A Very Weak Attempt to Link Sandy Hook to Satanism

As discussed in my last post, 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.
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.


The "Matrix-style surgical probe": This is actually just a light mounted on a flexible, snake-like tube. It does not enter the statue.
The black bodysuit: I doubt this is a nod to Catwoman. Gaga likes bodysuits, as evidenced by the white Where the Wild Things Are-inspired latex bodysuit she wore at the beginning of the "Bad Romance" video.
The "trooper hat": An old-fashioned ladies' picture hat, updated

The mirror: Clearly a reference to Cocteau's Orphée, 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 this fan video of her song "Bad Romance", set to scenes from Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. We are not dealing with Satanism here. The black mirror is a straight-up homage to French arthouse cinema.
[I wrote the passage above before re-watching the mirror scene in Orphée. When I reviewed it, I realized Gaga was definitely, absolutely, beyond any question in the world, re-enacting it. Watch it yourself, 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!
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.]
"Portrait: Death of Children (ovum and sperm)": 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 slime mold.
"Look how they prequel shooting children!": 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.
The backmasking of Lt. Paul Vance: 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.
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 The Flintstones.

As for production designer Nathan Crowley being related to the infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley was, as Nathan told the Art Newspaper in 2008, his grandfather’s cousin, but Nathan was "never allowed to even mention his name because we were a very Quaker family.”

In the News

People often ask me, "But haven't you ever come across a real 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 Christian context.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Another Forerunner was in the news this week, when 19-year-old Two and a Half Men star Angus T. Jones declared in a video produced by The Forerunner Chronicles 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 qualified his remarks, 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.
The man who appears beside Jones in the video is Christopher "Forerunner" Hudson, a YouTuber who believes that Jay-Z is a Satan-worshiping Freemason. Hudson also buys into 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. 

Charisma 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 The 700 Club or Jack Van Impe Presents. What, then, shall we make of a recent article titled "Can You Be Raped by the Devil?", 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?

Pat Robertson and the "Demonic"

Media Matters has a story 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 Twilight franchise. I can't really disagree with him on that last one.

Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is still the number one Christian network in the world, and its flagship program, The 700 Club, is watched by about a million people every day.

Gawd, I love YouTube...

Here's an '85 60 Minutes report featuring Pat Pulling, founder of BADD (Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons). See my post "D&D and The Devil's Boardgames" for more info on Ms. Pulling and role-playing game hysteria.

Satanic Panic on Reality TV

Satanic panic and religious ignorance/intolerance pop up in the strangest places. Would you believe...the Fox network? Friday's episode of the Fox program Trading Spouses (in which two women of wildly different lifestyles trade households for a week) featured a hypnotherapist and astrologer from Boston switching places with a devout Christian from Louisiana. Both women were white, middle-class mothers with several children and happy marriages, but the similarities ended there.
The Boston house was decked out with Buddhist prayer flags, hand-drawn mandalas, Buddha statues, and chimera statues ("gargoyles"). The long-haired patriarch of the family decided to welcome his new "spouse" by holding a backyard Solstice celebration at which guests were invited to throw incense on a fire "with good intentions and wishes for peace." The Lousiana mom, a morbidly obese women with a yawning gap between her two front teeth named Marguerite Perrin, visibly blanched and backed away from the fire as though her soul was in peril. She eyed the mandalas with distrust, believing they were "Japanese". As a guest host of the couples' call-in radio show, she stormed out of the studio upon learning that her co-host was a psychic. "I am a Christian and I do not approve," she said, before sequestering herself in the bathroom. ("They can shove this up their asses!" she growled behind the bathroom door.) She stalked out of the studio demanding to be taken to a church. "I won't have anything to do with the dark-sided...I don't believe in it."
Meanwhile, the hypnotherapist from Boston was introduced to family friends. As soon as the Christian coffee klatch heard what she did for a living, their faces turned to stone. "I believe in God," the woman offered, trying to bridge the culture gap.
A blonde woman snapped, "Do you believe in God...or do you believe in a 'higher power'?"
An awkward silence as the hypnotherapist grappled with this unwarranted hostility. The women glowered at her.
Addressing the camera, the blonde said coldly, "People who read tarot cards...they're of the devil."

There was no attempt at dialogue on the part of the Christians. This particular group embodied the worst of Judeo-Christian faith, just as the Muslims who storm newspaper offices in vengeance for political cartoons embody the worst of their faith. Naturally, reality TV shows are heavily edited and possibly even scripted and staged, so it's difficult to tell what actually occurred between these two families. But the temper tantrums and fits of irrational fear displayed by the Christian mother showed her true colors, and they weren't pretty. Gentle rebukes and calm conversations could have gotten her points across with equal strength. It's a shame when there's so little empathy among the faithful.

UPDATE: At the Trading Spouses website I discovered that Marguerite Perrin and her family reside in Ponchatoula, home of the allegedly Satan-worshipping, child-molesting, cat-killing, blood-drinking church led by Louis Lamonica. This could help explain Mrs. Perrin's extreme reaction to "dark-sided stuff". Also, Ponchatoula is known for its abundance of Christian churches, and the intense devotion of their congregants. This episode of Trading Spouses originally aired at the end of last year, not long after the case of the Ponchatoula Satanists surfaced.

Part of Marguerite Perrin's tantrum can be viewed at ifilm.