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?

Bill Schnoebelen: Former Witch, former Satanist, former Illuminati member...

...and current conspiracy bullshitter.

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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).

Schnoebelen claims to have been, at various times between 1968 and the present:

• a Wiccan
• a "high Druidic" priest
• an Ordo Templi Orientis initiate (2nd degree)
• a channeler
• a Satanist
• a member of the Illuminati
• a Mormon
• a Catholic priest
• a 90th Degree Freemason
• a 9th Degree Rosicrucian
  
• a Knight Templar
• a Gnostic bishop
• a spiritualist priest
  
• a vampire
• a naturopathic physician
• a member of Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant
  
• a fundamentalist Christian/ordained minister
  

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 forever deciding in a restaurant.

He worshipped everything but this.

There is evidence that Bill Schnoebelen actually did do many of the things he talks about. But like John Todd, he smeared Mormons, Freemasons, and many other groups as closet Satanists, and made some claims that are profoundly absurd.

The Road to Everything

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. (3)
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 Wendigo. 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. (2)

After high school, Bill still intended to become a priest. First, though, he enrolled at a small Catholic school called Loras College, in Dubuque, Iowa. It was here, in that crazy year of 1968, that a few New Agey professors and the counter-fundamentalist influence of Vatican II 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. (1)

Step 1: Witch

After some occult study, Bill decided to become a witch. He wrote to Alex Sanders, 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 Doreen Irvine and Mike Warnke. Note also that Schnoebolen has not mentioned any Satanic scripture, like most of the "former witches" we've seen so far.

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 St. Francis School of Pastoral Ministry in 1980 and his Master of Arts degree in counseling from Liberty University in 1990.)
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. (3)
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. (3) 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 John Todd and Tom Sanguinet 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. (1) Occult study is not a cram course.
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. (2)

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. (1)
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. (3)

Step 2: Warlock, Mason, and Illuminati Member

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. (3) Bill read Anton LeVey's Satanic Bible 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. (1) (The supposed connection between Satanism and Freemasonry was also trumpeted by John Todd in the mid-'80s.)
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.

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. (1)
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 Jacques de Molay 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 Spiritual Exercises 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 all priestly and monastic disciplines are occult.

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. (1)
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?

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. (3)
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".
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.
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.
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.

Step 3: Priest

Wait, it gets stupider. To "level up" to the hardcore Satanic high priesthood, Bill had to recruit seven people to sell their souls, and become a Catholic priest. He says medieval literature supports his contention that all Satanic high priests are also Catholic priests. (1) However, it isn't required that you become an orthodox Catholic priest; it's good enough just to be "ordained", as both Schnoebolen and Mike Warnke were, as a "bishop" of the Old Catholic Church. 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. (3)

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.

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.

Step 4: Vampire

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.

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.

A small harem of witches provided Bill with blood, but as time went on he required more and more of it. As a Milkwaukee Sentinal 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. (1)

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 (Mike Warnke essentially admitted as such on The Jim Bakker Show), 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.

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.

Step 5: Christian

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.

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."

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.

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. (1)

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: Mormonism's Temple of Doom. (1)
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.
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, claims 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.

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. (2)

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 James E. Faust, personally told him that Lucifer is the god of Mormonism.

In a Prophecy Club 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 recruit." (1)

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. (1)

As a Christian, Bill penned many books and tracts about the alleged evils of witchcraft, the occult, UFOs, Satanism, Mormonism, and Dungeons & Dragons. He claimed 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 early '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 still available on Jack Chick's website, along with the nonsense of John Todd. Chick is a strong supporter of Schnoebelen, and offers his book Lucifer Dethroned for sale.
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 With One Accord ministry.

In 2006, Schnoebelen sat down with Stephanie Relfe for a 9-hour interview that was packaged as a DVD, Interview with an Ex-Vampire. I've mentioned 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.

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.

Step 6: Naturopathic physician

"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.
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. (4)

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 don't have to imagine it.
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.
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.

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).
He says we've been successfully cloning animals since the 1940s. Dolly the sheep was just a cover.
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 not extraterrestrial, this drawing-of-an-alleged-photo is obviously a crude hoax. No sane, rational person would accept it as evidence of anything.
Schnoebelen also gives credence to Eisenhower's supposed meeting with aliens, Betty Hill's "map" of Zeta Reticuli, 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". (1)

His Biblical exegesis isn't much better. Schnoebelen believes that in I Corinthians 11:2-16, 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. (1)

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 John Todd, Irene Park, and Tom Sanguinet, who attributed all sorts of evil deeds to the Druids. (2)

Some (Very Obvious) Problems with Schnoebolen's Testimony

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?

Mormons are not witches. Mormons do not worship Lucifer. Witches do not worship Lucifer. If Mormons are secretly worshiping the Devil, why would Elder Faust confide this to two relatively new converts?

