvvwu_ILKqtPbz0rlQHwY5wjnRMopwBA7CSXsF2eqh4K1_IkQj4tI15kZ01HKtYIRlFp6_qRhq17Ig7BWll1QuGou10it7Y0u7ongejansfcLn6SjszYm_UeEWsqRDfg/s1600/satanseller.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 125px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTI1EDUpvvwu_ILKqtPbz0rlQHwY5wjnRMopwBA7CSXsF2eqh4K1_IkQj4tI15kZ01HKtYIRlFp6_qRhq17Ig7BWll1QuGou10it7Y0u7ongejansfcLn6SjszYm_UeEWsqRDfg/s200/satanseller.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585149596932498306" border="0" /></a>With his niche firmly established, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Warnke</span> enrolled at Trinity Bible College in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1975, his first Christian comedy album (<span style="font-style: italic;">Alive!</span>) cemented his fame. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Warnke</span> quickly became the best-selling Christian comedian of all time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Wt-gJFztq742XQr8bIpsHO5zeiwOTpFXlqRuO9fJUW0AKVLC1-gxAWEf4jI8PGWbGD4SS6aqXRAkuN6VQ6QIVrjhem7w3tSJk2IZdGPRiLe5x96kxVZvacAIsmZ6OpLSYru9bQ/s1600/warnkealive.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 199px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Wt-gJFztq742XQr8bIpsHO5zeiwOTpFXlqRuO9fJUW0AKVLC1-gxAWEf4jI8PGWbGD4SS6aqXRAkuN6VQ6QIVrjhem7w3tSJk2IZdGPRiLe5x96kxVZvacAIsmZ6OpLSYru9bQ/s200/warnkealive.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585151757073443458" border="0" /></a><br />Despite his chequered past, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Warnke</span> seemed stable and well-prepared for ministry. He was a Vietnam vet married to his college sweetheart, the former Sue <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Studer</span>. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Warnkes</span> had two young sons. Fellow Christians were amazed at how far Mike had come in such a short time. Truly, this was God's hand at work.<br /></p><p>Less than ten years earlier, Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Warnke</span> had been high priest in a violent Satanic cult, a drug dealer, and an addict. He viciously dominated and abused the women in his life, cut himself off from his family, and led his followers into increasingly demented behaviour. The way Mike describes himself on <span style="font-style: italic;">Alive!</span>, he was a ruthless gangsta junkie - as <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">badass</span> as 50 Cent, looking worse than Sick Boy from <span style="font-style: italic;">Trainspotting</span>:<br /></p><p> <i><blockquote> "I'd had hepatitis four times from shooting up with dirty needles. I had scabs all over my face from shooting up crystal. I was a speed freak. I weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. My skin had turned yellow. My hair was falling out. My teeth were rotting out of my head. I'd been pistol-whipped five or six times. My jaw had been broken. My nose had been almost ripped off. I had a bullet hole in my right leg. Two bullet holes in my left leg."</blockquote></i> </p>His childhood, while not as tragic as Doreen Irvine's, had been rough. Born in 1946, he grew up in Coffee County, Tennessee, son of a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">truckstop</span> owner called Whitey and his fifth wife. Whitey sold drugs and was mixed up with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">gangsters</span>; he carried a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">tommy</span> gun in his car, which was full of bullet holes from deals gone bad. He had affairs with many young women, including the teenage waitress who became his sixth wife after Mike's mother died in 1955.<br />For the next three years, Mike was at the mercy of a stepmother who whipped him with a dog leash at every opportunity.<br />Whitey died when Mike was 11. The orphaned boy lived for a short time with his mother's devoutly Christian sisters, and their influence stayed with him, just as Doreen Irvine's Sunday school teachers planted the seeds of salvation in her youth. Then he was sent to California, to live with half-sister Shirley <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Schrader</span>, her husband, and their son. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Schraders</span> raised Mike as their own child, bringing him up Catholic in the tight-knit community of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Crestline</span>.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Warnke's</span> teen years were typical for a Catholic California boy in the '60s: Dances, parties, cruising with the guys. He never got into serious trouble, but he loved to tell tall tales and act out weird jokes. A favourite trick was to go into a restaurant with one of his pals and pretend he was a Russian who couldn't speak much English. The friend would "translate" for him. Later, at a college coffeehouse, he pretended to be an Englishman for eight months. In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span>, he boasts repeatedly that he could talk his way out of anything.<br /><br />After graduating from Rim of the World High School in 1965, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Warnke</span> enrolled at a junior college, San <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Bernadino</span> Valley College. It was here, on a grassy campus full of mission-style buildings, that he went to the dark side. He had already abandoned the church, having been kicked out of Bible study for asking too many questions.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-GpUK_J31jogv93gM43wmd3yquBmnT9ysmQLnqIsLBEdVGSZbAPLTsQ1ALap3Rh7fvVZWX9ud0eDTQep8282ykMEEtOM30BQtqvOzWqnUL-9hqYeBpkrXRy7zW4UF_OE5c7qSzg/s1600/sanbernadino.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-GpUK_J31jogv93gM43wmd3yquBmnT9ysmQLnqIsLBEdVGSZbAPLTsQ1ALap3Rh7fvVZWX9ud0eDTQep8282ykMEEtOM30BQtqvOzWqnUL-9hqYeBpkrXRy7zW4UF_OE5c7qSzg/s200/sanbernadino.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585153617528293858" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">San <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Bernadino</span> Valley College<br /></span></div><br />College gave him the opportunity to break away entirely. He severed contact with this family in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Crestline</span>, grew his hair long, and bought outrageous clothes that made him stand out on campus. He became a kind of guru of the quad, dispensing wisdom to like-minded freshmen. He hung around campus all the time even after flunking out of all his classes.<br /><br />Though he doesn't give us many time markers, we know that everything <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Warnke</span> experienced at college occurred between his enrollment in the fall of '65 and his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">enlistement</span> in the Navy in the summer of '66. Keep that in mind.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Warnke</span> tells us he was already an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">alcholic</span> by the age of 18. At college, a clean-cut fellow student he calls "Dean Armstrong" offered him some pot to counteract the sour stomach and blackouts that resulted from his continuous heavy drinking. Dependence on pot led to a dependence on speed, also supplied by Dean. He also dabbled heavily in peyote, mescaline, and LSD supplied as part of a government-funded research experiment. Then Dean suggested he try something even stronger. He directed <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Warnke</span> to a gathering held at a posh house in the hills; beautiful hippies smoking pot, talking religion and philosophy before having a free-love orgy.<br />As Mike realized after attending several such gatherings, these people were Satanists or witches (just like <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-i-doreen-irvine.html">Doreen Irvine</a>, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">Warnke</span> uses the terms interchangeably). The sex parties were just a lure to bring selected people into the coven.<br />His introduction to the coven was extremely gradual, unlike the sudden initiation described by Irvine. Though time markers are few and far between, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">Warnke</span> gives us the impression that a significant amount of time passed before he was allowed to proceed to the "second level". In the meantime, he became a big-time drug smuggler and dealer for Dean Armstrong. He tells us the coven was handling a "large percentage" of the drug traffic for the Inland Empire at that time.<br /><br />The "secondary meetings" consisted of rituals that were blasphemous but surprisingly tame. Initiates learned simple witchcraft. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Warnke</span> estimates there were "several hundred" regional coven members at this, from all walks of life. There were even a few ministers and priests.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Warnke</span> itched to explore the deeper mysteries of the group, so he obediently served as Dean's drug gofer and message boy until he was admitted to the "third stage". This was the inner sanctum, the core group of <span style="font-style: italic;">real </span>Satanists. Dean revealed that he was one of the leaders, a "Master Counselor" (there were three Master Counselors at a time, which is rather bizarre).<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Warnke's</span> first "third stage" meeting was a Black Mass held in a barn near <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">Redlands</span>. A nude girl laid on an altar consisting of a granite slab atop two sawhorses while the three Master Counselors desecrated the sacraments, uttered blasphemies, and read from the Satanic bible, which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Warnke</span> calls <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Mother</span>. It was apparently far less <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">weighy</span> than the massive <span style="font-style: italic;">Book of Satan</span> used by Doreen Irvine's cult, because Dean was able to rest it on the naked altar-girl's stomach without crushing her. You'll notice, in the course of this series, that the world-wide church of Satan doesn't seem to have standardized scripture. At all. Each ex-Satanist describes different books, different magical systems, and different modes of worship. Orgies are the only consistent feature. You'd think that a secretive cult angling for world domination would be slightly more organized than this.<br /><br />At the end of the Black Mass, the Satanists cast curses on enemies (i.e., ex-members who were telling people about the coven and Christians who were preaching and praying against Satanism). <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Warnke</span> was so impressed with this that he asked to be initiated as soon as possible. Dean told him he could join the coven at the next full moon, three weeks later.<br /><br />We now see the darker side of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Warnke</span>. Up to this point, he's just a speed freak curious about Satanism. After the third meeting, he's kind of a monster. He admits to holding his girlfriend captive in his apartment for a week, using her as his "whipping girl", then pushing her out on the street for no reason.<br /><br />At his initiation, also held in the barn, Mike knelt naked in the center of a circle and received a new Satanic name, Judas. He was "baptized" with holy water mixed with urine. He was given a black robe, a hood resembling those worn by Eastern Orthodox priests, a silver ring to be worn only for "Satanic business", and a necklace bearing his zodiac sign. This ceremony bears little resemblance to Doreen Irvine's initiation ritual, which involved drinking the blood of a sacrificed rooster. Instead of signing a parchment, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Warnke</span> signed his name (in his own blood) within a large leather-bound book. Some of the names already inscribed in it appeared in green ink, and Dean explained that the blood magically turned green as soon as someone betrayed Satan.<br />This group called itself The Brotherhood.<br /><br />To his credit, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Warnke</span> tells us much more about the beliefs and attitudes of Satanic witches than Doreen Irvine did. He informs us that Satanists believe in God, but reject God in favour of the thrills and short-term benefits Satan can provide. They have elaborate rituals and spells. They don't just burn Bibles, like Irvine's "black witches". Nor does <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">Warnke</span> claim to have superpowers like those Irvine developed; he can't levitate, kill birds with his mind, or make himself invisible.<br />But <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Warnke</span> doesn't get <span style="font-style: italic;">too </span>specific about the doings of his cult. He doesn't reveal any of the contents of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Mother</span>, doesn't provide real names, and gives only vague descriptions of meeting places.<br /><br />Mike learned a lot about Satanic witchcraft in a very short time. First, a female witch revealed to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">Warnke</span> that the powers of spells, curses, and potions came from demons. These demons had been pressed into service by their master, Satan, and performed their tasks reluctantly. So if any rule was broken or any mistakes made, the demon could lash out violently against you. An "enraged demon" had clawed her forehead once, leaving a nasty scar. Later, he learned that two Satanists had been crushed to death by an invisible force because they carelessly stepped on the wrong part of the circle during a ceremony.<br />Next, Dean made it clear that he was expected to go out and recruit new members. In stages, he would lure them to a female witch's apartment for sex, then offer drugs, then ease them into witchcraft. Dean supplied him with a fake ID so that he could cruise bars for "marks". Mark brought 1000 people into the Brotherhood in this manner, raising regional membership to 1500. He repeats this number at least four times in the book.<br /><br />At some point, Dean told Mike that the "big guys" were giving him a big promotion, and Mike would be taking his place as a Master Counselor.<br />One week later, again on the night of a full moon, he was initiated into his new role. He became the "Master of Ritual" (the other two counselors were known as the Keeper of the Seal and the Keeper of the Books). Perks of Mike's new job included free rent, free groceries, a chauffeur, unlimited drugs and alcohol, and two pretty "roommates" who submissively catered to his every whim. According to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Warnke</span> these two young women were considered "slaves, or menials, or whatever", and were "just there for show and for my pleasure". But they also performed secretarial tasks, did all the cooking and cleaning and entertaining, and prepared his snacks and his drugs.<br /><br />At meetings, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">Warnke</span> intoned certain chants while he "exorcised" ritual knives with belladonna-laced incense, outlined a pentagram on the floor with the tip of a sword, and mock-disemboweled the naked girl on the altar. At some point he would summon a demon to do the bidding of the coven (the pentagram had to be outlined perfectly, because it magically "caged" the demon; if there was even the slightest break in the pentagram, the demon could escape and do serious damage).<br />After this was done, Satanists could step forward with petitions to curse their enemies.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">Warnke</span> introduced two innovations into meetings: Blood-drinking and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_desecration">host desecration</a>. These things had never been done by the coven, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">Warnke</span> says he took "sadistic pleasure" in watching the female witches nervously take their first sips of blood.<br /><br />From this point in his narrative, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Warnke</span> begins to hint that the "fourth step" in the Satanic hierarchy is the Illuminati. The people at this level were well-dressed professionals, almost aristocratic in bearing. Strangely, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">Warnke</span> never asked his fellow Satanists about the fourth level. He seemed content to let the upper echelons remain shrouded in mystery until he was considered worthy to join their ranks.<br />Perhaps he was satisfied with the power he wielded. