5748 lines
282 KiB
Plaintext
5748 lines
282 KiB
Plaintext
2600
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"Bring to me
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what I see
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By thy power
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Hecate.
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Altar power
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Must it be
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Earth and Air
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Fire and Sea
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Bring to me
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What I see
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By thy power
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Hecate."
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Place the bag inside your cloting and wear it every day for 7 days.
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Leave it on your altar every night visualizing prosperity. On the 7th
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day, hide it in the eastern portion of your house.
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There it is. It's a complicated spell, but it does work.
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BB
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Rowan
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Spell for contacting a friend
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Rowan Moonstone
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This spell should be used to cause someone with whom you have lost
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contact to contact you. It is not manipulation so much as an astral
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call for contact when you have no other way to reach them that you know
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of.
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You will need:
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White candle annointed w/ sandalwood oil
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Sandalwood incense
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photo of the person
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small glass of water.
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salt
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Light the white candle and the incense. Place the picture of the person
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on your altar. Put 2 heaping tablespoons of salt in the palm of your
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right hand. Let a small amount of salt trickle into the glass while
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making the sign of the equal armed cross of the elements. Make this
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cross 3 times. Say " Call me" three times as yo do this. Then set the
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glass on the altar and say "Get in touch with me, please." They
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should contact you by the time the water has evaporated from the glass.
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2601
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Coming of Age Ritual Notes
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Malakus
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Over the past weekend during an emotional upheaval I "Birthed" the
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concept for the ritual. I thought I would pass the concept on to you
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and see what you think. I have the ability to visualize a ritual from
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beginning to end, sometime with brief snatches of dialogue. It's like
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watching a play from the catwalks.
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This is how I see this ritual unfolding. The boy who is entering
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into Manhood will be abducted from the encampment where he is staying.
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The women of his Mother Grove will try to fight the men off from
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abducting the boy. When this skirmish is over and the boy is being
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taken off by the men the women will mourn the loss of the child. The
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boy will be stripped of his clothing and dressed in a deerhide loin
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cloth. He will then be blindfolded and his journey will begin. Where
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this ritual is being held there is approximately 5 miles of paths which
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the boy will journey over. He will be led by his Father who will carry
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a lamp to light his and his son's way. At the first prescribed stop the
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boy will be addressed by Herne. Herne, will speak to the boy of his
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wild nature, what it is like to be the hunter and the hunted. He will
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charge the boy with the responsibilities of becoming a man through Him.
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He will then tell the boy that He will meet him at the appointed place
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in the appointed hour. Never revealing when and where that is. Herne
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will withdraw into the woods as the Father and son begin to journey
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again.
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At the second stop the Father and boy will meet the Green Man. He
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represents the boy's earthy nature. He is the boy sexual responsibility
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as a carrier of sacred seed which is necessary to begin life. That he
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must act intelligently when it comes to the act of procreation. The
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Green Man as well will tell the boy that they will meet in the appointed
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placed at the appointed hour. The Green Man will stand in silence as
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the Father and boy leave.
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At the third stop the Father and boy will meet Loki\Rainbow Dancer.
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When I visualized the archetype I saw a myriad number of colours and
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flashed of refracted light. Loki will speak to the boy of his dreams,
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wishes and hope He will inform the boy that these are necessary even as
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a man. That he should not give them up but allow them to mature as he
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matures. Loki will also tell the boy that they will meet at the
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appointed place in the appointed hour.
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The Father and son will continue there journey until they reach the
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last stop on their journey. Here they will meet the Magus who is robed
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in black and you are unable to see his face. The Magus will speak to
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the boy of his inner true self, his highest ideals, his magical self.
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He symbolizes Divine Wisdom. When he is finished speaking he will also
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tell the boy of meeting in the appointed place in the appointed hour.
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All the archetype will be wearing masks that will be indicative of
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them. Herne with horns, Green Man with a mask made of leaves, Loki with
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the face of the fox, and the Magus with a black mask which entirely
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covers his face. All the other masks will not cover the mouth area. My
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Spirit Brother in Akron, OH is creating the masks and the staves for the
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four archetypes. After the journey has been completed he will be
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brought to the gateway of the ritual are Prior to the ritual itself the
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boy will be asked to select something that symbolizes his childhood and
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that he should bring it with him. When the boy is abducted those who
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abduct him must be sure to acquire this childhood symbol to be given to
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the father to take on the journey. At the gateway the father will stop
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the boy and inform him that he must now give up this childhood symbol in
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order to enter into the world of men. The boy must surrender the symbol
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before the rite can continue. The symbol will be left at the gateway.
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2602
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I didn see a traditional circle being cast, rather a ring of men hand in
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hand passing energy to form the circle. I keep hearing "a hand to a
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hand, to feed a hand" or a "brother to a brother". The circle will open
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to admit the father and boy The boy is still blindfold and will be place
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before the balefire facing the gateway through which he just entered.
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I see four men at various stage of the lives serving as Priests. One is
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just past puberty, the next has himself just become a father, the next
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being around 40-50 years (the age of the God at the
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time of his decline in power) and the last being the Grandfather. The
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four will each evoke one of the four achetypes that spoke to the boy
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during his journey. The Priest just past puberty will evoke Loki, the
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new father will evoke the Green Man, the 40-50 year old will evoke
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Herne, and Grandfather will evoke the Magus. Each will be evoked
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separately and when each has been evoked will enter the circle from
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where they have been waiting out of sight of the circle itself. Each
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will speak further to the boy of his mystery and present the boy with a
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"gift" which will enable the boy to commune with the archetype
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in times of trial in his life as a man. The last to speak will be
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Herne. Just as he is is finishing what he has to say he will be
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interrupted by the final archetype. This is the Great Mother. She will
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speak to the boy of his union with her and to truly become a man he must
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understand her magics as well. Herne and the Great Mother will argue
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(choice of words, maybe not the best) over who this boy/man belong. The
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Great Mother informs Herne that the boy/man belongs to Her. Herne
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informs Her that She was there at his conception and birth and that She
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will have him in death but now the boy/man belongs to Him. My Spirit
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Brother has a staff with a deer hoof end which I see being placed on the
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boy's heart while Herne claims him as his. During the claiming the
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boy's blindfold will be removed and the boy/man will see Herne for the
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first time with his hoof on his chest over his heart. After the
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claiming is finished the boy will be approached by the four Priests for
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the anointing.
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I have an anointing already written for this part of the rite.
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While the anointing is being done the four persons who are taking the
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roles of the archetypes will leave and return dressed as they wish. The
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boy will be taken to his father who will first greet the boy/man now as
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a fellow man and a guardian of the male mystery. The father will then
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take the newly made man to the North quarter where the Great Mother will
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speak to the newly made man bestowing Her gift to him. When the Great
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Mother speaks She will be heard only and not seen as if Her voice were
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being carried on the wind.
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The the newly made man will be taken to each man in turn in the
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circle who will give the newly made man a gift. I see the gift being
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wisdom something that they have learned of life and that they wish to
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pass on to help the newly made man's journey through life. As each man
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has an occupation which requires particular tools so does life require
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its tools.
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When all have granted their gift the newly made man will be asked
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to bestow his blessing upon a horn of ale which symbolized the cup of
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brotherhood of all peoples. The cup will be shared with all in the
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circle and will symbolized the universality of men.
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This is where I see the ritual ending. I see a simple feast being
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held where the ritual has been. More cups will be filled, stories share
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in the spirit of brotherhood. As the night wears on towards dawn the
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newly made made will be left to himself, the balefire and the night. He
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will return to the campsite from which he was abducted no longer as a
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child but as a man with all the responsibilities of a man.
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2603
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Lupercalia
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She-Wolf
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Lupercalia ia a Roman ritual of purification and fertility dating from
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such an ancient time that even the Romans of the first century B.C.E.
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had forgotten its origin and to which Gods it was dedicated and even the
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meaning of some of its symbolism. (Contrary to Z Budapest's statements,
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it was not known whether it was to Faunus and in fact I think it may
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have been sacred to the more ancient founding Goddess, Rumina, the
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She-Wolf of Rome.) Central to the ritual is the lustration (light
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flogging) with a goat skin scourge (see, Gardner didn't
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invent it). This was often accompanied by much rowdiness and horse-pla-
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y. The purpose was the purification of the people from curses, bad luck
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and infertility. The ritual is performed on February 15. The name of
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the month comes from the februa, anything used in purifying including
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wool (used for cleaning), brooms, pine boughs (which make the air sweet
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and pure), etc.
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The rite began in the cave of the She-Wolf in the city of Rome where
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legend had it that the founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, had been
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suckled by the wolf before they were found by a shepherd. The sacred
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fig tree grew in front of the cave. Vestals brought to the site of the
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sacrifice the sacred cakes made from the first ears of the last years
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grain harvest. Two naked young men presided over the sacrifice of a dog
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and a goat. With the bloody knife, their foreheads were smeared with
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blood, then wiped clean with wool dipped in milk. The young men laughed
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and girded themselves in the skin of the sacrificed goat. Much
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feasting followed. Finally, using strips of the goat skin, the young
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men ran, each leading a group of priests, around the base of the hills
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of Rome, around the ancient sacred boundary of the old city called the
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pomarium. During this run, the women of the city would vie for the
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opportunity to be scourged by the young men as they ran by, some baring
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their flesh to get the best results of the fertility blessing (you can
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see why the Christian church tried so hard to get this ritual banned,
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but it was so popular that it continued for quite some time under the
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new regime.)
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Except for the intrusion of foreign cults, this was the only Roman
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ritual where a goat was sacrificed. Dogs were only offered to Robigus
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(a guardian associated with crops), the Lares Praestites (the guardians
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of community), and Mana Genata (ancestral guardians).
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Because of the cave, the fig tree, the milk, and such, I suspect the
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very oldest forms of this rite honored a Goddess. Unlike some of the
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other Roman rites like the October Horse sacrifice, there is no other
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Indo-European equivalent in Vedic, Scandinavian, Irish, or Indo-Iranian
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traditions.
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With modifications, the Temple of Pomona performed Lupercalias and has
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a great time.
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2604
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Stones, A Short Catalog
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Tandika Star
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BLOODSTONE
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SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Bloodstone is a member of the Chalcedony
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family.It is a variety of quartz (silicon dioxide) often with some iron
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and aluminum. The chemistry is SiO2. It is dark, bright green spotted
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with red inclusions. The streak is white. This is considered a microcry-
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stalline variety of quartz and is not found in crystal form.
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ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally
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near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are
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relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and
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massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in
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chemical sedimentary rocks.
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OCCURENCE: India, Germany.
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NAME: This stone is also referred to as "heliotrope," which is derived
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from two Greek words which signify "sun-turning". It was given this name
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because of a notion that when immersed in water it would turn the sun
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red. Chalcedony is derived from Chalcedon, an ancient Greek city of Asia
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Minor.
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LEGEND and LORE: This is one of the birthstones for March.
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"Who in this world of ours, her eyes
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In March first opens, shall be wise.
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In days of peril, firm and brave,
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And wear a Bloodstone to her grave." (5)
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Ancient warriors often carried an amulet of bloodstone which was
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intended to stop bleeding when applied to a wound.
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MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Because it is green, it can be used for "money
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spells". It is also considered a "lucky" stone for atheletes because it
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imparts courage and stamina.
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HEALING: Heliotrope is used today in conjunction with anything having to
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do with blood.
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PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:I consider the ancient uses of bloodstone in line
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with what I use it for today. In addition, I consider it a "cholesterol
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buster", and wouldn't hesitate to apply it to any with this type of
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problem. Generally I would use it at the Heart Chakra. I've also used it
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successfully in situations where I needed "courage" to accomplish
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something. I will just carry a piece of it in my pocket for this
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purpose.
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NOTE: Chrysoprase, carnelian, jasper and agate are all forms of
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Chalcedony.
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-------bibliography-------
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1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased
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from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
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Minerals".
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2605
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2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
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cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
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3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
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Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
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4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
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notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
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5. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious
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Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
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an interesting experiment (BLOODSTONE cont.)
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ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ-
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This is more about bloodstone, but I didn't want to include it in the
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main text. Read on, and you'll see why...
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A few years ago, I had a discussion with my daughter (who was about 13
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at the time) about the "spiritual essence" of plants and stones. I
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explained to her that different people "see" this spiritual essence in
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various forms. Somehow, this led to a discussion of "devas", which she
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interpreted as "people, but without a body that we can see with mundane
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eyes."
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A few days later, I was reading a novel, reposed on the sofa in my
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livingroom. She was sitting on the floor by the coffee table, drawing
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in her sketchbook with her pastels.
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On the coffee table were several stones in a dish. One was an amethyst,
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one a bloodstone, one was some yellow/green crystal that someone had
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loaned to me because they wanted my "impressions" ...and there were some
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others that I don't remember now.
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I glanced over at my daughter, and she was holding one of the stones in
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her hands, with her eyes closed. She apparently had achieved some form
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of "altered state" because her little eyeballs were just wigglin' away
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(REM).
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A while later, I glanced over, and she was drawing a portrait. After she
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seemed finished and satisfied with what she was doing, I questioned her
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about it. She said she was drawing the "spirit/deva" of the stones in
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the dish.
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The one for bloodstone was an elf-like, male person. He had dark/black
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hair, green, slanted eyes, "Spock" eyebrows, and pointed ears. Because
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of the expression on his face, I asked her what she thought of him. Her
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comments were:
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"He is very fierce. I'm kind of afraid of him, because it seems like he
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is pretty strong and could get mad. He uses weapons...and can fight."
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My daughter didn't know anything about the "lore" connected with the
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stones. In addition, I found that "bloodstone" was very different from
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any of the other "stone portraits" that she did...The rest were much
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more "human"...
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2606
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BROWN (PICTURE) JASPER
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SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Brown Jasper, sometimes called "picture" Jasper
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because of the beautiful variations in coloring, is a type of Chal-
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cedony. It is closely related to Quartz, with the chemistry of SiO2. The
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color variations are from trace amounts of other minerals, usually iron
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and aluminum. The hardness is 7.
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ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally
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near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are
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relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and
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massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in
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chemical sedimentary rocks.
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OCCURENCE: Montana, Utah and Wyoming are prolific locations for Brown
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Jasper in the U.S. In addition, fine specimens have come from Brazil,
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Uruguay and Egypt. Other colors and forms of Jasper are abundant in
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California, Texas and Arkansas.
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NAME: The name Chalcedony is from Chalcedon, an ancient Greek city of
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Asia Minor.
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LEGEND and LORE: Beautiful Jasper, with light and dark brown markings
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was referred to as "Egyptian Marble". Various Native American tribes
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used Jasper as a rubbing stone and some called it "the rain bringer".
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MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Brown Jasper is balancing and grounding. This stone,
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carved into an arrowhead, is worn to attract luck. It is a good stone to
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use after completing a ritual to help you regain your center and become
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grounded.
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HEALING: Jasper is stabilizing. It will help to reduce insecurity, fear
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and guilt.
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PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use a piece of Montana Picture Jasper, which is
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mostly brown and tan with a slight bit of sky or navy blue as a strong
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grounding stone for those who have an excess of energy at the Splenic
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Chakra.I've also used the stone as a basis for a "journey"...The stone
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looks like a scene of the Rocky Mountains. Finally, I've used Picture
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Jasper as a psychological tool:I will ask someone who is "looking for an
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answer" to gaze into the stone and describe all the symbols they see.
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Then I work with the client to form the "symbols" into some sort of
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answer.
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NOTES: Agate, Jasper, Flint, Sardonyx, and onyx are all forms of
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Chalcedony. In addition, particular colors of Chalcedony have specific
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names, such as Heliotrope, Bloodstone, Chrysophrase and Moss Agate.
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-------bibliography-------
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1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
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from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
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Minerals".
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2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
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|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2607
|
|
|
|
CARNELIAN
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION:Carnelian is the clear red to brownish red member
|
|
of the Chalcedony family. It is a microcrystalline variety of Quartz(Si-
|
|
licone Dioxide) and may contain small amounts of iron oxides. The
|
|
hardness is 7, and the streak is white.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally
|
|
near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are
|
|
relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and
|
|
massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in
|
|
chemical sedimentary rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Fine carnelian comes from India and South America.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION:Carnelian is used as an alternate birthstone for
|
|
the month of May.It is normally cut into cabochons, engraved, or made
|
|
into seal stones or rounded, polished, and pierced for necklaces and
|
|
other items of jewelry.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name means "flesh-colored", from [caro], meaning "genitive"
|
|
and [carnis], meaning "flesh".
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Carnelian has long been associated with courage and
|
|
cleansing of the blood. It was beleived that the stone would improve
|
|
one's outlook, making the individual cheerful and expelling fears.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Katrina Raphaell says that Carnelian can be used to
|
|
"see into the past". The "Crystal Oracle" says that Carnelian referrs to
|
|
the Self, and Current Conditions. It is a grounding stone, and associ-
|
|
ated with the Earth. As such, it is considered practical, sensible and
|
|
balanced. Cunningham associates the stone with the element of Fire. He
|
|
suggests it as a talisman against Telepathic invasion.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: It is recommended for infertility or impotency. In addition it
|
|
is used for purification of the blood. It has also been suggested that
|
|
this stone will stop nosebleeding.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I call this the "sexy" stone...since I beleive it
|
|
stimulates sexual appetites. I use it in the lower Chakras for infer-
|
|
tility and impotency for men(I use Coral as the feminine counterpart.)
|
|
I always get a good chuckle when I notice a man wearing a LARGE
|
|
Cornelian belt buckle. In addition, I would use this stone for relief of
|
|
pain from arthritis in men.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
|
|
3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
|
|
|
|
2608
|
|
|
|
4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the
|
|
Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
|
|
CORAL
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: CaCo3, or calcium carbonate in the form of
|
|
calcite, is the main constituent of calcareous corals; minor con-
|
|
stituents are MgCo3, or magnesium carbonate and proteinaceous organic
|
|
substances, which act as binding agents. At 2.5 to 4, the hardness is
|
|
slightly higher than that of calcite. The skeletons of corals vary in
|
|
color: from bright to dark red, slightly orange-red, pink and white.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: In all cases, coral consists of the branching skeletons of
|
|
animals which live in colonies planted on the seabed at depths varying
|
|
from tens to hundreds of meters. They are typical of warmish to very
|
|
warm seas.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: The most famous of these organisms is Corallium rubrum, which
|
|
lives in the waters of the Mediterranean and, despite its name,provides
|
|
not only red, but orange, pink, and white coral. Similar to this are
|
|
Corallium elatius, C. japonicum, and C. secundum, which maily live off
|
|
the coasts of Japan, China, Indochina, the Philippines, and other
|
|
archipelagos of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Coral colonies occupy
|
|
large areas especially in the Pacific, but also near the coast of South
|
|
Africa, in the Red Sea, and to the east of Australia. These latter
|
|
colonies, however, consist of madrepore, which has little in common with
|
|
the corals used as ornaments.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Most of the coral used since antiquity as an
|
|
ornamental material comes from the calcareous skeletons of colonies of
|
|
marine organisms of the phylum Cnidaria, order Corgonacea, genus
|
|
Corallium. Corals take a good polish. They also have a certain degree of
|
|
elasticity and can be heated and bent into bangles. Thin brancehes were
|
|
and still are polished, pierced, and threaded, unaltered, into neck-
|
|
laces. Larger pieces are cut into spherical or faceted necklace beads,
|
|
pear shapes for pendant jewelry, or cabochons. It is also used for
|
|
carved pieces and small figurines, in both oriental and western
|
|
art styles. The most highly prized varities of coral are those that are
|
|
a uniform, strong bright red.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name is derived from the Latin [corallium,] related to the
|
|
Greek [korallion].
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: The oldest known findings of red coral date from the
|
|
Mesopotamian civilization, i.e. from about 3000 BC. For centuries, this
|
|
was the coral par excellence, and at the time of Pliny the Elder it was
|
|
apparently much appreciated in India, even more than in Europe.Red coral
|
|
has traditionally been used as a protection from the "evil eye" and as
|
|
a cure for sterility. One of the Greek names for Coral was Gorgeia,
|
|
from the tradition that blood dripped from the Head of Medea, which
|
|
Perseus had deposited on some branches near the sea-shore; which blood,
|
|
2609
|
|
|
|
becoming hard, was taken by the Sea Nymps, and planted in the sea. (8)
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Coral is associated with Venus, Isis and Water. It
|
|
has been used as a form of protective magic for children for hundreds of
|
|
years. Cunningham recommends it as a luck-attractor for living
|
|
areas.Sailors use it as a protection from bad weather while at sea.
|
|
Red-orange coral is one of the four element gemstones of the Pueblo
|
|
Indians. It is one of the four colors used for the directions in the
|
|
Hopi/Zuni Road of Life. Coral is considered a representative of the warm
|
|
energy of the Sun, and the southern direction.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Coral's healing properties are mostly associated with Women,
|
|
young children and the elderly. For women it is said to increase
|
|
fertility and regulate menstration. For young children, it is recom-
|
|
mended to ease teething and to prevent epilepsy. For the elderly, it is
|
|
used as a cure for arthritis.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use coral at the lower Chakras for "Women's
|
|
Healing." In particular, I will use it for disorders relating to female
|
|
reproductive organs. I also use it magically, to represent female
|
|
fertility.I have used it with some success for arthritis, but only for
|
|
women. This is one of the stones that I "reserve" for female/feminine
|
|
use. (I use Carnelian as the "male" counterpart.) I have not had an
|
|
opportunity to try it for a young child.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "Simon & Schuster's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
|
|
2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
|
|
3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
|
|
4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the
|
|
Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
7. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
8. Some occult lore is from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious
|
|
Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2610
|
|
|
|
EMERALD
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION:Emerald is a type of Beryl, Beryllium aluminum
|
|
silicate, frequently with some sodium, lithium and cesium.It's chemistry
|
|
is Be3Al2Si6O18. Beryls range in color from Bright green (emerald),
|
|
blue, greenish blue (aquamarine), yellow (golden beryl), red, pink
|
|
(morganite) to white. The streak is colorless. It's hardness is 7-1/2 to
|
|
8. The crystals are Hexagonal and they are common. Fine emeralds have
|
|
velvety body appearance; their value lies in their even distribution of
|
|
color. Inclusions are common in emerald, but other stones of this group
|
|
are usually most valuable when free of flaws.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Beryl develops in pegmatites and certain metamorphic rocks.
|
|
It occurs with quartz, microcline, and muscovite in pegmatites, and with
|
|
quartz, muscovite, and almandine in schist of regional metamorphic
|
|
rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Best emerald comes from Colombia.(NOTE: it is not necessary
|
|
to spend thousands of dollars for a tiny chip of emerald to add to your
|
|
healing/ magical collection. If you look around in rock shops, you may
|
|
be able to come across some "less than perfect" stones that aren't
|
|
faceted. I've found 4 of them, slightly larger than my fingernail and
|
|
they were about $3.00 each.)