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.

Satanists are not required to become Catholic priests. Catholics are not permitted to be Freemasons. It is far more likely that Schnoebelen, like Mike Warnke, 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.

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?

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 Perdurabo, 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 Magick in Theory and Practice, 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.
Schnoebelen also blames Crowley for Hitler, the Tunguska explosion, and "Transyuggothian magick". Like John Todd, he suggests that H.P. Lovecraft had access to secret knowledge about demonic/alien entities. He says the Simon Necronomicon contains about half of the "real" Necronomicon, which is utter b.s. 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..." (1)

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. (1)
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.

Schnoebelen makes similar allegations against Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set. He says Aquino was charged of child abuse three times, but the charges didn't stick "probably because of government involvement." (1)
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 very interesting that Aquino was never accused of a single crime until he outed himself as a Satanist.

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 Taxil hoax). Also in common with Todd, he criticized Star Wars, 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 (Star Trek, Star Wars, soaps, etc.). "As a result of this, most people end up on the dole, or in mental hospitals." (1)
Excuse me? Most Americans are welfare recipients, and Star Trek is responsible for this? Since when?

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.

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. Faux vampirism and delusional lycanthropy certainly exist, but real vampires and werewolves do not. Duh.



Sources:

1. Schnoebelen's Prophecy Club talk "Exposing the Illuminati from Within" (c. 1996)
2. "Interview with an Ex-Vampire" (Schnoebelen's 2006 interview with Stephanie Relfe)
3. Frater Barrabbas Tiresius' 4-part blog series on Schnoebelen @ Talking About Ritual Magick
4. Schnoebelen's Prophecy Club talk "The Medical Conspiracy" (date unknown)

The Return of Doug Riggs

Satanic ritual abuse and "Nephilim hybrids" in Oklahoma

On the August 16th-17th broadcast of Coast to Coast AM, guest L.A. Marzulli was nattering on about endtime 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 Mount Hermon to be impregnated by fallen angels, which Marzulli referred to as the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 (I'm not even sure if the Nephilim 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 Marzulli to this story had no vested interest in the matter, he insisted.
Marzulli then hinted that the hybrid offspring of these women have some connection to the alien breeding program, and that the Nephilim are keeping them at an offworld location.
"Will they bring them back at some point?" host George Noory asked.
"Yes, they will," Marzulli replied without hesitation.

So I Googled "Nephilim ritual abuse" and found a recent online radio interview with Pastor Doug Riggs, described as a friend of L.A. Marzulli. The subject was "Nephilim Mothers".
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, In Satan's Name, which originally aired on HBO. Riggs and his Morningstar Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were featured in the film's most memorable and disturbing segment.

In 1994, no fewer than 14 members of Morningstar Church believed they had been brought up in Satanism, were horrifically abused as children, and had Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). 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 Okie bumpkins, here. These were reasonably intelligent, middle-class people who seriously should have known better.
To be fair, Morningstar didn't look like a cult. Riggs was a poised, handsome man with graying hair and a mellow voice. He spoke knowledgeably about psychology. It's no wonder that parishioners turned to him for pastoral counseling unrelated to Satanism or abuse (marital trouble, eating disorders, etc.).
From 1985 on, these counselees began recovering memories of horrific, lifelong ritual abuse at the hands of Satanists. Namely their own parents. And after 1991, when Riggs learned about MPD (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.
Counseling was conducted in a large room with a mattress on the floor, so counselees could go through abreactions without hurting themselves. Riggs would lay on top of the person when abreactions 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 30ish man, Riggs ordered a demon out of his body ("Explode the seals!") while the man writhed and convulsed on the mattress, growling obscenities.
Ultimately, Riggs concluded that all these people had been victimized by the same Satanic cult, led by a man named Joe (father of one of the parishioners, Pam), and that God had brought the victims together at Morningstar 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 In Satan's Name explains that in reality, Joe was a Nebraska salesman who had never left his home state. He died during filming.
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.

This was as far as In Satan's Name took the story, but I soon learned that the situation at Morningstar was even stranger.
A testimony written in 1999 by 49-year-old Morningstar member Kim Campbell starts out as boilerplate SRA stuff. Campbell explains that Satanism, "as old as mankind itself", is a blend of Sumero-Akkadian/Babylonian mystery religions, Kabbala, and Paganism. "The culture is unbelievably and ingeniously evil; virutally everything about the culture is humanly damaging." Kim was subjected not only to "every abuse, trauma, and demonization imaginable within satanism", but to "medically-based mind control programming" at U.S. government facilities, clinics, and the Tavistock Institute (a favourite bugaboo in the world of conspiracy theory). Half of his waking preschool life was spent "being indoctrinated and incested". This realization came to him after 18 months of therapy with Pastor Riggs.
It isn't until page 7 of the testimony that shit gets seriously weird. Kim drops this bombshell: His real father was Edouard Philippe de Rothschild, and Kim was the "bastard son...of occult incest", indicating his mom Lula (who died in 1977) had some relation to the Rothschilds. 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.
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 Mengele himself coaching him over his shoulder." Kim was being groomed to infiltrate the Protestant church. As Riggs declared, the members of Morningstar 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 antichrist instead."