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">Warnke</span> ritually summoned demons at each Satanic ceremony, and the demons did his bidding. He tells us demons are capable of possessing people and driving them to insanity and suicide. They can cause disease and impede spiritual growth.<br />One night, to impress a childhood pal who was visiting, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">Warnke</span> summoned a demon and ordered it to burn down a bar. A short time later, the building was ablaze.<br />Later, the coven cursed the two young daughters of a Valley College professor who had spoken dismissively of witchcraft, and caused an ex-member to have a near-fatal car accident.<br /><br />Impressed with his performance as a Master Counselor, some fourth-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">stagers</span> sent <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Warnke</span> to a gathering of high-level witches organized by Bridget Bishop of Salem, Massachusetts - a descendant of the first witch executed during the Salem witch trials. (Some of Bishop's descendants <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> still live in the area, and a decade ago several of them <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1357835.stm">called </a>for Bridget's full exoneration. A "Bridget" was not among them. According to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">Warnke</span>, Bridget Bishop was a stunningly beautiful young woman who lived in a large old house stuffed with antiques.)<br /><br />At this witch convention, the main topic was organization. We learn that the U.S. Satanic witch movement has a corporate-style structure and uses tactics culled from big business and the military to keep everything running smoothly.<br />Hearing this, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">Warnke</span> had his New World Order revelation. He suddenly realized there could be a <span style="font-style: italic;">fifth </span>stage controlling everything, not just Satanism but world events.<br /><br />"<span style="font-style: italic;">A world-wide, super secret control group with perhaps as few as a very dozen at the top...with key men controlling governments, economies, armies, food supplies...pulling the strings on every major international event...and not just now, but for generations, centuries, since the beginning of civilization...manipulating men by their egos and their appetites, rewarding and depriving, enraging and pacifying, raising up first one side and then the other, maintaining a balance of frustration, bitterness, and despair?</span>" (p. 93, ellipses in original)<br /><br />He heard other attendees talking about the demons that had controlled the worst dictators of history: Nero, Hitler, Stalin. A light went on in his head, showing him that demonically inspired Satanists and their human puppets were the force <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">beyong</span> international finance, politics, war, industry, and everything else.<br /><br />"<span style="font-style: italic;">I laughed, a little hysterically, but the light show wouldn't shut off. So that was how it was done! The global-conspiracy buffs were right, after all. Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65">Sirhan</span> B. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66">Sirhan</span> - they were the pawns of a much bigger plot.</span>"<br /><br />Keep in mind that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_67">Warnke</span> was supposedly having this revelation in 1965 or '66. Ray and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_68">Sirhan</span> were nonentities.<br /><br />He also realized that he and all the other Satanists were just pawns in Satan's campaign of jealousy and hatred, and that Satan probably hated humans just as much as he despised the God who had denied him his rightful place in heaven.<br />It didn't bother him too much. He just got on with his Satanic business. He attended another witchcraft convention in New York, where he learned that some Satanists were sacrificing their fingers (mentioned repeatedly by Doreen Irvine) and eating human flesh.<br />Warnke introduced both practices to his coven, and added cat sacrifice to the rituals as well. He also suggested that his group collect blood from stray dogs if they couldn't get enough human volunteers, and he later learned that reports of exsanguinated dogs shot up 500% in the area.<br />After an occult convention in San Francisco (where he met Anton LaVey), he used a new "formula" during a meeting and inadvertently sent a young woman into a screaming, frothing fit of demonic possession.<br />In accordance with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Mother</span>, he decided it was time to start raping virgins at sabbats. He and three other Satanists convinced a college student named Mary to accompany them to the orange grove where they usually held their rituals, then violently forced her to disrobe and lay on the altar. She was raped by an unspecified number of men before being taken to a doctor affiliated with the coven - someone who wouldn't talk.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Warnke's speed use was spiralling out of control and he was becoming very paranoid. He feared the Mafia, Communists, and every bump in the night. The higher-ups evidently decided he was a liability, so his slave-girls were instructed to give him an overdose of heroin. While he was drifting in and out of consciousness, cult goons removed him from his apartment and dumped him on the sidewalk in front of a hospital. He registered as John Doe and went through agonizing withdrawal for a week.<br />When he returned to his pad, the slave-girls were gone and most of his Satanic paraphernalia had been removed. He had been ejected from the Brotherhood. He also lost his part-time job at a hamburger stand.<br />With few choices left, he joined the Navy. Withdrawal made bootcamp a nightmare, but the two Christian men in his unit lovingly tended to him day after day. These guys, Bob and Bill, seemed to be filled with a calm and peace that the others lacked. One day, Warnke's eye fell on Bill's Bible. It was open to John, and<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A16&version=NIV"> 3:16</a> caught his eye. He picked up the book and began reading it in the privacy of a broom closet. He found himself unable to put it down, so he read throughout the night. By dawn, he was saved.<br /><br />After basic training, Warnke visited his family for the first time since he left Crestline for Valley College. While there, he ran into an old classmate named Sue Studer, another born again Christian. They were soon engaged. He told her all about his Satanic past. Both Sue and Mike claim that Satanists were gunning for Mike at this time; their friend Lorrie narrowly escaped being shot while snooping around a warehouse where the Brotherhood was gathering, and someone fired on Mike's car from a Cadillac.<br /><br />Mike himself was a danger to those around him. Still in the grip of demons, he tried to strangle Sue one night. She realized what was happening and ordered the demons to depart in the name of Jesus, which seems like a rather strange reaction to a murder attempt by your fiance.<br /><br />In 1967 the newlyweds settled in San Diego, where Mike went through training to become a Navy medic. They befriended a pastor who is now a household name: Tim LaHaye, co-author of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Left Behind </span>novels. When Warnke told him about the Brotherhood and their efforts to scare him, LaHaye replied, "I've been attacked by witches," and filled him in on the history of the Bavarian Illuminati.<br />Every Christian who heard Mike's story was equally supportive and accepting. No one suggested that he turn himself in to the police for abduction and rape. No one advised him to seek psychological help or drug treatment. In fact, church members urged him to become a Sunday school teacher!<br /><br />Just as Sue learned she was pregnant, Warnke was shipped to Vietnam. In this dismal atmosphere of death and devastation, he soon reverted to drinking and popping pills. His newfound faith in Christ dwindled. Though he was not supposed to be armed, he was, and one day an officer ordered him to execute a suspected Vietnamese spy.<br />In October '69, his unit was withdrawn. He returned to California in March of the following year. By this time, he had 3-month-old son, Brendon.<br />Their Christian friends helped Warnke regain his footing in the faith. He began giving his testimony at Jesus People gatherings in San Diego, Coronado, and La Mesa. Dick Handley introduced him to <span style="font-style: italic;">Anaheim Bulletin</span> writer/photographer David Balsiger, who would become one of his co-authors. Balsiger was also a media director for Morris Cerullo at this time, though Warnke doesn't mention that. Cerullo and Balsiger had constructed an educational "witchmobile" full of occult paraphernalia, and Cerullo wanted Balsiger's help in writing a book titled <span style="font-style: italic;">Witchcraft Never Looked Better. </span>In the end, Balsiger and Warnke left Cerullo out of their collaboration (Balsiger assisted Cerullo with his '73 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/back-side-Satan-Morris-Cerullo/dp/B0006C55VG"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Back Side of Satan</span></a>).<br />Balsiger considered himself something of an occult expert, and Warnke donates several pages to his "knowledge". Among Balsiger's pearls of wisdom:<br /><br />- "<span style="font-style: italic;">We discovered that occult practitioners open themselves to mental derangement, criminal tendencies and possible self-destruction or the destruction of other persons...many witches say that only Satanists and black arts practitioners go off the deep end and kill people or commit other crimes, but we researched eleven recent criminal cases...[and] occult practices were directly or indirectly linked to each case</span>." He doesn't explain who conducted this research, how it was conducted, how occultism was connected to the cases, or even which cases were examined. We pretty much have to take his word for it.<br />- "<span style="font-style: italic;">witchcraft is being taught as an official course or as part of a lecture series in public schools all across the country under a variety of course titles, including the 'Literature of the Supernatural</span>'."<br />- "<span style="font-style: italic;">40 to 50 percent of those undergoing treatment for various neuroses in and out of mental institutions have dabbled in the occult, and it never occurs to most psychiatrists to ask about this, nor would they know how to deal with it if they did ask</span>." (Balsiger's wife, Janie, chimes in, "That's because it's a spiritual problem, and only a Christian psychiatrist would be able to cope with it successfully.")<br />- The peace symbol has a Satanic origin. Also, "<span style="font-style: italic;">it was used on Hitler's Nazi death notices and as part of the official inscription on the gravestones of Nazi officers of the SS, the leaders of which, incidentally, were Satanists</span>." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morning_of_the_Magicians"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Morning of the Magicians</span></a> by Bergier and Pauwels is cited as a source for this factoid)<br />- "<span style="font-style: italic;">In some parts of the country the occult epidemic is more serious than the drug-abuse scene among young people</span>."<br /><br />At the urging of Balsiger and others, Warnke applied for early release from the Navy (he had four years left to serve) so he could launch an anti-occult ministry.<br />He tries to convince us that Satanism poses a real threat to the average American. On page 195 he writes, "Drug pushers and political revolutionists are using devil worship as a way to rake in millions of dollars, weaken the government, and destroy law enforcement." When a reporter asked for his opinion on the Manson murders, he said, "Well, the main point here is that lots of crimes are committed as a result of occult involvement, and people should report to the police if they see someone going around wearing human bones as jewelry, or if there's a group meeting under a full moon."<br /><br />What Warnke advocates, basically, is a new witch hunt. He even scoffs at the notion that Medieval and early modern witchhunts were "nothing but mass paranoia". At a press conference, he urged people to "get uptight" with bookstores that sold occult literature and theatres that screen horror movies.<br /><br />As soon as his early release was granted - which Warnke portrays as a miracle - he began setting up speaking engagements to share his testimony.<br />Morris Cerullo, the preacher who got him started on this path, is not mentioned anywhere in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span>. He and Warnke had a falling-out when Warnke went off on his own, and Warnke reportedly forbade Cerullo from using any part of his life story in his revival sermons. Cerullo did include some of Warnke's anecdotes in his '73 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/back-side-Satan-Morris-Cerullo/dp/B0006C55VG"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Backside of Satan</span></a>, however, and those tidbits would come back to haunt Warnke.<br /><br />The story of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span> concludes with Mike and Sue starting out on their glorious new ministry. At the end of the book is a list of suggestions for combatting the occult: write to congressmen and senators about the occult menace, picket bookstores and movie theatres, and "investigate schools" to make sure they aren't teaching kids about things like supernatural literature.<br /><br />Warnke networked widely in the evangelical community, forging ties with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement">Jesus People</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Gospel_Business_Men%27s_Fellowship_International">Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship</a>, Pentacostal preachers, Charismatics, and anyone else who unquestioningly accepted his testimony. They adored him. He was real, solid proof that an occult underground was devouring America's youth.<br /><br />As mentioned in <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Part I</a>, Warnke moved Sue and their two children to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1974 so he could attend Trinity Bible College. The Warnkes became friends with another student at the bible college, Carolyn Alberty. Her testimony, while not as thrilling as Mike's, still grabbed attention: She was "third-generation Mafia", with a dad who ran gambling dens and a mom who ran brothels.<br />By the end of the school year, Mike and Carolyn were having an affair.<br /><br />It was also around this time that Warnke made the peculiar decision to become a deacon in the <a href="http://www.conservapedia.com/Evangelical_Apostolic_Church_of_North_America_%28Syro-Chaldean%29">Syro-Chaldean Church</a>, a renegade offshoot of the Eastern Orthodox church. He would later lace his own services with Orthodox accoutrements such as gaudy robes and incense, which is very much at odds with the negative picture he paints in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span> of the "almost sensual" trappings of Catholicism. (p. 7)<br /><br />After graduating from Trinity in the spring of '75, the Warnkes moved to Denver. Mike lured his mistress, Carolyn, there with the promise of employment at Pastor Wally Hickey's <a href="http://www.forgottenword.org/hickey.html">Happy Church</a>, where Mike held an unpaid position as an evangelist for one of the church's lay ministries.<br />By the end of the year, he and Carolyn were openly a couple and his "employment" with The Happy Church was over.<br /><br />In September '76, Mike moved with Carolyn to Nashville. He divorced Sue that December, despite desperate efforts by friends to negotiate a reconciliation. In early '77, Carolyn and Mike married. Though a few Christian associates frowned heavily on the divorce and remarriage, it didn't put a serious dent in Warnke's public image. He appeared on the cover of the October '76 issue of the Christian magazine <span style="font-style: italic;">Harmony</span>. In the article, he's quoted as saying, "Now, I'm a strong civil rights advocate. The last time I had been in Alabama was with Dr. Martin Luther King, back in my college days when I went down there on Freedom Rides. The last time I was there was to march in a civil rights demonstration. "<br />As you know from <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/03/prodigal-witch-part-ii-mike-warnke_17.html">Part I</a>, Warnke was in college (very briefly) in 1965. The Freedom Rides were in '61, when Warnke was 15 years old and living in California.<br /><br />In the fall of 1978, the future seemed bright for Mike Warnke. His three albums were the most popular Christian comedy albums every recorded, and his '79 tour was going to be his biggest yet. He had also written a second memoir, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hitchhiking on Hope Street</span>.