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name is from the Greek [beryllos] indicating any green
|
|
gemstone.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Emerald is considered a birthstone for the month of
|
|
May.
|
|
|
|
"Who first beholds the light of day,
|
|
In spring's sweet flowery month of May,
|
|
And wears an Emerald all her life,
|
|
Shall be a loved, and happy wife." (5)
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: "If you wish to bring a love into your life, buy an
|
|
emerald and charge it with your magical need through your visualization,
|
|
perhaps while placing it near a green candle. After this ritual, wear or
|
|
carry the emerald somewhere near your heart. Do this in such a way that
|
|
it cannot be seen by others. When you meet a future love, you'll know it
|
|
wasn't the visible jewel that attracted him or her." (3) The Greeks
|
|
associated this stone with the Goddess Venus. It has come to represent,
|
|
for many people, the security of love. Emerald, like allmost all of the
|
|
green stones, is also advantageous for business/money ventures.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Emerald is said to aid perception and inner clarity. Because of
|
|
this, they are also associated with healing diseases of the eye, and
|
|
problems affecting eyesight. It was believed that emeralds could
|
|
counteract poisons and cure disentary.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:I sometimes use Emeralds in a stone layout. I will
|
|
use them for their psychological/spiritual values of clarity and
|
|
perception. If I am using them for this purpose, I use them in the area
|
|
of the Heart Chakra, in conjunction with Rose Quartz, or Rhodochrosite
|
|
for balanced energy. I've also used them for prosperity consciousness.
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2611
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. Other sources may be "Stone
|
|
Power" by Dorothee L. Mella.
|
|
|
|
4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
5. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious
|
|
Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
GARNET (PYROPE)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Pyrope Garnets are from a group of very closely
|
|
related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Pyrope variety is
|
|
Mg3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from deep red to reddish
|
|
black and on rare occasions from purple and rose to pale purplish red
|
|
(sometimes called [rhodolite].) The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and
|
|
7-1/2.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Pyrope occurs with olivine and hypersthene in peridotite of
|
|
plutonic rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Pyrope Garnets occur in peridotite in Kentucky, Arkansas,
|
|
Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. In the latter half of the nineteenth
|
|
century, most Pyrope came from Bohemia, where it is still found today.
|
|
The main sources nowadays, however, are South Africa, Zimbabwe,
|
|
Tanzania, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: The garnet species with red or purple varieties,
|
|
including Pyrope are considered gemstones. Usually bright red, Pyrope
|
|
can be a much less attractive brick or dark red. It can be perfectly
|
|
transparent, but this feature is less visible in dark specimens. It is
|
|
either made into fairly convex cabochons, or faceted, with an oval or
|
|
round mixed cut or, more rarely, a step cut. The faceted gems have good
|
|
luster, rather less obvious in cabochons. The most valuable types are,
|
|
of course, the transparent ones with the brightest red color. Pyrope is
|
|
relatively common, although less so than almandine. Very large stones,
|
|
up to several hundred carats have been found; but these are rare and are
|
|
found in museums and famous collections.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name comes from the Greek [pyropos,] meaning "fiery." The name
|
|
"Garnet" comes from the Latin [granatus,] meaning "seed-like".
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Pyrope Garnet has long been associated with love,
|
|
passion, sensuality and sexuality. Some Asiatic tribes used red garnets
|
|
as bullets for sling bows because they pierced their victims quickly,
|
|
and could not be seen well in the body when they mingled with the blood.
|
|
2612
|
|
|
|
Throughout the ages, Pyrope has been used as a curative for all types of
|
|
ailments dealing with blood.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Pyrope is directly linked with the Will. As such, it
|
|
is a strong stone for the Magician and Shaman. It is associated with
|
|
Fire and Mars, Strength and Protection. It will help the practitioner
|
|
tap into extra energy for ritualistic purposes.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: While all Garnets are associated with the Root Chakra, Pyrope
|
|
is particularly symbolic. It is used for healing when the subject
|
|
involved has "lost the will to live", since it is directly related to
|
|
the desire to live and achieve in this lifetime. This stone warms and
|
|
aids blood circulation, rouses sexuality and heals the reproductive
|
|
system and the heart.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: If you are already a strong willed individual or
|
|
have a fiery temper that you need to learn to control, I suggest that
|
|
you work with the Alamandine Garnets, rather than the Pyropes. This is
|
|
a good stone to use for treating depression. Very often, when I've
|
|
"worked" on an individual who has suffered a heart attack, I find that
|
|
the individual is rather severely depressed (which I think is a side
|
|
effect of the medication) and has lost the will to continue in this
|
|
lifetime. I've found that fiery red Pyrope Garnets are a great help in
|
|
this situation.
|
|
|
|
ADDITIONAL NOTES: The Latin name [carbunculus,] (small coal or ember),
|
|
is attributed to all red transparent stones. It is more often applied to
|
|
Pyropes when they are formed into cabochons than any other stone.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide
|
|
to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom,
|
|
Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn.
|
|
7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L.
|
|
Mella.
|
|
8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane
|
|
Stein.
|
|
9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative
|
|
Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
GARNET (ALMANDINE)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Almandine Garnets are from a group of very
|
|
closely related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Almandine
|
|
variety is Fe2/3+Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from deep red
|
|
to brown and brownish black. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and
|
|
7-1/2.
|
|
|
|
2613
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Almandine occurs in diorite of plutonic rocks, and with
|
|
andalusite, hornblende, and biotite in hornfels and schist of contact
|
|
and regional metamorphic rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Well-formed crystals of Almandine have come from Wrangell, SE
|
|
Alaska; from Emerald Creek, Benewah Co., Idaho; and from Michigamme,
|
|
Michigan. Gemstone quality material is obtained in large quantities
|
|
from Sri Lanka and India, where it is also cut; other sources are Burma,
|
|
Brazil, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Australia.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Most red garnets come under the name Almandine,
|
|
even when their composition is midway between that of Pyrope and
|
|
Almandine and similar, in many cases, to that of Rhodolite. The reason
|
|
for this is the similarity in their color and absorption spectrum
|
|
characteristics. Almandine has a brilliant luster, but its transparency
|
|
is frequently marred, even in very clear stones, by excessive depth of
|
|
color. The cabochon cut is widely used, often being given a strongly
|
|
convex shape and sometimes a concave base, in an effort to lighten
|
|
the color by reducing the thickness. Rose cuts have also been used,
|
|
particularly in the past. Nowdays, when the material is quite transpare-
|
|
nt, faceted cuts are used as well, and sometimes square or rectangular
|
|
step cuts. Gems of several carats are not uncommon. Faceted or even
|
|
barely rounded pieces of Almandine, pierced as necklace beads, were very
|
|
common in the recent past, but are now considered old-fashioned.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name Almandine comes from [carbunculus alabandicus,] after the
|
|
city of Alabanda in Asia Minor, where gems were traded at the time of
|
|
Pliny theElder.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: All red Garnet has long been associated with love,
|
|
passion, sensuality and sexuality. Garnet is considered a birthstone for
|
|
those born in January:
|
|
|
|
"By her in January born
|
|
No gem save Garnets should be worn;
|
|
They will ensure her constancy,
|
|
True friendship, and fidelity."
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: The darker Garnets are associated with the Will and
|
|
the Source of Life Incarnate. This is who and what we are in this
|
|
lifetime. This stone is worn for protective purposes, and is thought to
|
|
drive off demons and phantoms.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Almandine Garnets are used to heal skin conditions associated
|
|
with poor circulation. They improve vigor, strength and endurance.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Almandine Garnets are particularly effective when
|
|
healing "traumas" that are carried over from a past life and deal with
|
|
sexuality and heart/love problems.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide
|
|
to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
2614
|
|
|
|
4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom,
|
|
Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn.
|
|
7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L.
|
|
Mella.
|
|
8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane
|
|
Stein.
|
|
9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative
|
|
Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
GARNET (SPESSARTINE)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Spessartine Garnets are from a group of very
|
|
closely related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Spessartine
|
|
variety is Mn3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from brownish red
|
|
to hyacinth-red. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and 7-1/2.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Spessartine occurs with albite and muscovite in granite
|
|
pegmatites and with quartz and riebeckite in blue schist or regional
|
|
metamorphic rocks..
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Large corroded crystals of Spessartine have come from the
|
|
Rutherford No. 2 Mine, Amelia, Amelia Co., Virginia; crystals up to 1"
|
|
in diameter have been found in several pegmatites in the Ramona
|
|
District, San Diego Co., California; sharp, dark-red, well-formed
|
|
crystals occur in cavities in rhyolite near Ely, White Pine C., Nevada;
|
|
and brilliant crystals of Spessartine have been found with topaz at Ruby
|
|
Mt., near Nathrop, Chaffee Co., Colorado. Gem material comes from the
|
|
gem gravels of Sri Lanka and Burma. It is also found in Brazil and
|
|
Madagascar.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: The gem variety of Spessartine Garnet is uncommon.
|
|
It tends to be midway between spessartine and almandine in composition.
|
|
The "aurora red", orange-red or orange-pink color is typical. It has
|
|
good transparency and considerable luster. It is normally given a mixed,
|
|
round, or oval cut. The weight does not normally exceed a few carats.
|
|
Gems of about 10 carats are extremely rare and usually of an atypical,
|
|
rather dark, unattactive color.
|
|
|
|
NAME: Spessartine is named after an occurrence in the spessart district,
|
|
Bavaria, Germany.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: In the 13th century garnets were thought to repel
|
|
insect stings. A magical treatise, "The Book of Wings", dating from the
|
|
thirteenth century says "The well-formed image of a lion, if engraved on
|
|
a garnet, will protect and preserve honors and health, cures the wearer
|
|
of all diseases, brings him honors, and guards him from all perils in
|
|
traveling."
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Spessartine is normally considered to be red-orange
|
|
to orange-pink. Thus it links the "will" with the "desire". It is a good
|
|
stone to use when casting a spell for your "heart's desire", especially
|
|
if it is of the orange-pink" variety.
|
|
2615
|
|
|
|
HEALING: The orange garnets are linked to the root and the belly chakra.
|
|
They are beneficial in instances of infertility, dealing with reproduc-
|
|
tive organs. Mentally, it inspires confidence in personal creativity and
|
|
self-worth.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Spessartine is not as effective as Carnelian for
|
|
instances of infertility. But it DOES help the mental attitude of the
|
|
individual experiencing the difficulty. It is a warming stone, and works
|
|
well for increasing circulation in the lower part of the body.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide
|
|
to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
|
|
3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
|
|
4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
|
|
5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom,
|
|
Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn.
|
|
|
|
7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L.
|
|
Mella.
|
|
|
|
8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane
|
|
Stein.
|
|
|
|
9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative
|
|
Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
GARNET (GROSSULAR)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Grossular Garnets are from a group of very
|
|
closely related calcium silicates. The Chemistry for the Grossular
|
|
variety is Ca3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from yellow, pink
|
|
and brown through white and colorless. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2
|
|
and 7-1/2.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Grossular occurs with wollastonite, calcite, and vesuviani-
|
|
te in hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Being the commonest of all garnets, it is found in a variety
|
|
of locations. Fine colorless crystals up to 1/2" across occur in
|
|
Gatineau and Magantic Cos., Quebec, fine lusterous pale brown crystals
|
|
2616
|
|
|
|
up to 3" across were found near Minot, Androscoggin Co., Main, and
|
|
beautiful white and pick crystals up to 4" across have been found near
|
|
Xalostoc, Morelos, Mexico.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Grossular also has the typical crystal form of
|
|
garnets, occuring in isolated crystals which are often complete, in the
|
|
shape of a rhombic dodecahedron, sometimes combined with a trapezo-
|
|
hedron. They vary from transparent to semiopaque. The typical color is
|
|
light (gooseberry) yellowish green; but they can be a strong to bluish
|
|
green, honey yellow or pinkish yellow, or even colorless. When transpar-
|
|
ent, the crystals have good luster. Like other garnets, they have no
|
|
cleavage. The greenish to yellowish varieties are used as gems.
|
|
Grossular is not a rare mineral. The types used as gems mainly come from
|
|
the gem gravels of Sri Lanka (honey yellow variety); the the United
|
|
States, Canada, Mexico, Madagascar, Kenya. The green variety of
|
|
grossular garnet, discovered a few decades ago and found mainly in
|
|
Kenya, near the Tsavo National Park, is also known as Tsavorite (or
|
|
Tsavolite) It is a light, verdant, or dark green, similar to the color
|
|
of the better green tourmalines and sometimes, it is said, even
|
|
comparable to African emerald. It has good luster. These gems, which are
|
|
usually given a round or pear-shaped mixed cut, or occasionally a
|
|
brilliant cut, are generally small, rarely exceeding one carat and never
|
|
more than a few carats.
|
|
|
|
NAME: Grossular is from the New Latin [grosssularia,] "gooseberry,"
|
|
because some Grossular crystals are pale green like the fruit.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: I do not find anything referring specifically to yellow
|
|
or green garnets in my sources.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: While deep red garnets focus on "Will" and orange--
|
|
red garnets focus on "Desire", yellow garnets are focused on Personal
|
|
Power and Personality. In addition they are (because of their color)
|
|
associated with athletic prowess and Oriental philosophies.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Being linked to the Solar Plexus Chakra, yellow garnets are
|
|
energizing. They can be used for the digestive organs, the diaphram (and
|
|
the breath) and eyesight. Green garnets center their healing on the
|
|
Heart Chakra.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: It is difficult to find a green stone that works
|
|
well for the lower chakras and the lower half of the body. When I do
|
|
total layouts for individuals with Aids, I use all green stones,
|
|
whenever possible. The Green garnets work well for this. Since Garnet is
|
|
the stone of the Root Chakra, the Will, and green is the color of the
|
|
Heart Chakra, love, circulation, general healing, this stone works
|
|
exceptionally well. I find that the yellow garnets work better for
|
|
magical purposes than healing. For healing, there are several
|
|
yellow stones that seem to work better for me.
|
|
|
|
NOTES: Garnets are used in industry as an abrasive.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2617
|
|
|
|
2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide
|
|
to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
|
|
3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
|
|
4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
|
|
5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom,
|
|
Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn.
|
|
|
|
7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L.
|
|
Mella.
|
|
|
|
8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane
|
|
Stein.
|
|
|
|
9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative
|
|
Powers
|
|
of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks,
|
|
by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
LAZURITE (LAPIS LAZULI)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Lazurite is a silicate of sodium calcium and
|
|
aluminum, with some sulfur. It is a member of the sodalite group. It's
|
|
chemistry is (Na, Ca)8(Al,Si)12O24(S,SO)4. The color ranges in shades of
|
|
blue from violet blue and azure blue thru greenish-blue. Lazurite is
|
|
distinguished from sodalite by its deeper color and fine grain. It is
|
|
also softer and lighter in weight than lazulite. It is dull to greasy
|
|
and the streak is pale blue. The hardness ranges between 5 and 5-1/2.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Crystals are rare. It is usually granular, compact,
|
|
massive. It forms in association with pyrite, calcite, and diopside in
|
|
hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks. The opaque, vivid blue, light
|
|
blue, greenish-blue, or violet-blue stone, consisting largely of
|
|
lazurite but with appreciable amounts of calcite, diopside, and pyrite,
|
|
is a rock called [lapis lazuli.] The stone is usually veined or spotted.
|
|
Its value depends largely upon excellence and uniformity of color and
|
|
absence of pyrite, although some purchasers prefer lapis with pyrite.
|
|
|
|
OCCURRENCE: Lazurite is a rare mineral in North America, but it does
|
|
occur on Italian Mt. in the Sawatch Mts. of Colorado; on Ontario Peak in
|
|
the San Gabriel Mts., Los Angeles Co., and in Cascade Canyon in the San
|
|
Bernardino Mts., San Bernardino Co., California. The finest lapis lazuli
|
|
has come from Badakshan in Afghanistan, and less valuable material has
|
|
come from Russia and Chile.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name is from the Arabic [lazaward], "heaven," which was also
|
|
applied to sky-blue lapis lazuli.
|
|
2618
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Lapis Lazuli was a favorite stone of the ancient
|
|
Egyptians. In the past Lazurite has been burned and ground to form the
|
|
pigment "ultramarine." It was consider an aid to childbirth, and has
|
|
long been associated with altered states of consciousness and trance
|
|
work. Lapis is sometimes designated as a birthstone for December,
|
|
although turquoise is most common.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: To quote Cunningham: "This stone is used in rituals
|
|
designed to attract spiritual love. Take an untumbled piece of lapis
|
|
with a sharp edge. Empower the stone and a pink candle with your need
|
|
for love. Then, using the lapis lazuli, carve a heart onto the candle.
|
|
Place the stone near the candleholder and burn the candle while
|
|
visualizing a love coming into your life." Actually, the most important
|
|
magical aspect of lapis is it's ability to strengthen psychic awareness.
|
|
Cunningham says "Despite its somewhat high price, lapis lazuli is one
|
|
stone every stone magician should own and utilize."(2)
|
|
|
|
HEALING: This stone is used at the Ajina, the Brow Chakra. It's related
|
|
gland is the pituitary. The pituitary gland is also referred to as the
|
|
"master gland" because it regulates all of the others. This location is
|
|
also the center for the eyes, ears, nose and brain.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I don't often use Lapis for physical healing,
|
|
unless I feel that there is a "link" between what is manifested as
|
|
disease, and some conflict of the "higher self". I have used it for
|
|
brain disorders (tumors, inflammation, etc.) More often, I use it in
|
|
layouts where the client is trying to achieve an altered state of
|
|
consciousness.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurrence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
LEPIDOLITE
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Lepidolite a potassium, lithium, aluminum
|
|
fluorsilicate mica. Its chemistry is complex: K(Li,Al)3(Si,Al)4O10-
|
|
(F,OH)2. It is pink, lilac, yellowish, grayish white or a combination of
|
|
all of these. The streak is colorless. It is one of the softer stones,
|
|
with a hardness of 2-1/2 to 3.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Lepidolite is confined to granite pegmatites, where it
|
|
occurs either as fine-granular masses near the core of the pegmatite or
|
|
as stubby or tabular crystals in cavities. It is commonly associated
|
|
with microcline, quartz, and tourmaline.
|
|
2619
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Large fine masses of lepidolite have been mined at the
|
|
Stewart Pegmatite at Pala, and superb sharp crystals have been obtained
|
|
from the Little Three Pegmatite near Ramona, both in San Diego Co.,
|
|
California. It has also been mined in substantial amounts in several New
|
|
England states and in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name comes from the Greek [lepidos], meaning 'scale', in
|
|
allusion to the scaly aggregates in which the mineral commonly occurs.
|
|
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2620
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Lepidolite is a stone that could certainly be con-
|
|
sidered "new age" in the sense that it is just now coming into recogni-
|
|
tion by healers and magicians. There is no "past lore" on this stone, to
|
|
the best of my knowledge. Part of this may be due to the fact, that it
|
|
is native to the United States.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: "This stone soothes anger, hatred or any other
|
|
negative emotion. To quiet the entire house, place lepidolite stones in
|
|
a circle around a pink candle." (2)
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Lepidolite is also know as the "Dream Stone". It will protect
|
|
the individual from nightmares, especially those caused by stress or an
|
|
upset in personal relationships. It can be used in the same types of
|
|
circumstances as Kunzite, namely for manic depression or schizophrenia.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: This is one of the most soothing and relaxing
|
|
stones I've ever held. It is a beauty to look at, and calms the mind
|
|
enabling it to concentrate on the TRUE source of a problem...instead of
|
|
running around in frantic circles accomplishing nothing. The more
|
|
rubellite in the stone, the better it will help the heart and mind work
|
|
together.
|
|
|
|
NOTES: Lepidolite has been used as a source of lithium. The above
|
|
description of the appearance of this stone may be deceiving, as I found
|
|
Cunningham's to be, also. All of the specimens of this stone that I have
|
|
seen so far have been grey to a pale lavendar grey with "sparkles" of
|
|
the lithium mica embedded in it. The heart-shaped cabuchon that I have
|
|
also has very distinctive crystals of rubellite (pink tourmaline) and
|
|
veins of white running through it. I was originally looking for a MUCH
|
|
brighter lavendar stone. It is unusual, also, to find specimens that are
|
|
cut and polished. Usually the stone is too "crumbly" to take a good
|
|
polish. However, it is equally handsome in rough form.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------
|
|
MALACHITE
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Malachite is a basic copper carbonate. It's
|
|
chemistry is Cu2CO3(OH)2. It ranges in color from emerald green thru
|
|
grass green to shades of silky pale green. The streak is light green.
|
|
It's hardness is 3-1/2 to 4. Crystals are rare. Most gem specimens
|
|
display distinctive concentric colorbanding; (alternating dark green and
|
|
light green bands.)
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Malachite is a secondary copper mineral and develops in the
|
|
zone of alteration in massive, lode, and disseminated hydrothermal
|
|
replacement deposits. Associated minerals are azurite, limonite, and
|
|
2621
|
|
|
|
chalcopyrite.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: The copper mines at Bisbee, Chochise Co., Arizona, are famous
|
|
for their fine specimens of massive malachite and pseudomorphs of
|
|
malachite after azurite. Mines at Morenci in Greenlee Co., and at Globe
|
|
in Gila Co., Arizona, have yielded beautiful malachite specimens, of
|
|
which some consist of alternating layers of green malachite and blue
|
|
azurite. Fine malachite has also come from copper mines in California,
|
|
Nevada, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name is from the Greek [moloche], "mallow," an illusion to the
|
|
mineral's leaf-green color. Malachite is used as an ore of copper and as
|
|
a gemstone.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: It is said that if malachite is worn, it will break
|
|
into pieces to warn the wearer of danger.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Used to direct power towards magical goals.
|
|
Protective, especially towards children. According to Cunningham, "Small
|
|
pieces of malachite placed in each corner of a business building or a
|
|
small piece placed in the cash register draws customers. Worn during
|
|
business meetings or trade shows, it increases your ability to obtain
|
|
good deals and sales. It is the salesperson's stone." (2)
|
|
|
|
HEALING: If the malachite is of the blue-green variety, it can be
|
|
associated with the Sacral Center, or Splenic Chakra (Svadisthana).
|
|
Here, it's energy branches to the left, to the spleen. (It is intended
|
|
in this position for those who are celebate.) In addition, if it is
|
|
grass-green, it can be used at the Lumbar/Solar Plexis Center. "When the
|
|
malachite is placed at the solar plexus and a piece of green jade is
|
|
placed at the heart center and a double-terminated quartz crystal is
|
|
placed between them, people may remember events that have been blocked
|
|
for years. They may cry or scream. As these buried emotions are brought
|
|
to the surface and released, a great weight is lifted and they soon feel
|
|
renewed." (3)
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I am very careful about using Malachite. It has
|
|
been my experience that the emotions that it releases can be very
|
|
powerful, to the point of overwhelming some people. On the other hand,
|
|
if the individual is ready to deal with them (in a "growth" period) it
|
|
may work out just fine. You could "balance" the emotional content with
|
|
a pink stone (such as rose quartz) to cut down some on the intensity.
|
|
|
|
A few years ago, I broke my arm. To do so, I damaged the muscles and
|
|
nerves in my wrist. I was in a lot of pain, and was searching for what
|
|
I could do to help the situation. During a journey, I saw malachite, so
|
|
I found a malachite heart which I held in the palm of the broken arm
|
|
while meditating. I got a lot of relief from it. Now, if the wrist acts
|
|
up, I use the heart, taped over the wrist area when I go to bed at
|
|
night. It seems to help quite a bit. I now recommend malachite for
|
|
nerve/muscle damage with some success. (4)
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2622
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------
|
|
MOONSTONE
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Moonstone is one variation of Orthoclase. It
|
|
owes its beautiful silvery to bluish sheen ('adularescence' or 'schil-
|
|
ler') to its composition of extremely thin plates of orthoclase and
|
|
albite. The thinner these plates are, the bluer is the sheen. There are
|
|
also moonstones consisting mainly of albite. These are less translucent,
|
|
but they can occur in a variety of colours: grey, blue, green, brown,
|
|
yellow and white. There are also moonstone cat's-eyes. The chemical
|
|
composition is KAlSi3O8 and the hardness is 7. The streak is white.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: The potash feldspars are important rock-forming minerals in
|
|
plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks. Adularia and sanidine are
|
|
found usually in volcanic rocks.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: The main countries of origin are Ceylon, southern India (the
|
|
district near Kangayam), Tanzia and Malagasy which, together with Burma,
|
|
produces some of the finest stones with a deep blue schiller. White
|
|
adularia crystals up to 2.5 cm (1") across have been found in gold-bear-
|
|
ing quartz veins at Bodie, Mono Co., California, and in the silver mines
|
|
of the Silver City district, Owhyee Co., Idaho.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Moonstone is always cut into cabochons, to display
|
|
the cat's-eye, or schiller.
|
|
|
|
NAME: Adularia (another name for Moonstone) comes from the locality in
|
|
Switzerland, the Adula Mts.