Wow. Just wow. Somehow, Doug Riggs convinced most of his 30-40 parishioners that they were multiple personalities programmed in Zedekiah's cave 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".
Instead, they found a saviour. Un-fracking-believable, no?

Let's go back to L.A. Marzulli for a moment. He also mentioned that Dr. Mengele was one of the originators of mind control. This is a very popular notion in conspiracy circles, but it makes little sense. Mengele was a geneticist, not a psychiatrist, and there's no evidence that he took even the slightest interest in psychology.
Marzulli also made reference to the work of I.E.D. Thomas, a Welsh minister who believes that UFOs and alien abductions are demonic manifestations, another guise of the Nephilim.

Back to Riggs and the Morningstar Satanists. Last April, Riggs and his wife were guests on The Byte Show, accompanied by about half a dozen of Riggs' SRA victims, to discuss the infiltration of Nephilim hybrids into society.
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? Nephilim mated with the daughters of Man. That's exactly what Riggs contends is happening now. Fallen angels - the "B'nai Elohim" - are interbreeding with human women, by force. He cited the work of I.E.D. Thomas. Hmm. Call me an asshole, but I'm starting to wonder if Marzulli's "two researchers" actually exist. Isn't it more likely that he got his eschatological Illuminati-Satanic-Nephilim info from his buddy Doug?

Two women gave their stories of being "Nephilim mothers".
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 Nephilim child. She had been groomed literally from the womb to bond with the principality (spirit) that sired this child.

Riggs sat on the Nephilim hybrid revelation until this year. Now he's an expert on the subject. Riggs explains that Nephilim conception occurs at age 13, through an arcane genetic-engineering process (angels can't reproduce). Gestation is 4 months. Once the Nephilim hybrid sons have matured, their mothers are encouraged to become their lovers, carrying on the tradition of "incesting".

The second woman, Juliana, learned just this year that her recovered memories of giving birth to human sons were actually screen memories of bearing Nephilim sons. Like all the other Morningstar members, she was born to a European "royal family", then placed with relatives in the U.S. She was "incested" 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.

For the rest of the program, Riggs made a strenuous effort to show that the SRA victims' memories didn't come from him. Hilariously, though, he got them to explain how he doesn't tell them what to say by telling them what to say.
There is, of course, ample reason to suspect that the Satanic Illuminati stories did 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 SRA have turned out time and time again to be unreliable (see the Ingram case for a particularly chilling example). Thirdly, some of the key details are whack. There was no Edouard Philippe de 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?

Then there's the fact that this has all happened before.
In the early '90s, right around the time Riggs was learning about MPD/DID, psychiatrist Bennett Braun 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 affiliations they posed a mortal danger to their families, themselves, and other patients. Braun even told them that flowers sent to their rooms were coded mind-control messages from Satanists, with certain colours representing threats and commands.
As former patients like Pat Burgus and Mary Shanley later revealed (see the Frontline documentary The Search for Satan), the people in Braun's 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 Braun and the other doctors involved in their treatment.
What happened at Rush Presbyterian isn't much different from the spectacular displays of female hysteria that gripped Paris's Salpetriere Hospital in the late 19th century. Under the influence of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, numerous women underwent bizarre convulsions and contortions not unlike the symptoms of "demonic possession". When Charcot died in 1893, the symptoms abated, leading some of his colleagues to suspect that the hysteria had been iatrogenic in nature. Medical historian Edward Shorter supports this conclusion in his book A History of Psychiatry (1997, John Wiley & Sons).
Though Dissociative Identity Disorder is classified as a dissociative disorder in the DSM-IV, Multiple Personality Disorder was considered a form of hysteria. Specifically, it was Grande Hysterie - the very same condition suffered by Charcot's patients.

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).
There's troubling evidence that the Nephilim hybrid/recovered memory nonsense has taken hold in at least one congregation in Australia. Riggs is also closely associated with Russ Dizdar, a pastor we'll examine in the next post.
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.

Two Recent Films that Promote Satanic Panic

Jeremiah Films has released a documentary entitled PopCulture Paganism, 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 The Secret. The PopPaganism page 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 13 other anti-Pagan films J.F. has made.

As you probably know, Jeremiah Films is the low-budget Christian Right/conspiranoia production company that churned out The Clinton Chronicles in the '90s. Despite plugs on The 700 Club, 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, Mormons, and of course Freemasons.