<br />He was touring continuously while Carolyn remained in Nashville with her mother. You can probably see where this is going. In Kentucky, Warnke met a young woman named Rose Hall and began courting her openly. The lovers met in various cities while Warnke was on the road, dishing out Christian comedy and salvation.<br />His relationship with Carolyn allegedly turned violent. One night that summer, according to Carolyn, Mike shoved her into a wall during a fight and split her head open. He told her, "If you go to a local hospital and tell them what your name is, I'll kill you. I don't have to do it physically. I can do it from another room or another state."<br />They divorced in November. Warnke told several friends that Carolyn had died.<br />In January 1980, he married Rose Hall. She would take a more active role in his ministry than either Sue or Carolyn, but this union was also doomed.<br /><br />Sometime after his third wedding, Warnke became a "bishop". Independent "bishop" Richard Morrill had married Carolyn and Mike in Nashville, and in 1980 he consecrated Warnke a bishop in his "Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, Eastern and Apostolic" (registered in the state of Texas).<br />In 1982, Mike and Rose registered their own ministry as "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky".<br /><br />The centre of Warnke's ministry remained anti-occult, though. Throughout the early eighties, he and Rose traveled the country warning Christian audiences of the occult menace, and described their work in Kentucky helping victims of Satanism. One such victim, a little boy they called "Jeffy", was so traumatized by years of Satanic ritual abuse that he had lapsed into catatonia.<br />To date, no one has been able to locate "Jeffy".<br /><br />On May 6, 1985, ABC's <span style="font-style: italic;">20/20</span> program aired a special on Satanism in America, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Devil Worshipers</span>. This allegedly "skeptical" report by Tom Gerold was alarmist in tone from beginning to end. On the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Kasso">Ricky Kasso</a> case: "Despite numerous signs that Kasso was into Satanism and rock music associated with devil worship, police steadfastly refused to label this case Satanic. The offical explanation: A drug-related crime." Well, it <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> a drug-related crime. The victim, Gary Lauwers, allegedly stole ten packets of angel dust from Kasso, and Kasso (a small-time dealer) vowed he wouldn't get away with it.<br />Much of the program is taken up with the problems of juvenile graffiti, dog mutilations, and horror movies, but then Warnke shows up as a "former Satanist" to describe some of the practices of devil worship. He sits behind an arrangement of props that include a sword, a goblet, and a human skull. Holding up a bone, he explains that Satanists use them to tell the future. He says he was drawn into Satanism as a young man because he "wanted to be somebody special."<br />Cut to stark black-and-white photos of a teenage boy's corpse. Writing is faintly visible on his skin. "This is a 15-year-old boy who also wanted to be special," Tom Gerald tells us. The boy hung himself after scrawling Satanic slogans and symbols on his body. As we'll see, tying a bizarre teen suicide to Warnke's cult confessions was not a wise journalistic move.<br />Other "occult experts" interviewed for the program included "cult cop" Sandi Gallant and <a href="http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=4813">Dale Griffis</a>, a former police chief whose academic credentials were exposed as bogus during the trial of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three">Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOCp2tJFJleG8nbehBL9mZbE8aiwYPSSkjVMqqCsmdOajrlxeQtQv9vy9Jj-MmnS_xDbI-TB0KjWn4Vm3W47q8ayPDr3ea61JEcidC48A_UJs9jldWZMeT-GbhA-WrrAt57gySA/s1600/warnke2020.htm"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 112px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOCp2tJFJleG8nbehBL9mZbE8aiwYPSSkjVMqqCsmdOajrlxeQtQv9vy9Jj-MmnS_xDbI-TB0KjWn4Vm3W47q8ayPDr3ea61JEcidC48A_UJs9jldWZMeT-GbhA-WrrAt57gySA/s400/warnke2020.htm" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586303186514174834" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Warnke on 20/20 in 1985</span><br /></div><br />Contributions to Warnke's ministry topped $1 million in 1985, and reached over $2 million each year from 1987 to 1990. By '91 he had released eight albums and produced a video (<span style="font-style: italic;">Do You Hear Me?</span>). Until the spectacular collapse of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's multimedia Christian empire, he was a regular guest on <span style="font-style: italic;">The PTL Club</span>.<br /><br />Warnke's account of his year as a Satanist had become more elaborate over the years. Though the only famous person to appear in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span> is Anton LaVey, Warnke <a href="http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=cabc&c=whs&id=4348">told</a> Morris Cerullo and others that Charles Manson attended one of his coven's rituals in 1966 and was unimpressed, apparently disappointed that Warnke only <span style="font-style: italic;">pretended </span>to disembowel the nude altar girl. Manson also attended the same San Francisco occult conference as LaVey, Warnke said.<br />Between June 1960 and March 1967, Manson was in jail for violating the Mann Act and his probation. Warnke could not have met him in the flesh unless he traveled out to McNeil Island penitentiary.<br /><br />These weren't the only stretchers Warnke was telling. In '82, he told <span style="font-style: italic;">Contemporary Christian Music</span> magazine he had earned a Ph.D in philosophy, a master's degree in theology, and a second master's degree in Christian education. Since his single term at San Bernadino Valley College back in '65, the only schooling he had was his year in bible college. The degrees were completely fictional. <span style=";font-family:Bookman Old Style,Verdana,Albertus Medium;font-size:180%;" ><span style=";font-family:Times,Times New Roman,CG Times;font-size:100%;" ><a name="tx3" href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/higher_ed.htm#fn3"></a></span></span><br /><br />Beginning in late '86, the Warnkes talked of establishing a treatment facility for children rescued from Satanism, and began taking donations for it. This centre never materialized. By April of 1987, the lovely brick complex of Warnke Ministries in Burgin, Kentucky, consisted of offices, chapel, and library. There were no medical facilities, no rehab quarters, and no staff trained to deal with traumatized children. Dr. John Cooper was hired as director of the centre in 1989, but was fired later that year without treating a single child.<p> Mike and Rose separated the same year. They divorced in '91, and six weeks later Mike married his fourth (and current) wife, Susan Patton. They returned to California. Mike published his third book, an "educational" tome titled<span style="font-style: italic;"> Schemes of Satan</span>, quickly followed by his fourth book (co-written with Rose), <span style="font-style: italic;">Recovering from Divorce</span>. Warnke was becoming something of an expert on the latter subject.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqV76TH9qXs4q_Uuv6UDoOc-QXZxVbAoRBjnvzpbUUXjkvyYfll4_JLnqVQ9V45bYYYpIwa9o7U9BCET39_D0xdm8yuqkR44FObEqCauZBwjMqB29R2hmEDxYqFJrSBYNtBi1Uhw/s1600/schemes.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqV76TH9qXs4q_Uuv6UDoOc-QXZxVbAoRBjnvzpbUUXjkvyYfll4_JLnqVQ9V45bYYYpIwa9o7U9BCET39_D0xdm8yuqkR44FObEqCauZBwjMqB29R2hmEDxYqFJrSBYNtBi1Uhw/s200/schemes.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586306472690639522" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Exposed</span><br /></p>Warnke's fibs and confabulations had not gone entirely unnoticed in the Christian world. In the late '80s, <span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone </span>magazine quietly launched an investigation into his ministry and background. This was a publication of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_People_USA">Jesus People USA</a>, established and run by Christians. Warnke was being examined by his own people.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone </span>writers Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein had already examined Lauren Stratford's popular memoir of child abuse and Satanic worship, <span style="font-style: italic;">Satan's Underground</span> (which we'll see later in this series). They found that Stratford's story didn't correspond in any way to the known facts of her life. This was a disappointment to the many Christians and anti-occult activists who had supported "Lauren" and promoted her testimony, but the publishers of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone</span> felt the truth was more important than protecting the reputations of fellow Christians.<br />They took the same approach to Warnke's background. Trott and Hertenstein interviewed family, classmates, friends, associates, and former employees of Warnke. They also waded through a swamp of divorce proceedings, financial documents, and academic records to ferret out which of Warnke's many claims were true.<br /><br />The results were stunning. Trott and Hertenstein learned from Warnke's own mother (half-sister Shirley Schrader) that he had not wandered away from church life as a teenager. In fact, he asked to be confirmed as a Catholic in his senior year of high school.<br />When he was supposedly living with two slave-girls in a Satanic bachelor pad, strung out on speed, with bleached hair down to his butt and black-painted fingernails, Warnke was actually engaged to a devoutly Catholic nursing student named Lois Eckenrod. They met within the first two months of college, got engaged in the winter of 1965, and spent every day together until Mike joined the Navy the following June. Lois says Mike was a Christian who always kept his hair short. He lived alone. He showed no signs of drug or alcohol abuse.<br />His college friend Greg Gilbert, with whom he lived for a while, described 18-year-old Warnke in much the same way. He was part of a loose-knit group of clean-cut, mostly Christian, students who bowled, played croquet, and drank very little.<br />His high school and college buddies had never seen him take a drag, much less move hundreds of kilos into the Inland Empire at the behest of Satanic kingpins. While Mike "Judas" Warnke was supposedly lopping off the fingers of devil-worshipers and sipping blood from a chalice, the <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> Mike Warnke was bowling, sharing hot fudge sundaes with his Catholic girlfriend, and listening to folk music at campus coffeehouses.<br />While Warnke claims he avoided his family after enrolling at college, Shirley Schrader says Mike had Christmas dinner in Crestline with the family in '65. She noticed nothing out of the ordinary about his appearance or demeanor.<br /><br />The recollections of his friends and family members weren't the only things that contradicted Warnke's story. Trott and Hertenstein used the handful of time cues in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Satan Seller</span> to figure out just how long it took Warnke to become a drug-addicted Satanic high priest. In their side-article "<a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/dates.htm">Why the Dates Don't Work</a>", they explain how his chronology is flat-out impossible.<br />They also sorted out Warnke's confusing claims about his <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/higher_ed.htm">education</a>, learning that he didn't possess a single degree aside from the one issued by Trinity Bible College - a nonaccredited school.<br />They heard allegations of death threats and abuse from Warnke's second wife, Carolyn. They learned that he had carried on an affair during this marriage even before meeting his third wife, Rose.<br />They spoke to former ministry employees who quit or were fired after they realized that all the money being raised wasn't being spent in the ways it was supposed to be spent. The rehab center for child victims of Satanic ritual abuse, for instance, never existed as anything more than a fantasy.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone</span> published the results of Trott and Hertenstein's research as a cover article in June 1992: "<a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/sellingsatan.htm">Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Mike Warnke</a>".<br />Testimonials supporting Warnke immediately cropped up: <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0001a.htm">David Balsiger</a>, first wife <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0006a.htm">Sue Studer</a>, Bob Larson, <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0003a.htm">Pat Matrisciana</a>, Joanna Michealson, and others stood behind him. Note that all of these people met Warnke <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> his supposed year of Satanic involvement.<br />His record label, Word, also pledged loyalty to Warnke. Warnke himself penned a scathing <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0009a.htm">letter</a> to <span style="font-style: italic;">Cornerstone</span>, declaring that he stood by his autobiography "exactly as published", boasting of his "nationally recognized expertise on the occult", and dismissing ex-wife Carolyn as a "cold-hearted and calculating temptress".<br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Lexington Herald-Leader</span> then picked up the ball, printing an expose of financial irregularities in Warnke's ministry.<br />Word promtply <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0011a.htm">dumped</a> Warnke.<br /><br />In September, the Warnkes shut down their ministry. Warnke ultimately <a href="http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/warnke_response/csr0018a.htm">admitted</a> that his coven of 1500 Satanists actually consisted of 13 people. He declined to give their names, claiming that 8 of them were deceased, and never provided any evidence in support of his testimony.<br /><br />In the spring of 1993, a panel of ministers assembled to sort out Warnke's problems, both spiritual and financial. The group rebuked him for his ungodly behaviour, recommended changes to his ministry (including accountability reports and salary caps), and advised that he pay back taxes to the IRS. Warnke reportedly complied with everything.<br /><br />Warnke's ministry took a severe beating for a few years, but in the grand tradition of American preacher scandals, he was rehabilitated and welcomed back into the arms of the Christian community. By 2000, he was back on tour. The born again was born again.<br />But he wasn't entirely chastened by his scandal. In 2002 he published a book titled <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0768421241">Friendly Fire: A Recovery Guide for Believers Battered by Religion</a>, </i>in which he vented about his treatment at the hands of other Christians. And to this day, he maintains that his experiences with Satanism are essentially as he described them back in the '70s.<br /><br />Today, Warnke and his fourth wife run<a href="http://www.mikewarnke.org/"> Celebrations of Hope Ministry</a>. Warnke's fellow preachers skirt around the whole Satanic thing these days, focusing instead on his trials and triumphs as a temporary Christian pariah. During Warnke's appearance on <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Jim Bakker Show</span> in 2007, Bakker told the audience, "Mike was saved out of Satanism or something."<br />Warnke's own comments during this show are illuminating. He joked that exaggeration on the part of televangelists is "evangelasticity". Explaining how he got into comedy/ministry, he said, "I was a child of the Jesus Movement, and of course in the Jesus Movement we all had to have a testimony. If you had been to seminary, if you had six doctorates, if you'd been in the ministry for 25 years, nobody wanted to hear a word you had to say. If you killed your mom, in say 15 minutes they'd let you pass [into] the church." In time, he realized that his own "four-star testimony" was bumming out his audiences, so he leavened it with comedy.<br />He says he entered the Navy to escape murderous Satanists. He figured there wouldn't be any Satanists or homosexuals there.<br /><br />Today, Warnke is a "Right Reverend", and the website of Christian Communion International <a href="http://thecci.tv/the-college-of-bishops/">identifies</a> him as a doctor.