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: This stone has always been revered because of its lunar
|
|
attraction. It was believed that the shiller in the stone would follow
|
|
the cycles of the moon. (Becoming greatest when the moon was full.) In
|
|
addition, it has always been considered a "feminine, or Goddess" stone.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Meditation with moonstone calls into consciousness
|
|
the three-form moon phase goddesses, Diana/Selene/Hecate, the waxing,
|
|
Full and waning Moon. These are woman as goddess in her ages and
|
|
contradictions, Maiden/Mother/Crone. Cunningham favors this stone for
|
|
spells involving love. In addition he has a longish essay on using it
|
|
for a "diet" stone.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Because of it's feminine nature, Moonstone has long been
|
|
considered a "womans healing stone". It is used traditionally for
|
|
healing/balancing of female organs and hormones.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use Moonstone at the Transpersonal Point, for
|
|
connection to the Goddess and Universal Feminine Energy. This is the
|
|
connection to dreams and dreaming, feminine "intuition", and "cycles".
|
|
There are cycles of time, seasons, the moon, stars, etc. I also use/give
|
|
2623
|
|
|
|
this stone for those clients who are having difficulty being in tune
|
|
with the feminine side of their nature. (Everyone has a masculine and
|
|
a feminine side.)
|
|
|
|
NOTES: In the past, this stone has also been called "Cylon Opal".
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
|
|
3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
|
|
4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the
|
|
Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
7. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
8. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious
|
|
Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------
|
|
OBSIDIAN
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Obsidian occurs as volcanic lava flows that are
|
|
thick and of limited area. Its black, glassy, lustrous, and often
|
|
flow-banded appearance makes it rather easy to distinguish from the
|
|
other volcanic rocks with which it is commonly associated. This mineral
|
|
forms when a silica-rich magma of granitic composition flows onto the
|
|
earth's surface, where it solidifies before minerals can develop and
|
|
crystallize. It is, therefore, an amorphous solid or glass rather than
|
|
an aggregate of minerals. The hardness of Obsidian is between 6 and 7;
|
|
it will scratch window glass. Although generally black, it is more or
|
|
less smoky along translucent to transparent edges; other colors are
|
|
gray, reddish brown, mahogany and dark green. When it has small white
|
|
"flower" designs in it, it is called Snowflake Obsidian. It is also
|
|
possible to find pieces with a sheen, or chatoyance. This is often
|
|
called Rainbow Obsidian.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Obsidian is an environment for very few minerals. Lithophy-
|
|
sae and spherulites may contain small but beautiful crystals of
|
|
feldspar, tridymite, and cristobalite.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Some locations of Obsidian bodies are California (Inyo,
|
|
Imperial, and Modoc Cos.), Oregon (Crater Lake), Wyoming (Yellowstone
|
|
Park), and Mexico (near Pachuca.)
|
|
2624
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name is dervied from the latin name for the mineral, [obsio.]
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Polished pieces of black Obsidian have been used for
|
|
Scrying. Primitive peoples once valued obsidian highly, chipping and
|
|
flaking it into knives, spearheads, and many other implements with
|
|
razor-sharp edges resulting from the intersecting conchoidal fractures.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Obsidian is a very protective stone. It is also
|
|
associated with the inner mysteries of the Goddess, symbolizing entrance
|
|
to the labyrinth, the womb or the subconscious self.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Because of its protective qualities, Obsidian is a good stone
|
|
for those who are soft-hearted and gentle. It will help to guard them
|
|
against abuse. This stone cleanses toxins from the liver, so it is also
|
|
good for people who are exposed to environmental pollutants.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: This is the "balance" stone for Clear Quartz
|
|
Crystals. We jokingly refer to it around here as a "dark sucker"...mean-
|
|
ing it will absorb all sorts of negative things. It is also a grounding
|
|
stone, and I use it at the Base Chakra (below the feet) at the beginning
|
|
of a layout to keep my client "grounded". In India, the women wear
|
|
obsidian toe rings for the same purpose. I use Black Obsidian in
|
|
conjunction with Quartz. If I'm not using Clear Quartz, I use Snowflake
|
|
Obsidian. I also have a piece of Rainbow Obsidian, but it is relatively
|
|
new and I haven't finished "conversing" with it, so I have no advice
|
|
as to how to use it...at the moment.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
----------------------------------------------
|
|
OPAL
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Opal is hydrous silica, often with some iron and
|
|
aluminum. Its chemistry is SiO2.nH2O; amount of water varies up to 10
|
|
percent. It ranges in color from White, yellow, red, pink, brown to
|
|
gray, blue and even colorless. It is most easily recognized by its rich
|
|
internal play of colors (opalescence). Its hardness ranges from 5-1/2 to
|
|
6-1/2. It is vitreous and pearly. The streak is white. It is not found
|
|
in crystal form, rather is is usually massive, botryoidal, reniform,
|
|
stalactitic, and/or earthy.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Opal is a low-temperature mineral and usually develops in
|
|
a wide variety of rocks as cavity and fracture fillings. It requently
|
|
develops as amygdules in basalt and rhyolite of volcanic rock and
|
|
replaces the cells in wood and the shells of clams.
|
|
2625
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Common opal is widespread and can be readily obtained at many
|
|
places, but localities for precious opal are rare and seem to localized
|
|
in W United States and Mexico. Magnificent examples of opalized wood can
|
|
be found in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, and lively
|
|
green fluorescing opal (hyalite) occurs in seams in pegmatites in New
|
|
England and North Carolina and in cavities in basalt near Klamath Falls,
|
|
Oregon. Beautiful precious opal, as a replacement in wood, has been
|
|
obtained in Virgin Valley, Humboldt Co., Nevada. Excellent fire and
|
|
precious opal occur in laval flows in N Mexico. Nevada, Australia, and
|
|
Honduras are sources for black opal; Australia and Czechoslovakia
|
|
for white opal; Mexico and SW United States for fire opal.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Black, dark blue, dark green opal with dark gray
|
|
body color and fine play of colors is called [black opal;] opal with
|
|
white or light body color and fine play of color is called [white opal;]
|
|
and transparent to translucent opal with body color ranging from
|
|
orange-yellow to red and a play of colors is called [fire opal.] Play of
|
|
colors depends upon interference of light and is not dependent upon body
|
|
color. Black opal is the most highly prized, and fire opal is the most
|
|
valued of the orange and red varieties. Most opal is fashioned into
|
|
cabochons, but some fire opals are faceted.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The word is from the Sanskrit [upala,] meaning "precious stone."
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: Opal is a birthstone for October.
|
|
|
|
"October's child is born for woe,
|
|
And life's vicissitudes must know;
|
|
But lay an Opal on her breast,
|
|
And hope will lull those foes to rest." (5)
|
|
|
|
Opals have traditionally been considered "lucky" stones...but only for
|
|
those born in the month of October. It has been considered bad luck to
|
|
wear them if you were born in any other month.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Opal is considered to be able to confer the gift of
|
|
invisibility on its wearer. To accomplish this, Cunningham says "The gem
|
|
was wrapped in a fresh bay leaf and carried for this purpose." He also
|
|
says, "Opals are also worn to bring out inner beauty. A beauty spell:
|
|
Place a round mirror on the altar or behind it so that you can see your
|
|
face within it while kneeling. Place two green candles on eithe side of
|
|
the mirror. Light the candles. Empower an opal with your need for beauty
|
|
-- while holding the stone, gaze into your reflection. With the scalpel
|
|
of your visualization, mold and form your face (and your body) to the
|
|
form you desire. Then, carry or wear the opal and dedicate
|
|
yourself to improving your appearance." (2)
|
|
|
|
HEALING: Opals contain all the colors of the other stones, thus, it
|
|
could be used in place of any of them. (They are akin to quartz
|
|
crystals, in this aspect.) Generally speaking, Opal is used more
|
|
frequently for healing the spirit, rather than the physical body.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Opals are probably my favorite stone. This may be
|
|
partially due to the fact that they are my birthstone, and I have been
|
|
surrounded by them all of my life. For me, they are protective and
|
|
invigorating. I normally use them during Journeying, and when doing
|
|
"readings" for other...anything where I am using altered states of
|
|
consciousness. I find that they help me to understand the symbols of my
|
|
2626
|
|
|
|
visions in a way that makes them meaningful for others.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
|
|
2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's En-
|
|
cyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
|
|
3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A
|
|
Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner.
|
|
|
|
4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
|
|
5. Birthday poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious
|
|
Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
VESUVIANITE (IDOCRASE)
|
|
|
|
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Vesuvianite is composed of calcium, magnesium
|
|
and aluminum silicate, often with some beryllium and fluorine. The
|
|
chemistry is Ca10Mg2Al4(SiO4)5(Si2)7)2(OH)4. Specimens range from brown
|
|
and green to a rare yellow or blue. The hardness is 6-1/2.
|
|
|
|
ENVIRONMENT: Vesuvianite forms by igneous and metamorphic processes. It
|
|
commonly is metamorphic and occurs with grossular, wollastonite, and
|
|
calcite in hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks; with chromite and
|
|
magnetite in serpentinite of hydrothermal metamorphic rocks; and with
|
|
wollastonite, andradite, and diopside in carbonatites.
|
|
|
|
OCCURENCE: Gem-quality Vesuvianite has been obtained from a pegmatite in
|
|
marble near Sixteen Island Lake, Laurel, Argenteuil Co., Quebec, and
|
|
beautiful micromount cyrstals of purplish-pink color occur in massive
|
|
Vesuvianite at the Montral chrome pit at Black Lake, Megantic Co.,
|
|
Quebec. The blue variety called [cyprine] has been obtained at Franklin,
|
|
Sussex Co., New Jersey. Fine crystals up to 1-1/2 inches across occur in
|
|
pale-blue calcite at Scratch Gravel, near Helena, Lewis and Clark Co.,
|
|
Montana, and spectacular material of similar nature occurs at quarries
|
|
near Riverside, California. Beautiful pale-green massive Vesuvianite
|
|
([californite]) occurs in California at Pulga, Butte Co.,
|
|
and near Happy Camp, Siskiyou Co., and crude yellow prismatic crystals
|
|
occur with grossular at Xalostoc, Morelos, and Lake Jaco, Chihuahua,
|
|
Mexico.
|
|
|
|
GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Translucent gray to green or nearly colorless
|
|
Vesuvianite with green streaks is called [californite], and is often
|
|
sold as "California Jade." Californite is fashioned into cabochons.
|
|
Principal sources are the USSR, Italy, Canada and California.
|
|
|
|
NAME: The name "Vesuvianite" is from the original locality at Mt.
|
|
Vesuvius, Italy. The alternate name, "idocrase," comes from the Greek
|
|
[eidos,] "form", and [krasis,] "mixture," because Vesuvianite may appear
|
|
to combine the crystal forms of several other minerals.
|
|
|
|
2627
|
|
|
|
LEGEND and LORE: None found.
|
|
|
|
MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Dolfyn associates this stone with Passion, enthus-
|
|
iasm, warmth and devotion.
|
|
|
|
HEALING: No specific information found, other than what Dolfyn states.
|
|
|
|
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: None. I do not have a specimen of Vesuvianite.
|
|
|
|
-------bibliography-------
|
|
1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased
|
|
from)"The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and
|
|
Minerals".
|
|
2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide
|
|
to Gems and Precious Stones".
|
|
3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland.
|
|
4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from
|
|
"Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas.
|
|
5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's
|
|
Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham.
|
|
6. Some magical and healing information from "Crystal Wisdom, Spiritual
|
|
Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn.
|
|
7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L.
|
|
Mella.
|
|
8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane
|
|
Stein.
|
|
9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative
|
|
Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D.
|
|
10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and
|
|
notebooks, by <grin> Tandika Star.
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2628
|
|
|
|
AUTHOR: Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein
|
|
SOURCE: Cornerstone, vol. 21, iss. 98, pp. 7-9,11-14,16-17,19,30,38
|
|
DATE: 1992
|
|
TITLE: Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Michael Warnke
|
|
NOTES: Copyright 1992 by Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I always wanted to write him a letter and
|
|
say, `Mike, when were you able to have this
|
|
coven of fifteen hundred people?' About the
|
|
most exciting thing we used to do was play
|
|
croquet."
|
|
ÄÄOne of Mike Warnke's college friends
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
SELLING SATAN:
|
|
The Tragic History of Michael Warnke
|
|
|
|
by Jon Trott & Mike Hertenstein
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is the story of well-known comedian, evangelist, and professed
|
|
ex-Satanist Mike Warnke.
|
|
|
|
Known as "America's Number One Christian Comedian," Mike Warnke has
|
|
sold in excess of one million records. June 29, 1988, was declared
|
|
"Mike Warnke Day" by the governor of Tennessee. The Satan Seller has,
|
|
according to its author, sold three million copies in twenty years.[1]
|
|
His 1991 Schemes of Satan quickly climbed the best-seller list. Mike
|
|
Warnke's press material includes credits for appearances on "The 700
|
|
Club," "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Larry King Live," "Focus on the
|
|
Family," and ABC's "20/20." Mike has won numerous awards from the
|
|
recording industry, including the 1992 Grady Nutt Humor Award. He
|
|
continues to perform two hundred live shows a year. He is truly a
|
|
figure of national prominence.
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke's ministry and public profile are based upon the story
|
|
he tells of his previous involvement with Satanism. As written in The
|
|
Satan Seller, the story goes like this: a young orphan boy raised in
|
|
foster homes drifted from whatever family and friends he had to join a
|
|
secret, all-powerful satanic cult. First, he descended into the hell of
|
|
drug addiction. Then he ascended in the satanic ranks to the position
|
|
of high priest, with fifteen hundred followers in three cities. He had
|
|
unlimited wealth and power at his disposal, provided by members of
|
|
Satanism's highest echelon, the Illuminati. And then he converted to
|
|
Christ.
|
|
|
|
A generation of Christians learned its basic concepts of Satanism
|
|
and the occult from Mike Warnke's testimony in The Satan Seller.
|
|
Based on his alleged satanic experiences, Warnke came to be recognized
|
|
as a prominent authority on the occult, even advising law enforcement
|
|
officers investigating occult crime. We believe The Satan Seller has
|
|
been responsible, more than any other single volume in the Christian
|
|
market, for promoting the current nationwide "Satanism scare."[2]
|
|
|
|
Through the years, Cornerstone has received many calls from people
|
|
2629
|
|
|
|
who felt something was not right concerning Mike Warnke. After our
|
|
lengthy investigation into his background, we found discrepancies that
|
|
raise serious doubts about the trustworthiness of his testimony. We
|
|
have uncovered significant evidence contradicting his alleged satanic
|
|
activity. His testimony contains major conflicts from book to book and
|
|
tape to book, it contains significant internal problems, and it doesn't
|
|
square with known external times and events. Further, we have
|
|
documentation and eyewitness testimony that contradict the claims he
|
|
has made about himself.
|
|
|
|
The evidence we present here includes testimony from Mike's closest
|
|
friends, relatives, and daily associates ÄÄpeople whose names Mike
|
|
disguised or omitted entirely in his "official" testimony. These people
|
|
knew the real Mike Warnke, who was not a drug fiend or a recruiter for
|
|
Satanism. But he was a storyteller.
|
|
|
|
Michael Alfred Warnke was born November 19, 1946, to Alfred "Al"
|
|
Warnke and his wife, Louise. Mike's parents lived in Evansville,
|
|
Indiana, and according to their son's confirmation certificate, had
|
|
Mike baptized at St. Anthony's Catholic Church.[3]
|
|
|
|
When Mike was five, the Warnkes moved to Manchester, Tennessee,
|
|
where Al opened Warnke's Truck Stop.[4] Located on Highway 41, north of
|
|
town, the diner soon became part of the local landscape. On January 15,
|
|
1955, Louise, on her way home from town, lost control of the family's
|
|
brand-new Packard and was killed. She was thirty-seven; Mike was eight
|
|
years old.[5]
|
|
|
|
Mike had other family, too, from his father's previous marriage. His
|
|
half sister, Shirley Schrader[6] was twenty-two years older than he
|
|
was. She first met Mike in 1954, when Al brought his family to
|
|
California on a visit. As Shirley recalls, "Dad, Louise, and Michael
|
|
came out to California in the mid-fifties. Prior to that, I wasn't
|
|
writing my father. I didn't even know where he was. My dad had
|
|
abandoned me when I was little. He was an alcoholic, and maybe twice in
|
|
my childhood did he make any effort to communicate with my mother. So I
|
|
was working and they came to my office, very unexpectedly. He says,
|
|
`I'm your father,' and he came on big and strong, `Oh, my daughter, my
|
|
daughter.' They spent maybe a week in California, and then went back to
|
|
Tennessee."
|
|
|
|
When Mike's mother was killed, Al flew Shirley to Tennessee for the
|
|
funeral. During that visit, Al Warnke asked Shirley if she and her
|
|
husband, Keith, would move to Manchester and help run the truck stop.
|
|
"You always think, Wouldn't it be neat to know your own dad? That was
|
|
probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made."
|
|
|
|
Shirley, Keith, and their six-year-old son Keith, Jr., came out to
|
|
Manchester in February of 1955. But Al and Shirley soon had their
|
|
problems. "He had me working days, with Thursday off, and he had my
|
|
husband working nights, with a different day off. Then there was the
|
|
fact that my father was a drunk. We weren't there but a few days when
|
|
he went off on a big binge and didn't show up again for a week. There
|
|
would have been enough money to support us all. But he forgot we were
|
|
supposed to be paid."
|
|
|
|
Al Warnke seems to fit the description given him by his son in his
|
|
books and records. But what about Mike Warnke? Shirley recalls Mike as
|
|
2630
|
|
|
|
a little boy who spent a lot of time "sitting two feet from the
|
|
television. I tried to tell my dad, `Hey, the boy can't see.' And he'd
|
|
say, `Don't try to tell me about my son!' And my dad would give the kid
|
|
ten bucks and send him uptown. That was a lot of money for those days."
|
|
|
|
Disgusted with Al and his truck stop, but feeling empathy for Mike,
|
|
the Schraders returned to California. Two years later, Al Warnke was
|
|
dead of heart failure.[7]
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke's story of his life, The Satan Seller, opens just
|
|
after Al's funeral, with adults discussing Mike's future as he
|
|
eavesdrops. As the book indicates, the eleven-year-old boy was
|
|
initially placed with his two aunts, Dorothy and Edna, who lived in
|
|
Sparta, Tennessee. Warnke has a segment on his Mike Warnke Alive![8]
|
|
album called "Tennessee Home and Blankety-Blank," in which he describes
|
|
how he raised one aunt's dander with his crude, truck stop ways.
|
|
|
|
The first night I was up there this lady came out and she
|
|
said, "Well, honey, how do you think you're gonna like it
|
|
here?" And I said, "Well, this is a pretty nice
|
|
blank-blankety-blank place. We oughta get along pretty
|
|
blank-blankety-blank well as long as you feed me
|
|
blank-blankety properly."
|
|
|
|
Aunt Edna Swindell[9] denies any such child appeared at her
|
|
Tennessee home. "He was just a typical boy. We had no problems." What
|
|
about his claims about being a foulmouthed brat? "He wasn't that here."
|
|
Meanwhile, Shirley Schrader was trying to get custody of young Mike.
|
|
"We wanted Michael," Shirley recalls. "And we fought through the
|
|
courts for Michael for months before they let him come out here."
|
|
|
|
Aunt Edna notes, "He stayed with me seven months. I guess if I
|
|
wanted him, I could have kept him the entire time. His half sister in
|
|
California wanted him, and that's where he wanted to go."
|
|
|
|
Mike Moves in with the Schraders
|
|
|
|
During the summer of 1959, Mike went to live with his half sister
|
|
and her family near Riverside, California. Shirley confirms Warnke's
|
|
story of how his Aunt Edna sent him to California loaded down with
|
|
anti-Catholic materials.
|
|
|
|
Shirley Schrader took the boys to church ÄÄthat is, she took her
|
|
eleven-year-old son Keith with her to Catholic mass and allowed
|
|
thirteen-year-old Mike to attend a nearby Protestant church. "And that
|
|
was fine for as long as he wanted to do it, because we weren't going to
|
|
force religion on him."
|
|
|
|
In Riverside, Keith, Jr., attended a parochial schoolÄÄSt. Francis
|
|
deSales. Mike eventually decided he wanted to go to that same parochial
|
|
school. "He went for a year, until we moved up on the mountain," says
|
|
Shirley.
|
|
|
|
In February of 1961, the Schraders and fourteen-year-old Mike moved
|
|
to Crestline, a small community planted among the pine trees atop the
|
|
San Bernardino Mountains overlooking the vast San Bernardino Valley.
|
|
|
|
The Schraders were well respected in Crestline. Community pillars,
|
|
2631
|
|
|
|
they ran a tight ship at home. Keith, Sr., head of the Pilot Rock
|
|
Conservation Camp, was in charge of minimum security inmates assigned
|
|
to fight forest fires. "We took the boys on camping trips. We rock
|
|
hounded. We did things together," recalls Shirley. "We sat them down
|
|
and had the sex talk. We had the talk about alcohol. We were a regular
|
|
family."
|
|
|
|
Keith, Jr., recalls, "Mike and I had a good time growing up
|
|
together. We were real close during high schoolÄÄwhen we weren't
|
|
fighting."[10]
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke attended Rim of the World High School. His best friends
|
|
through these years were Tim Smith[11] and Jeff Nesmith.[12] "We'd
|
|
spend lots of time at each other's houses," says Jeff Nesmith, "go to
|
|
school dances together, proms, and one summer Mike and I worked for my
|
|
dad in the construction business. We weren't hellions, but we weren't
|
|
angels either. We had our parties, gate crashed some dances."
|
|
|
|
All of Mike's friends and family we were able to contact denied his
|
|
assertion that he drifted at one point to a "rougher" crowd. In fact,
|
|
most of the kids Mike hung out with were, by all reports, good, clean,
|
|
Catholic boys. Tim Smith and another local boy, David Goodwin,[13] were
|
|
altar boys at St. Francis Cabrini Church. "Tim and I went to morning
|
|
mass every day before school," says Goodwin. "Sometimes Mike Warnke
|
|
attended mass with us." Tim's sister Terri explains, "I believe Mike
|
|
got interested in Catholicism from hanging out with us. He was like a
|
|
piece of furniture at our house."[14]
|
|
|
|
One day Mike announced to the Schraders that he, too, wanted to
|
|
become a Catholic. In the spring of his senior year in high school,
|
|
Warnke was confirmed in the Catholic Church. His sponsor was Tim's dad,
|
|
Paul "Jerry" Smith.[15] Two months after being confirmed, Mike
|
|
graduated with the rest of his class at Rim High in the class of '65.
|
|
|
|
Everybody we talked to who knew Mike Warnke at "Rim" remembers him
|
|
first and foremost as a chronic storyteller. His high school partner in
|
|
various escapades was Jeff Nesmith. Once, says Jeff, Mike had a date
|
|
but no car, and Jeff had his parents' Lincoln. "Mike talked me into
|
|
dropping him and his date off at a restaurant and then picking them up
|
|
after dinner. Before we picked up Mike's date, we stopped at a local
|
|
uniform store and got me a chauffeur's cap. From the moment the girl
|
|
got into the car, Mike spun this wild tale about me being an orphan boy
|
|
and how his family had taken me in, and how I sometimes performed
|
|
various services for them such as being their chauffeur. She just
|
|
soaked it all in."
|
|
|
|
The thing that always struck Nesmith about his pal was that Warnke
|
|
would never break out of character. "We'd go into some restaurant, and
|
|
Mike would pretend to be a Russian immigrant who couldn't speak
|
|
English. I'd translate Mike's order into English for the waitress.
|
|
Sometimes ÄÄjust to get himÄÄ I'd order something I knew he'd hate. But
|
|
Mike was always enough of a pro that he'd stick with it and wouldn't
|
|
say anything . . . until we got outside the restaurant and he'd yell at
|
|
me."
|
|
|
|
The Schraders also knew Mike as a boy with the gift of gab. "Michael
|
|
is a showman," says Shirley. "He is an actor, and he always swore he
|
|
would never make a living with his hands, that he would make his living
|
|
2632
|
|
|
|
with his mouth." Keith, Jr., adds: "Mike is the kind of guy that can
|
|
sell somebody the Golden Gate Bridge. Or swamp land in Florida. I gotta
|
|
hand it to him. I wish I was as good a salesman."
|
|
|
|
In high school, storytelling had been a diversion, a way to get by.
|
|
According to his friends in college, it would increasingly become a
|
|
part of Mike Warnke's identity.