The other film is a low-budget horror flick about a Satanic cult that ritually sacrifices random folks, aptly titled Satanic Panic. This wouldn't be a big deal on its own, but unfortunately the movie is being promoted as "inspired by true accounts", just like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Haunting in Connecticut, and The Fourth Kind (which was really just a hoax). The film's official website 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.
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. Real Satanic Panic ruined many lives, families, and minds. It's not entertaining.

Anna Nicole's Moonchild

First Bob Larson announced Anna Nicole Smith died because she was suffering a curse (and offered for sale his handy DIY curse-removal kit). Now anti-occult cable access TV host "Freeman" says infant Dannielynn is a Moonchild summoned by Anna Nicole's Satanic Illuminati mind-control handlers. I won't comment on Bob's motives - I think we can all guess wha they are - but it seems that Freeman believes every word he's saying...

According to "Freeman" of the Austin cable access show The Freeman Perspective, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s eccentric husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, really is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter Dannielynn, as he insisted (DNA testing revealed Larry Birkhead to be the father, but never mind that; facts must never get in the way of a good conspiracy theory). Von Anhalt was the result of Nazi experiments in breeding perfect Aryan specimens who could take over the world (clearly unsuccessful). Anna Nicole was a mind-controlled slave programmed through Satanic ritual abuse to have multiple personalities (he points to the infamous Mushroom Clown video as evidence that she had a little-girl alter personality). Lawyer/partner Howard Stern was her primary mind control handler. And Dannielynn is a Moonchild.

The Nazi breeding part of Freeman's theory is drawn from a rumour that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the biological daughter of Adolf Hitler. This shouldn’t even be considered a possibility, as Merkel was born 9 years after the Fuhrer's death, but the explanation is that the horrifically sadistic Auschwitz doctor Carl Clauberg was able to freeze some of Hitler’s sperm and inseminate Eva Braun’s younger sister, Gretl, with it years later. The rumour say Clauberg was “the father of artificial insemination”, but in actuality his Auschwitz experiments centered around forced sterilization of Jewish women. He only dabbled in insemination techniques. Robert Jay Lifton, in his 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide , noted “Clauberg is reported to have told prisoners he planned artificial-insemination experiments, and there is one report of his admitting to two assistants that he had future plans for experiments in both natural and artificial insemination.” (272) There are no reports that Clauberg actually achieved any success with insemination; he is by no means the father of the procedure, which is derived from much older methods of animal husbandry.

Gretl Braun did have a daughter, Eva Barbara Fegelein, named after her Aunt Eva, but she was born on May 5, 1945, and committed suicide in 1975 - during the same period Merkel was studying physics at the University of Leipzig. Clearly, the Merkel-Hitler rumour is a fantasy aimed at defaming a controversial and much-maligned public figure: G8 member, first female chancellor of German, proponent of EU expansion. She’s ideal fodder for anti-Illuminati conspiracy theories.

The Moonchild was a concept introduced in Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law. It was described as something like an AntiChrist and/or an incarnate god, a child "resembling man, and possessing those qualities of man which distinguish him from beasts, namely intellect and power of speech, but neither begotten in the manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a human soul." Rather than being conceived and born, the Moonchild would apparently be summoned through magick ritual.

In 1946, California rocket scientist/occultist Jack Parsons attempted to summon a Moonchild into the womb of his girlfriend following a complex set of rituals he called The Babalon Working. His assistant in this endeavor was, believe it or not, L. Ron Hubbard. The intended vessel/mother of the Moonchild, Marjorie Cameron, never manifested any signs of pregnancy, but to the end of her life she believed that she really was the incarnation of Thelema's Mother of Abominations, the Scarlet Woman of The Book of the Law. The “birth” of the Moonchild was a metaphysical event, taking place on the ethereal plane. After Parsons' untimely death, Marjorie Cameron performed a ritual to conceive a posthumous child with him a la Osiris and Isis, whom she christened Wormwood. This "child", too, manifested only on the ethereal plane.

Freeman's theory is, essentially, that genetically engineered Nazi Satanists are trying to take over the world by impregnating their mind-controlled robotic priestesses with AntiChrist Moonchildren.
Crowley’s Book of the Law described the Moonchild as "mightier than all the kings of the earth".

So, if you can imagine that the daughter of Anna Nicole Smith will someday rise up to rule over us all, this may be the conspiracy theory for you.

Adopt a Bigot

A friend directed me to the blog of a woman named KC. KC's corner of the 'Net is an all-too-familiar mishmash of New Age health misinformation (railing against the FDA as a criminal organization, urging parents not to have their daughters vaccinated against HPV because only whores need such protection, etc.), anti-gay silliness ("the rainbow stands for God's word, not for perversion"), and these gems of misinformation...

"Satanic sacrifices require Blood of The innocence. Every baby killed during Abortion is a Sacrifice to Satan!"

