Who is this JB guy anyway?
When people find out about my interest in Satanism, Witchcraft, magick, and other out-of-the-way belief systems, they often want to know just what my beliefs are. They also frequently get the idea that I must automatically believe what I study. It's a fair question, though, and since I firmly believe there's no such thing as objectivity, I give this brief biographical sketch:
I was raised more or less atheist. I had a few experiences with Christian churches, which I now remember as comical. However, at adolescence, along with other burgeonings, I found a flowering religious and mystical sensibility. At first I was mainly interested in the occult and its promise of power, being a rather nerdy kid. However, with age came some perspective, and I began to appreciate, often in spite of myself, the subtler aspects of divinity.
Currently I describe myself as "something of a Gnostic". To be technical, I think of myself as an "immanentalist Gnostic"--I regard Gnosis, the direct experience of divinity, as an understanding of what lies all around. This might sound purely Zen or perhaps Buddhist, but the source is distinctly Western, and I think it does make a difference. In particular, I like the revolutionary bent of the historical Gnostics and their distaste for authority figures, and I do regard much of the modern world as a veil of deception, but not by virtue of its physical existence. It is human folly and malice that makes the fabric of lies that surrounds us. That's why I give this presentation--in the hope that it will help dispel error and let us know each other as human beings, not stereotypes.
Before I go on to describe the beliefs and ways of philosophies and religions that most people misunderstand, I'd like to cover the common misperceptions about them, as these are unfortunately often the first thing we hear about such people as Wiccans, Druids, Santerians, followers of magickal belief systems, and finally, most infamously, Satanists. I will devote what may seem an inordinate amount of time to this last, not because Satanists are any more important than any other religion, but rather because perhaps the commonest myth about ill-understood belief systems is that they are all in fact Satanists. Of course, as many of you here know, just about everyone has at one time or another been accused of being a Satanist, right up to the Pope of Rome himself. I call this the "myth of conflation". Debunking it is simple enough; one must simply know what a Satanist is. I'll cover this shortly. First, the other myths. Keep in mind, as I go over these, that the myths described are very ancient, and manifold.
Criminal Conspiracy
One common myth is that various cults are not only involved in criminal conspiracies of racketeering, prostitution--including child prostitution--drug dealing, murder, and so on, but that they actually control large sections of these nefarious industries. It is true that religious ceremony has played a part in organized crime, but only because the religious sentiment doesn't discriminate between the criminal and the law-abiding. Further, throughout history, to be a member of certain religions has been, by definition, criminal.
There are some spectacular cases of criminality and religiosity joining together to wreak havoc. The early 80s saw the infamous Matamoros murders, when several bodies were discovered near the Texas-Mexico border. A cauldron was found in the criminals' hideout ranch, said to be filled with various human body parts. (This was never confirmed, and the Mexican officials' playing up of the murders for the press seriously hampered a proper understanding of the evidence.) Similarities were found between the rituals that the charismatic leaders of the gang performed and the ceremonies of Candomble, an Afro-Caribbean religion similar to Santeria.
However, these practices were no more Candomble than Jim Jones' murder of a U.S. Senator and scores of his own followers can be called Christianity. Just because those motivated by money can twist a religion to their own ends, doesn't make it culpable, and it certainly should not be taken as exemplary of a belief system with thousands of peaceful and law-abiding followers throughout Mexico and South America.
Child Abuse/Murder Conspiracies
Children are an extremely powerful symbol in most cultures, and perhaps especially so in ours. They represent innocence, hope, another chance for a generation grown cynical, but renewed in the eyes of a newborn. What crime, then, could be more heinous than to take away that innocence by violence, by sexual abuse? What murder could possibly be more awful, more deserving of swift and terrible punishment, than that of a child?