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke at College
|
|
|
|
Here begins the critical period described in The Satan Seller, the
|
|
defining moment of Mike Warnke's later testimony and ministryÄÄhis
|
|
involvement with and subsequent banishment from a satanic cult.
|
|
|
|
On September 13, 1965, Mike Warnke began school at San Bernardino
|
|
Valley College, a two-year school.[16] Mike writes in The Satan
|
|
Seller that it was after he started college that he first was
|
|
introduced to drugs, sex, and finally Satanism. And, he continues, it
|
|
was only after the Satanists threw him out of their coven that he
|
|
joined the navy. Warnke's military records say he entered the navy on
|
|
June 2, 1966.[17] Therefore, whatever happened in Mike's life regarding
|
|
Satanism had to have happened between September 13, 1965, and June 2,
|
|
1966. (See sidebar "Under a Full Moon," p. 9.)
|
|
|
|
Mike, in his 1991 book, Schemes of Satan, claims to have had no
|
|
close friends at college and to have virtually disappeared:
|
|
|
|
In my own case, being away from home at college and not
|
|
having any close friends there meant that almost no one could
|
|
have known what was happening to me except, of course, the
|
|
members of the Satanic Brotherhood, and they were not
|
|
telling![18]
|
|
|
|
In reality, Mike Warnke simply did what countless other freshmen
|
|
have done: he found a new circle of friends. We found that new circle,
|
|
and they were not a part of the Satanic Brotherhood. None of these
|
|
people are mentioned by Warnke in The Satan Seller or anywhere else.
|
|
|
|
Greg Gilbert[19] was one of Mike's first and closest friends at
|
|
college. Today an English professor at a southern California
|
|
university, Greg reflects upon the notoriety of his old college
|
|
roommate. "After Mike became a star, I assumed that since he had gotten
|
|
this far with his Satan story, he'd always get away with it. I never
|
|
knew what to do. Who could you tell?"
|
|
|
|
Right around the time college started in 1965, Greg met Mike through
|
|
a mutual friend, Dennis Pekus.[20] Greg was living with his elderly
|
|
grandparents in San Bernardino and took Warnke to meet them. "When my
|
|
grandparents said they were from Tennessee, Mike said, `I come from
|
|
Tennessee, too,' " Greg recalls. "Before the evening was over he had us
|
|
all convinced he was a long-lost relative. Next thing we knew, he'd
|
|
talked his way into living with us."
|
|
|
|
Greg's college girlfriend, Dawn Andrews,[21] gave us her assessment.
|
|
"The first time I saw Mike Warnke was at Greg's house. He was
|
|
introduced to me as Greg's cousin," says Dawn. "He told everybody he
|
|
was. I remember how upset I was when The Satan Seller came out,
|
|
because what Warnke said was a lie. He has a very fertile imagination."
|
|
2633
|
|
|
|
Dyana Cridelich[22] was another of Mike Warnke's college friends
|
|
introduced by Greg. "After he got famous, I always wanted to write him
|
|
a letter and say, Mike, remember me? The one you gave the silver cross
|
|
to? When were you able to have this coven of fifteen hundred people?
|
|
Don't you remember, about the most exciting thing we used to do was
|
|
play croquet in Greg's backyard?' "
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, Mike never mentions croquet. He was too busy
|
|
becoming a teenage alcoholic.
|
|
|
|
I attended classes regularly at first, but I wasn't about
|
|
to cut down on my drinking. As the days went by, it became
|
|
harder to concentrate on what the professors were saying, but
|
|
I could still talk my way out of anything, and this carried me
|
|
through. I was drinking so much by now, it was starting to
|
|
wreck my stomach."[23]
|
|
|
|
Was Mike a heavy drinker? Not according to those who knew him. "We
|
|
drank occasionally," says Greg, "but mostly we just talked about it. We
|
|
weren't of age, and alcohol was hard to come by."
|
|
|
|
This group of college freshmen often sat on the lawn between
|
|
classes, or got together in the student union cafeteria, The Tomahawk
|
|
Room. It was there that Lois Eckenrod,[24] a girl who was soon to be
|
|
his fiancee, joins the story. "Mike and I met in September or October,
|
|
that first semester at Valley," Lois said. "It was only a couple of
|
|
months before we got engaged. Hardly a day went by that we didn't see
|
|
each other."
|
|
|
|
His friends remember Mike Warnke as thin, with thick glasses and
|
|
short hair. He was bright, he was mainly happy ÄÄthough Lois remembers
|
|
he could swing easily to depression. Yet Mike says in The Satan
|
|
Seller that when college started, he was a "heavyset, jovial guy" who
|
|
only later lost weight due to drug use. His hair, he writes, was
|
|
already collar length. Within a short time, he claims to have become a
|
|
full-fledged hippie:
|
|
|
|
I made a return trip to the Salvation Army and bought some
|
|
black pants and freaky shirts. My hair was longer than ever,
|
|
and I bleached it blond. I was really craving attention, and I
|
|
got it. You know, weird people attract chicks.[25]
|
|
|
|
"He looked like everybody else," says Greg. He did have one constant
|
|
accessory, a silver cross. (This cross Warnke gave to Dyana, she says.)
|
|
|
|
Warnke writes in The Satan Seller that he frequented a coffeehouse
|
|
called Penny University, where he danced, obtained hard liquor, and got
|
|
acquainted with the owner while practicing his fake English accent.[26]
|
|
|
|
Lois says that she and Mike did go to Penny University, "quite a bit
|
|
because Mike really liked folk music. But there was no room for
|
|
dancing. The place was full of tables and stuff."
|
|
|
|
Cornerstone also talked with John Ingro,[27] who in 1965 not only
|
|
owned Penny U., but also was a district attorney (currently he is a San
|
|
Bernardino judge). "You couldn't dance there. It was very small, and
|
|
packed with chairs. As far as alcohol, we only served coffee at a penny
|
|
a cup. That's where the place got its name." As for remembering Mike
|
|
2634
|
|
|
|
and the fake English accent? "No. Is this a joke?"
|
|
|
|
Storytelling in the Tomahawk Room
|
|
|
|
Storytelling developed into an art form among the Tomahawk Room
|
|
crowd. One student, Gary Manbeck, is remembered as having some of the
|
|
best stories. "Gary always told stories about being in the Green
|
|
Beret," says Dawn. "He was very good, but I never thought any of it was
|
|
true."
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke joined right in. "Gary and Mike vied for attention with
|
|
stories, trying to be the life of the party," says George Eubank,[28]
|
|
another of the Tomahawk crowd. "Who can one-up ya. That's a real good
|
|
description of the two of them together."
|
|
|
|
Warnke produced a never-ending stream of tall tales. "He claimed he
|
|
had some kind of white witchcraft background," recalls Greg Gilbert.
|
|
"He claimed he'd been reincarnated any number of times, that he was
|
|
born in the Irish Moors in the 1570s. Along with his other stories, he
|
|
claimed he'd once been a Trappist monk."
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, Warnke paints himself as a freshman guru,
|
|
dispensing wisdom to an eager audience of disciples:
|
|
|
|
Most of my friends were the pseudo-intellectual type. We
|
|
liked to lie out on the lawn in the quad after classes and
|
|
discuss psychology, philosophy, religion, art, and politics.
|
|
Other students began coming around, and they seemed to look to
|
|
me for answers to their questions. Anything I said was okay
|
|
with them. And it was certainly okay with me. If they were
|
|
that hung up for a leader, I was happy to oblige." [29]
|
|
|
|
Greg Gilbert remembers things this way: "We sat out under the trees
|
|
at school, all right. And there were times we listened to Mike tell his
|
|
tall tales. But if Mike thought we believed what he was saying, or that
|
|
we looked at him like some kind of guru, he was greatly mistaken. We
|
|
were all part of the same bragging team."
|
|
|
|
It was difficult, at times, to know whether Warnke believed his own
|
|
stories or not. "I don't think it was in fun. I think he himself wanted
|
|
to believe it," says Phyliss Catalano,[30] Lois's best friend. "I used
|
|
to sit there and be embarrassed, because I'd think, How could somebody
|
|
that young have done all these things? He'd done everything. And
|
|
everything he told was with a straight face."
|
|
|
|
Phyliss's mother, Mary Catalano,[31] saw Warnke on a regular basis
|
|
when the gang gathered at the Catalano house. "He was a likable young
|
|
man when he visited our house," she says, "but anything brought up in
|
|
conversation ÄÄhe'd done it. He said he'd been a Greek dancer, and he'd
|
|
dance for us, round and round. He said he'd been a professional
|
|
ambulance driver. And he was a monkÄÄhe'd come to the house all dressed
|
|
in black. Of course, we never believed him. We just said, `Boy, is he
|
|
one big liar.' "
|
|
|
|
In college, as he'd done in high school, Warnke continued to costume
|
|
himself for his roles. Mike particularly liked being a priest. "I
|
|
remember at Halloween he dressed up like a priest and went around
|
|
pretending," says Dawn. "My parents saw him ÄÄthey're very CatholicÄÄ so
|
|
2635
|
|
|
|
I heard about it." Another occasion for the priest impersonation was a
|
|
double date with Lois and Phyliss and her boyfriend David Gibbet. "I'll
|
|
never forget when he went dressed as a priest to Jay's Coffeehouse,"
|
|
says Lois. "He met us there, and came walking in wearing robes and a
|
|
white collar. I about died."
|
|
|
|
Yet another student, Tom Bolger,[32] recalls Warnke boasting how
|
|
he'd dressed as a priest and gone panhandling in downtown San
|
|
Bernardino. "He said he'd made fifty dollars." And finally, Greg
|
|
recalls Mike unsuccessfully using the priest bit to get drinks. "He got
|
|
the robes at a costume shop, went to Corky's Liquor Store, and tried to
|
|
get Christian Brothers wine for the mass. They just laughed him out."
|
|
|
|
"The Satan Seller" And the Way Things Really Were
|
|
|
|
According to The Satan Seller, though, things are by now getting
|
|
serious. The story is set in motion by the mysterious college-age
|
|
individual named "Dean Armstrong," who Warnke alleges was a satanic
|
|
high priest. Mike says Dean lured him into drug use, sexual
|
|
promiscuity, witchcraft, and Satanism. We will examine these elements
|
|
of the story, then compare each with what witnesses remember. For
|
|
starters, Mike's associates at school affirm that none among them
|
|
remotely resembled the Dean character in The Satan Seller.
|
|
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2636
|
|
|
|
According to the book, Mike was encouraged by Dean to quit drinking
|
|
so much and start smoking marijuana. Mike tells Dean no, but later an
|
|
unnamed roommate brings up the subject again:
|
|
|
|
My stomach was still hurting. I tried everything I could think
|
|
of, except giving up drinking. My new roommate suggested I try
|
|
. . . [grass], and not wanting to be left out, I finally went
|
|
along with it. . . .
|
|
. . . I really liked marijuana.[33]
|
|
|
|
Regarding drug use, Greg laughs. "Drugs? No way, not at Valley, and
|
|
not in 1965. Two years later there was plenty of grass around, but back
|
|
in '65 we still believed Reefer Madness."
|
|
|
|
Did Warnke ever talk about drugs around anybody else? "None of us
|
|
were into drugs," says Dyana. "We didn't even smoke cigarettes." Yet in
|
|
The Satan Seller, Warnke and his friends are allegedly full-blown
|
|
into drug use early in the year:
|
|
|
|
When we tried the peyote, we decided it was better and
|
|
heavier than pot. We also started eating mescaline in our food
|
|
in increasing quantities, and from there we went on to reds. .
|
|
. . . . . Some doctors came to the campus to conduct
|
|
controlled group experiments on [LSD]. My friends and I
|
|
decided to volunteer for the tests.[34]
|
|
|
|
Not only do Mike's friends deny controlled or uncontrolled
|
|
experimentation with drugs, but according to the records, no LSD
|
|
experiments took place on the campus of San Bernardino Valley College.
|
|
This was underscored in our conversation with Dr. George Zaharopoulos,
|
|
head of the Social Sciences Department at Valley. "I taught here during
|
|
those years, and we never, ever, asked for or had any LSD experiments
|
|
take place here. This is only a junior college."
|
|
|
|
In ®The Satan Seller¯ Mike not only claims to have used drugs, but
|
|
to have been a major-league drug trafficker:
|
|
|
|
One time I took some money for a drug payoff down to El
|
|
Centro, a burg in the desert of California, not far from the
|
|
border town of Mexicali. A really big load was involved, and
|
|
this caused quite a flap. It was the most money I had ever
|
|
seen at one time ÄÄfifty thousand dollars in bundles of
|
|
hundred-dollar bills.[35]
|
|
|
|
On his Mike Warnke Alive! album, Mike further claims:
|
|
|
|
I'd had hepatitis four times from shooting up with dirty
|
|
needles. I had scabs all over my face from shooting up
|
|
crystal. I was a speed freak. I weighed 110 pounds soaking
|
|
wet. My skin had turned yellow. My hair was falling out. My
|
|
teeth were rotting out of my head. I'd been pistol-whipped
|
|
five or six times. My jaw had been broken. My nose had been
|
|
almost ripped off. I had a bullet hole in my right leg. Two
|
|
bullet holes in my left leg.
|
|
|
|
Greg Gilbert and the others saw Mike on a daily basis, and say that
|
|
it is totally impossible for Mike to have had hepatitis, facial scabs
|
|
from injecting "crystal," and wounds from being shot three times.
|
|
2637
|
|
|
|
"Without us knowing it? It's a lie," Greg says.
|
|
|
|
Lois's reaction to Mike's tale? "That's just make-believe," she
|
|
states. "Mike never fell in with drugs. My dad was an alcoholic, and
|
|
because of our family situation, I'd had to move in with the Catalanos.
|
|
So I was really sensitive to things like that. Second, I was training
|
|
to be a nurse, and I think I would have known if he was using drugs. I
|
|
wouldn't have dated Mike if he was drugged. I didn't even allow people
|
|
to drink around me."
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, drugs and sex were the magnet that drew Mike
|
|
Warnke along. Warnke gradually found himself running errands for Dean,
|
|
attending occult discussion meetings, until, finally, Dean decided his
|
|
charge was ready for the real thing: a satanic ritual service.
|
|
|
|
The Black Mass in an orange grove turned out to be just what anybody
|
|
would expect who's seen ®Rosemary's Baby¯ or other films of this genre:
|
|
black robes, a naked woman on the altar, blasphemy and incantations.
|
|
"After the Invocation of Satan, I listened intently to the Offertory,
|
|
where the members offered their souls to Lord Satan."[36]
|
|
|
|
According to ®The Satan Seller¯, Warnke signed his name in blood to
|
|
give his soul to Satan, and a few pages later took over the coven from
|
|
Dean as the new High Priest.
|
|
|
|
I swung the now screaming cat over the smoking caldron and
|
|
then over the heart of the girl on the altar. Then, when the
|
|
sword point touched the cat's belly, I thrust it in.
|
|
|
|
"Now!" I suddenly shouted. . . . I drew an upside-down star
|
|
on the girl's stomach, with the freshly spilled blood. From
|
|
the weird utterances that now came from her mouth, I knew we
|
|
were being graced by the presence of one of the denizens of
|
|
hell.[37]
|
|
|
|
Just before he published The Satan Seller in 1973, Warnke brought
|
|
manuscript copies to his old high school friends Jeff Nesmith and Tim
|
|
Smith, and asked them to sign affidavits swearing the events depicted
|
|
were true. Jeff Nesmith had lost track of Warnke after high school and
|
|
had little idea what he did during college or who he hung out with. On
|
|
a rare visit to Mike's apartment during his college days, Mike asked
|
|
Jeff to join a "coven." But Jeff laughed it off, thinking it was one of
|
|
Mike's stories. In any event, when Warnke asked Jeff to sign the
|
|
affidavit, he refused.[38] "My initial reaction to the book was, `Come
|
|
on, Mike! This is poppycock!' "
|
|
|
|
Tim Smith dropped out of college after only two months, but notes,
|
|
"I had contact with Mike off and on all the way through the fall of
|
|
1965 until the summer of 1966." Tim states he never saw Warnke with
|
|
long hair or in the drug-induced emaciated state he claimed to be
|
|
during that period. "Sign the affidavit? I told him, `Nope. Can't do
|
|
that.' "
|
|
|
|
Warnke's two high school buddies saw him sporadically throughout the
|
|
year, but not every day. Yet Mike brought Jeff and Tim the affidavits,
|
|
but not Lois, Greg, Dawn or the others. It does not speak well for the
|
|
veracity of Warnke's claims that he did not ask those who knew him on a
|
|
daily basis in San Bernardino Valley College to endorse his story.
|
|
2638
|
|
|
|
The College Crowd and the Occult
|
|
|
|
Interestingly, most of Mike's college friends did dabble in occult
|
|
activities. "Some of them were into seance and Ouija board type stuff,"
|
|
says George Eubank. "But it wasn't serious, just the kind of stuff
|
|
freshmen in college play with. Especially sheltered freshmen in college
|
|
that are all of a sudden free from their parents, spreading their
|
|
wings, so to speak."
|
|
|
|
Bill Lott,[39] another college student who is now a Christian,
|
|
took the experimentation more seriously. "People were messing around
|
|
with stuff like reincarnation, tarot cards, Ouija boards. Mike was one
|
|
of those people. But he never talked about Satanism or being a devil
|
|
worshiper," Lott says.
|
|
|
|
"People talked about witches and Ouija boards," says Dawn. "It was
|
|
that era. None of us belonged to a coven, and none of us were witches.
|
|
If we'd have thought anybody was serious, it would have scared us to
|
|
death. We did table tipping once, and the table tipped and that was
|
|
that. No more table tipping for me."
|
|
|
|
Warnke and a few of the guys created a not-so-secret society. "We
|
|
started a club called The Royal Order of the Lantern," says Greg. "We
|
|
played chess, drank beer, and told tall tales. It was a group that
|
|
really never took off."
|
|
|
|
Adds George Eubank, "The Royal Order of the Lantern had to do with
|
|
this lamp we'd stolen from somebody's driveway. Warnke wanted to get an
|
|
apartment and have a group of guys. I don't think it was supposed to be
|
|
secret. It was supposed to be fun and games. It flopped because nobody
|
|
was willing to put the effort into it. Mike carried it as far as he
|
|
could at the time. It was kind of a defunct fraternity that never got
|
|
anywhere." The Royal Order of the Lantern is a far cry from ®The Satan
|
|
Seller¯'s fifteen hundred followers in three cities, financed by a
|
|
worldwide network of Satanists.
|
|
|
|
Mike eventually did get his own apartment, and the place became a
|
|
favorite hangout for the Tomahawk Room crowd ÄÄthe guys in particular.
|
|
Mike gave both Greg Gilbert and Bill Lott keys. The apartment "was
|
|
above a garage," says Greg. "There was an exterior stairway that went
|
|
up to a room with an open-beam ceiling, the gable coming to a point."