Now, I oppose infanticide in all it forms, and I believe that abortion is one of them. Life is sacred. But the above statement is, of course, ridiculous. What does this woman know of Satanic sacrifices? How many Satanic rituals has KC attended? Clearly, not a single one - if she had bothered to ask, she would know that "Blood of Innocence" - whatever that could be - is by no means a requirement.

"Satan uses a counterfeit of God's system of identification, luring and tempting God's children to place their faith in man for their safety, sustenance and security by demanding the use of an identification card in all of their social/political/economic interactions with their fellow man." - David Deschesne, Editor, Fort Fairfield Journal

I don't know where Ft. Fairfield is, but it horrifies me that this man is allowed to edit its newspaper. And what, pray tell, is "God's system of identification"? To what card is Mr. Deschesne even referring? Social Security numbers/cards would fit that description, and they don't strike me as terribly Satanic.

Need I add that KC's favorite website is Alex Jones' Prison Planet?

The ignorance prominently displayed by such anti-vaccination, AIDS-denying, gay-bashing, anti-occult, paranoid, misinformed, angry folks is enough to make me cry. But what can be done about it?

Well, this may come to naught in the end, but I suggest adopting a bigot. Find a misinformed soul like KC and kindly, gently, lovingly offer him/her more accurate information to replace the drivel being crammed into his/her brains by zealots and hotheaded conspiranoids. Don't be pushy. Don't be mean-spirited (that's the original problem, remember?). Just...be. Let your light so shine, if you will. Talk to him/her as you would talk to a friend who doesn't have things quite right, but means well.

My adoptee will be KC. I'll keep you updated.

May '08 Update: Though I was unfailingingly polite on KC's blog, and occasionally even agreed with her, she has disabled comments. As my friend and I were the only commenters she had, and my friend agreed with her bizarre views to the point of sychopantism, I wonder if she was just tired of me? Ah, well. I know I didn't make the slightest dent in her bigotry, but at least I tried. I won't be adopting any more bigots. Visiting KC's blog made me feel queasy...

A Word from Alex Constantine, conspiracy researcher

August 27/07: "PS: "Satanic Panic" is one of your many undocumentable (when you get down to it) lies. Been there, done that. You and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation exist to discredit the victims of mind control activity. I exposed the FMSF long ago. You I'm exposing now. Same kettle of fish. Wallow in it. You are a collaborator in crimes aginst children, and don't want to come across as that. Too bad. I see you for what you are. That's what Constantines do. Poison yourself with asparatame, for all I care. It's the innocent that I'm trying to protect. The moles should follow their own advice on aspartame. Where's the libel suit? Haven't I defamed you by labelling you publicly as a mole? No. You deny it indirectly, by suggestion, above, but aren't you angry? I would be. I'd probably threaten to sue. But you take it in stride. Good little mole. I like you, too."

Not only was Mr. Constantine horribly mistaken about my gender (I'm a Canadian housewife, not an American man as he assumed), my source of income (I'm a housewife, not a CIA agent), but he's also dreadfully mistaken about my opinion of the False Memory Syndrom Foundation. I do not approve of this organization and I don't support it any way, nor do I reference the little valuable info that it provides from time to time. Why? The non-profit org was started by an accused child molestor, and his daughter's claims have never been disproven; there is no such thing as "FMS" - it was created by a member of the group, Ralph Underwager, who was later expelled from the group for expressing pro-pedophilia sentiments in a Dutch publication. I believe false memories can and do exist, but these aren't the people to be investigating it.

The Johnny Gosch/Jeff Gannon Incident

Conspirologists sparked intense online speculation about child prostitution, Satanism, and kidnapping in the Midwest and the Capitol.

Google "Johnny Gosch" and you will find a wealth of info on a young boy who disappeared from his Iowa neighborhood in 1982. He has become a part of the "Franklin Cover-up", which began to surface in 1988 with the collapse of a small savings & loan in Omaha, Nebraska, and culminated in a series of trials involving allegations of child prostitution, murder, and Satanic worship involving very well-known citizens of Omaha and beyond. Two people from Omaha insist to this very day that they were pimped out by some of Omaha's most esteemed citizens as children. Paul Bonacci claims that he helped abduct little Johnny Gosch on the orders of Temple of Set founder Michael Aquino, and amazingly Noreen Gosch, the boy's mother, supports this story. She wrote a book, Why Johny Can't Come Home, in which she explained that her son was very much alive and still being controlled by his kidnappers as an adult. He supposedly paid her a brief visit in 1997.

In spring 2005, a bald young reporter named James Guckert was booted out of the White House when it was discovered he didn't have proper press credentials and had possibly engaged in male prostitution. A conspiracy theorist noted his resemblance to an old photo of little Johnny Gosch and proposed that this man, who went by the alias Jeff Gannon, was the kidnapped boy. The reporter denied it and evidence was scant, but speculation was rife on such sites as Jeff Wells's blog Rigorous Intuition. Conspiracy theorists opined that the resemblance between Gannon/Guckert and 12-year-old Johnny Gosch was uncanny, that Gannon could be little Johny Gosch all grown up and corrupted by the Bush administration.