<br /><br />The long hair is gone, the evangelasticity is a little less springy, but he's still the same "former Satanist" who scared the hell out of millions of Christians for nearly two decades. His four-star testimony convinced them that all witches, Pagans, and Satanists are a threat to every American family, and that the occult menace of Halloween celebrations and rock music must be destroyed.<br />The rehabilitation of his career demonstrates that truth is of secondary importance to certain quarters of America's faith community.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-48602664595084503192011-03-25T13:37:00.000-07:002011-03-25T13:59:24.202-07:00Doreen Irvine: The Original "Witch Who Switched"<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ThwIFnQKfa3Eofj9rQrVp0A01hHSJptFQZ9nRX2EeveKojk51pX2Yw9ggYdT8fqhZYfj7Istx7gKHCy9o2mDyh6w4UE0220GrM71n1ZmUgCQruu5x0bzLTlwGGcYQhi4DrWGYQ/s1600/doreenirvine.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ThwIFnQKfa3Eofj9rQrVp0A01hHSJptFQZ9nRX2EeveKojk51pX2Yw9ggYdT8fqhZYfj7Istx7gKHCy9o2mDyh6w4UE0220GrM71n1ZmUgCQruu5x0bzLTlwGGcYQhi4DrWGYQ/s320/doreenirvine.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584038838312624114" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Doreen Irvine, Europe's former "Queen of the Black Witches", in the '80s.<br /></span></div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />The First of Many </span><br /><br />In 1973, Englishwoman Doreen Irvine published her autobiography, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Witchcraft-Christ-SENSATIONAL-RESCUED-SATANS/dp/1842912593"><span style="font-style: italic;">From Witchcraft to Christ</span></a>. Just eight years earlier, an exorcist had expelled 47 demons from her body. Years before that, she was Queen of the Black Witches of Europe.<br />Since the late '60s, Irvine has given her Christian testimony countless times. She has appeared on <a href="http://crossroads.ca/television/huntley"><span style="font-style: italic;">100 Huntley Street</span> </a>and in Christian documentaries about the dangers of the occult. (<span style="font-size:85%;">1</span>) Her story has been cited by many Christian authors, including <a href="http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:QrwT-YiSsVYJ:www.acc-uk.org/documents/ACC%2520conference%25202011/Russ%2520Parker.doc+Russ+Parker&hl=en&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESimjUuICPS344WMOsHmGIhv0uphvdSgY0I9OHmzefWvhLbBkOLqt2ZxPSpZzNSIRMw99DkaQjpo3S77d4l1fYc7eZOnyZFFrIjh_uZ9Nt15xd2llTwJ-BegzmutjDqUBpjzo8E0&sig=AHIEtbQjB23PMmzf5MUfPT_hnSnQw3XYow">Russ Parker</a> and the late <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/01/anti-occult-nonsense-on-stilts-kurt.html">Dr. Kurt Koch</a>, as a reliable account of what witches and Satanists do (like many "former Satanists", Irvine used the terms "witchcraft" and "Satanism" interchangeably).<br />She was the first of many born again Christians who claimed to be ex-witches and/or ex-Satanists, among them women who claimed to have been high priestesses in destructive Satanic cults, so her testimony provided a sort of blueprint. Among such testimonies, many of the same elements recur time and again:<br /><br />- A Dickensian childhood full of abuse, exploitation, and deprivation<br />- An early introduction to Jesus that would pave the way for salvation later in life (In Doreen's case, her Sunday school lessons)<br />- An absence of time markers<br />- Lack of detail about the <span style="font-style: italic;">beliefs</span> of Satanists (scripture, philosophy, etc.), but extraneous detail about the <span style="font-style: italic;">practices</span> of Satanists (sacrifice, crime, etc.)<br />- Helplessness. Rather than being led into Satanic evil through his/her bad choices, the protagonist is usually a naive and vulnerable innocent victimized, lured, or coerced into sin by more worldly people. Once ensnared, escape is impossible.<br />- Supernatural events and paranormal abilities are common. Demons and angels materialize, Satanists use death curses against their enemies, and sometimes Satan himself makes an appearance.<br />- A remarkable conversion experience<br />- Complete redemption and forgiveness through Christ<br />- Expert advice on the occult. After sharing his/her testimony, the ex-witch or former Satanist gives us pointers on how to avoid occultism, prevent children from becoming involved in it, and/or how to expunge it from our communities. There are typically warnings about Ouija boards, Halloween, and occult literature.<br /><br />Doreen Irvine's testimony does bear key differences from later ex-witch stories, though. First of all, she gives no explicit suggestion of a worldwide Satanic conspiracy. However, the "fact" that her cult encompasses <span style="font-style: italic;">at least</span> the whole of Europe does hint at Satanic organization on a global scale. Secondly, her family was not involved in the occult (in later stories of "former Satanists", multigenerational Satanism became the norm).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">From Soho to Satan</span><br /><br />According to her testimony, Irvine's circuitous route to evangelical stardom began around 1948, when she became a teenage prostitute in London's East End. We know the approximate year only because she gives the year of her conversion (1964) and provides a few numbers that allow us to make guesstimates of the chronology. As in most ex-Satanists' testimonies, time markers and dates and specific names are almost nonexistent. Perhaps such details are omitted to lend the stories a timeless quality, or maybe there are other reasons for leaving out information that can be checked. (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br />Doreen describes her childhood as terrible. Though she adored him, her dad was a drunk who beat his wives and couldn't provide for his five daughters. Doreen slept on piles of dirty laundry in lieu of a bed, and seldom had shoes. She attended school so rarely that she was illiterate until her late teens. Mum fled when she was 11.<br />So at 14, Doreen was walking the streets. By 16, after a stint as a domestic servant, she was a striptease artist and a callgirl in Soho.<br />She turned to Satanism around 1950, at the age of 16. She had begged to be inducted after overhearing two other strippers discussing the "secret, ancient order" to which they belonged. Reluctantly, the girls agreed to take her to a coven gathering at "Satan's temple", but she had to be blindfolded until she was inside.<br />When the blindfold was removed, Doreen saw about 400 people and 13 priests/priestesses gathered in a hall adorned with effigies of Satan. The high priest of these "black witches" sat on a throne (Irvine refers to him as "the chief Satanist"). At some point a white rooster was killed and its blood drained into a cup, to be mixed with blood from a cut made on Doreen's arm. She drank from the cup, then signed a parchment pact with the Devil, pledging to serve Satan for the rest of her life.<br />Though the temple was packed with people, Doreen later learned that only VIPs were present that night, because there wasn't enough elbow room for <span style="font-style: italic;">all </span>the London area's black witches.<br /><br />Under the name Diana (her stage name), Doreen spent the next 16 years developing occult powers and learning by heart the Book of Satan, an ancient tome six times thicker than the Bible. Satanism had many rules, and she learned them all.<br />In return, she received Mindfreakish paranormal abilities. She could levitate several feet off the ground, read minds, render herself invisible, manifest apports, and kill birds in midflight just by looking at them.<br />At some point, the chief Satanist told her she would be a contender to become Queen of the Black Witches. She would compete against six other witches at a midnight ceremony held on the moor at Dartmoor.<br />As always, the witches were naked. Just before the ceremony commenced, a local pastor showed up with two reporters, having somehow caught wind that witches would be convening that night. The witches, having nowhere to hide, went into a panic until Doreen assured them she could make everyone invisible. They joined hands, and were enveloped in a swirling green mist that obscured them from the three men.<br /><br />Doreen easily won the magical competition. In the final phase of the test, each witch had to walk into a raging bonfire with flames 7 feet high. The successful candidate would reach the centre of the fire, where Satan himself would met her and lead her out of the flames unharmed. This is exactly what happened to Doreen. She strode confidently into the fire and saw her master, "Diablos" [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>], materialize before her as a "great black figure". He took her hand and walked with her out of the fire before vanishing, leaving Doreen without so much as a blister. She was then crowned with a crown of "pure gold" and ensconced on a throne as Queen of the Black Witches of Europe, with the other witches prostrated before her. She held this title for one year.<br /><br />Doreen goes into great detail about her paranormal abilities, the accoutrements of Satanism (thrones, a "golden orb", etc.), and the "perverted" lesbian and gay sexual activities of witches. But she tells us remarkably little about what the "black witches" of this "ancient order" believe. Their beliefs seem to be centred on the repudiation of Christianity and very little else, as evidenced by the 8 rules of Satanism:<br /><br />1. Never reveal the whereabouts of a Satanic temple or what goes on in it to an outsider.<br />2. Obey the "chief satanist" and commit yourself to Satan for life.<br />3. Never enter a Christian church.<br />4. Never read the Holy Bible.<br />5. The Holy scriptures are to be mocked and burned in the Satanic temple, and all Christian literature destroyed.<br />6. Satanists who are not punctual at worship will be whipped.<br />7. Lying, cheating, swearing, lust, and murder are permitted.<br />8. Prayers must be made to Lucifer daily.<br /><br />This list is bizarre and simple-minded in the extreme. It's as though someone asked a child or a young teenager to describe what they think Satanists or witches might be like. Not one item corresponds to actual beliefs or practices common among Satanists, Pagans, or witches.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Saved</span><br /><br />Surprisingly, being queen of all the witches in Europe brought absolutely no material benefits to Doreen. She held the title for just one year, then it was back to being a heroin addict and prostitute. Her circumstances worsened considerably as the years passed. Whereas in her teens she had been a "classy" callgirl, by 1964 (when she was about 30), she was back hooking on the streets. That's where she spotted a poster for a sermon by evangelist Eric Hutchings, which enraged her. She decided to attend the event expressly to "punch him in the nose".<br />Instead, she was saved. Satan audibly warned her not to give herself to Christ, and even physically tried to restrain her, yet Doreen felt a love she had never known and stumbled to the altar to commit herself to Christ just as unquestioningly as she committed herself to the Devil 16 years earlier.<br /><br />Salvation did not completely dispel her demons, however. Doreen experienced fits at church services, so in 1965 she underwent a 7-month exorcism by the Reverend Arthur Neil of Bristol and a group of other pastors. They expelled 47 demons.<br /><br />Aside from the events enshrined in her testimony, not much is known of Doreen Irvine's life. We know she gave birth to a disabled daughter around 1962, two years before she was saved. For many years she traveled to other countries to share her testimony, and counselled other ex-witches in England. She fell out of public view in the mid-'90s.<br /><br />When giving her testimony, Irvine always stressed that she wanted to glorify Christ rather than Satan, and spoke effusively of her new life in Christ. She spoke succinctly, in an organized manner, often using exactly the same words and phrases.<br />She comes across as an earnest, candid believer. It's difficult to believe she could be mentally disturbed, or an attention junkie, but of course both possibilities must be considered. Irvine herself claims she was diagnosed as being schizophrenic (more on that below).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why Doreen Irvine's Testimony Probably Isn't True</span><br /><br />Quite simply, it doesn't stand up to the facts.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Witches are not Satanists, and Satanists are not witches.</span> This conflation appears again and again in the testimonies of "former witches". Some Christians will try to tell you that Wiccans and Pagans only <span style="font-style: italic;">pretend</span> to be devoted to earth religions; in reality, they're devil-worshipers bent on destroying Christianity. As anyone familiar with Satanism, Paganism, and witchcraft knows, this is completely false.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Satanism, neo-Paganism, and witchcraft are far more than knee-jerk reactions to Christianity.</span> They have distinct beliefs, rules, and rituals unrelated to Christianity.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No Satanic or witchcraft movement has encompassed all of Europe.</span> Even in pre-Christian Europe, Pagan beliefs were regional and diverse. Celtic culture, for instance, had different gods and customs than Nordic cultures. Today, many covens operate more or less independently. The notion of a single, continent-wide Satanic church with a tightly organized hierarchical structure existing from ancient times is a fantasy.<br />If a Satanic "ancient order" did exist, its hierarchy would surely have well-defined titles and roles. There is little evidence of that in Doreen's account. She says virtually nothing about her duties as Queen of the Black Witches, and she refers to her male counterpart by the generic title "chief Satanist" (a term that no established Satanic organization uses).<br />Loose terminology is a recurrent problem in ex-Satanist testimonies.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Irvine contradicts herself repeatedly. </span>For example, rule #4 of Satanism is supposedly that Satanists must never enter Christian churches, yet Irvine tells us that she and her co-religionists frequently entered churches to steal and burn Bibles.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Her account is uncorroborated. </span>In the four decades that have passed since Doreen Irvine began sharing her story, not one of the other thousands of "black witches" has appeared, and no evidence of their existence has surfaced. No one has seen the largest Satanic temple she described, supposedly located in Bristol.<br />Other ex-Satanists described covens much different from Doreen's. In fact, despite the superficial similarities of their accounts, every former Satanist seems to describe a different system of Satanism - even though most of them claim to be describing <span style="font-style: italic;">the </span>world-wide "church of Satan".<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She presents no evidence.</span> This is another issue that crops up again and again with ex-Satanists' testimonies.<br />People who have defected from secretive cults have generally been able to provide <span style="font-style: italic;">some </span>evidence that they actually belonged to those groups. Ex-Satanists like Irvine provide zero evidence. No temples have been found, though they were of considerable size and were used frequently by hundreds of people. No one has seen a copy of the massive Book of Satan that Doreen memorized (and she will not reproduce passages from it). There is not a single photograph or document accompanying Doreen's presentations, not one other defector has appeared, and she refuses to divulge any names or locations associated with the "black witches".<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Other claims Doreen's story make no sense at all. </span>Reverend Arthur Neil, the Bristol minister who exorcised Doreen in 1965, wrote the <a href="http://www.kjv1611.org.uk/WITCHCRAFT%20TO%20CHRIST.htm">introduction</a> to<span style="font-style: italic;"> From Witchcraft to Christ. </span><span>In it, he included a letter sent to him by Doreen in which she states that brain scans and</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>X-rays taken prior to her exorcism revealed she had "extensive brain damage". She was also diagnosed as schizophrenic and suffered from unnamed physical and neurological problems so severe that doctors gave her about six months to live.<br />X-rays taken after the exorcism, however, showed no evidence of brain damage. Ergo, she concludes, demons had caused brain damage that was miraculously reversed.<br />This is all very problematic for a few reasons. Firstly, because<span style="font-style: italic;"> X-rays cannot show brain tissue</span> (at the most, they can reveal skull damage indicating underlying tissue damage). Secondly, Doreen does not explicitly state that she was cured of the schizophrenia and the other unspecified ailments. Thirdly, she presents no evidence of either her ailments or their miraculous disappearance.