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, Warnke describes the exterior of his
|
|
apartment in this way: a second-floor apartment approached by an
|
|
outside stairway. The interior, however, was redecorated by the
|
|
Satanists after Warnke became high priest:
|
|
|
|
A long, low, oxblood leather couch replaced the sagging old
|
|
brown horsehair one, and there were two sets of bookshelves
|
|
full of books [on the occult]. . . . The biggest surprise was
|
|
on the floor ÄÄtwo chicks sitting on a white rug . . . .
|
|
|
|
. . . "We hope you like it, Mike, because we come with the
|
|
apartment," said the blonde one named Lorraine.[40]
|
|
|
|
The two women allegedly remained at Warnke's beck and call, rarely
|
|
leaving the apartment unless it was to get groceries or drugs. "It's a
|
|
fantasy," says Dennis Pekus, who knew Mike in both high school and
|
|
2639
|
|
|
|
college. Greg Gilbert says he never knew Mike Warnke to have a
|
|
girlfriend in college besides Lois Eckenrod. None of the college
|
|
friends who frequented the apartment ever saw occult books, an oxblood
|
|
leather couch, or two love slaves.
|
|
|
|
Mike says plenty of "soft pink sex"[41] is at the center of his
|
|
satanic experiences. These begin with the orgies Warnke says initially
|
|
drew him into the coven:
|
|
|
|
Then they split off into couples. It was great, because there
|
|
was a girl for every guy, not like most places I had been
|
|
where there is a chronic chick shortage.
|
|
|
|
Cool-looking, sexy girls, too. . . . These chicks were
|
|
free-lovers. . . .
|
|
|
|
"Come on over here, Mike," a blonde said.[42]
|
|
|
|
Then there's the sexual recruiting Mike says he helped organize and
|
|
rituals that degenerate from cat killing to the rape of an innocent
|
|
virgin. (Warnke is careful to exclude himself from direct participation
|
|
in the rape, though he writes that it was his idea.)
|
|
|
|
In a later book, Schemes of Satan, Warnke suggests that sex was a
|
|
routine part of the rituals:
|
|
|
|
On more than one occasion, I regret to admit, we participated
|
|
in ritual sexual abuse that even involved rape. Most of the
|
|
time I was too doped up to perform sexually, but I would watch
|
|
these lust rituals with great desire.[43]
|
|
|
|
Such tales of perversion and criminal activity raise serious
|
|
questions. If Mike led in acts of rape and other violent crimes, why
|
|
(after his conversion) didn't he turn himself in and aid the police in
|
|
apprehending his old satanic friends? If, on the other hand, his rape
|
|
and abuse stories are not true, what does this say about the
|
|
imagination of their author?
|
|
|
|
Mike's college crowd completely rejects these stories of violence
|
|
and sexual perversion. "Oh, my goodness, no," says Phyliss. "To talk
|
|
about sex orgies and all these drug parties. He didn't do them with
|
|
Lois and me, that's for sure!"
|
|
|
|
"I never slept with him," says Lois. "We kissed and hugged, but I
|
|
never would have had sex with him because I was a very devout Catholic,
|
|
and I wanted to be a virgin till I got married. Thank God I didn't
|
|
marry him."
|
|
|
|
There always seemed to be a story. In college, as in the high school
|
|
role-playing with Jeff Nesmith, Warnke refused to drop out of
|
|
character. "He played it to the end," says Greg. "He never gave up.
|
|
That was the remarkable thing about him. We'd question him about his
|
|
stories and he always came up with some half-baked answer. And you
|
|
couldn't disprove what he was saying ÄÄthat was the common thread. It
|
|
was never anything we were likely to have the real answer for or the
|
|
time to check into. So he could say anything he wanted."
|
|
|
|
Warnke's refusal to admit to his own storytelling made him
|
|
2640
|
|
|
|
untrustworthy in the eyes of some members of the group. "I didn't know
|
|
anything about his past, so I didn't know what was true and what
|
|
wasn't," says Dawn. "I didn't feel like he was sincere in anything he
|
|
did. If the situation required him to be macho, he was macho. If it
|
|
required him to be mean, he was mean. He just sort of blended into the
|
|
situation and tried to monopolize everyone. There was nothing real
|
|
about him."
|
|
|
|
Mike and Lois Plan Their Marriage
|
|
|
|
By Christmas of 1965, Mike and Lois were seeing each other on a
|
|
daily basis. "It was pretty fast that we said we were going to get
|
|
married," says Lois. "Within two or three months of school starting, he
|
|
gave me a rose ring with a diamond in it. It cost $60. He had to make
|
|
payments on it. I thought he really loved me. And I thought I loved
|
|
him, too."
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, Warnke has gone through his drugs, sex, and
|
|
promotion to high priest before Christmas of 1965. (Trying to fit the
|
|
long list of his claims onto a real calendar is a challenge. See
|
|
sidebar, p. 18) Shirley Schrader says Mike had Christmas dinner in
|
|
Crestline with the family. "He didn't seem emaciated by drugs to me,"
|
|
she says.
|
|
|
|
College records show Mike Warnke left school after the first term.
|
|
"Most of us dropped out after the first semester," recalls Lois. The
|
|
group continued to hang out together at Mike's apartment, the
|
|
Catalanos', and elsewhere. What about the Mike in The Satan Seller
|
|
who flew around the country on satanic business trips to San Francisco
|
|
(where he allegedly met Anton LaVey), New York, and Salem,
|
|
Massachusetts? "You're a real traveling salesman for Satan, Mike, and
|
|
we want you to go to Salem and get more hip with some really serious
|
|
organization."[44]
|
|
|
|
"How could he fly when he didn't have two pennies?" asks Lois, who
|
|
adds that Mike never went anywhere, and when he did it was with her.
|
|
"If he says he was a Satanist between September of 1965 to June of
|
|
1966, he's lying. How could I not know my boyfriend was into Satanism?
|
|
I don't remember there ever being a time when we didn't see or talk to
|
|
each other every day."
|
|
|
|
Every day? "Yes," says Lois. "We went to movies together, I went to
|
|
the country club with him in the mountains, we went to the beach. We
|
|
used to go to Jay's Coffee Shop in San Bernardino. That was the big
|
|
thing. He introduced me to hot fudge sundaes. I spent the majority of
|
|
that year with him."
|
|
|
|
Lois says she and Mike used to play pool over on Highland Avenue in
|
|
San Bernardino. We read her a story from Warnke's book Hitchhiking on
|
|
Hope Street. In it Mike writes that he got into a gunfight with Ray, a
|
|
local pimp, at the pool hall:
|
|
|
|
I was drunk as a skunk when I shot at him with the .44,
|
|
because I missed him by a country mile and blew off the corner
|
|
of the pool table. . . . The two of us went roaring down the
|
|
street, screaming and shooting. . . .
|
|
|
|
. . . he . . . got off a lucky shot. It hit me in the leg and
|
|
2641
|
|
|
|
knocked me down.[45]
|
|
|
|
The predictable reaction: "Oh, my goodness. You're kidding. . . ."
|
|
Lois dissolves into laughter.
|
|
|
|
According to The Satan Seller, Mike Warnke's reign as a satanic
|
|
high priest ends, apparently sometime in the spring of 1966, when
|
|
Warnke crumples under the strain of too much responsibility and too
|
|
many drugs. On a "Focus on the Family" radio broadcast, he described
|
|
his appearance at this time: "I had white hair. It was about down to my
|
|
belt. . . . I had six-inch fingernails; I painted them black."[46] (See
|
|
picture, p. 8, taken April 30, 1966.)
|
|
|
|
Warnke says he was intentionally overdosed with heroin by one of his
|
|
live-in love slaves and thrown, naked, on the steps of a local
|
|
hospital. After a few weeks of drying out at the hospital, Warnke
|
|
escaped by joining the Navy.[47] On the ®Mike Warnke Alive!¯ album, he
|
|
describes his hair length the night before boot camp: "It hit me just
|
|
below the pockets." He continues:
|
|
|
|
The night before I went to boot camp I went to this
|
|
party. . . . I smoked a bunch of dope and ate a bunch of reds
|
|
and got crashed out in a corner. . . . But the girl I was with
|
|
decided the thing that would really be cute is if she braided
|
|
my hair. . . . She put beads with the first bunch, feathers
|
|
with the next bunch, a piece of red ribbon about that long
|
|
with the last bunch, braided it all together, and hung a
|
|
jingle bell on the end of each braid.
|
|
|
|
Lois says she was the girl who gave Mike his going-away party.
|
|
When she heard this story for the first time in 1979, she was furious.
|
|
"I couldn't believe it when I heard that!" she says. "I'm the one who
|
|
gave him the going-away party! We never touched drugs. He never had
|
|
long hair ÄÄhis hair was short, short, short!"
|
|
|
|
Greg and Dawn, who had just gotten married, offered Lois the use of
|
|
their apartment for the party. "I bought a big cake decorated with a
|
|
navy boat," Lois remembers. "It said `Ship Ahoy, Mike.' Dawn and I made
|
|
food and pop, and we had a bunch of people over. It was just clean fun.
|
|
I took him to the bus stop, put him on the bus to go to boot camp,"
|
|
Lois says. "We were supposed to get married when he finished."
|
|
|
|
Mike, Sue, and Campus Crusade
|
|
|
|
On June 2, 1966, Mike Warnke joined the U.S. Navy. During the time
|
|
he was there, he and Lois stayed in touch by letter. According to
|
|
Warnke's official story, boot camp is where he meets two Christians who
|
|
are such a bold witness for Christ that the ex-Satanist converts to
|
|
Christianity.
|
|
|
|
According to his service records, Mike Warnke graduated from boot
|
|
camp August 22, 1966.[48] His fiancee, Lois, and the Schrader family
|
|
attended graduation. "I went down with a friend and gave Mike a St.
|
|
Christopher medal," says Lois. There was a fifteen-day leave after camp
|
|
ended. During this time Lois noticed a change in Mike. "He was
|
|
different. He was carrying a Bible. I asked him about it, and he said
|
|
he'd found Christ at boot camp. He was real excited about being a
|
|
Christian, finding God." Within days Mike told Lois "he'd had this
|
|
2642
|
|
|
|
Christian conversion and he had to go on. That this was it. I didn't
|
|
see him anymore after that."
|
|
|
|
The Satan Seller, once again, tells a different story. There is,
|
|
of course, no mention of Lois Eckenrod before or after boot camp.
|
|
Instead, when Warnke returns home from boot camp, he begins dating Sue
|
|
Studer, a fellow Rim High alumnus who was soon to become his first
|
|
wife. "I turned around and was surprised to see Sue Studer, the girl
|
|
who had always dated the football heroes. Sue was still as pretty as
|
|
ever."[49]
|
|
|
|
Warnke writes that he then told Sue of his recent conversion to
|
|
Christ, and to his delight Sue replied she, too, had become a
|
|
Christian. "Sue had worked on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ at
|
|
the Arrowhead Springs Headquarters."[50]
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller, Mike Warnke says that he was chased by Campus
|
|
Crusaders attempting to convert him when he was the campus Satanist.
|
|
However, Lois and several others do remember Mike Warnke taking some
|
|
interest in religion and Campus Crusade before boot camp. "I remember
|
|
him starting to get interested in religion," Lois says. "He'd go up the
|
|
hill to Campus Crusade's headquarters."
|
|
|
|
Just how early Mike dabbled with Christianity is unclear, but at
|
|
least one witness says she saw him proclaiming faith in Christ in 1965,
|
|
a whole year before The Satan Seller says he became a Christian.
|
|
Charlotte Tweeten,[51] a 1964 Rim graduate who attended Valley College,
|
|
told Cornerstone, "It was in the fall of 1965. I know that because by
|
|
winter I had already left school. Mike Warnke came up to me while I was
|
|
sitting there drinking coffee and started proselytizing me. It was the
|
|
born-again thing. Mike was doing his religious thing and Sue Studer was
|
|
with him."
|
|
|
|
On September 7, 1966, Mike Warnke reported to Hospital Corps School
|
|
in San Diego.[52]
|
|
|
|
Mike gives us our choice of stories as to why he chose to become a
|
|
medic. In The Satan Seller he writes he joined the Hospital Corps
|
|
because "I could be of more use to God mending guys than swabbing
|
|
decks."[53] On the album Hey, Doc!, he says he joined the Hospital
|
|
Corps because of drugs and nurses: "Dope and women . . . for pay . . .
|
|
far out!"[54]
|
|
|
|
In late 1966, Warnke graduated from medic school and, after training
|
|
with the marines at Camp Pendleton, went to work at the naval
|
|
dispensary in San Diego.[55] Marriage records show Mike and Sue Studer
|
|
were married May 13, 1967, in Crestline.[56] Soon after, the couple
|
|
moved onto San Diego's Louisiana Street.
|
|
|
|
While in San Diego, the Warnkes visited Scott Memorial Baptist
|
|
Church, pastored by now well-known church leader and author Tim LaHaye
|
|
and his wife, Beverly. In The Satan Seller, Warnke offers one version
|
|
of what happened when the LaHayes visited the Warnke home. Mike says he
|
|
told Tim LaHaye about the Illuminati.
|
|
|
|
I had already told him I had been to an occult conference.
|
|
"There were some weird guys that seemed to be the real backers
|
|
of the whole thing. . . . I heard the word Illuminati."[57]
|
|
2643
|
|
|
|
"The conversation really wasn't like he put it in his book," says
|
|
Dr. LaHaye.[58] "I brought up the term Illuminati first. I had been
|
|
reading a book on the subject, and I tried testing him to see if he
|
|
really knew anything about it. He didn't seem to have ever heard the
|
|
word before."
|
|
|
|
"Mike gave us a little of his testimony," says Beverly LaHaye,[59]
|
|
who is now the head of Concerned Women for America. "He said a book
|
|
about the leaders of the Satan church had disappeared off his shelf
|
|
when he became interested in Christianity." Dr. LaHaye sums up, "His
|
|
type of personality tells stories for effect, not for accuracy."
|
|
|
|
Mike in Vietnam
|
|
|
|
In November of 1967, the Warnkes moved back to Camp Pendleton and
|
|
Oceanside. In May of 1969, Warnke was transferred from Pendleton to the
|
|
Third Marine Division, Vietnam.[60] Warnke says he spent his time in
|
|
Vietnam, like so many who served there, anesthetized from the
|
|
experience of war by drugs.[61]
|
|
|
|
The following is a list of the other things Mike Warnke says
|
|
happened to him while in Vietnam:
|
|
|
|
My faith was weakening fast![62] A buddy of mine was
|
|
killedÄÄa mortar shell landed directly on him, disintegrating
|
|
him except for his shoes.[63] I was existing from one bottle
|
|
to the next.[64] The message [a spy] was carrying was a
|
|
detailed description of myself and the skipper, identifying us
|
|
as prime targets for the Viet Cong. . . .
|
|
|
|
. . . I shot a spy, went to my tent, cooked dinner, and
|
|
ate. And something died inside of me.[65] I was the first to
|
|
enter the tent [of marines who had been "fragged"ÄÄkilled by
|
|
their own people]. [66]
|
|
|
|
Anyway, one day we were into this fire fight. . . .
|
|
Everybody is shooting at each other. . . .
|
|
|
|
. . . All of a sudden: zooooom, zonk, and my arm is
|
|
pinned to the ground with an arrow! I look over at this other
|
|
Marine Corps sergeant, who goes, "Only you, man, only
|
|
you!"[67]
|
|
|
|
One time I went through a village and was handing out
|
|
candy bars to little kids. Just standing in the back of my
|
|
Jeep. . . .
|
|
|
|
When I get done, I'm putting the box back and this
|
|
twelve-year-old kid goes in his house, comes back out with a
|
|
gun, and shoots me.[68]
|
|
|
|
Add to the list this story from Keith Schrader, Jr.: "Mike told me
|
|
that he killed a man in a bar fight in the Philippines."
|
|
|
|
Despite the impression such a long list may give, records show
|
|
Warnke was in Vietnam for only six months.
|
|
|
|
In The Satan Seller Mike says that he was wounded twice. In his
|
|
2644
|
|
|
|
second book, Hitchhiking on Hope Street, he says he was wounded five
|
|
times.[69] Military records obtained by Cornerstone show that Mike
|
|
Warnke, hospital corpsman, second class, service number B98 05 49,
|
|
received one Purple Heart, and, along with the rest of his unit,
|
|
several additional medals. The Third Marine Division he was connected
|
|
to was withdrawn from Vietnam in October of 1969 and sent to
|
|
Okinawa.[70]
|
|
|
|
Warnke was sent back to the U.S. in the spring of 1970 and for the
|
|
first time was able to see his infant son, Brendon Michael, born
|
|
December 2, 1969, while Mike was overseas. In return for reenlisting
|
|
for six more years, Mike was enrolled in cardiopulmonary school. The
|
|
Warnke family settled in San Diego.
|
|
|
|
George Wakeling,[71] who worked with young drug addicts, says he was
|
|
contacted by Mike around this time. George was the founder of the Drug
|
|
Prevention Center, or "the Hotline," a ministry to addicts at the
|
|
Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim. Mike started spending time at
|
|
the Hotline, and getting instruction from Hotline speaker Dick Handley.
|
|
It was through the Hotline that Mike made his first contacts with
|
|
Jesus Movement-era Christianity.
|
|
|
|
Mike Meets the Jesus Movement
|
|
|
|
Melodyland was one of the Southern California centers of the
|
|
charismatic renewal movement then sweeping the Church. The ex-addicts
|
|
and others who ran the Hotline were among the original Jesus People,
|
|
part of a new youth counterculture uniquely compatible with the
|
|
charismatics. Both preferred informal gatherings and a vital,
|
|
experience-oriented faith. The culturally conservative Melodyland crowd
|
|
thus understood when the exuberant young hippies suggested "getting
|
|
high on Jesus."
|
|
|
|
Both groups majored on the theme of acceptance. The mainstream
|
|
church was sadly out of touch with the needs of counterculture youth
|
|
and, even more sadly, unwilling by and large to reach out to them. But
|
|
Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God seemed to grasp
|
|
what God was doing among children of the sixties. Uncritically, without
|
|
attacking the cultural preferences of the young, many charismatics and
|
|
Pentecostals shamed their mainstream peers by being (in Paul's words)
|
|
all things to all men.
|
|
|
|
But as with nearly all revivals, there were problems with the newly
|
|
revived. The mix of uncritical acceptance plus emphasis on experience
|
|
was easily taken too far. It opened the door for various cults among
|
|
the Jesus People; it also opened the door for those with fascinating
|
|
though unprovable conversion stories.
|
|
|
|
"A lot of people came to the Hotline and told their drug
|
|
testimonies," says Ron Winckler,[72] a leader there. "Mike Warnke came
|
|
with the added attraction of the Satanist experience, which was a big
|
|
hit with the Full Gospel Businessmen and charismatics. The times were
|
|
right for that sort of testimony."
|
|
|
|
Hotline speaker Dick Handley and friends in Crestline had introduced
|
|
Mike Warnke to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Through Handley, Warnke
|
|
met Dave Balsiger, a writer who had done promo work for Melodyland and
|
|
now was media director for charismatic evangelist Morris Cerullo.
|
|
2645
|
|
|
|
After starting a youth ministry in San Diego, Cerullo had come in
|
|
contact with kids dabbling with the occult and decided to write a book
|
|
on the subject. Balsiger was assigned the job. It was during this time
|
|
he met Mike Warnke and enlisted his aid. The book was to be called
|
|
®Witchcraft Never Looked Better.¯[73] They also created a specially
|
|
outfitted trailer, purchased to house "research materials" such as
|
|
voodoo oil, graveyard dust, and fortune-telling spray. The vehicle,
|
|
dubbed the "Witchmobile," was to be unveiled at an upcoming Morris
|
|
Cerullo convention, The Seventh Deeper Life Conference.[74]
|
|
|
|
Cerullo's vision, Warnke's story, and Balsiger's media talents
|
|
combined to make the January 1972 meeting a smash. A twelve-page
|
|
tabloid on Cerullo was inserted into the ®San Diego Evening Tribune.¯
|
|
Warnke and the Witchmobile were introduced to the media at a press
|
|
conference, and at the Saturday night youth rally.[75]
|
|
|
|
Christianity Today covered the event, noting that Cerullo "bore
|
|
down heavily on the theme that satanic forces are loose in the
|
|
nation."[76] Mike Warnke, who gave a seminar on the occult, was one of
|
|
the newsmen's favorites.
|
|
|
|
After the January 1972 conference, Warnke and Balsiger parted with
|
|
Cerullo and decided to write a book together about Mike's Satanist
|
|
experience. We asked Dave Balsiger about evidence for the story told in
|
|
the book. Was he concerned about that? "Oh, yes." And what was the
|
|
evidence Mike offered for The Satan Seller's fifteen-hundred-member
|
|
cult; the all-powerful Illuminati, the intricate rituals complete with
|
|
various knives, candles, books, and robes? "Mike took me to some of the
|
|
sites." (The reader should recall that Mike's experiences had allegedly
|
|
occurred six years before the book was written.) "I saw where there had
|
|
been a fire started. And there were some indications of cultic writings
|
|
and graffiti."[77]
|
|
|
|
During the first half of 1972, Warnke had been working hard (with
|
|
the help of Morris Cerullo's organization) to get out of the navy so he
|
|
could go full-time into the ministry. "I helped him write letters,"
|
|
recalls Cerullo staffer Jean Jolly,[78] "and I got hold of
|
|
[Congressman] Del Clawson's office. We got him out of the navy." On
|
|
June 2, Warnke was granted an early discharge on conscientious-objector
|
|
basis.[79]
|
|
|
|
"As soon as he got out, Mike sent a letter to Morris Cerullo's
|
|
headquarters and said we were forbidden to use his name or his
|
|
material," recalls George Eckeroth,[80] who headed Jolly's department.
|
|
"And Balsiger left Cerullo around the same time."
|
|
|
|
Mike launched his ministry under the banner "Alpha Omega Outreach."
|
|
In mid-June, Warnke went to Explo '72 in Dallas, a sort of Campus
|
|
Crusade version of Woodstock attended by over eighty thousand.[81]
|
|
Guideposts was running a feature on Warnke's story,[82] and his book
|
|
was due in the fall.[83]
|
|
|
|
"The Satan Seller" a Best-seller
|
|
|
|
Logos International released The Satan Seller in early 1973.[84]
|
|
At that moment, Christian publishing was in the midst of an
|
|
unparalleled boom with the success of blockbusters like The Late Great
|
|
Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and the Praise books by Merlin Carothers.
|
|
2646
|
|
|
|
While the party lasted, Logos was the life of the party, the industry
|
|
leader in both output and income.[85]
|
|
|
|
Yet, as a former Logos editor has admitted, the boom-time books were
|
|
often "too quickly written."[86] That same year, Logos published
|
|
Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?,¯ the purported story of
|
|
born-again rabbi Michael Esses. A later expose revealed Esses' bogus
|
|
credentials and immorality.[87]
|
|
|
|
Into this heady atmosphere The Satan Seller was born. The book was
|
|
positively reviewed in publications ranging from Moody Monthly to
|
|
The Christian Century, with nary a question as to its
|
|
credibility.[88] "The only thing I remember about that book is that it
|
|
sold better than we thought it would," says Logos founder Dan Malachuk.
|
|
Indeed, by April 1973, The Satan Seller was a religious
|
|
best-seller.[89]
|
|
|
|
Other ex-Satanist testimonies followed Warnke's. John Todd's
|
|
warnings about the Illuminati and a conspiracy of witches were promoted
|
|
in a series of Jack Chick comic books. According to Ron Winckler, Todd
|
|
visited the Hotline once with a group of underlings to check out Mike
|
|
Warnke. "There was a backstage confrontation," says Ron Winckler."Todd
|
|
accused Warnke of stealing his material about the Illuminati."
|
|
|
|
Another alleged ex-Satanist, Hershel Smith, purchased the
|
|
Witchmobile from Morris Cerullo and began his own tour. Smith's
|
|
testimony, seen in the 1974 book The Devil and Mr. Smith, coauthored
|
|
by Dave Hunt, was an apparent effort to one-up The Satan Seller.[90]
|
|
|
|
Hershel Smith eventually dropped out of sight. Todd's story was
|
|
later discredited. When a book debunking Todd was written, Mike Warnke
|
|
wrote the forward. "We as Christians have to be careful of those who
|
|
take the name of the Lord in vain," said Warnke. [91] In Ron Winckler's
|
|
analysis, "Mike Warnke had the jump on John Todd. He understood the
|
|
Full Gospel mind-set better."