Some would have us believe that hundreds of thousands of children are abducted and subsequently murdered by a pervasive and astonishingly evil Satanic conspiracy. Women are forced to become breeders so that newborn, unbaptized babies may be sacrificed in terrible rites of devil worship. A number of cases were brought against daycare centers all over the United States, accusing their staffs of daily making pornographic films of their charges, forcing them to watch animal mutilations, and raping them. The name "McMartin" may ring a bell for you. Therapists, social workers, and law enforcement professionals worked with the press to build an image of a staggering worldwide organization of Satanists that had infiltrated every level of government, and which had such extraordinary resources as private jets to fly children from daycare centers halfway across the country for their abuse, and portable crematoria to dispose of tiny, mutilated bodies.
No physical evidence supports the existence of such a massive conspiracy. When you do the math, you see that to support the purported numbers of Satanic conspirators, from a fifth to half of the population in an area would have to be in on a conspiracy of mind-numbing evil, repulsive to any but the most twisted sociopath. Some public figures describe themselves as "ex-Satanists" who witnessed these extraordinary events, yet they never lead authorities to the physical evidence which would have to be present. (Sometimes the evasions approach the comical--witness the mutating baby sacrifice theory: when it was pointed out that babies burned in a fire would leave bones, conspiracy theorists moved to the idea of portable crematoria--such devices would weigh in the thousands of pounds, and leave enormous ruts in the rural locations it is purported they are used in.)
In reality, most missing children return to their homes fairly quickly. Many who run away are in fact escaping a perfectly mundane abusive environment. That is the real tragedy of the hysteria that these abuse conspiracy theories bring--it clouds the issue of the depressingly common mental, physical, and sexual abuse that so many children suffer every day. For them, the horror isn't robes, candles, inverted crosses and animal mutilation--it is the simple betrayal of the trust they should rightly be able to place in their own close relatives--the most common perpetrators of real child abuse.
As so often seems to happen, the children in question are victimized by the system. Many children were not only coached, but coerced, into telling increasingly bizarre stories of abuse. When one child spontaneously mentioned abuse by her father, her testimony was brushed aside, in favor of trying to get more evidence against the daycare workers. These are the other victims: those whose lives are utterly destroyed by witchhunts.
Mind Control
Almost every extant religion has at one time or another been accused of being what we nowadays call a "cult". The term brings to mind slack-jawed, swaying devotees, in the sway of some charismatic leader who is either a total fanatic or who uses his or her followers for financial and personal gain. (Alternatively, they can all be fanatics, willing to blow themselves up for their strange ideas of how the world should be.)
I do believe that there are dangerous groups that exercise an unhealthy degree of control over their respective flocks, stripping once-free people of their wills, and of course their money. Some of these groups, such as the "church" of Scientology, wield frightening temporal power. The Church of Scientology uses harassment lawsuits, defamation, and threats to preserve its enormous treasury. Most recently, one ex-member was sued into silence after revealing inner documents of the Church, which described its various odd ideas about "thetans", ancient spirits that attach themselves to human souls, causing neurosis and requiring extensive--and expensive--"auditing" to remove.
However, the vast majority of new religious movements are the result of sincere seekers trying to find their own understanding of spirituality. In particular, members of "New Age" religions like Wicca are often unusually intelligent, well-read, and fiercely independent in their thinking.
Perversion
Finally there is the generic accusation of perversity, usually sexual. Satanists in particular are notorious for their use of a nude woman as an altar, and many believe every service is accompanied by an orgy of positively Roman proportions.
It is true that modern Pagan practitioners are unusually accepting of different ideas of healthy sexuality. Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people make up sizeable and vocal minorities in Pagan communities of worship. One neo-Pagan church, the Church of All Worlds, is specifically accepting of group marriages. Another group, the Radical Faeries, is composed of gay men, many of whom are also part of the "leather" subcommunity--they practice consensual bondage, domination games, and S and M (sadomasochism).
Just as with the extremely slanted videotapes about the "Gay Agenda", as one such video is titled, enemies of religious freedom also latch onto sexual freedom and label it licentiousness--a freedom borne of disrespect for any sense of restraint at all.