After reading the article on Gannon/Guckert in the June 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, I seriously doubted Gannon and Gosch could be the same person. Gosch would be 35, while Gannon is 48. Trauma can age a person, I agree, but Gannon also has a life history that has been picked over thoroughly by left-wing bloggers. He grew up in Pennsylvania (a grad photo accompanies the Vanity Fair piece) and worked various jobs before he became senior reporter for a teeny Conservative news service called Talon News (now defunct in the wake of the scandal). He graduated from high school when Johnny Gosch was a tyke. While it's thrilling to think that a kidnapped boy has resurfaced as a Bush-administration stooge, smuggled into the White House pressroom by shadowy powers-that-be with orders to "make Bush look good", there doesn't seem to be a single solid item of evidence that Jeff Gannon, male escort and staunch Republican, has ever been anyone other than plain old Jim Guckert (his real name and, significantly, the one he used to gain his first press pass). He wouldn't have been valuable to Bush's administration anyway - Talon News was virtually unknown until the Gannon scandal broke.

Returning to Johnny Gosch and the Franklin cover-up: Was Omaha a hotbed of Satanic and abusive activity in the 1980s? It seems that way. The late Monsignor Hupp, who headed Omaha's famous Boys' Town far longer than even Father Flanagan (played by Spencer Tracey in the 1938 movie Boys Town), confessed to Lincoln lawyer John DeCamp that he knew young boys were being molested by priests at Boys' Town. And there have been several suspicious deaths in the case. Were the abusers involved in Satanic worship and the production of snuff films? That remains to be seen. Bonacci said that he was taken to California's Bohemian Grove, a staple of modern conspiracy theories, and forced to appear in a snuff film with another young boy. The cameraman was none other than gonzo reporter Hunter S. Thompson, who committed suicide in February 2005.

The Hamlin Case: Satanic Ritual Abuse in Sacramento

California attorney Richard Hamlin believes his wife is under the control of her father's Satanic cult; conspirologists support him.

Until February 2004, California attorney Richard Hamilton led an outwardly idyllic existence. He was a former Sacramento County deputy prosecutor with a successful Sacramento practice, a $1 million mansion in posh El Dorado Hills, and four children by his wife of 20 years. Susan Hamlin, 46, was also an attorney. The only obvious wrench in the works was Hamilton's elderly father-in-law, a respected Fresno biochemist named Sydney Siemer.
In 1999, following a period of hospitalization for depression, Susan Hamlin had begun to recover repressed memories of childhood rape and torture at the hands of her father. She shared these horrific memories with her husband in 2002, and he responded by traveling to Fresno and publicly distributing fliers with damning information about Dr. Siemer.
Dr. Siemer hired a lawyer and denied that he had ever abused Susan or her three siblings, filing a restraining order against the Hamlins. He offered to attend therapy with his daughter to help her realize that her memories of incest and violence were false, but Mrs. Hamlin declined. Mrs. Hamlin's sister couldn't recall any abuse in the Siemer home, so she entered therapy to try to recover memories of her own. To date, she has not come forward with any allegations.