|
|
|
|
Now a published author, Mike Warnke found increasing demand for his
|
|
story and told it in coffeehouses and churches beyond the West Coast.In
|
|
August of 1973, Warnke spoke at a Christian music festival in
|
|
Pennsylvania. The Jesus Movement had spawned its own music, and Warnke
|
|
gravitated toward this fraternity of musicians. Tim Archer of the group
|
|
The Archers, told the crowd at Jesus '73, "Mike Warnke is the Chaplain
|
|
of Gospel Rock."[92]
|
|
|
|
In his travels, Warnke had met Charles Duncombe, an elderly
|
|
Pentecostal evangelist. "Brother D," who started in the ministry under
|
|
English preacher Smith Wigglesworth, was loved and respected by all who
|
|
knew him. In 1974 Mike, Sue, four-year-old Brendon, and newborn
|
|
Jesse[93] all moved to Oklahoma near Duncombe's small school, Trinity
|
|
Bible College. Mike would attend school while Sue tended children.
|
|
|
|
Trinity Bible College was a nine-month preparation for ministry,
|
|
located in a big country house outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. The thirty
|
|
students were mostly new converts, many from a counterculture
|
|
background and eager to learn. "Within two weeks of our conversion my
|
|
wife and I were in Trinity," says John Witty,[94] who with his wife
|
|
Vicki Jo had been a nightclub comedian.
|
|
|
|
2647
|
|
|
|
Fellow students Bob and Karen Siegal[95] ran a Jesus People ministry
|
|
in southern Illinois and had met Brother D at a Full Gospel
|
|
Businessmen's meeting. "We were the token hippies at FGBM," says Karen.
|
|
"They'd bring us in there and have us give our testimonies." Student
|
|
Bill Fisher, known as "Wild Bill," was a colorful local who later
|
|
became Mike Warnke's traveling partner and confidant.
|
|
|
|
In some ways Mike Warnke was the star pupil, since he was already
|
|
doing what everybody else was just learning to do: ministering in
|
|
churches around the country. "Here was a guy who was going out on the
|
|
weekends and leading hundreds to Jesus," says John Witty. "He was a
|
|
hero to us all."
|
|
|
|
On local gigs, Trinity students would tag along, sometimes even
|
|
joining Warnke on stage. "Mike liked to introduce me as a former hippie
|
|
or drug addict ÄÄwhich I'd been, but I wasn't proud of," Karen Siegal
|
|
says. "Then he started introducing me as a former prostitute, which I'd
|
|
never been. I had to ask him to stop."
|
|
|
|
Another new convert at Trinity, one with a sensational testimony of
|
|
her own, was to see her real-life story blended with Mike Warnke's.
|
|
"Part of the program at Trinity was tell your testimony," she says. "I
|
|
got up and said, `My name's Carolyn Alberty and I'm third-generation
|
|
Mafia. My father ran gambling houses, and my mother ran brothels. We
|
|
had connections in political circles and the entertainment
|
|
business.'"[96]
|
|
|
|
This story caught Warnke's interest, says Carolyn. "Mike told me he
|
|
knew me from some parties I had given in California." He convinced her
|
|
he'd been to some, though she didn't remember him. "Then he started
|
|
inquiring about my connections and ability to promote."
|
|
|
|
Carolyn rattled off a list of things Warnke needed to do to further
|
|
his ministry. "Mike brought me to his home, introduced me to Sue, and
|
|
said, `I really think Carolyn can help us.' " Carolyn assembled his
|
|
first real promotional package and called churches to make connections
|
|
for speaking engagements. She says she told Mike, "Ease up on the
|
|
satanic stuff and concentrate on the funny stories you've started to
|
|
tell."[97]
|
|
|
|
It didn't take long for the relationship to move beyond a
|
|
professional level. "Mike started telling me he and Sue had different
|
|
ideas about what they wanted out of life, and that he didn't love her
|
|
anymore," says Carolyn. "Mike began passing notes to me in class, with
|
|
stuff like `Hubba, hubba' written on them."
|
|
|
|
As the year wore on, Karen Siegal realized something was up.
|
|
"Carolyn and Mike started getting really hot and heavy," says Karen. "I
|
|
confronted them and said, `This is not godly.' They basically told me
|
|
it was none of my business." Karen took her concerns to fellow
|
|
students, but they suggested she was being judgmental.
|
|
|
|
Brother D was taken by Warnke's sincerity, says Karen. John Witty
|
|
adds that the rest of the class was too naive to realize what was
|
|
happening. "Back then, Mike and Carolyn seemed to be just what Jesus
|
|
freaks would call `brothers and sisters in the Lord.' I now realize the
|
|
relationship had warning signs all over it from the beginning."
|
|
|
|
2648
|
|
|
|
Karen Siegal protested one last time. "I'd repeatedly told Mike he
|
|
needed to clean up his act with Carolyn," she says. "One time he came
|
|
over to our house when nobody else was home. I made the mistake of
|
|
confronting him again. All of a sudden, he said, `It's not Carolyn or
|
|
Susie I love. It's you.' He grabbed me. It freaked me out and I pushed
|
|
him away. I yelled, `Get out of here! I love my husband!' "
|
|
|
|
Carolyn Alberty admits her relationship with Warnke took the
|
|
inevitable turn near the end of the school year. "We'd been assigned to
|
|
paraphrase the book of Isaiah. Mike rented a cabin outside Tulsa to do
|
|
his work, and he offered to help me with my homework there. I thought
|
|
that sounded reasonable, since I was living with the Siegals and had no
|
|
privacy."
|
|
|
|
After they'd worked at the cabin for awhile, Carolyn says, the two
|
|
went for a drive, and Warnke stopped at a convenience store. "He asked
|
|
what kind of cigarettes I used to smoke, and I said, `Pall Mall Gold.
|
|
Why?' He just shut the door and kept on walking. I went, `Uh-oh.' "
|
|
Warnke returned to the car, says Carolyn, with "two bottles of Annie
|
|
Greensprings wine, two packs of cigarettes, and a package of peanut
|
|
butter cookies." That day they began an affair that would lead to
|
|
marriage two years later and divorce two years after that. "I guess
|
|
from day one I was wrong," says Carolyn.
|
|
|
|
Meanwhile, recalls John Witty, "Mike's testimony was just starting
|
|
to break nationally. He was beginning to get calls from big churches."
|
|
|
|
Among the churches calling Warnke during this time was the Golden
|
|
Heights Christian Center in Brockport, New York.[98] Pastor Don Riling
|
|
tried his best to disciple the young Christian musicians and speakers
|
|
who came to his church. "I loved Mike Warnke as a son," he says. But
|
|
soon problems cropped up. "We had a woman in the church who'd just
|
|
become a Christian. She began to hang out with Mike WarnkeÄÄhe seemed
|
|
to have an eye for people with weaknesses," Riling says. "Later, she
|
|
confessed to me she'd met him a number of times in hotels for sex when
|
|
he was in the area."
|
|
|
|
The Syro-Chaldean Connection
|
|
|
|
During the Trinity '74-'75 school year began one of the strangest,
|
|
and longest-running, chapters of the Mike Warnke story. Elijah Coady,
|
|
an independent bishop in an Eastern Orthodox splinter group called the
|
|
Syro-Chaldean Church, ordained Warnke a deacon.[99]
|
|
|
|
Warnke had met Coady on the road, and expressed interest in the
|
|
bishop's brand of independent Eastern Orthodoxy. Several Trinity
|
|
students remember Bishop Coady's visit to Tulsa. A few were present
|
|
when Coady ordained Warnke at a local church. "The bishop wore a
|
|
strange hat, like a stack of pancakes," says Bill Fisher, who adds that
|
|
Charles Duncombe expressed some concerns about Coady. "Brother D told
|
|
us to be cool. He'd gotten a real check in the spirit about the guy."
|
|
|
|
Another ordination was bestowed upon Warnke by Brother Duncombe on
|
|
his graduation from Trinity in the spring of 1975. After graduation,
|
|
Carolyn says Warnke made promises to her but would not be rushed. "He
|
|
told me he was going to divorce Sue, that I should wait and be patient,
|
|
that he needed to set up his escape."
|
|
|
|
2649
|
|
|
|
Soon afterwards, Warnke did a show at The Happy Church in
|
|
Denver,[100] where he met Pastor Wally Hickey and his wife Marilyn.
|
|
Mike and Sue Warnke decided to move to Denver with their two children,
|
|
and Mike invited Bill Fisher and Carolyn to join him there. The
|
|
entourage arrived in Denver in August of 1975, where Mike and Sue
|
|
settled.[101] Mike had promised Fisher and Carolyn jobs with Happy
|
|
Church, but the jobs didn't materialize. Mike leased a 270-acre
|
|
mountain retreat called Joy Ranch in Evergreen, Colorado. "Mike would
|
|
go catch the plane in Denver, and I would keep the place together up
|
|
there," notes Bill Fisher.[102]
|
|
|
|
The relationship between Warnke and Happy Church is unclear. Bill
|
|
Fisher says Mike was "a kind of evangelist for them," not on the
|
|
payroll but working under Marilyn's Life for Laymen organization. An
|
|
article in the ®Denver Post¯ in October '75 identifies Warnke as "an
|
|
evangelist with Life for Laymen, a Denver-based movement."[103] The
|
|
Hickeys refused to talk with us, but their spokesperson said Warnke and
|
|
his wife attended the church during the seventies, primarily for
|
|
counseling.
|
|
|
|
According to Carolyn, Warnke now began to push for a divorce from
|
|
Sue. The Hickeys tried to reason with him. "Mike told them he and Sue
|
|
would try to work it out," says Carolyn. "But he told me he wanted out
|
|
of the marriage." Not long after, the relationship was broken between
|
|
Mike Warnke and The Happy Church.
|
|
|
|
In November 1975, Mike was invited to do a show at the Adam's Apple
|
|
coffeehouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana.[104] Christian artists Nancy
|
|
Honeytree and Phil Keaggy were recording a concert that night. The tape
|
|
kept rolling during Warnke's part of the show. A proposed
|
|
Keaggy/Honeytree live album didn't materialize, but the Warnke tape
|
|
found a buyer in Myrrh Records, a subsidiary of Word, Inc.[105]
|
|
|
|
Another Christian artist Mike had done concerts with on the road was
|
|
Randy Matthews. Randy, along with Wes Yoder, was co-owner of Dharma
|
|
Artists Agency, a fledgling Christian management company based in
|
|
Matthews' garage in Nashville. After talking with Matthews, Warnke and
|
|
Carolyn flew to Nashville, where he signed with the company.[106]
|
|
"While Wes was signing Mike, he asked me to work with Dharma," says
|
|
Carolyn. "Wes said he'd split my bookings down the middle, fifty-fifty.
|
|
Mike said, `I can't beat that. He may get half of me, but I get half of
|
|
it back.' So I became a working member of the team."
|
|
|
|
During this time Brockport, NY, pastor Don Riling[107] continued to
|
|
befriend Warnke. He was growing more and more concerned over what was
|
|
going on in Mike and Sue's marriage. "On several occasions Mike had
|
|
told me and my wifeÄÄcrying and the whole bitÄÄ`Sue doesn't love me.
|
|
She's kicked me out,' " Riling says. "Mike kept saying how all he
|
|
wanted to be was a family man, to raise his two boys. I told him he'd
|
|
have to choose between the road and his family." According to pastor
|
|
Riling, Marilyn Hickey then visited the Rilings. "I asked Marilyn,
|
|
`Isn't there anything we can do to persuade Sue to go back to Mike?'
|
|
Marilyn about fell out of her chair. She said, `What are you talking
|
|
about? Sue loves Mike. She wants to save their marriage. Mike is the
|
|
one who wants to end it.' Then it was my turn to be surprised. All I'd
|
|
known about the marriage problems before this was that Mike said Sue
|
|
was cheating on him."[108]
|
|
|
|
2650
|
|
|
|
Riling flew to Denver in the late summer of 1976 on a desperate
|
|
mission to try to save the marriage. On arriving, Riling said he found
|
|
Mike had left Sue and the two children and had moved into an apartment
|
|
with Carolyn. So Riling met with Sue. "She wanted to get back together
|
|
with Mike. Sue said at one time she had dated another man, but she was
|
|
plugged into Hickey's church and her attitude was `I just want to be
|
|
with my husband.' I think Mike saw it as his chance to dump Sue."
|
|
(Carolyn told us that Mike had urged both Sue and herself to go out
|
|
with others when he was away on the road. Finally, Carolyn says, Sue
|
|
did go out once with her to a dance hall.)
|
|
|
|
After talking with Sue, Pastor Riling stayed with the Hickeys but
|
|
spent most of his time with Mike and Carolyn. Riling got his
|
|
information about Carolyn from Warnke: "Mike was out on the road, and
|
|
he had supposedly led this gal Carolyn to Jesus. Before then, she had
|
|
run these houses of ill repute. Mike told me he had to bring her home
|
|
to help rehab her, and she lived right there with Sue."
|
|
|
|
During the visit, Riling didn't let up. "Every opportunity I could,
|
|
I pleaded with Mike to go back to SueÄÄfor the sake of his marriage,
|
|
for the sake of his ministry. Mike wouldn't hear anything about leaving
|
|
Carolyn." Riling was in a restaurant with Warnke when Mike told him Sue
|
|
was being served with divorce papers that very moment. (The summons is
|
|
dated August 20, 1976.)[109] His mission a failure, the pastor returned
|
|
to New York.
|
|
|
|
Upon receiving the divorce petition, Sue Warnke called Ron Winckler
|
|
and George Wakeling, along with others, and asked for prayer, saying
|
|
Mike had run off with another woman.
|
|
|
|
It was at this point that Dr. Walter Martin, a well-known
|
|
counter-cult apologist and founder of Christian Research Institute
|
|
(CRI), was asked to speak to Mike about his marriage difficulties. (Dr.
|
|
Martin died in 1989.) Gretchen Passantino was Martin's senior research
|
|
consultant at the time, in charge of CRI's research staff, [110] and
|
|
her duties included overseeing Walter Martin's travel arrangements.
|
|
|
|
"Dr. Martin had a speaking engagement near Denver and asked me to
|
|
book a couple extra days so he could speak with Mike Warnke and his
|
|
wife, Sue," says Gretchen. "When he got back, he took me aside. He
|
|
said, `I had this real difficult meeting with Mike and Sue Warnke. I
|
|
hope what I did was enough.' Realizing that Mike was determined to
|
|
leave the marriage, Dr. Martin had prayed and counseled with both of
|
|
them, advising Mike he needed to leave the ministry."
|
|
|
|
Mike & Carolyn in Music City
|
|
|
|
®Harmony¯ magazine was ®the¯ Christian music magazine in the
|
|
mid-seventies, and in September 1976, Mike Warnke was on the
|
|
cover.[111] During this era, Mike relocated to what was becoming the
|
|
center of the contemporary Christian music business. Jesus music began
|
|
to be shaped by the powerful influence of Nashville, country music
|
|
capital and home of the Gospel Music Association (GMA). The "music"
|
|
part was welcomed in Music City. As for Jesus, insiders there have a
|
|
saying: "Nashville has changed more Christians than Christians have
|
|
changed Nashville."[112]
|
|
|
|
Mike and Carolyn pulled into town with a U-Haul trailer. "Mike and I
|
|
2651
|
|
|
|
moved into an apartment together," says Carolyn. "Once we'd moved in,
|
|
Mike went and bought cases of whiskey, different wines, and beer." At
|
|
the time, of course, Warnke was still married to Sue. Among their
|
|
Nashville Christian music friends, the only ones to protest Mike and
|
|
Carolyn's living arrangements was a couple they had met on the road,
|
|
Mike and Karen Johnson.[113]
|
|
|
|
Though many of our readers may be unacquainted with Mike Johnson, he
|
|
was a Jesus music pioneer, starting his first Christian band in 1968.
|
|
According to many Jesus music historians, Johnson never received
|
|
recognition equal to the dues he paid and miles he and Karen logged on
|
|
the coffeehouse and church basement circuit.
|
|
|
|
When Mike Warnke came to town with Carolyn, Karen Johnson wanted to
|
|
know what was going on. "We said, `Hey, what about Sue?' Mike told us,
|
|
`She's running around on me.' I called Sue, and she said that wasn't
|
|
true. She said Mike found this other woman and he wanted to marry her.
|
|
And the only way you could get a divorce in the Christian community was
|
|
to say somebody had been unfaithful."
|
|
|
|
Out of their concern, the Johnsons orchestrated another meeting with
|
|
mutual acquaintance Don Riling. "We thought Mike Warnke was a mess and
|
|
wanted him to get help," says Karen. "Don Riling was the only pastor
|
|
that Warnke opened up to and submitted to in any form. He was like a
|
|
father figure to Mike." Mike Johnson told the Rilings that Warnke had
|
|
asked him to be best man in his wedding with Carolyn. "We pushed for a
|
|
meeting," says Karen Johnson. "Wes set it up. Don Riling flew to
|
|
Nashville."
|
|
|
|
The meeting was held at the Dharma offices. Riling, Mike Johnson,
|
|
Wes Yoder, and Mike and Carolyn were there. "You'd have never guessed
|
|
that this was a meeting of Christians," says Riling. "Mike and Carolyn
|
|
were swearing the whole time, and they must have gone through a whole
|
|
pack of cigarettes." The meeting went on for hours in an effort to get
|
|
everything out on the table with Warnke. "He moped around, saying his
|
|
life was a mess," says Riling. "I tried to convince him to go back to
|
|
Sue and save his ministry."
|
|
|
|
At one point in the meeting, Carolyn brought up Warnke's continuing
|
|
affair with the woman at Riling's church in Brockport. "Mike was still
|
|
very involved with her," says Carolyn. Pastor Riling was struck by the
|
|
bizarreness of the situation: "I'm sitting there listening to this
|
|
woman Warnke was committing adultery with talk about how Mike was
|
|
cheating on her."
|
|
|
|
As the meeting bogged down, Riling took Wes Yoder aside and tried to
|
|
make him understand the gravity of the situation. "Wes wouldn't deal
|
|
with it," says Riling. "He knew Mike Warnke had a problem, but Wes was
|
|
young and inexperienced. Wes said to Mike, `Do whatever you want to.
|
|
Stay with this woman. Go back to your wife. It's okay. I'm behind you,
|
|
because we have to keep the ministry going.' Mike Johnson was horrified
|
|
by this," says Riling.
|
|
|
|
Carolyn says she also gave Wes advice: "I thought Mike Johnson was
|
|
being sanctimonious and Don Riling was a joke. Wes came to me and said,
|
|
`What's going on?' I said, `Look, the guy's a joke. He's trying to get
|
|
his paws on Mike, but you've got him signed and if you don't keep him
|
|
it's your fault.' So it was really us against them."
|
|
2652
|
|
|
|
Wes Yoder says of those days, "I should have run Warnke out of town
|
|
when he first showed up with Carolyn. I was stupid. I didn't miss it. I
|
|
just didn't know what to do about it. I was sinful in allowing him to
|
|
use me as a cloak of decency for what he was doing. The Lord doesn't
|
|
bless in things like that."[114] Karen Johnson forgives Wes for his
|
|
part in the debacle, saying, "Here he was, this young guy trying to be
|
|
a part of Christian music, and he's involved with all these crazy
|
|
people."
|
|
|
|
Carolyn says the meeting accomplished nothing. "Nobody I ever met
|
|
who was around or who was connected with Mike Warnke in any way ever
|
|
had any effect on him." The day after the meeting, Mike Johnson left
|
|
Dharma. His path then began to lead downward by degrees. It was also
|
|
after this meeting, says Carolyn, that Mike Warnke initiated her in
|
|
what he called an Indian ceremony. "We were at a motel, and he said,
|
|
`I'll show you how much I love you.' He took a pocket knife and cut his
|
|
wrist, and cut mine, and mixed our blood. He said, `Now we are one.' He
|
|
gave himself the name Many Horses ÄÄbecause I was part American Indian."
|
|
|
|
Bill Fisher said, "Mike told me he got the name Many Horses from an
|
|
Indian medicine man." Bill Fisher told us, explaining the Indian
|
|
identity as one of Warnke's many "mojos": "Mike would personify himself
|
|
as various characters at times. Mike had his Indian mojo, or sometimes
|
|
he'd be a Scotsman, or Jewish, or a Catholic priest, or Jeremiah
|
|
Johnson, or black ÄÄhe wanted to think he had black blood because Andre
|
|
Crouch told him he had soul."
|
|
|
|
The divorce of Mike Warnke from Sue was finalized on December 3,
|
|
1976.[115] Mike and Carolyn were married four months later.[116]
|
|
Instead of Mike Johnson, Wes Yoder was best man.
|
|
|
|
Downhill into the Bigtime
|
|
|
|
In his books and on his records, Mike Warnke goes from Satan to
|
|
Christ. In Nashville, the path led from rags to riches. Warnke had no
|
|
money or credit when he came to town, says Carolyn. The bang-up
|
|
combination of a hit record and the Dharma Agency soon changed
|
|
that.[117] And the money started rolling in. "Lots of money," says
|
|
Carolyn. "Not all of a sudden. But it wasn't uncommon for us to make
|
|
five thousand dollars on the road, spend two to three thousand a day,
|
|
buy whatever we wanted, go where we wanted, do whatever we wanted."
|
|
|
|
The Dharma Agency prospered. During this period, they moved their
|
|
offices from Randy Matthews' garage to Music Row, and later to a
|
|
penthouse suite in the United Artists Towers. They hired additional
|
|
booking agents.[118] Dharma's star rose with the fortunes of something
|
|
that was now called contemporary Christian music.
|
|
|
|
Writes Christian media observer William D. Romanowski, "The industry
|
|
scaffolding began to go up as concert halls replaced coffeehouses and
|
|
church fellowship halls, as record labels replaced custom recordings,
|
|
and as contemporary music radio formats replaced tapes of
|
|
preachers. . . .
|
|
|
|
Christian entrepreneurs were building a Christian entertainment
|
|
industry that paralleled its secular counterpart not just in musical
|
|
styles and trends, but in marketing techniques, management, concert
|
|
production, publicity, and glamorization."[119]
|
|
2653
|
|
|
|
The whole atmosphere surrounding the music changed. "We took our
|
|
eyes off what had been very precious and innocent," says industry
|
|
veteran, Dan Hickling, "the joy of being a Christian and going around
|
|
and singing music for people that would bring them closer to God."[120]
|
|
|
|
Buddy Huey, Word Records' artists and repertoire man, who had signed
|
|
Warnke, was part of the big change.[121] "What we were trying to do was
|
|
have better distribution to get the Word out. We ended up compromising
|
|
lots. When I was with Word, the intent of the company was nothing more
|
|
than trying to find those people who had a voice or a platform. And
|
|
then all we could go on was what they told us." Including Warnke's
|
|
satanic story? "It was just accepted," says Huey. "That's one of the
|
|
things you'll find in the industry. You see something that might be
|
|
salable, marketable ÄÄthat's what you look at. It saddens me that I was
|
|
a part of setting up things in the industry that I wish I had a chance
|
|
to undo."