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How Doreen Irvine's Testimony Has Been Used</span><br /><br />Doreen's conversion story served both as an inspiration to Christians and as an evangelistic tool to be used on people they hoped to covert. It contained a powerful message of redemption: If even a drug-addicted prostitute who worshiped the Devil can be saved, then <span style="font-style: italic;">no one</span> is beyond the grasp of Jesus. Any and all can be saved, and no sin is unforgivable.<br />Doreen's story also served to foster complete reliance on Jesus Christ. "You can't change yourself, " she told her audiences. "Only Jesus can change you." (<span style="font-size:85%;">2</span>)<br /><br />Doreen's testimony was soon used for another purpose; to counteract the effects of the burgeoning New Age movement, and the various "alternative" religions that had become popular in the '60s.<br />Its hegemony seriously threatened for the first time by other religions, the Christian church in America and the UK (particularly the fundamentalist denominations) launched an anti-occult crusade. Preachers warned of the spiritual hazards posed by Halloween, rock music, Ouija boards, and occult bookstores. <span style="font-size:100%;">Doreen's story was cited extensively by the late Dr. Kurt Koch in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Occult ABC</span> (which I reviewed<a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2011/01/anti-occult-nonsense-on-stilts-kurt.html"> here</a>), and by Russ Parker in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">Battling the Occult.</span></span><br />Doreen's book, and the testimonies that followed, provided tangible evidence of a spiritual battle between the forces of God and the forces of evil. They helped mobilize Christians for spiritual warfare, created cohesion among believers by identifying a common enemy, and upped morale. After all, conversions like Doreen Irvine's can make the enemy appear like a worthy opponent destined to be vanquished.<span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><br />Doreen's testimony is still being used in this way today. One <a href="http://eastsidebaptistchurchinvercargill.org/latest-sermon/to-halloween-or-not-to-halloween-that-is-the-question">Baptist blogger </a>recently wrote, "<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">One has only to read the testimonies of Dr Rebecca Brown and Doreen Irvine and of most missionaries to realize that there are dark forces assailed [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>] against us."</span></span></span> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><p><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:100%;" > </span>In the late '80s, Irvine actively joined in the anti-occult crusade in the UK spearheaded by the late Geoffrey Dickens MP, Maureen Davies of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reachout_Trust">Reachout Trust</a>, Dianne Core of Childfind, the Reverend Kevin Logan, and others.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Dickens called for all forms of witchcraft to be outlawed in England, while Core and Davies disseminated alarmist misinformation about Satanic ritual abuse and Satanic crime. Rev. Logan performed mass exorcisms on "ritually abused" children and counseled adults who claimed to be former Satanists. Doreen also counseled former Satanists, joined the Investigation Committee of the <a href="http://www.eauk.org/index.cfm">Evangelical Alliance</a>, and became a representative for the UK Campus Crusade for Christ.<em> </em><span><span style="" lang="EN-US">She and Maureen Davies appeared in <span><span style="" lang="EN-US"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Films">Caryl </a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Films">Matrisciana</a>'s documentary <a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/products/DWRSD"><span style="font-style: italic;">Devil Worship: The </span></a><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/products/DWRSD">Rise of Satanism.</a> </span></span></span></span></span>(<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)<br /></p><p>By this time, Satanism wasn't just a threat to strippers anymore. Dickens, Core and cohorts insisted that children were being Satanically abused from infancy by parents, daycare providers, and pornographers. Every atrocity imaginable was being committed by these fiends: Incest, torture, ritual human sacrifice, bestiality, child sex slavery and prostitution.<br />There was no forensic evidence of these goings-on, so testimony like Irvine's became indispensable as the only "evidence" that a well-organized criminal Satanic underground was operating in the UK. </p><p>Doreen's influence on a younger generation of women soon become evident, and the results were grim.<br /></p><p>In 1987, a deeply troubled 20-year-old woman named <a href="http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/marchant.htm">Caroline Marchant</a> received counselling at the Zion Christian Temple at Yate, near Bristol. One of her counselors was Doreen Irvine. </p><p>Caroline claimed that at the age of 13, she had been sexually initiated into a Satanic cult in Norfolk by her boyfriends' parents. She gave birth to a child that year, but the birth was unregistered and the baby taken from her and shipped to America by the Satanists. She also underwent at least one abortion. <span><span style="" lang="EN-US">The teenage father of her first baby was ritually murdered in her presence by his own father, a leading member of the cult. The cult also sacrificed newborns on a regular basis.<br /></span></span></p><p>Over the next 8 years Caroline became a high priestess of Satan, worked as a prostitute, and abused drugs. <span><span style="" lang="EN-US">The Satanists ritually abused her throughout this time, raping her and carving symbols into the inside of her vagina. </span></span><br /></p><p><span><span style="" lang="EN-US">In 1985 she joined a Baptist church, and gave her testimony to the congregation. She didn't mention Satanism or abuse, but did say she had been raped while living in Norfolk.<br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="" lang="EN-US">During '86 she spent several periods at residential healing centres operated by evangelical Christians, and began to speak of Satanism. For the rest of her life, she sought refuge in the homes of evangelical Christians who seemed sympathetic to her troubles. One Christian couple was harsh with her, however. Believing that she was not telling them the full story of her Satanic past, they ordered her to either confess all her sins to Maureen Davies of Reachout Trust or she would be cast out of their house like Cain, to wander as a fugitive for the remainder of her days. So Caroline contacted Davies and told her whole story. </span></span></p><p> </p></span></p><p> Maureen Davies introduced Caroline to Kevin Logan. Logan took her into his home. Logan had turned St. John's Vicarage near Blackburn, Lancashire, into a halfway house for ex-satanists and witches.<br /></p> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">On the morning of February 16, 1990, Logan found Caroline unconscious in her room. She had taken a fatal dose of the anti-depressants she had been prescribed. She died 19 days later.</p><p>Davies and Logan told the press that Satanists had pursued Caroline after her defection from the cult. Increasingly fearful of being killed for her betrayal, she took her own life. That was the bullshit story given to London's <i>Sunday Mirror</i>, which on March 25, 1990, published an account of Caroline's life under the headline "I SACRIFICED MY BABIES TO SATAN <i> - From sex orgy to death at the hands of the Devil's disciples." </i> The article didn't mention that Caroline had taken her fatal overdose while in the care of Kevin Logan.</p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"> <span style="" lang="EN-US"><p>The real story of Caroline's life emerged, bit by bit. Caroline's divorced father, Les Marchant, was a self-employed builder in Hayes, Middlesex. He placed his two children in foster care because he found it difficult to raise them on his own.<br /></p><p>Shortly before Caroline's 13th birthday in 1979, foster parents <span><span style="" lang="EN-US"> Gordon and May Porter moved to a horse farm in Norfolk</span></span>. For the next four years, Caroline and younger brother lan lived at Border House Stables in Fordham with several other foster children and the Porters' own daughters. Caroline rode horses and took dancing lessons. She had medical check-ups every six months and was closely supervised. The Porters, her friends, and her foster siblings agreed that she could not possibly have been pregnant during this time.<br /></p><p>After high school, Caroline earned her certificate as a trainee instructor in horse management, then worked as a nanny before becoming dependent on her fellow Christians for housing and support. When she killed herself, she left behind bizarre and contradictory accounts of her supposed Satanic past.<br /></p><p>The solicitor hired for her by Maureen Davies, Ronald Marshall, believed Caroline possessed valuable inside information about snuff movies, child sacrifice, Satanic financing, arms deals involving the IRA and the Baader-Meinhof gang, and shady political dealings. There is no evidence that Caroline Marchant had any knowledge of such things. In fact, everything she said and wrote about Satanism seemed to come from Christian sources.<br /></p><p><span style="" lang="EN-US"> <p>Her incomplete autobiography plagiarized passages from Irvine's <span style="font-style: italic;">From Witchcraft to Christ. </span>Describing her first encounter with her devil-worshiping boyfriend she wrote, "He explained the difference between being good and what good really was. Evil was right... It sounded crazy to me but I was soon brainwashed into that way of thought." Compare this to a passage in <span style="font-style: italic;">From Witchcraft to Christ, </span>which<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>reads "I was taught that evil... is not wrong, but right and good. It sounded stupid to me, but I started to believe it... It was a kind of brainwashing." Caroline's initiation into her boyfriend's cult was nearly identical to Doreen's: "When the time came I stepped forward up to the altar, an incision was made on my arm and some of the blood caught up in the cup with the cockerel's blood."<br /></p> </span></p><p>A second post-mortem exam conducted on Caroline by Leeds-based pathologist Dr Michael Green could not determine if Caroline had ever given birth. There was no conclusive evidence of sexual abuse. The genital mutilations were not evident at all. </p><p>Caroline Marchant was not the only "ex-Satanist" taken under the wing of the UK anti-occult crusaders during this time. Former devil-worshiper and born again evangelical Audrey Harper became a member of the Reachout Trust, lecturing widely on the dangers posed by Satanists in the UK. She claimed she had been lured into a posh Satanic coven in the late '60s, when she was a homeless, drug-addicted prostitute.</p><p>In 1988 she gave her story to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sunday Sport</span>. She described how she been initiated into Satanism at a ceremony in which the throat of a rooster was slit and its blood smeared on her body. Two years later, when her memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Devil-Audrey-Harper/dp/0860658503"><span style="font-style: italic;">Dance with the Devil</span> </a>was published, the sacrificed rooster had become a sacrificed <span style="font-style: italic;">baby</span>. Times had changed. (<span style="font-size:85%;">3</span>)</p></span><br /></p><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notes </span><br /></p><pre><span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">1. Audio of her appearance on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >100 Huntley Street </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">can be found </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.angelfire.com/md3/pafn777/doreen.html">here</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">.</span><br /><br />2. In addition to the recording above, there is a<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C3vXif1LoQ"> video presentation on YouTube</a>, c. 1986.</span></span></span><span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /></span></span></span></pre><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;">3. See this <a href="http://www.skepticfiles.org/mys5/tvstorya.htm">timeline </a>of the UK anti-occult crusade. The UK crusade has also been extensively documented by the <a href="http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/">Sub-Culture Alternatives Freedom Foundation (SAFF)</a></span></span></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span></span></span></div>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-58492734222350897432010-09-04T17:54:00.000-07:002010-09-04T18:19:28.437-07:00The Return of Doug Riggs<span style="font-weight: bold;">Satanic ritual abuse and "Nephilim hybrids" in Oklahoma</span><br /><br />On the August 16th-17th broadcast of <span style="font-style: italic;">Coast to Coast AM</span>, guest <a href="http://www.lamarzulli.net/">L.A. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Marzulli</span></span></a> was nattering on about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">endtime</span></span> prophecy, natural disasters, and a Great Deception involving aliens or the Illuminati or something. I wasn't really listening. Then he said this: According to two researchers who contacted him recently, at least two American women claiming to be victims of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) have reported that the Satanists took them to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hermon">Mount Hermon</a> to be impregnated by fallen angels, which <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Marzulli</span></span> referred to as the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Nephilim</span></span></a> of Genesis 6:4 (I'm not even sure if the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Nephilim</span></span> are supposed to be the same "sons of God" that mated with human women, or giants unrelated to the angels, or the offspring of angels and women, but that's a different post). The researchers who alerted <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Marzulli</span> to this story had no vested interest in the matter, he insisted.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Marzulli</span> then hinted that the hybrid offspring of these women have some connection to the alien breeding program, and that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Nephilim</span> are keeping them at an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">offworld</span> location.<br />"Will they bring them back at some point?" host George <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Noory</span> asked.<br />"Yes, they will," <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Marzulli</span> replied without hesitation.<br /><br />So I Googled "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Nephilim</span></span> ritual abuse" and found a recent <a href="http://www.thebyteshow.com/DouglasRiggs.html">online radio interview</a> with Pastor Doug Riggs, <a href="http://barry-julie-radio.blogspot.com/2010/04/nephilim-born-to-modern-day-women.html">described </a>as a friend of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">L.A. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Marzulli</span></span>. The subject was "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Nephilim</span> Mothers".<br />The name Doug Riggs was very familiar to me, but I couldn't recall precisely why. I rifled through some notes. Sure enough, I had jotted down a bit of info on the guy. A month or two ago I had stumbled upon a documentary from 1994, <span style="font-style: italic;">In Satan's Name</span>, which <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">originally</span> aired on HBO. Riggs and his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Morningstar</span></span> Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were featured in the film's most memorable and disturbing segment.<br /><br />In 1994, no fewer than 14 members of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Morningstar</span></span> Church believed they had been brought up in Satanism, were horrifically abused as children, and had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_personality_disorder">Multiple Personality Disorder</a> (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">MPD</span>). All of this was based on repressed memories they recovered while in "counseling" with Pastor Riggs, during sessions lasting up to 19 hours in length. Please keep in mind that we're not talking about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Okie</span></span> bumpkins, here. These were reasonably intelligent, middle-class people who seriously should have known better.