February 22, 2004: Susan Hamlin returned home from a Starbuck's in Granite Bay covered in bruises, her nose broken and some ribs fractured. Her husband demanded to know what happened. Mrs. Hamlin confessed that for the past two years, members of a Satanic cult to which she and her father belonged had been plotting to ritually murder Richard Hamlin as a "trophy Christian", a fitting sacrifice to Satan. Susan was promised she would be made high priestess of the cult if she went along with the plan. The murder was scheduled for March 1, at midnight. When she tried to extricate herself from the plot, she explained, she was summoned to meet with a fellow Satanist named Lisa Clum at the Granite Bay Starbuck's. (Apparently, the women were going to chat about Satanic ritual sacrifice over venti lattes and blueberry scones.) As soon as she stepped out of her car, Lisa's 47-year-old husband, Rock Clum, allegedly beat Mrs. Hamilton to a bloody pulp right in the parking lot and warned her to "stick with the plan".
Susan Hamlin had even more chilling revelations. Her father continued to exert sexual and emotional control over her to such an extent that she was still having incestuous sexual relations with him. He and his friend Howard Mily, the high priest of the cult, had been sexually exploiting her since she was a young teenager. They had prostituted her, used her to procure other young victims, and ritually tortured her in the most sadistic ways imaginable. She admitted that she had molested 3 of the couple's 4 children from 1996 to 2002, under her father's instruction. He taught her how to hypnotize her kids and sexually abuse them as any "good Satanist mom" should, she said. At the time the abuse began, the kids were ages 6, 8, and 12. Dr. Siemer, his wife (Susan's stepmom), and Susan's sister all molested the Hamlin children as well.
There was more. In 1982, Howard Mily and others in the cult tortured Susan for a 3-week period by stringing her up on a pegboard and confining her in cold storage. Twice she was forced to witness the torture of a dark-haired 9- or 10-year-old girl they had abducted; they broke the girl's bones and tied her body into strange positions, then murdered her. This was filmed.
Dr. Siemer had a stash of child pornography and snuff films in his Fresno home, according to Mrs. Hamlin. Aghast, Richard Hamlin urged his wife to report everything to the police. On February 26, four days after the Starbuck's beating, he accompanied her to the El Dorado Sheriff's office, where she confessed to molesting her kids and plotting to kill her husband. She explained that the sexual abuse was not for her own sexual gratification, but an effort to accustom the children to touching and to "keep [them] from thinking their sexuality was their own." She also described the murder she witnessed in 1982, not specifying if this was a recovered memory or not.
Several detectives interviewed Mrs. Hamlin on tape and had her sign a statement. The Hamlin children were immediately removed from the home by Child Protective Services for their own safety, but the detectives decided not to arrest Mrs. Hamilton until an investigation into her claims had been conducted.
Two days later, Susan Hamlin returned to the Sheriff's office and recanted every word of her elaborate signed confession. It was a lie, she said; neither she nor anyone in her family ever molested the kids. Her father had never sexually abused her. It was Richard Hamlin, not Rock Clum, who beat her up the previous week and forced her to implicate her father in a murder plot that was all in his head. After the beating, he had threatened her at gunpoint and swordpoint.
The detectives had been reluctant to accept Mrs. Hamlin's original claims, but they pounced on her retraction. Richard Hamlin was immediately arrested and eventually charged with 18 felony counts of spousal abuse, torture, death threats, negligent discharge of a handgun, and child endangerment. His trial began on October 11, '05. His 18-year-old son Ryan took the stand and testified that Mr. Hamlin had been beating his wife up to 5 times per week since 2002. The day of the Starbuck's beating, believing there really was a Satanic plot against his life, he had forced the whole family into the van and driven to Granite Bay with a sword, a Derringer, and a paintball gun full of frozen paintballs. The two Hamlin girls were dropped off somewhere, but Ryan and his younger brother were forced to stay in the vehicle and train the paintball gun on their mother while she gave directions to the Clum house. Richard Hamlin intended to murder Lisa Clum and Dr. Siemer, Ryan told the court. (1)
Mr. Hamlin is defending himself in the trial. You might wonder how he could possibly stand a chance against the incredibly damaging testimony of his own son and ex-wife. It's easier than it looks. First of all, Hamlin was able to acquire Susan's journals from 1999-2002. They are chock-full of recovered memories of incest, Satanic ceremonies, and torture, undermining her claim that Dr. Siemer and his alleged accomplices never laid a hand on anyone. To complicate matters, Susan's court testimony at times directly contradicts her father's. She insists he never worked in Indio, California (home of the notorious Cabazon Indian Reservation, supposed site of illegal weapons experiments and gun-dealing throughout the 1980s) - but Dr. Siemer admits he did. (3)

Naturally, conspirologists have pounced on the Hamlin case. The Indio link "confirms" the findings of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro of Virginia, who in the late '80s uncovered connections among pirated PROMIS software, the October Surprise that allegedly cost Jimmy Carter the 1980 election, the Beirut bombing, fuel-air explosives developed on the Cabazon Reservation by Wackenhut and other CIA fronts, and dozens of other shady doings that he attributed to a power cabal called "The Octopus". Casalaro's Octopus theories are too complex to examine here, but I will note that Casalaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991, an apparent suicide. Supporters declare he was murdered for being a Man Who Knew Too Much. (see Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith's book The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro for a detailed study of this, or save yourself some trouble and check out Kenn Thomas's chapter "Behold a Pale Horse" in Jim Keith's Secret and Suppressed, Feral House, 1993)