|
|
|
|
Romanowski writes, "Evangelism was the rhetoric, business became
|
|
reality." The manipulation of language, he says, transformed
|
|
"money-making into ministry, easing the consciences of those few who
|
|
earn healthy incomes off the music."[122]
|
|
|
|
"You could see a kind of downhill slide," says Larry Black, a
|
|
one-time Christian deejay who is now an actor.[123] "To see the
|
|
marriages dissolve, to see them slowly begin to justify various vices."
|
|
Was this behavior common knowledge in the industry? "Yeah. I think
|
|
there was general knowledge. But you're caught in that old trap of not
|
|
wanting to criticize a brother."
|
|
|
|
We asked Buddy Huey if there was any company policy regarding
|
|
Christian artists who were exhibiting non-Christian behavior. "No,
|
|
there really wasn't," says Buddy Huey. "I didn't personally do cocaine,
|
|
for instance, but I was present when others did cocaine. Looking back
|
|
at that, I think my silence was worse than them doing the drugs."
|
|
|
|
Scott Ross, who now works for CBN Television and back then was the
|
|
country's foremost Christian disk jockey, recalls how kinky things had
|
|
gotten. "There was a lot of immorality, drugs, and booze."
|
|
|
|
Says Karen Johnson, "Mike [Johnson] tried to stay so straight, for
|
|
eight years. Then everything fell apart after we'd been in Nashville
|
|
for awhile. Mike looked around and realized that Warnke and his friends
|
|
were making lots of money and fooling around on their wives. My husband
|
|
thought, `What difference does it make?' He started drinking, smoking
|
|
grass. He started hanging around with these Christian music people that
|
|
didn't care if you were moral or not."
|
|
|
|
Says Mike Johnson, "I was one big mess." Adds Karen, "When my Mike
|
|
came home from being on the road with Warnke, he'd confessÄÄall in the
|
|
name of repentance ÄÄto all this drinking and going to discos.
|
|
|
|
In the fall of 1978, the future seemed bright for Mike Warnke. His
|
|
albums were "the most popular Christian comedy records ever produced
|
|
anywhere, with sales reaching to nearly 200,000."[124] Doubleday
|
|
Publishing was assembling a book of material from the first three
|
|
albums. With dates around the world, 1979 was slated to be his biggest
|
|
tour ever. Mike asked Bill Fisher to travel with him.
|
|
|
|
2654
|
|
|
|
At home, Carolyn says she and Mike had been fighting, and that
|
|
several times he had hit her. Because of this, Carolyn's mother, Peggy
|
|
Alberty, had moved to Nashville to be near her daughter.
|
|
|
|
Enter Rose, Exit Nashville
|
|
|
|
Warnke was on the road almost constantly. "We figured it out one
|
|
time," says Bill Fisher. "We traveled over 280,000 air miles in about
|
|
ten months that year, with three days off a month." About halfway
|
|
through the whirlwind ten-month tour, Warnke performed in Hazard,
|
|
Kentucky.[125] It was there, says Rose Hall, that she first met Mike
|
|
Warnke.[126]
|
|
|
|
Carolyn confirms this story. "While Mike and I were still married,
|
|
he went to Kentucky to do a show, and that's where he met Rose."
|
|
Carolyn says Mike came home very excited about something. "Then he went
|
|
down to a jewelry store where we'd established credit and began buying
|
|
jewelry for someone else, who I later found out was Rose."
|
|
|
|
The story of Mike Warnke's romance with Rose Hall is told in her
|
|
book, The Great Pretender. Rose never mentions Carolyn or the fact
|
|
that Mike was married to Carolyn during his courtship with Rose. She
|
|
says she met Warnke in various cities and stayed in the hotel with
|
|
himÄÄin separate rooms. "Looking back, it had never occurred to me to
|
|
say, `You're a minister, an evangelist; are you married?' It never
|
|
entered my mind."[127]
|
|
|
|
During the time she was traveling around with Warnke, Rose says she
|
|
went with him to Nashville. There, she writes, both his road manager
|
|
and his agent objected to the relationship.[128] Wes Yoder says, "Rose
|
|
came along before Mike and Carolyn were divorced. The whole thing with
|
|
Carolyn, I couldn't deal with personally. With Rose I did. But I was
|
|
still there. I was so wrong."
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke's relationship with the Johnsons went from bad to worse.
|
|
As Karen Johnson tells it, "Mike called on the phone and said he wanted
|
|
to come over, because he knew I was angry at him over what had happened
|
|
to my Mike. I told him no, that I felt he was leading people astray,
|
|
and I didn't want him associating with my husband because he was
|
|
helping destroy our marriage. But later Warnke came over anyway and
|
|
said, `Karen, I don't want you to dislike me. I want us to be friends.'
|
|
I said, `Then change what you're doing. You're deceiving people. You're
|
|
committing adultery.' He said, `I can't change.' "
|
|
|
|
After Karen told Warnke to get out, "He came at me like he was going
|
|
to kill me." Mike Johnson says of this episode, "I was in pretty good
|
|
shape back then, and I was ready to go at it there in the living room."
|
|
Warnke left, says Karen, "screaming obscenities at me."
|
|
|
|
The end for Mike Warnke and wife Carolyn was, as she tells it, the
|
|
stuff of melodrama. "We were fighting and he threw me into a wall and
|
|
split my head open. He said, `If you go to a local hospital and tell
|
|
them what your name is, I'll kill you. I don't have to do it
|
|
physically. I can do it from another room or another state.' "
|
|
|
|
"There was a revolver in the nightstand," Carolyn says. "I took it
|
|
out and said, `If you hit me again Mike, I'm gonna kill you, because
|
|
I'm tired of your beatings. I just can't take any more.' " Carolyn says
|
|
2655
|
|
|
|
she jumped into her car, started driving, and didn't stop until she
|
|
reached Pensacola, Florida.
|
|
|
|
Tom Carrouthers found Carolyn in a convenience store in Pensacola
|
|
that summer night in 1979, dazed and bleeding. "Carolyn said she and
|
|
her old man had gotten into it," says Carrouthers.[129] "She had a big
|
|
gouge on the top of her head, and a wad of dried blood. I took her to
|
|
the hospital. When we got there, she was like a kid and didn't want me
|
|
to leave. She stayed with my sister and me for a week or so."
|
|
|
|
Carolyn gave us a note she received from Mike. "Dear Carolyn," it
|
|
reads, "I don't know how we ever got to this place. All I know for sure
|
|
is that we are here. . . . I can't blame you for not wanting to be
|
|
around me right now. Nor can I condemn your disgust at my rages and
|
|
tantrums. I'm trying hard to get control. . . . I'll always be there
|
|
when you need me. The scar on my wrist will never fade. . . . Peace
|
|
to you. Many Horses."
|
|
|
|
Carrouthers remembers Carolyn talking with Warnke on the phone
|
|
during the two weeks she was there; things seemed to be improving. But
|
|
when Carolyn finally returned to Nashville from Florida, she was in for
|
|
a surprise. "I came home and there was a `For Sale' sign on the house.
|
|
All the locks had been changed, and everything in the house was gone.
|
|
In just a matter of days, I had no funds, no furniture, nothing," she
|
|
says.
|
|
|
|
Carolyn didn't go back to Dharma. She felt most of the people she
|
|
knew in the industry had been siding with Mike, who was telling
|
|
everyone the stories about her unfaithfulness. In a bizarre twist,
|
|
Carolyn got a job working as an undercover narcotics operative with the
|
|
Regional Organized Crime Information Center, a law enforcement
|
|
organization in Nashville.
|
|
|
|
Mike and Carolyn's divorce was final on November 29, 1979.[130] Mike
|
|
Johnson says Warnke told him that Carolyn was rubbed out by the mob,
|
|
"bludgeoned to death in a ditch." A friend from the Trinity days,
|
|
Clarence Benes, heard from Warnke that Carolyn had been killed in a
|
|
boating accident.[131] Don Riling says he was told by Warnke that
|
|
Carolyn had drowned.
|
|
|
|
From Carolyn's viewpoint, "Mike is one of the greatest con artists
|
|
I've ever known in my life. And coming from my background, that says
|
|
quite a bit."
|
|
|
|
Mike and Karen Johnson divorced two years later, and he is no longer
|
|
in Christian music. "Mike Johnson has really reaped what he has sown,"
|
|
says ex-wife Karen. "He has no family, no friends, no career, no money,
|
|
no life. It makes me angry that Mike Warnke, on the other hand, seems
|
|
to be making money, going on with life, and continuing to deceive
|
|
people."
|
|
|
|
Among the friends that took a different path than Warnke at the end
|
|
of 1979 was Bill Fisher. "Mike and I parted when he moved to Kentucky
|
|
to be with Rose," says Bill. "He was divorced, but that's not grounds
|
|
for moving in with someone. Mike said, `We married each other before
|
|
the Lord.' I said, `Do it before the state, too.' "
|
|
|
|
Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky
|
|
2656
|
|
|
|
Mike Warnke married Rose Hall in Paintsville, Kentucky, on January
|
|
2, 1980.[132] It was his third marriage, her fourth. With the marriage
|
|
came several changes: Rose was often onstage and on record with
|
|
Mike;[133] Warnke left Dharma Agency and began to book his own
|
|
concerts; the public focus shifted from onstage concerts to the
|
|
ministry back home.[134] As Mike has said: "When you get right down to
|
|
it, I'm just a glorified cheerleader. The real work of our ministry
|
|
goes on back there."[135]
|
|
|
|
The name of the "ministry back there" was Warnke Ministries; its
|
|
nonprofit status was listed under "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in
|
|
Kentucky" (HOCCK). This built on Warnke's previous 1974 ordination in
|
|
Tulsa by Bishop Elijah Coady while Warnke was attending Trinity Bible
|
|
School. With HOCCK, Mike Warnke joined the ranks of "independent"
|
|
Eastern Orthodox churchmen who founded their own autonomous
|
|
denominations. During the early eighties, Warnke met James Miller, a
|
|
local bishop in the American Orthodox Church. Miller told us he
|
|
ordained Warnke a deacon and then a priest in early 1983. He suspended
|
|
the ordination later when Warnke failed to submit regular reports.
|
|
|
|
And then Mike Warnke became a bishop. This final ecclesiastical step
|
|
occurred when another independent bishop, Richard Morrill, consecrated
|
|
Warnke ÄÄan event we have verified by speaking to three other bishops
|
|
who say they were told by the late Morrill that he had indeed made Mike
|
|
Warnke a bishop.[136]
|
|
|
|
Bishop Richard Morrill had officiated over Mike and Carolyn's
|
|
marriage in Nashville.[137] According to Elijah Coady, Morrill was an
|
|
itinerant cleric given to flamboyance and the founding of
|
|
organizations, many of which seemed to exist only on paper. In 1981,
|
|
Morrill incorporated in Texas under the name "The Holy Orthodox
|
|
Catholic Church, Eastern and Apostolic."[138] One year later, Mike and
|
|
Rose incorporated as "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentuck-
|
|
y."[139]
|
|
|
|
HOCCK's offices were located at first in a converted garage behind
|
|
the Warnkes' Versailles home.[140] As time went on, they staffed it
|
|
with a series of Christian women whose opinions of the Warnke ministry
|
|
were much higher when they joined than when they left. In the summer of
|
|
1983, Dorothy Green heard Rose on a Lexington Christian radio station
|
|
and invited her to speak to the Danville, Kentucky, Women's Aglow.[141]
|
|
Soon afterwards, "Dot" was hired to answer letters and do phone
|
|
counseling. Dot's friend, Jan Ross, joined later as Rose's personal
|
|
secretary. Roxanne Miller and Phyllis Swearinger eventually worked in
|
|
the bookkeeping department.
|
|
|
|
All four women were nonplussed by Mike's preference for High Church
|
|
"chapel" services. Dot remembers an early chapel service with Mike: "He
|
|
had incense, and he'd come down the aisle with his robes, swinging it
|
|
in this thing."
|
|
|
|
Roxanne Miller's opinion had less to do with the High Church
|
|
trappings than with an event where Mike's ritual got in the way of a
|
|
few friends' prayer time. "We used to go down to the park for lunch,"
|
|
Roxanne recalls.[142] "Dot, Jan, myself, a few others . . . and we'd
|
|
just talk about what God had done in our lives. What He still was
|
|
doing. Mike was usually out of town, but one day he just showed up and
|
|
said, `I'm gonna do the teaching this week.' So we sang, and then Mike
|
|
2657
|
|
|
|
put on his robes. I thought he was plain ridiculous. It was like
|
|
dressing up to be something you're not. It made me feel sad. He wants
|
|
to be so much, and he isn't. I can still see him standing there in his
|
|
robe, all velvet and dark."
|
|
|
|
The Ministry and the Money
|
|
|
|
Another point which perplexed the women was HOCCK's finances.
|
|
Roxanne Miller had been hired to get control of the finances and says
|
|
that while she was there (1985-1986) HOCCK covered various expenses for
|
|
Mike and Rose. "We paid for the car, we paid for the gas, we paid for
|
|
the parsonage, we paid for their clothes and their food," she says. Yet
|
|
she says her job was a continual battle of the budget. Mike seemed to
|
|
have no concept that money made by a nonprofit ministry is different
|
|
than personal income. Once, she says, Mike Warnke responded to her
|
|
efforts to curb his spending this way: "He told me, `Every bit of the
|
|
money is mine. I earned it. If I wasn't out front, there would be no
|
|
money.' "
|
|
|
|
Jan Ross told us, "On several occasions Rose said to me that anybody
|
|
who was in the position she and Mike were in deserved to have the best
|
|
of everything because of who they were and what they had given up to be
|
|
where they were. I thought, `What did you give up?' "[143]
|
|
|
|
Phyllis Swearinger said there were problems making ends meet.[144]
|
|
"I'd worked at banks before, so I was used to handling large amounts of
|
|
money. But the amount that came in here every week sort of threw me.
|
|
And then to find out it just wouldn't go far enough! Once Mike called
|
|
me, upset because he needed some trees pruned at his home, and I
|
|
wouldn't write a check for it because we didn't have enough money in
|
|
the account at the moment. What struck me about this conversation is
|
|
Mike told me he felt he deserved to make as large a salary as Jimmy
|
|
Swaggart was making."
|
|
|
|
The Warnkes' home was certainly in line with his high aspirations.
|
|
Back in July of 1983 Rose's mother, Blanche Hall, had purchased a huge
|
|
mansion (at one time a plantation) near Danville. "Lynnwood Farm" was
|
|
leased to HOCCK for several years and later sold to Rose, who with Mike
|
|
referred to it as "the parsonage."[145]
|
|
|
|
Tax returns indicate HOCCK's total revenue for 1984 was over
|
|
$900,000. In 1985 HOCCK grossed over $1,000,000, with over $500,000 in
|
|
love offerings alone. In 1986, the total went over two million: love
|
|
offerings brought in over $1,000,000; product sales (i.e., books and
|
|
records) grossed over $180,000; and direct public support totaled over
|
|
$450,000. The 1987 total was $2,239,927. Revenue figures for 1988
|
|
through 1990 continued at slightly over $2,000,000.[146]
|
|
|
|
HOCCK tax returns show that the Warnke's personal salaries[147]
|
|
steadily rose (see Table 1).
|
|
|
|
==============================================
|
|
Table 1: Warnke's annual income
|
|
----------------------------------------------
|
|
MIKE ROSE
|
|
1984: $ 34,500 $ 11,500
|
|
1985: $ 95,617 $ 83,417
|
|
1986: $163,632 $155,418
|
|
2658
|
|
|
|
1987: $177,450 $177,450
|
|
1988: $183,917 $183,917
|
|
1989: $204,383 $204,383
|
|
1990: $239,291 $230,291
|
|
==============================================
|
|
|
|
|
|
The growth of Warnke Ministries in the mid-eighties paralleled a
|
|
sudden explosion of public fears about Satanism. In March of 1985, Mike
|
|
Warnke appeared on an ABC "20/20" report called "The Devil
|
|
Worshippers," part of a deluge of talk shows and books on contemporary
|
|
Satanism. Stories of hideous satanic crimes were often woven together
|
|
by self-proclaimed "experts" to demonstrate the existence of a
|
|
worldwide satanic conspiracy similar to the Illuminati network outlined
|
|
in The Satan Seller.
|
|
|
|
Each year, goes the theory, thousands of children are being
|
|
sacrificed in satanic rituals laced with sex and violence. Alleged
|
|
adult survivors of satanic ritual abuse testify to the hidden cult's
|
|
existence. The Satan Seller seems tame in comparison. Yet when
|
|
evidence for the conspiracy is requested, true believers (including a
|
|
few therapists and police officers) often refer skeptics to Warnke and
|
|
his book as a final authority.[148]
|
|
|
|
In the early eighties, when Mike and Rose began to speak about their
|
|
Kentucky ministry to audiences on the road, they offered descriptions
|
|
typically centered around their work helping victims of the occult
|
|
ÄÄlike "Jeffy."
|
|
|
|
"Supposedly, Jeffy was this little boy who had become a vegetable
|
|
because of all the satanic abuse he'd had," says Jan Ross. "The story
|
|
was used to raise money to `help all the Jeffys of the world, so there
|
|
wouldn't be so many Jeffys.' Mike would say, `What if your child was
|
|
sent to preschool and this happened? How'd you like this to happen to
|
|
your child?' "
|
|
|
|
The home office would always know when Mike was telling the Jeffy
|
|
story, says Dot Green. "People would write on the offering envelopes,
|
|
`This is for all the children like Jeffy.' It was amazing how many
|
|
envelopes would come back with Jeffy's name on it. Mike always had to
|
|
count the money after a concert and call Rose to give her an idea of
|
|
what was there," Dot continues. "She'd ask if he'd told the Jeffy
|
|
story. If he hadn't, she'd say, `You tell the Jeffy story tomorrow
|
|
night.' " Several staffers say the Warnkes' interest in the at-home
|
|
ministry never made it home from the road. Says Dot, "I'd try to tell
|
|
them about somebody who wrote needing help, and they didn't want to
|
|
hear."
|
|
|
|
Adds Jan Ross, "We didn't get that many calls, maybe four or five
|
|
actual calls a day. Some people just wanted attention, but every once
|
|
in a while there'd be people with real problems. Mike and Rose just
|
|
didn't want to deal with them. They'd go on the road and say, `We're
|
|
here to help you,' but when you called they didn't want to deal with
|
|
you."
|
|
|
|
For a while, Dot Green tried to ignore everything at Warnke
|
|
Ministries that wasn't connected to her counseling duties. "I loved my
|
|
job so much," she says. "I fooled myself into thinking it was my
|
|
2659
|
|
|
|
ministry, since Mike and Rose didn't seem to have any interest in it.
|
|
But I started realizing the people I was writing to were sending in
|
|
offerings. I always put a pink offering envelope in with each letter. I
|
|
began marking my envelopes so I could tell which came back with my
|
|
mark. The month I left, my letters brought in over $21,000. At that
|
|
point, the Lord let me know I was just as guilty as they were as long
|
|
as I stayed."
|
|
|
|
Jan Ross was in the midst of her own struggle. The staff attended a
|
|
series of Warnke shows in Cincinnati. "We did this concert; it was just
|
|
a super evening. Then we walked out and went to a bar. The Warnkes were
|
|
buying rounds of drinks, dancing. I kept thinking the whole time, I
|
|
wonder if anybody's going to come in and recognize them."
|
|
|
|
Roxanne remembers that trip. "We went to Cincinnati once. It just
|
|
grossed me out. They went out and drank and carried on afterwards, Mike
|
|
and the road guys. I said, `I just can't handle this.' "
|
|
|
|
Dot Green and Jan Ross left Warnke Ministries at the end of 1985.
|
|
Roxanne Miller was fired in February 1986 (for refusing to give Rose
|
|
several signed, blank checks, she says), and Phyllis quit soon after.
|
|
"It's not been something we have forgotten easily," says Jan Ross.
|
|
"It's scary to think you can get involved with something like that with
|
|
a pure heart, to serve God, and then find out it's run on deception,
|
|
lies, and thievery."
|
|
|
|
Warnke Ministries continued to expand. In October of 1986, the
|
|
Warnkes purchased property in Burgin, Kentucky, which they then sold to
|
|
HOCCK.[149] A newsletter announced that a long-promised "Center" was
|
|
about to become a reality. Plans included rehab and medical facilities.
|
|
"Phase I" was the construction of an administration building.[150]
|
|
|
|
The fund-raising campaign began. "This Center is fast becoming a
|
|
reality and will be a reality if ®you¯ make it one," said Mike in a
|
|
ministry newsletter. "Your gifts, offerings, and prayers enable Warnke
|
|
Ministries to continue its missions."[151]
|
|
|
|
By April of 1987, Warnke Ministries was able to move to Burgin and
|
|
into their beautiful new colonial-style brick office complex.[152]
|
|
|
|
Dr. John Cooper worked for a short time in this building. In the
|
|
late eighties, Warnke Ministries opened a seminar department to teach
|
|
police and others the gruesome facts about Satanism and occult crime.
|
|
Dr. Cooper, a former college professor and author of twenty-nine books,
|
|
was hired in 1989 as director.
|
|
|
|
Cooper has this to say about the Warnkes' "Center": "They were
|
|
raising money for a children's center for refugees from Satanism. Phone
|
|
calls would come to my office, people wanting to send kids there. I'd
|
|
explain to them that there wasn't any such thing there, only a building
|
|
with offices. The only parts of that building not dedicated to getting
|
|
Mike speaking engagements or handling receipts were a large room set up
|
|
like a Greek Orthodox Church and a library."[153]
|
|
|
|
Cooper disputes the Warnkes' claim of 50,000 counseling calls and
|
|
letters a month.[154] "There isn't any way in the world for that to be
|
|
so," he says. "My guess would be, on a daily basis, they might get 6
|
|
calls." (Such a figure, if accurate, would translate to 120 calls per
|
|
2660
|
|
|
|
month.) "The only ministry I know of that went on there was one fellow
|
|
who worked part-time answering the phone. And he'd usually just give
|
|
out other ministry numbers and tell people to call them."
|
|
|
|
John Cooper spent several months preparing a seminar presentation,
|
|
which he premiered in May. Shortly afterwards, he was fired. He later
|
|
tried suing the Warnkes, but the case died in court.
|
|
|
|
A more important court case for Warnke Ministries was the 1991
|
|
divorce of Mike and Rose. According to the Warnkes' new book,
|
|
®Recovering from Divorce,¯ the serious problems in the marriage date as
|
|
far back as November 1984. In the book, Rose notes an "It's over, isn't
|
|
it?" talk with Mike that took place in his office in December of
|
|
1984.[155]
|
|
|
|
Some comparison with Rose's previous book is enlightening. Written
|
|
in mid- to late 1985, The Great Pretender reveals how Rose caught
|
|
Warnke in an "affair" in 1984. "We had a situation this last year when
|
|
we felt there was nothing left between us. We weren't communicating,
|
|
and Satan provided a woman to fill the gap in Michael's life."[156]
|
|
|
|
The conversation in the first book goes like this:
|
|
|
|
He began to tell me there's nothing to this and that I'm
|
|
misunderstanding it all.