<br />To be fair, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Morningstar</span></span> didn't <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> like a cult. Riggs was a poised, handsome man with graying hair and a mellow voice. He spoke <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">knowledgeably</span> about psychology. It's no wonder that parishioners turned to him for pastoral counseling unrelated to Satanism or abuse (marital trouble, eating disorders, etc.).<br />From 1985 on, these <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">counselees</span> began recovering memories of horrific, lifelong ritual abuse at the hands of Satanists. Namely their own parents. And after 1991, when Riggs learned about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">MPD</span> (now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder), they began to discover they had hundreds, even thousands, of separate personalities because of the Satanic ritual abuse. Riggs told them that every single one of their alters could be possessed by demons.<br />Counseling was conducted in a large room with a mattress on the floor, so <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">counselees</span> could go through<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">abreactions</span></a> without hurting themselves. Riggs would lay on top of the person when <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">abreactions</span> became intense, while helpers held the person's arms and legs. In this way, counseling and deliverance from demonic possession were merged into a single process. In one filmed session with a 30<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">ish</span> man, Riggs ordered a demon out of his body ("Explode the seals!") while the man writhed and convulsed on the mattress, growling obscenities.<br />Ultimately, Riggs concluded that all these people had been victimized by the <span style="font-style: italic;">same </span>Satanic cult, led by a man named Joe (father of one of the parishioners, Pam), and that God had brought the victims together at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Morningstar</span> to be healed. Joe supposedly conducted powerful rituals for high government officials (including leaders of the Soviet Union), the Vatican, even heads of state. The narrator of <span style="font-style: italic;">In Satan's Name</span> explains that in reality, Joe was a Nebraska salesman who had never left his home state. He died during filming.<br />Needless to say, the allegations tore apart families. A graceful, soft-spoken couple in their 60s, Jim and Fran Field, mourned the loss of their daughter Cynthia to what they considered a destructive, all-consuming cult.<br /><br />This was as far as <span style="font-style: italic;">In Satan's Name</span> took the story, but I soon learned that the situation at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Morningstar</span> was even stranger.<br />A <a href="http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ritual_abuse/43922">testimony</a> written in 1999 by 49-year-old <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Morningstar</span> member Kim Campbell starts out as boilerplate <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">SRA</span> stuff. Campbell explains that Satanism, "as old as mankind itself", is a blend of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Sumero</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Akkadian</span>/Babylonian mystery religions, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Kabbala</span>, and Paganism. "The culture is unbelievably and ingeniously evil; <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">virutally</span> everything about the culture is humanly damaging." Kim was subjected not only to "every abuse, trauma, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">demonization</span> imaginable within satanism", but to "medically-based mind control programming" at U.S. government facilities, clinics, and the <a href="http://www.tavinstitute.org/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Tavistock</span> Institute</a> (a favourite bugaboo in the world of conspiracy theory). Half of his waking preschool life was spent "being indoctrinated and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">incested</span>". This realization came to him after 18 months of therapy with Pastor Riggs.<br />It isn't until page 7 of the testimony that shit gets seriously weird. Kim drops this bombshell: His <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> father was Edouard Philippe <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">de</span> Rothschild, and Kim was the "bastard son...of occult incest", indicating his mom Lula (who died in 1977) had some relation to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Rothschilds</span>. Kim spent much of his childhood and adolescence on his dad's French estate, and was brought up in homosexual incest. He thought it was normal, even admirable.<br />Edouard despised God and loved humanity with equal passion. "Such was the true generational core of my ancestral iniquity and, being a Rothschild descendant, it was maximally demonized." As all Satanists do, Edouard introduced his son to Christianity, "with none other than Herr Josef <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_40">Mengele</span> himself coaching him over his shoulder." Kim was being groomed to infiltrate the Protestant church. As Riggs declared, the members of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_41">Morningstar</span> Church "had come together to live in such a way as to hasten the Lord's coming for His Bride, but we also had been constituted in the occult to frustrate the will of God for the Church and bring the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_42">antichrist</span> instead."<br /><br />Wow. Just wow. Somehow, Doug Riggs convinced most of his 30-40 parishioners that they were multiple personalities programmed in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zedekiah%27s_Cave">Zedekiah's cave</a> by the great families of Europe (plus Nazi doctors) to infiltrate the Christian Church and pave the way for the Antichrist, who will be a member of the Hapsburg family associated with the name "Alexander".<br />Instead, they found a saviour. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_43">Un</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_44">fracking</span>-believable, no?<br /><br />Let's go back to L.A. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_45">Marzulli</span> for a moment. He also mentioned that Dr. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_46">Mengele</span> was one of the originators of mind control. This is a very popular notion in conspiracy circles, but it makes little sense. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_47">Mengele</span> was a geneticist, not a psychiatrist, and there's no evidence that he took even the slightest interest in psychology.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_48">Marzulli</span> also made reference to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Omega-Conspiracy-Satans-Assault-Kingdom/dp/0978845358">the work</a> of I.E.D. Thomas, a Welsh minister who believes that UFOs and alien abductions are demonic manifestations, another guise of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_49">Nephilim</span>.<br /><br />Back to Riggs and the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_50">Morningstar</span> Satanists. Last April, Riggs and his wife were guests on<span style="font-style: italic;"> <a href="http://www.thebyteshow.com/Library.html">The Byte Show</a></span>, accompanied by about half a dozen of Riggs' <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_51">SRA</span> victims, to discuss the infiltration of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_52">Nephilim</span> hybrids into society.<br />Riggs began the show with a reading of Matthew 24:37, in which it is stated that the coming of the Son of Man (Christ) will be just like the days of Noah. And what happened in the days of Noah? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_53">Nephilim</span> mated with the daughters of Man. That's exactly what Riggs contends is happening now. Fallen angels - the "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_54">B'nai</span> Elohim" - are interbreeding with human women, by force. He cited the work of I.E.D. Thomas. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_55">Hmm</span>. Call me an asshole, but I'm starting to wonder if <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_56">Marzulli's</span> "two researchers" actually exist. Isn't it more likely that he got his <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_57">eschatological</span> Illuminati-Satanic-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_58">Nephilim</span> info from his buddy Doug?<br /><br />Two women gave their stories of being "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_59">Nephilim</span> mothers".<br />Sally, a surprisingly chirpy woman, says that after joining Riggs' church, she began to journal and pray, and memories started surfacing. She shared her journal with the pastor, but after a time she felt God compelling her to share things directly, even her most frightening memory (the President wearing a gorilla costume). Through prayer and God's guidance, she learned to trust her emerging memories. She learned that she came from a royal bloodline, stamped with a certain iniquity and allied with Nazi doctors. Many years ago she revealed to Riggs that she had once given birth to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_60">Nephilim</span> child. She had been groomed literally from the womb to bond with the principality (spirit) that sired this child.<br /><br />Riggs sat on the Nephilim hybrid revelation until this year. Now he's an expert on the subject. Riggs explains that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_61">Nephilim</span> conception occurs at age 13, through an arcane genetic-engineering process (angels can't reproduce). Gestation is 4 months. Once the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_62">Nephilim</span> hybrid sons have matured, their mothers are encouraged to become their lovers, carrying on the tradition of "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_63">incesting</span>".<br /><br />The second woman, Juliana, learned just this year that her recovered memories of giving birth to human sons were actually screen memories of bearing <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_64">Nephilim</span> sons. Like all the other <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_65">Morningstar</span> members, she was born to a European "royal family", then placed with relatives in the U.S. She was "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_66">incested</span>" by the couple she called her mom and dad. She trusts her recovered memories because of their emotional intensity, a very poor indicator of whether a memory is true or false.<br /><br />For the rest of the program, Riggs made a strenuous effort to show that the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_67">SRA</span> victims' memories didn't come from him. Hilariously, though, he got them to explain how he doesn't tell them what to say <span style="font-style: italic;">by telling them what to say</span>.<br />There is, of course, ample reason to suspect that the Satanic Illuminati stories <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span> come from Riggs. First of all, there's that peculiar use of "incest" as a verb. While this may be common usage in the survivor community, I have come across it only a handful of times - and every single instance involved Riggs or one of his church members. Secondly, recovered memories of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_68">SRA</span> have turned out time and time again to be unreliable (see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurston_county_ritual_abuse_case">Ingram case</a> for a particularly chilling example). Thirdly, some of the key details are whack. There was no Edouard Philippe <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_69">de</span> Rothschild, and if there had been he would have been Jewish. How, I wonder, would a Jewish Frenchman and a Catholic Nazi groom a child to infiltrate American Protestant churches? If the Satanic New World Order plot is closely linked with Hitler's plan to create Aryan supermen, as Riggs contends, why would a former Nazi help a Jewish man raise his illegitimate children? And Satanism notwithstanding, why would a Nazi and a Jew be hanging out together in the first place?<br /><br />Then there's the fact that this has all happened before.<br />In the early '90s, right around the time Riggs was learning about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_70">MPD</span>/DID, psychiatrist Bennett <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_71">Braun</span> opened a DID treatment unit at Chicago's Rush Presbyterian Hospital. Within a year, he and his colleagues had most of the patients convinced they were lifelong victims of Satanic cults, that their alter personalities still practiced Satanism, that they had ritually sacrificed and/or eaten other people, and that because of their Satanic <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_72">affiliations</span> they posed a mortal danger to their families, themselves, and other patients. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_73">Braun</span> even told them that flowers sent to their rooms were coded mind-control messages from Satanists, with certain colours representing threats and commands.<br />As former patients like Pat <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_74">Burgus</span> and Mary <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_75">Shanley</span> later revealed (see the <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_76">Frontline</span> </span>documentary <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/info/1402.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Search for Satan</span></a>), the people in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_77">Braun's</span> DID unit were so heavily medicated that stories of cannibalism and Satanic incest began to make sense to them. They have since renounced all their "recovered memories", and some filed lawsuits against <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_78">Braun</span> and the other doctors involved in their treatment.<br />What happened at Rush Presbyterian isn't much different from the spectacular displays of female hysteria that gripped Paris's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salp%C3%AAtri%C3%A8re"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_79">Salpetriere</span> Hospital </a>in the late 19<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_80">th</span> century. Under the influence of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Charcot">Dr. Jean-Martin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_81">Charcot</span></a>, numerous women underwent bizarre convulsions and contortions not unlike the symptoms of "demonic possession". When <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_82">Charcot</span> died in 1893, the symptoms abated, leading some of his colleagues to suspect that the hysteria had been<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis"> iatrogenic</a> in nature. Medical historian Edward Shorter supports this conclusion in his book <span style="font-style: italic;">A History of Psychiatry</span> (1997, John Wiley & Sons).<br />Though Dissociative Identity Disorder is classified as a dissociative disorder in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV"><span style="font-style: italic;">DSM-IV</span></a>, Multiple Personality Disorder was considered a form of hysteria. Specifically, it was <span style="font-style: italic;">Grande Hysterie</span> - the very same condition suffered by Charcot's patients.<br /><br />It's tremendously disturbing to me that Riggs has been carrying on this "counseling" for over 30 years without interruption, and that he is bringing a new generation of "victims" into his circle (his youngest, a Canadian named Sarah, is just 21 years old).<br />There's troubling evidence that the Nephilim hybrid/recovered memory nonsense has taken hold in <a href="http://shepherdsheart.com.au/index.php?p=1_1_Home">at least one congregation in Australia</a>. Riggs is also closely associated with Russ Dizdar, a pastor we'll examine in the next post.