One of Casalaro's primary sources was a man named Michael Riconosciuto, who claimed he personally modified stolen PROMIS software for the U.S. government (so it could be used to "spy" on foreign computers). He also made a lot of other claims regarding the CIA, NSA, the October Surprise, etc. Hereafter I'll refer to Riconosciuto as "Tater", since he looks like Mr. Potatohead with a Mo haircut.
After Richard Hamlin's arrest, Tater informed him that he had important information about his father-in-law's activites. On March 30 of this year, Tater penned a letter of Judicial Notification to the Chief Judge of the Superior Court in El Dorado, claiming he has proof that Dr. Sydney Siemer worked on illegal biowarfare research for the CIA in Indio in 1982. I don't believe this information is even remotely relevant to the Hamlin case, which is a domestic violence case. What does biowarfare research have to do with incest, death threats, and spousal abuse? This is how the judge, Edward Keller, responded as well.
Tater is currently incarcerated on unrelated charges and will not be allowed to testify in the Hamlin trial. Unfortunately, Richard Hamlin firmly believes that Tater is a credible witness who could aid his defense. From Hamlin's open letter, posted on his website: "Michael Riconosciuto is in jail. He has fought the government over and over again. He could have seen my plight and said, 'It’s not my fight,' yet he won’t. With nothing to gain—except a sense of justice and truth—he volunteered his information about Dr. Sidney Siemer."Why is Tater even involved? Well, his letter of Judicial Notification speaks for itself..."My legal defense team has in their possession documents obtained after my trial that clearly can be used to support the defense of Richard Hamlin, and prove the direct knowledge I possess...is true and correct...There is the additional matter of the prosecution of Philip Arthur Thompson who is presently charged with murder and rape in the same jurisdiction as the Richard Hamlin case. The above mentioned government documents will show Thompson was actively working as an FBI informant against me at the time he committed numerous rapes and murders. Many...orchestrated by the real perpetrator in the Hamlin case." Tater continues, "Eldorado County [sic] has demonstrated a conflict of interest between the Thompson case and the Hamlin case...impeach[ing] my credibility in the Hamlin case serves to obstruct my being an effective witness in the Thompson case.." Furthermore, Tater states he's been threatened by the "real perpetrator" in the Hamlin case, causing him to be transferred to a medical facility where his prostate canser isn't being treated properly. You decide: Does this sound like a man with "nothing to gain"?

Richard Hamlin's open letter makes clear his position on his ex-wife's original claims of being a Satanic pawn. He believes them. Yet he is quick to point out that the case is about incest and psychological abuse, not occult beliefs and practices. He writes, "The traditional media has focused almost exclusively on the 'Satanic' angle of this case. Such reporting is a miscarriage of justice to the real overriding issue of incest and molest and the methods child molesters use to enforce and perpetrate their ongoing abuse.This case is about incest." Hamlin believes that Dr. Siemer raped and terrorized his 4 children, continuing to have relations with Suan even after she married. He had sex with her the night before her wedding. The kids were "swapped" with other incestuous families and prostituted. Susan helped her dad gain access to other victims, including her own kids. Dr. Siemer wanted Richard Hamlin dead to shut him up and get him out of the way, so he could continue to exert sexual and emotional control over his family.

Based on the findings of Virginia McCullough of the conspiracy-oriented website http://www.newsmakingnews.com/ and the private investigation of the rather sinister Ted Gunderson (who insinuated himself into the case alongside Tater), Richard Hamlin also believes his father-in-law was a part of MKULTRA, the government's secret mind-control program. "So, we have a man that usd mind control, learned from our own government, to create the perfect incestuous family". McCullough has written a series of articles in defense of Richard Hamlin and buys the Satanic ritual abuse stories hook-line-and-sinker. She clearly relishes the case, calling it "the best conspiracy case in recent California history". She claims two anonymous sources have linked Dr. Siemer to a CIA child kidnapping/prostitution ring called The Finders, and revealed that he's a "senior member" of the Temple of Set's Order of the Trapezoid. There is no evidence to support either claim.

Richard Hamlin and his conspiracy-minded supporters aren't acknowledging the possibilities that Susan Hamlin could be a compulsive liar, an hysteric, and/or mentally ill. They uncritically accept the basic truth of her original claims and have fit them into a standard conspiracy framework. According to Mr. Hamlin, Dr. Siemer escaped detection for so many years by using trauma-based mind control and the resultant Multiple Personality Disorder to create amnesia in Susan and her siblings, then adding intimidation of an occult nature. He also has friends in high places. All of these conclusions are derived from Susan Hamlin's descriptions of conditioning, hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation used by her dad to control her. Hamlin makes much of the fact that Dr. Siemer reportedly worked with Army Intelligence and had a high security clearance. He and McCullough believe he was engaged in covert operations, radiation experiments, and illegal biowarfare research. Again, I don't know what any of this has to do with domestic abuse and death threats.
Worst of all, Hamlin blames himself for much of what has occurred. He expresses deep guilt for not having realized that his "babies were being hurt...I cared about me, material things, and my career." (2)

The bottom line: The Hamlin case is the result of incredibly complex intrafamily issues that could never be fully resolved in a courtroom. The principal players themselves don't appear to know what is true, what is imagined, and what is an inextricable combination of truth and imagination.

Sources:

1. Sacramento Bee, Oct. 26/05, "Teen: Father feared a plot" by Ramon Coronado
2. Official site for the Richard Hamlin defense (www.geocities.com/richardwhamlin/)
3. Virginia McCullough articles at www.newsmakingnews.com