I personally don't think accusing a group of sexual "perversion" is very valid, as long as all parties involved are consenting. None of the groups I am discussing today advocate anything less than complete consent and maturity for all sexual relations. Indeed, many regard sex as sacred--a divine gift--and so they also feel that to participate in non-consensual sexual activity in particular is the worst kind of blasphemy.
I call this section "Truths" with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek. Modern Paganism, so-called "New Age" religions, and other new spiritual movements are typically almost completely free of dogma, and resistant to adopting hierarchical structures that are often seen as part of the problem these spiritual seekers are trying to address with their different ways. As such, it's very difficult to characterize them as being definitely one thing or another. So keep in mind, as I describe a few examples, that these paths tend to be extremely ecclectic, and sincere followers of them may be in acute disagreement with some of my necessarily general characterizations.
The "New Age"
The New Age movement as such scarcely exists, except as an umbrella term to cover unorthodox beliefs such as the power of cyrstals, alternative healing methods such as Reiki, "creative visualization" for achieving one's goals, channelled material like the Course in Miracles, places of power such as Sedona or the Egyptian pyramids, ghosts, and on and on.
Proponents of the New Age have a generally optimistic outlook, a concern for the environment, and a basically liberal attitude toward politics and life. There are a variety of New Age magazines, including one simply called New Age. On the "scary scale", they are extremely benign, even in appearance, at least to most observers.
In part because of its extreme genericness, and because of the many monetary and spiritual scams that have arisen out of it, the New Age as such has a reputation of superficiality for many adherents of Paganism and other new religions with more structure. Often pronounced "newage", the term is frequently used ironically or derisively by those who feel they have something more genuine in their lives.
It's interesting to note that the New Age, as a term, first appeared in the late 1800s.
Paganism
Paganism, while still an extremely broad term, covers narrower ground than the New Age. While the New Age is usually called a "movement", those who describe themselves as Pagans usually have a more solidly religious (or, many would say, "spiritual", eschewing the word "religion" because they feel it connotes organized religion) sentiment. While a New Ager might simply have a collection of beliefs in supernatural ideas, a Pagan is more likely to say that his or her spirituality has a basis in some pantheon, or a national or ethnic background.
"Pagan" comes from the Latin pagani, "people of the hills", something that might loosely be translated as "those uncultured hicks". Today's pagans take the term more positively, taking it to denote a belief in the holiness of the unsullied Earth. Environmentalism runs very strong in Pagan circles, where destruction of the environment can be thought of as a literal crime against nature.
A few people describe themselves as generically Pagans or neo-Pagans, and may syncretize widely separated pantheons from ancient Greece, pre-Christian Europe, and other cultures. There are even a few invented deities, such as Asphalta. ("Hail Asphalta/ Full of grace/ Help us fund a parking space!") The majority regard gods and goddesses not as literal truth, but rather a kind of psychic force. A few, notably the Norse Pagans or Asatruarar (followers of Asatru), take their religion more literally.
Because their rites may involve ritual nudity, and the sacramental use of swords and knives, many different kinds of Pagans get misperceived as dangerous. If anything, they benefit society by their concern for liberty and the environment, and of course the various Pagan beliefs fill a void that many seekers find unfulfilled in mainstream religion. Many Pagans were raised Christian, but we are beginning to see a new generation of Pagan-raised Pagans.
Wicca
Wicca is the most common, or at least the most well-known, subtype of Paganism, so much that some people think the terms are synonymous. It's pervasive enough in Albuquerque and New Mexico generally to have occasional unbiased press coverage. "Wicca" comes from the Old English wicce, which has a controversial etymology. Many believe it translates as simply "wise", and so we get wiccecraeft, "Craft of the Wise". A minority of Wiccans reject the modernized pronunciation, which was probably coined to avoid the much more recognizable word "witch".
Wiccans are known for their adherence to the Rede, which in its shortest form reads "An it harm none, do what thou wilt." Many Wiccans (and many Pagans and other practitioners of magic) also subscribe to the "threefold law", which states that whatever you do, for good or ill, comes back to you threefold.