<br />Also, Riggs' belief system is rooted in a school of thought that sees all mental illness as demonic in nature, and/or indicative of repressed memories. He insists that before they enter into counseling with him, his parishioners read the work of Neil T. Anderson, a minister who preaches that 80% of Christians are "demonized" to some extent and that most (if not all) mental illness is a symptom of demonization. He offers "clinical deliverance" (exorcism) as treatment.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-14610368469940285942010-03-09T22:02:00.000-08:002010-03-09T22:44:41.684-08:00Some anti-occult nonsense<ul><li>After their failed bid to cast their daughter as the girl martyr of Columbine, the parents of Cassie Bernall are now <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_14523827">giving public addresses </a>in which they describe their daughter as a Satanic would-be murderer (because she wrote angry study hall letters and had some "occult" stuff in her bedroom). I don't quite understand how disparaging their murdered daughter will accomplish...well, anything. </li><li>A very strange anti-occult site called <a href="http://fakeapoc.tripod.com/">Satan's Fake Apocalypse </a>asks some very strange questions, like "Criss Angel: Black Magician or Illusionist?" (is this where<a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.com/2009/02/thank-you-sheldon.html"> Sheldon</a> got his info?), and "Was Bertrand Russell Possessed?". Other articles include "Programming Kids for Satanism with Video Games", "SRA: the appalling and pervasive reality hidden in plain sight", and "Demonic possession: sociopathy on steroids". A <a href="http://fakeapoc.blogspot.com/2010/03/eduardo-valseca-case-satanism-disguised.html">blog</a><a href="http://fakeapoc.blogspot.com/2010/03/eduardo-valseca-case-satanism-disguised.html"> pos</a>t by the same person asserts that kidnapping-for-ransom victim Eduardo Valesca was probably abducted by Satanists. Something to do with Satanists controlling the real estate market, and the "fact" that letters usually featured on maps of Mexico convert to the number sequence 9969, which translates to 666 if you remove a 9 and invert the others (without inverting the 6). This person believes his former housemates were ritualistically torturing him with sleep deprivation because they belonged to a Lucis Trust offshoot known as <a href="http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/triangles">Triangles</a>, which he read about in one of the Satanic panic pamphlets Lyndon LaRouche's organization cranked out in the '80s. Evidence for this plot included triangular decals on one roomie's vehicle, a bag of Mission Triangle tortilla chips left on a countertop, and a secret code employed on Lucis Trust websites. He "translated" these websites, "which was one of the more mentally draining efforts of my life because they were deliberately written to be highly ambiguous". <span style="font-size:130%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"></span></span></span></li></ul>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-35599724147308188052009-02-06T18:20:00.000-08:002010-03-09T22:16:18.436-08:00Thank You, SheldonRecently a Charismatic Christian named Sheldon shared with me some of the goofiest, weirdest examples of Satanic panic I have ever witnessed. And that's saying something. As you peruse the Deep Thoughts of Sheldon, remember: <em>He believes every word of this stuff,</em> and I doubt he's the only one. It's folks like Sheldon who make me realize that the work of combatting anti-occult misinformation is far from over. We've got a <em>lot</em> to do. So in a way, I should be thanking him for reminding me.<br /><br />- As "explained" in a YouTube slideshow, the Jonas Brothers (Evangelical Christian teenagers who sing for Disney) could be demonic entities. In the '80s and '90s, they were a Scandinavian black metal band called The Sanoj Brotherhood. By the power of Satan, they morphed themselves into wholesome American "brothers" in order to entice young girls to the dark side. The dark side of<em> what</em>? Shitty pop music?<br />The only "evidence" for this is that that Jonas is Sanoj spelled backward. Oh, and the music of both bands sucks some very serious ass.<br /><em>Saturday Night Live </em>spoofed this on Valentine's Day by having Andy Samberg confront the Jonas Brothers with videos of an '80s hair band. "This is you guys, isn't it? Are you Highlanders?"<br /><br />- Criss Angel is probably using demonic powers granted to him by the Devil. I asked Sheldon why he only suspects Criss Angel of making a pact with Satan, and not, say, Doug Henning. Sheldon's reply: How else could he lie on broken glass and be run over by a steamroller without being harmed?<br /><br />- Sheldon has worked with people from seven different Satanic covens operating in our province (which is overwhelmingly conservative and Christian, by the way). He knows Satanic breeders in our area. Also, a local man told him he was allowed to wander through a local Mormon "temple" (he meant a ward house) and discovered a room draped in black, adorned with an upside-down crucifix. My Mormon friend interrupted at this point in the conversation, for obvious reasons. He even offered to take Sheldon through the ward house in question to satisfy himself that no such room exists. Sheldon declined.<br /><br />- Todd Bentley, the preacher who blessed Sheldon and his girlfriend, is a legitimate healer. Bentley's the guy who made a name for himself by leading a spectacle-laden revival down in Florida last year, healing the elderly by kicking, punching, and kneeing them. Sheldon informed me that God asked Bentley to smack people around just to test him; God prevented actual physical contact from happening. (The numerous YouTube videos of Bentley using his "knee of God" indicate otherwise.) Sheldon believes Bentley's claim of raising a dozen people from the dead during his revival; this is a routine occurrence in the Chinese underground church.<br />At any rate, Sheldon no longer believes that Bentley is a righteous man, because he was caught having an affair with a staffer. But the staffer was probably a plant, hired to lead Bentley astray.<br /><br />- It's good that California's Proposition 8 passed. This will avert earthquakes. 'Cause we all know that gayness, rather than seismic activity, creates earthquakes, right?S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-23092136268646689192010-02-01T10:44:00.000-08:002010-02-01T11:01:43.464-08:00Tell Me Again How Satanists Abduct Children?"<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100201/cb-haiti-americans-detained/">Trafficking Probe Key to Americans' Fate in Haiti</a>" by Michelle Faul and Paul Bajak, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">Huffington Post</a><br /><br />Ten Baptists, or people posing as Baptists, were caught trying to smuggle over 30 children out of Haiti with neither documentation nor permission. This sort of thing occurs with alarming regularity in the wake of natural disasters, yet conspiranoids and anti-occult crusaders will not stop harping on the late-'80s case of The Finders, an obscure religious group that was "caught" transporting children of its members. Authorities allegedly found files on the children of non-members, photos of children sacrificing a goat, and other disturbing stuff in a warehouse owned by the group. Though nothing more is known, this has been used as evidence that "Satanic" child trafficking and abuse is widespread.<br /><br />For some, it must be tempting to think that only those who practice "non-traditional" beliefs could be capable of such monstrosities, but the Haiti case and many others should make it clear that child trafficking is child trafficking - it doesn't matter what its alleged perpetrators do in their spare time. It is a crime that transcends racial, religious, geographical, and ethnic boundaries. It is a crime that must be stopped, no matter who's doing it or how.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-87257563694734928102010-01-20T12:02:00.001-08:002010-01-20T18:02:03.435-08:00The Devil in MassachussettsI know that at this moment, many Americans are deeply upset over Scott Brown's election to the Massachusetts Senate. A Republican in that swing state will almost definitely spell the end of the new health care plan that could - if properly administered - transform U.S. health care from the "privilege" it is today to the basic human right it should be. This is tragic.<br /><br />However, Pollyanna that I am, I'm going to point out a couple of things about the Democratic contender, Martha <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Coakley</span>, that aren't so great:<br /><br />1. <a href="http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/01/annotating_coakleys_excyses.php">She didn't try hard enough</a>. Wasn't she <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/a-view-from-inside-coakleys-camp/">on <span style="font-style: italic;">vacation</span></a> for part of her campaign?<br /><br />2. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Coakley</span> has a very mixed track record when it comes to common sense, and her handling of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Amirault</span> case is as good (er, bad) an example as any.<br /><br />Let me take you back to 1985. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Violet <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Amirault</span> and her two children, 31-year-old Gerald and 28-year-old Cheryl, were charged with abusing and molesting children in the daycare run by Violet in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Malden</span>, Massachusetts.<br />Violet <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Amirault</span> opened Fells Acre Daycare as a single parent and had been running it since the mid-1960s without any complaints. In fact, it was considered one of the best daycares in the community, and there was always a waiting list.<br />Then, in the autumn of 1984, the family of a 4-year-old who attended the daycare considered the boy's sex play with his cousin to be a troubling sign. They questioned him about bad touching by adults. He said that Gerald Amirault (known as "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Tooky</span>") had removed his pants one day. This was true; Gerald helped the boy change his clothes after he wet himself on one occasion.<br /><br />Somehow, this incident mushroomed into a vast array of bizarre accusations. On September 12, 1984, more than a hundred parents attended a meeting to discuss the issue with police. Gerald had just been arrested, two days before the birth of his third child, and police were interviewing all of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">daycare's</span> 70 or so children with the help of a pediatric nurse named Susan J. Kelly. Parents were encouraged to question their kids at home, as well. Soon, they were eliciting stories of secret rooms, clowns, sodomy with a butcher knife, a murdered baby, biting robots, witch and "bad lobster" costumes, and something about an elephant. One child said, "<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Tooky</span> was sorry for chopping me into little pieces." Another said that 16 fellow preschoolers had died.<br /><br />Jurors at Gerald's trial didn't hear about clowns and monsters, but they did hear about secret rooms where child pornography was produced. These rooms were never located. At Violet and Cheryl's trial, the allegations were more outlandish: a child lashed nude to a tree on a busy street, robots, butcher knives, etc. The prosecutors made an unusual decision to face the child witnesses directly toward the jury rather than the defendants, ostensibly for the children's peace of mind.<br />There was no physical evidence in the case. The prosecution rested solely on interviews of the children. Video recordings of these sessions reveal that if the kids denied being abused, Kelly prodded until they disclosed something - <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span>. Officer John Rivers referred to the process as "getting blood from a stone".<br />No one had ever heard screams of terror coming from the daycare, nor seen any naked children tied to trees. No <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Malden</span> toddlers had mentioned Satan at the dinner table until <span style="font-style: italic;">after</span> Gerald <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Amirault</span> was arrested.<br /><br />Nonetheless, Gerald <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Amirault</span> was convicted of raping and abusing 9 children, and was sentenced to 30-40 years in prison. His mother and sister each received sentences of 8-20 years for raping and abusing four children. The women's lighter sentences were clear indicators that the prosecution and jury considered Gerald to be the head of the family's Satanic Robot Clown cult.<br /><br />Violet's and Cheryl's convictions were overturned in 1995, when a judge ruled that they had been denied their Constitutional right to face their accusers in court. Then the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Massachusetts</span> Supreme Judicial Court reinstated the overturned convictions, and the Honorable Isaac <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Borenstein</span> granted motions for separate trials. However, he ultimately ruled that "grave errors" in the original questioning of the children had irrevocably tainting their testimony, rendering it <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">inadmissible</span> as evidence. He believed the case bore the earmarks of ritual abuse hysteria, noting that none of the kids showed signs of abuse prior to the arrests of the Amiraults.<br />In 1997, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Violet and Cheryl would be <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">reincarcerated</span> until their new trials. Violet passed away during this time, having spent close to a decade of her golden years in prison.<br /><br />Here's where Ms. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Coakley</span> enters the picture. In October 1999, as the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Middlesex</span> district attorney, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Coakley</span> struck a deal with Cheryl Amirault: In exchange for being released, Cheryl would receive 10 years probation - as long as she gave no TV interviews and had no unsupervised contact with children.<br /><br />For <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Coakley</span>, this deal wasn't about getting some leniency for a woman almost universally considered an innocent victim of "Satanic panic". No, for her it was about keeping Gerald <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Amirault</span> in prison. Early in negotations<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21"></span>, she demanded that the long-serving <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Amirault</span> family attorney, James Sultan, pledge to drop Gerald as a client in return for Cheryl's release. Sultan refused.<br /><br />In July 2001, the parole board unanimously recommended that Gerald's sentence be commuted. The final decision would be up to Governor Jane Swift.<br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Coakley</span>, acting as advocate for the victims and their families, began lobbying Swift on their behalf.<br /><br />While it's commendable for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Coakley</span> to offer assistance to victims of child abuse, this particular case wasn't a good place to start. Either she isn't well-acquainted with the facts of the case, or she's harebrained enough to believe that a Satanic Robot Clown cult operated a Hell Hostel for toddlers<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>in plain view of a small town's residents for nearly 20 years.<br />There is a third, even less appetizing <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">possibility</span>: That Martha <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Coakley</span> politically exploited the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Amirault</span> case to make herself appear very tough on crimes against children. Again, being a victims' advocate is commendable - but this wasn't the right place to start. The Fells Acre case is <span style="font-style: italic;">full </span>of victims: the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Amiraults</span>, the parents who believe their children were horrifically abused in a safe place, and the children who were persuaded of the same thing by suggestive questioning. Some of them bear psychic scars to this day. Victim Phaedra Hopkins and her family spoke out against the proposed commutation of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">Amirault's</span> sentence, as did Jennifer Bennett. She says she and the other kids were telling the truth; the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Amirault</span> family <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">ruined</span> her life. Brian <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">Martinello</span> and his mom, Barbara <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">Standke</span>, also spoke out. Brian had scratches or sores on his genitalia when he went to Fells Acres at age 4. He and his mother remain convinced that this was the result of sexual abuse.<br /><br />Governor Swift rejected the parole board's recommendation in 2002. Gerald <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Amirault</span> spent another year and a half in prison before being released on parole, a registered sex offender and convicted child abuser for the rest of his life.<br /><br />Thanks, Ms. Coakley.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notes on Sources: </span><br /><br />Most of the information in this article comes from John Demo's excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Within-Years-Witch-hunting-Western/dp/0670019992"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Modern World</span></a> (Viking, 2008), Dorothy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Rabinowitz's</span> January 14, 2009 <span style="font-style: italic;">Wall Street Journal</span> piece ("<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003341640657862.html">Martha <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Coakley's</span> Convictions</a>"), and <a href="http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/witch/fells.html">news articles on the Fells Acre case compiled online by Hugo S. Cunningham</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>All online materials were retrieved January 20, 2010.<br /><br />To date, a definitive account of the case has yet to be written.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-77541406161745335422010-01-01T21:48:00.000-08:002010-01-02T01:28:49.128-08:00Two Recent Films that Promote Satanic Panic<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/70wrl1WHV-M&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/70wrl1WHV-M&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Jeremiah Films has released a documentary entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">PopCulture Paganism</span>, taking a right-handed swipe at the teen vampire trend, which they call "Neovampirism". The filmmakers try to lump it in with Paganism as well as New Agey stuff like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Secret</span>. The <span style="font-style: italic;">PopPaganism</span> <a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/released/CreepingPaganism/00101">page </a>features a glut of links to crimes and outrages that have pretty much nothing to do with the topics of the documentary. This film is apparently unconnected to the <a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/products/Pagan-Invasion-Classic">13 other anti-Pagan films</a> J.F. has made.<br /><br />As you probably know, Jeremiah Films is the low-budget Christian Right/conspiranoia production company that churned out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clinton_Chronicles"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Clinton Chronicles</span></a> in the '90s. Despite plugs on <span style="font-style: italic;">The 700 Club</span>, the video ended up losing money after J.F. CEO Pat Matrisciana lost a defamation lawsuit. Since then, J.F. has stuck mainly to safer targets: Harry Potter, <a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/products/PI11D">Mormons</a>, and of course <a href="http://www.jeremiahfilms.com/products/FFDLD">Freemasons</a>.<br /><br />The other film is a low-budget horror flick about a Satanic cult that ritually sacrifices random folks, aptly titled <span style="font-style: italic;">Satanic Panic</span>. This wouldn't be a big deal on its own, but unfortunately the movie is being promoted as "inspired by true accounts", just like <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.com/2006/01/real-emily-rose-and-vodun-bunk.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Exorcism of Emily Rose</span></a>, <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/06/ghostbusters-part-iii-bs-in-connecticut.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Haunting in Connecticut</span></a>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Fourth Kind</span> (which was really just <a href="http://swallowingthecamel.blogspot.com/2009/11/hoaxes-from-space-two-recent-hoaxes.html">a hoax</a>). The film's <a href="http://www.satanicpanicthemovie.com/">official website </a>explains that the real Satanic Panic of the '80s was sparked by a "rash" of unexplained disappearances throughout the U.S. This is not true. Disappearances played a very minor role in the hysteria to come, and at any rate the disappearance rate was not elevated in any noticeable way at that time. People were simply paying more attention to disappearances after the high-profile cases of Etan Patz, Adam Walsh, and other children.<br />Besides that, it strikes me as rather inappropriate to base a schlocky slasher film (complete with an ugly hillbilly) on the testimony of unbalanced people who, for the most part, really believed they had been tortured by Satanists as children. <span style="font-style: italic;">Real </span>Satanic Panic ruined many lives, families, and minds. It's not entertaining.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rqx5g7IgpO0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rqx5g7IgpO0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-89372595668764164172009-12-05T01:23:00.000-08:002009-12-05T01:24:24.569-08:00SadAmanda Knox and her boyfriend have been convicted.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-59322342542786823112009-10-31T23:49:00.000-07:002009-11-15T20:28:44.041-08:00Satanic Panic is Alive and WellSatanic panic is alive and well. The crafty and the naive alike exploit it to achieve their own ends - whether that's putting the fear of God in people, prosecuting an alleged criminal, or just selling lots of DVDs. Just one recent example:<br /><br />- In a recent interview with David Icke, conspiranoid radio host <a href="http://leavingalexjonestown.blogspot.com/">Alex Jones</a> gave several examples of what he considers Satanic sacrifice and deviant sexuality. "We know that Satanists sacrifice people. They get caught doing it all the time."<br />He declared that France's Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand, bragged in a book that he "goes to slave camps and rapes little boys". Mitterand even refers to this practice as a "ritual".<br />This is pure bullshit. The book Jones refers to (though he clearly hasn't read it) is Mitterand's 2005 autobiographical novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bad Life</span>, in which he describes visiting young male prostitutes (young <span style="font-style: italic;">men</span>, not <span style="font-style: italic;">children</span>) in Thailand. No "slave camps". No "rape". No "little boys". However, Mitterand did push the envelope by describing his reaction the sex trade in Bangkok thusly: "All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market, excite me enormously". <div id="TixyyLink" style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />Jones mentioned that in 1999, a woman escaped from captivity in a Rothschild castle weighing only about 98 pounds, yet the police did nothing. I can't find any incident even remotely matching this description. Knowing Jones, it was probably 1973 and a hotel or something. He gets confused.<br /><br /></div>Icke stated, "Roman Polanski is a practicing Satanist." He said Sharon Tate's murder was directly connected to Satanism. This is pure bullshit. The Manson Family murders had nothing to do with Satanism, and making a film about devil worshippers does not make you a Satanist. Period.<br />He went on to explain one of his central conspiracy theories, that the elite routinely rape and sacrifice prepubescent children to obtain their energy (and blood, since they are blood-drinking, shapeshifting Reptiles from another dimension).<br /><br />Jones listed the cultures that have practiced ritual human sacrifice: Mesoamericans, Africans, Aztecs, Asians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Middle Eastern tribes. All had high priests who worshipped the same snake god and followed the same "secret mathematics religion", and all sacrificed healthy people of all ages and both sexes. Most tortured their victims. Most used hallucinogens (as does Icke himself, but Icke stayed mum at this point in the broadcast). Note, please, that Jones <span style="font-style: italic;">didn't mention Celtic or Nordic sacrifice</span>.<br />Again, pure bullshit. There is no "secret mathematics religion", and the cultures mentioned had an array of gods (not just a single "snake god", though a few did incorporate snakes or serpents into their cosmology and/or mythology at one time or another - as does Christianity, which Jones favors, and the chemognostic New Age "shamanism" that Icke appreciates).<br /><br />Jones went on to say that Tony Blair likes to be possessed by the spirit of "white light", and that homosexual orgies take place during Skull & Bones initiation ceremonies. Blair is Catholic now, so his alleged ecstatic states have nothing to do with Satanism. And while I'm sure college secret societies have some homoerotic aspects, no one has ever reported gay orgies (or orgies of any kind) at S&B.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-83262525346053477952009-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:002009-07-14T21:16:40.665-07:00Tell Me Again How Satanists Secretly Rule the World?<a href="http://www.alternet.org/politics/141278/rachel_maddow:_gop_sex_scandal_exposes_secretive_conservative_religious__group_--__%27the_family%27/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rachel Maddow: GOP Sex Scandal Exposes Secretive Conservative Religious Group </span><br /></a>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-69985995473034954592009-07-06T20:03:00.000-07:002009-07-06T20:27:40.411-07:00More Satanic Panic in Africa<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>In Ndola, Zambia, two teen boys (13 and 14) are being <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/200907020985.html">sued </a>for defamation by Kamba Ward PF councillor Oscar Himanga. Last year, the boys declared that Himanga lured them into Satanism with money and sweets when they were 5 and 6 years old. Since that time, they claim, he has ordered them to murder over 300 people.<br />According to the courtroom testimony of the 13-year-old, their initiation took place inside an "old warehouse in Kawama where they found white men who were half humans and half snakes". Over the years "they continued to meet the same people in the Atlantic Ocean", and the boy used a "spiritual computer" to kill people at the Satanists' command. The boy said he came forward with his confession last year because the cultists had ordered him to kill his mother, and he didn't want to do it.<br />I sincerely hope that Mr. Himanga wins his suit.<br /><br />Also in Zambia, five girls have been expelled from school for allegedly practicing Satanism.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-23225807288246376302009-04-21T18:38:00.000-07:002009-04-21T18:44:17.053-07:00A TravestyThis isn't quite Satanic/occult panic, but it<em> is</em> deplorable and quite frightening, legally and ethically. The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by a Texas death row inmate, who appealed his sentence because the jurors consulted the Bible when deciding whether or not to give him the death penalty in 1999.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/20/ap/politics/main4956478.shtml">http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/20/ap/politics/main4956478.shtml</a>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-27547967864289695122009-03-21T01:20:00.000-07:002009-03-22T23:27:51.976-07:00A Family Divided<strong>An unhappy ending to 1989 abductions motivated by Satanic ritual abuse panic</strong><br /><br />Twenty years ago, Marvin Maple and his wife Sandra somehow got it into their heads that their two grandchildren were being ritually abused by their parents (the Maples' daughter, Debbie Baskin, and her husband Mark). The Maples alleged that Debbie and Mark belonged to a Satanic cult in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which practiced murder, child molestation, animal sacrifice, and other atrocities. So they sought, and were granted, temporary custody of 8-year-old Christie and 7-year-old Bobby. When a yearlong investigation failed to turn up even one indication of Satanic ritual abuse, a court ordered the children returned to their home. At the time, far from being a Satanist, Mark Baskin was pursuing a degree in theology.<br /><br />Just before the Baskins were scheduled to regain custody of their children in March 1989, the Maples disappeared with the kids. For 20 years, they lived as the "Bunting" family; Christie was renamed Jennifer, and Bobby went by the name Jonathan.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Baskins never gave up on their missing children. They distributed fliers far and wide, gave interviews and made media appearances whenever possible, and appealed to the Maples to do the right thing. Their answering machine always contained a message for Bobby and Christie.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29086098/">Then it happened</a>. Early last month, a patron in a cafe in San Jose, California, overheard 73-year-old "John Bunting" recounting the abduction of his grandchildren. He was annoyed that a newspaper story about the children had described him as a kidnapper.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/btestEuDIZc&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/btestEuDIZc&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Police soon located Christie and Bobby. Christie, 28, was working as a nurse in San Jose, while Bobby is married with children of his own. The Baskins eagerly awaited a reunion, but feared that the kids might not feel the same way after being told for 20 years that their parents were abusive Satanists. Unfortunately, their fears manifested when they traveled to San Jose; both children <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11665412?nclick_check=1">refused </a>to respond to phone calls or visits.<br /><br />Sandra Maple died in 2006. Marvin faces kidnapping charges in Tennessee. He, too, refuses to speak with the Baskins. He says he is innocent. According to the report below, Debbie's two sisters seem to be supporting their father.<br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T_rZ2KJUK7s&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T_rZ2KJUK7s&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />The Baskin abduction bears a striking similarity to a 1990 grandparent abduction in Hobbes, New Mexico. This case has a happier ending, and the underhanded method used to induce stories of Satanic ritual abuse is transparent:<br /><br />As described in an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqmtjdLOMqg">episode</a> of<em> Unsolved Mysteries</em>, Ladonna Morrow had a strained relationship with her mom, Pat Farmer, but needed her to help care for her 4-year-old son, Jared Peters, after she divorced Jared's father. Pat disapproved of the divorce, so using televangelist-produced videotapes and coaching, she taught Jared to describe being molested and ritually abused by members of a Satanic cult. Then she encouraged Jared to report this abuse, and sought sole custody of her grandson.<br /><br />Two months after custody was granted to Pat Farmer, Jared's father and the authorities came to the conclusion that there was <em>no</em> Satanic cult and <em>no </em>abuse. Ladonna regained custody of Jared, but Pat was allowed monthly, unsupervised visits. She simply didn't return Jared after one of these visits.<br /><br />Pat was caught in Salt Lake City two years later, and Jared was reunited with his mother.<br /><br />There may be no such reunion for the Baskins. They remain a family divided and ruined by the spectre of Satanic panic.S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20519777.post-29324981700462167772009-03-10T22:27:00.000-07:002009-03-10T22:38:36.239-07:00Gawd, I love YouTube...Here's an '85 <em>60 Minutes </em>report featuring Pat Pulling, founder of BADD (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). See my post <a href="http://satanicpanicnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/d-and-devils-boardgames.html">"D&D and The Devil's Boardgames" </a>for more info on Ms. Pulling and role-playing game hysteria. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/XbcWKWp2UE4&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/XbcWKWp2UE4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3lN0nrrynb8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3lN0nrrynb8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>S.M. Elliotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13790067061938701596noreply@blogger.com0