Most Wiccans have an identifiable schedule of holidays, based on the "quarters"--the solstices and the equinoxes--and the "cross-quarters", which fall between. These holidays tell a kind of story of birth and renewal through the year, also a kind of passion play of the dying and resurrected God.
On that note, most Wiccans worship the God and the Goddess, or sometimes the Lord and Lady, with about equal reverence. Some Wiccans, notably Dianic Wiccans, either eliminate the male deity or relegate him to a minor role. The covens of these Wiccans are often women-only. The Goddess is the Great Mother of All, not an artificer like the Old Testamant Yahweh, but a force that gives birth to the universe in an evolutionary process. She is typically associated with the Earth and the Moon. The God, often the Horned God, is a positive, energizing force that enables fertility, sometimes by sacrificing his own life, after which he is reborn.
The Horned God is, not surprisingly, confused with the Christian Satan. Wiccans are especially adamant that they condone no violence (though most make the unsurprising exceptions for self-defense), that their God and Goddess are loving, and so on. A common retort is that one would have to be a Christian to be a Satanist, since Satan is part of the Christian pantheon.
Satanism
Since I'm pressed for time I'll save other specialized forms of Paganism for the question-and-answer portion of this talk. I'd like to go into some depth on Satanism, as mentioned earlier, because of its extreme tendency to get confused with other unusual religions.
Modern Satanism Satanism is a recognized religion in the United States. The U.S. Army Chaplain's Manual even contains a section on it. There are probably no more than a few thousand relatively organized Satanists in the U.S.
Satanism is actually an atheistic religion. It glorifies the individual person above all theology. It is very hedonistic, revelling in pleasure and seeking to avoid pain. Restrictions on pleasure are regarded as the only evil, though Satanists are careful to emphasize consensuality as part of their ethic. The Satanic Bible, by Anton Szandor LaVey, the high priest of the Church of Satan, based (surprise!) in California, even condemns animal sacrifice.
Of course, it could be argued such disclaimers are merely P.R. efforts, but no evidence of any organized Satanic conspiracy has ever been unearthed. Members of the Church of Satan usually do not stand out in everyday life, as they see no conflict in hiding their religion to avoid persecution. They hold strength and cunning in high regard.
If you wonder why a bunch of people who sound basically like rather obnoxious humanists would bother to call themselves Satanists, you have a point. Most answer that it's the psychological power of the symbol of Satan, who for them is a Promethean, liberating character, and its ability to break down puritanical societal conditioning. Unquestionably, Satan is a powerful symbol in our society, or the merest scent of him wouldn't create such a furor in local official and the national press. Satanists take no small pleasure in offending the sensibilities of the sensitive, so if their inverted pentagrams, deliberately spooky ritual elements, and personalities get a rise out of you, they're happy to have helped "de-condition" you a bit. Reactions of outrage, to them, represent mental weakness, most likely.
There is one Satanic church that has simultaneously shucked the controversial "Satanic", at least in the name of their church, and adopted a slightly more theistic outlook. This is Michael Acquino's Temple of Set. Based in Austin, Texas, this still-smaller organization believes in Set as an ancient power, a sort of cosmic Jungian Shadow, that informs every rebel deity throughout history. The Setians, as they call themselves, have a slightly less puckish demeanor than the LaVeyan-styled Satanists, and a much more developed theology and hierarchy.
I guess the point of all this is, "don't judge a book by its cover", or perhaps even "don't judge a book by the back-cover blurb that the author had nothing to do with." It's easy to draw on the sensational aspects of these religions: weird symbols, sexualized deities, nudity, edged weapons, odd chantings, and the continual rumors of antisocial activity. Most of us have had our eyes opened about the ridiculous beliefs that used to attach to native peoples as "savage", women as inherently inferior, or to the Earth as a limitless resource to be used as we humans please. I don't believe I've likely made any seriously shocking revelations to anyone in this room, but it's my hope that you'll carry this information out with you into the world, and perhaps make someone else think again when they slander a worthwhile or at least harmless belief as evil. Thank you.