|
|
|
|
"Okay, okay," I growled, "I don't want to hear it. If you're
|
|
not going to tell the truth, don't say anything. . . . You're
|
|
throwing your ministry away, your life, the whole works. I'll
|
|
guarantee you, people will not accept this. You're not going
|
|
to go through another divorce and people accept it."[157]
|
|
|
|
Rose says she threatened on Christmas Eve to call the woman, and
|
|
Mike responded by moving out. Later, after Warnke had promised to end
|
|
the relationship, Rose found out he was still calling the woman. Says
|
|
Rose, "He hid all the guns. Michael's a big gun collector, and I know
|
|
how to shoot. . . . I said, `I'll continue running the ministry, I'll
|
|
get myself established ministry-wise, then I don't care what you do.
|
|
You're not going to wreck my life. I'll establish myself. You do what
|
|
you want."[158]
|
|
|
|
These incidents go unmentioned in the new book. Instead, Recovering
|
|
from Divorce presents a rather psychologized story of a marital
|
|
mismatch, doomed from the start. While the Warnkes are evasive on the
|
|
exact reasons, they make it clear their marriage was a painful
|
|
experience for both of them. Court records say the couple last lived
|
|
together in October of 1989.[159]
|
|
|
|
Despite her earlier warnings in The Great Pretender about how
|
|
people would not accept another divorce, Rose Warnke filed for divorce
|
|
on September 4, 1991. A property settlement agreement drawn up by
|
|
Rose's attorney and signed by both Mike and Rose was filed the same
|
|
day.[160]
|
|
|
|
Blanche Hall had deeded Lynnwood Farm to Rose in April of 1991. In
|
|
the divorce property settlement, Rose was also awarded 327 additional
|
|
acres surrounding the farm, which the couple purchased in April 1991
|
|
for $525,000 (despite the fact that they hadn't lived together there
|
|
2661
|
|
|
|
since October, 1989.)[161] Mike Warnke also agreed to pay half the
|
|
mortgage for the new acreage.[162]
|
|
|
|
Additionally, Rose got a condominium the Warnkes owned in Stewart,
|
|
Florida (purchased in May, 1986, for $398,000), and another condominium
|
|
the couple owned near Danville (purchased in July, 1989, for
|
|
$231,500).[163] Further, Rose got everything in all the houses
|
|
mentioned above, plus the Yamaha piano, the 1985 Cadillac, and the
|
|
couple's four horses.
|
|
|
|
Mike also agreed to pay Rose $8,000 per month ($96,000 per year) for
|
|
the rest of her life via a wage assignment out of Mike's salary from
|
|
HOCCK. Mike agreed to assume responsibility for paying various liens,
|
|
pay for the education of Rose's daughters until the year 2001, divide a
|
|
$15,000 IRA with Rose, and also split the debt to their accountant.
|
|
|
|
Rose also got 65 percent of Warnke's ownership of his copyrights for
|
|
and royalties from absolutely everything he will make from his books
|
|
and recordings. Mike agreed to keep various existing life insurance
|
|
policies and take out an additional $2 million life insurance policy on
|
|
himself, with Rose as the beneficiary, for the next fifteen years.
|
|
|
|
Finally, Mike agreed to pay Rose $20,000 to equalize the division of
|
|
property.
|
|
|
|
In the same property settlement, Mike Warnke was awarded whatever
|
|
property was located at the condo where he was staying, his motorcycle,
|
|
and visiting rights to the horses.
|
|
|
|
October 2, 1991, the Warnkes' divorce was granted.[164] The local
|
|
paper quoted a ministry spokesman who said nothing would change. Rose,
|
|
who was identified as the music director and an administrator, would
|
|
continue to do separate shows and possibly make joint appearances with
|
|
Mike.[165]
|
|
|
|
When it came time for Mike Warnke to announce his third divorce
|
|
officially to the friends of Warnke Ministries, he used a rationale
|
|
which he was sure his fellow believers would respect: He did it, he
|
|
said, for the ministry.
|
|
|
|
"As many of you know," wrote Warnke, "Rose and I, after seeking the
|
|
Lord's guidance, and two years of intensive Christian counseling,
|
|
accepted the fact that our marriage was beyond reconciliation, and the
|
|
only hope of saving the Ministry we have poured our lives into, was
|
|
divorce."[166]
|
|
|
|
Six weeks after his divorce was finalized, on November 18, 1991,
|
|
Mike Warnke married Susan Patton, an old Rim High classmate, and moved
|
|
to California.[167]
|
|
|
|
As of this writing, Mike and Rose are scheduled to appear together
|
|
at the Christian Booksellers Association convention in late June, where
|
|
they will be promoting their new book, Recovering from Divorce.
|
|
According to CBA press material, the Warnkes will be available for
|
|
interviews to discuss their "unique perspective on the troublesome
|
|
issue of divorce."
|
|
|
|
Their unique perspective: forgive and forget. In the book, Mike and
|
|
2662
|
|
|
|
his ex-wife share the pain of their relationship and parting; then the
|
|
experiences are interpreted by their editor, Lloyd Hildebrand, and
|
|
therapist, John Joy. There is much talk of how sad divorce is, and much
|
|
assigning of blame to dysfunctional backgrounds and a codependent
|
|
relationship. Although they could not be married, Mike and Rose
|
|
conclude, they can now be friends.
|
|
|
|
"Perhaps no one is ready for this book," writes Mike. "Could being
|
|
`up front' about our failure cost it all? That's the chance I must
|
|
take. Rose feels the same way. We both have come to the place where we
|
|
know that the only real choice we have is to go on ®as
|
|
ourselves.¯"[168]
|
|
|
|
For those who would raise objections to what is, indeed, in the
|
|
Christian Church a "unique" perspective, Mike Warnke fires a preemptive
|
|
blast. "So I messed up. Does that change who Jesus is?"[169] Likewise,
|
|
he decries "the Gospel Gestapo" who feel bound to discover and
|
|
publicize the failures of those in ministry, "even if the evidence
|
|
proves to be true."[170]
|
|
|
|
After our research was complete, we contacted Mike in early May to
|
|
set up an interview with him, to which we had invited some other
|
|
Christian leaders (Ron Enroth, Don Riling, and others). Mike declined
|
|
our interview and said he would only meet with us at his attorney's
|
|
office in Kentucky. We considered this a matter for the Body of Christ,
|
|
with no lawyers being necessary, and asked about the possibility of
|
|
meeting somewhere convenient for everyone. Mike's response: that we
|
|
have no further contact with him except through his attorney. This
|
|
ended our communication.
|
|
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2663
|
|
|
|
This concludes a long and painful survey of the life and ministry of
|
|
Mike Warnke. We did not prepare it lightly, but solemnly and with
|
|
counsel from many dedicated ministers.
|
|
|
|
A Biblical Plan of Action
|
|
|
|
We would be remiss in our duty as Christian journalists if we could
|
|
not offer some concrete suggestions and reflections.
|
|
|
|
Some of our readers will expect us to have followed the steps of
|
|
Matthew 18:15-17, starting with a private confrontation. This passage
|
|
gives Christ's instructions on what to do "if your brother sins against
|
|
you," and the process stops if the brother repents privately. We have
|
|
two remarks on this passage.
|
|
|
|
First, Mike has already been confronted numerous times over the
|
|
years by many concerned Christian friends, acquaintances, and church
|
|
leaders. Mike knows what the Bible says about truthfulness, integrity,
|
|
and fidelity. He is responsible to put into practice what he already
|
|
knows.
|
|
|
|
Second, this is not a private dispute between Mike Warnke and a
|
|
magazine. A public figure is susceptible to public scrutiny and
|
|
criticism. Matthew 18 is not violated when public figures are publicly
|
|
rebuked. (However, other scriptures are violated if the rebukes being
|
|
made are not fair, true, or applicable to the person.)
|
|
|
|
Mike has sinned against the public for years, and the public is
|
|
entitled to know the truth about his claims and actions. The
|
|
misinformation about Mike's testimony is still in circulation,
|
|
influencing how Christians view contemporary Satanism. For the sake of
|
|
the Church and the watching world, it must be corrected. (A more
|
|
complete discussion of the biblical grounds for Christian reporting
|
|
appears in the article, "Public Trust," on page 5.)
|
|
|
|
The statements made in this report are factual and verifiable.
|
|
Anybody can read Mike's book, study its time line, and see that there
|
|
is no way for him to have done the things he claimed in ®The Satan
|
|
Seller.¯ Mike's former fiancee, his roommates, relatives, and cohorts
|
|
in school emphatically contradict his claims on everything from hair
|
|
length to drug use and from out-of-town trips to "love slaves" in his
|
|
apartment. Mike's own friends refused to sign an affidavit that his
|
|
Satanism testimony was true.
|
|
|
|
If Mike has any real evidence to disprove what we've offered here,
|
|
we're willing to print it. However, the evidence we have uncovered
|
|
leads us to the conclusion that Mike doesn't have any. One thing is
|
|
certain: the Church should not let the master storyteller get by with
|
|
telling just another story: "There really ®was¯ a satanic coven; they
|
|
just didn't talk to the right people. . . ."
|
|
|
|
At this stage, excuses aren't sufficient. Mike needs to provide
|
|
either evidence or repentance. It is not enough to make religious
|
|
excuses for sin or sophisticated attempts to change the subject: "Those
|
|
girls came on to me, and I was at a vulnerable point in my life. . . ."
|
|
"The person who said `the Christian Church is the only army to shoot
|
|
its own wounded' was totally right. . . ." "It's not up to you to judge
|
|
my actions. Last time I read my Bible, Jesus was sitting on the throne,
|
|
2664
|
|
|
|
and He's not about to get off and let you take His place. . . ."
|
|
|
|
This is sidestepping. It's a move to change the subject and get away
|
|
from calling one's actions sin and asking for forgiveness. The issues
|
|
are whether Mike has told the truth, whether he is fit for public
|
|
ministry, and whether he meets the standards for biblical leadership.
|
|
Like it or not, by addressing thousands of people he is assuming a
|
|
pastoral role, regardless of what he calls himself.
|
|
|
|
If Mike were to seek forgiveness and restoration, what could the
|
|
Church expect to see as evidence of the genuineness of his repentance?
|
|
The following principles should apply to any Christian leader who has
|
|
manifestly fallen.
|
|
|
|
Repentance. Repentance is fundamental to Christianity. It denotes a
|
|
complete turnaround, heading in the opposite direction than previously.
|
|
Like "to love," to repent is a verb denoting action. Nobody wants to
|
|
see another Jimmy Swaggart crying crocodile tears on camera but
|
|
returning to save "the ministry" three months later . . . and returning
|
|
to the same sin after that. In Mike Warnke's case, true repentance
|
|
would necessitate complete withdrawal from public ministry.
|
|
|
|
Confession. If Mike is repentant, he should make an open admission of
|
|
guilt. On the other hand, Mike Warnke has built a career of telling us
|
|
about past and present sins. The Church must not allow him to emerge as
|
|
a new authority on fraudulent testimonies.
|
|
|
|
Restitution. True moral change involves some attempt to undo past
|
|
wrongs and to provide some kind of restitution. Perhaps the best kind
|
|
of restitution Mike Warnke could perform would be to take ®Satan
|
|
Seller¯ and all his other products off the market.
|
|
|
|
What about the rest of us? Accountability is a public as well as a
|
|
personal matter. Christian publishers have an obligation to validate
|
|
the books they print, whether nonfiction or historical fiction books.
|
|
At the same time, it is ®our¯ responsibility as the book-buying public
|
|
to ask for evidence before accepting a story.
|
|
|
|
After Warnke's testimony began circulating, those few who knew the
|
|
truth kept silent: they felt powerless against the immensity of the
|
|
story. Where could they turn? Well, the publisher would be a place to
|
|
start. We need the active participation of all members of the Body of
|
|
Christ in provoking each other to righteousness and, where necessary,
|
|
in providing biblical confrontation and counsel.
|
|
|
|
Sometimes a twisted man can preach a straight gospel. Through the
|
|
years, we've known many people who could speak truth while ignoring it
|
|
in their personal lives. Scripture testifies that God may bless or
|
|
anoint a sermon even while condemning the deeds of the preacher (Num.
|
|
23-24, 2 Pet. 2:15, Matt. 23:3).
|
|
|
|
Yes, the love of God is truly as infinite and wondrous as Mike
|
|
Warnke has been telling us for twenty years. God loves Mike Warnke as
|
|
he really is ÄÄex-Satanist, war hero, Ph.D.ÄÄor not. His choice now is
|
|
no different than it has ever been: losing the whole world or losing
|
|
his soul. For no one can know the love of God whose heart is closed to
|
|
the truth.
|
|
|
|
2665
|
|
|
|
Perhaps he has never stopped feeling like an outsider, and even when
|
|
Christianity opened its arms to him, he would not give up his
|
|
storytelling. His adolescent flirtation with the occult was exaggerated
|
|
into a postadolescent fantasy of having incredible amounts of money,
|
|
sex, prestige, and power as a Satanist. He later achieved money, sex,
|
|
prestige, and power. Sadly, it was in the name of Christ.
|
|
|
|
It's not too late for Mike to change, if he wants to. The secular
|
|
press may scoff, and those who consider themselves real Satanists may
|
|
snicker, but the Jesus of the Bible is still the God of truth. The
|
|
Lord, who makes ruined lives whole and restores purity to harlots and
|
|
liars, offers each of us forgiveness and acceptance. Not on our terms,
|
|
but His.
|
|
|
|
To Mike, and all others, who have been tempted to sacrifice the
|
|
truth for the sake of "the ministry," we can offer no better words than
|
|
these of the apostle Paul:
|
|
|
|
Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received
|
|
mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden
|
|
things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the
|
|
word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth
|
|
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
|
|
of God. (2 Cor. 4:1-2)
|
|
|
|
ENDNOTES
|
|
|
|
1. Coauthor David Balsiger, in his biographical sketch, says The
|
|
Satan Seller has sold only 500,000 copies.
|
|
|
|
2. So-called satanic panic has led to tragedy in many cases. For
|
|
further information, see Jon Trott, "Satanic Panic," Cornerstone 20,
|
|
iss. 95 (1991): 9.
|
|
|
|
3. Mike Warnke marriage licenses. Interview, Fr. Bob Nagler, St.
|
|
Francis Cabrini Church, Crestline, CA.
|
|
|
|
4. Interview, Mildred Warnke Jordan; Al Warnke obituary, Manchester
|
|
Times, 17 Oct. 1958.
|
|
|
|
5. Mildred Warnke Jordan; Larry Nee, Manchester Times, 16 Oct. 1991,
|
|
spoke with local undertaker, who referred to his notes on Louise
|
|
Cooper.
|
|
|
|
6. Interview and letter, Shirley Schrader.
|
|
|
|
7. "Final Rites for A. J. Warnke," Manchester Times, 17 Oct. 1958.
|
|
|
|
8. Mike Warnke Alive!, Mike Warnke, Myrrh Records, 1976.
|
|
|
|
9. Interview, Edna Swindell.
|
|
|
|
10. Interviews, Keith Schrader, Jr.
|
|
|
|
11. Interview, Tim Smith.
|
|
|
|
12. Interviews, Jeff Nesmith.
|
|
|
|
2667
|
|
|
|
13. Interview, David Goodwin.
|
|
|
|
14. Interview, Terry Smith Perry.
|
|
|
|
15. Confirmation certificate (see above).
|
|
|
|
16. Charles Donovan, San Bernardino Valley College ref. librarian.
|
|
|
|
17. Warnke, Michael Alfred, USN, #B98 05 49.
|
|
|
|
18. Mike Warnke, Schemes of Satan (Tulsa, OK: Victory House, 1991),
|
|
87.
|
|
|
|
19. Interviews, Greg Gilbert.
|
|
|
|
20. Interviews, Dennis Pekus.
|
|
|
|
21. Interviews, Dawn Andrews.
|
|
|
|
22. Interview, Dyana Cridelich.
|
|
|
|
23. Mike Warnke, with Dave Balsiger and Les Jones, The Satan Seller,
|
|
(Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1972), 18.
|
|
|
|
24. Interviews, Lois Eckenrod.
|
|
|
|
25. Satan Seller, 19.
|
|
|
|
26. Satan Seller, 14.
|
|
|
|
27. Interview, John Ingro.
|
|
|
|
28. Interviews, George Eubank.
|
|
|
|
29. Satan Seller, 19.
|
|
|
|
30. Interview, Phyllis Catalano.
|
|
|
|
31. Interview, Mary Catalano.
|
|
|
|
32. Interview, Tom Bolger.
|
|
|
|
33. Satan Seller, 19.
|
|
|
|
34. Satan Seller, 19, 20.
|
|
|
|
35. Satan Seller, 30.
|
|
|
|
36. Satan Seller, 33.
|
|
|
|
37. Satan Seller, 100, 101.
|
|
|
|
38. In 1981, Logos went bankrupt and sold its titles to Bridge
|
|
Publishing, which has since been purchased again. The new owners were
|
|
unable to locate any affidavits, signed or otherwise, for The Satan
|
|
Seller.
|
|
|
|
39. Interviews, Bill Lott.
|
|
2668
|
|
|
|
40. Satan Seller, 64, 65.
|
|
|
|
41. Satan Seller, 29.
|
|
|
|
42. Satan Seller, 28.
|
|
|
|
43. Schemes of Satan, 73.
|
|
|
|
44. Satan Seller, 90, 91.
|
|
|
|
45. Mike Warnke, Hitchhiking on Hope Street (Garden City, NY:
|
|
Doubleday & Company, 1979), 63, 64.
|
|
|
|
46. "Focus on the Family" broadcast, 16 March 1985.
|
|
|
|
47. Satan Seller, 112-114, 116, 121.
|
|
|
|
48. Naval records show Warnke was transferred out of Recruit Training
|
|
Command on 22 August 1966. This is also the date he gives on his video
|
|
Do You Hear Me? as the day he became a Christian.
|
|
|
|
49. Satan Seller, 135.
|
|
|
|
50. Satan Seller, 137.
|
|
|
|
51. Interview, Charlotte Tweeten.
|
|
|
|
52. Navy Records.
|
|
|
|
53. Satan Seller, 136.
|
|
|
|
54. Mike Warnke, Hey, Doc!, 1978, Myrrh Records; Also, Hitchhiking
|
|
on Hope Street, 34.
|
|
|
|
55. Completed Hosp. Corps School 12/22/66; Reported to Field Med.
|
|
Serv. School, Camp Pendleton; 1/5/67; Reported to Naval Adcom, San
|
|
Diego, 2/7/67.
|
|
|
|
56. Certificate of Registry of Marriage, San Bernardino co., CA.
|
|
|
|
57. Satan Seller, 149, 150.
|
|
|
|
58. Interviews, Tim LaHaye.
|
|
|
|
59. Interview, Beverly LaHaye.
|
|
|
|
60. Transferred to Third Marine Division, Vietnam, 5/2/69.
|
|
|
|
61. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1 (1991), 4.
|
|
|
|
62. Satan Seller, 163.
|
|
|
|
63. Ibid., 165.
|
|
|
|
64. Ibid., 166.
|
|
|
|
65. Ibid.
|
|
|
|
2669
|
|
|
|
66. Ibid., 168.
|
|
|
|
67. Hitchhiking on Hope Street, 42, 43.
|
|
|
|
68. Ibid., 45.
|
|
|
|
69. Ibid., 42.
|
|
|
|
70. "Decorations and Awards: Good Conduct Medal, Combat Action Ribbon,
|
|
Vietnam Service Medal, Purple Heart, Republic of Vietnam Campaign
|
|
Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Meritorious
|
|
Unit Citation; Warnke transferred home 3/1/70.
|
|
|
|
71. Interview, George Wakeling.
|
|
|
|
72. Interview, Ron Winckler.
|
|
|
|
73. Don Musgraves, director of Cerullo's Youth Action Center in San
|
|
Diego, interview: "It was during those times that I began to have heavy
|
|
contact with people coming out of the occult . . . "; Peter Brown,
|
|
"Dropout Heads WitchcraftFight," San Diego Union, 15 January 1972, 1;
|
|
"Evangelism Group Fights Witchcraft," San Diego Union, 22 January
|
|
1972, p. 5B; Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos
|
|
Journal, May/June 1972, 39, 40.
|
|
|
|
74. Interview, Morris Cerullo; Balsiger, "Insider's Report;" Christian
|
|
Life, March 1972, 12.
|
|
|
|
75. Dave Balsiger, et al., "It's Happening Now," insert, San Diego
|
|
Evening Tribune, 17 January 1972. (See Roddy, below: " . . . Cerullo,
|
|
surprisingly unassuming in contrast to the image created by his flashy
|
|
PR people . . . ") Peter Brown, "Dropout Heads Witchcraft Fight"; John
|
|
Dart, "Converted `Priest' Offers Guided Tour of Satanism," Los Angeles
|
|
Times, 19 January 1972, Sec. C, Part II, 1; "Evangelism Group Fights
|
|
Witchcraft"; Balsiger, "Insider's Report."
|
|
|
|
76. Lee Roddy, "Morris Cerullo Crusade: A New Anointing?" Christianity
|
|
Today, 18 February 1972, 52-53.
|
|
|
|
77. Interview, Dave Balsiger.
|
|
|
|
78. Interview, Jean Jolly.
|
|
|
|
79. Navy Records, date of discharge, 2 June 1972.
|
|
|
|
80. Interview, George Eckeroth.
|
|
|
|
81. "YEAR END REPORT and APPEAL FOR ASSISTANCE," Alpha Omega Outreach,
|
|
Rev. Mike Warnke, president, January, 1973.
|
|
|
|
82. Michael Warnke, "When Evil Fights Back," Guideposts, Nov. 1972,
|
|
22-26.
|
|
|
|
83. Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos Journal,
|
|
July-August 1972, 54.
|
|
|
|
84. Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos Journal,
|
|
Nov-Dec 1972, 56.
|
|
2670
|
|
|
|
85. John P. Ferre, "Searching For the Great Commission: Evangelical
|
|
Book Publishing Since the 1970s," in American Evangelicals and the
|
|
Mass Media, ed. Quentin J. Schultze (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan,
|
|
1990), 99-101.
|
|
|
|
86. David Hazard, "Decatrends in Christian Publishing," Charisma,
|
|
August 1985, 140.
|
|
|
|
87. Michael Esses, Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?
|
|
(Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1973); Betty Esses DeBlase,
|
|
Survivor of a Tarnished Ministry (Santa Ana, CA: Truth Publishers,
|
|
1983).
|
|
|
|
88. James Danne, "Demonic Spirits," Christian Century, 4 July 1973,
|
|
738; Paul Nevin, "On Selling Your Soul to the Devil," Moody Monthly,
|
|
July-August 1973, 52.
|
|
|
|
89. Dave Balsiger Biographical Sketch.
|
|
|
|
90. James E. Adams, "Regards Peril of the Occult As Worse Than That of
|
|
Drugs," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 29 November 1972; Hershel Smith with
|
|
Dave Hunt, The Devil and Mr. Smith (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell
|
|
Company, 1974); James H. Brewster, "Rolling Along with the
|
|
Witchmobile," Probe the Unknown magazine, March 1973, 22-25;
|
|
Interview, Jean Jolly.
|
|
|
|
91. Darryl E. Hicks and Dr. David A. Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon
|
|
(Harrison, AK: New Leaf Press, 1979), foreword by Doug Wead and Mike
|
|
Warnke.
|
|
|
|
92. Don Cusic, "Mike Warnke: Jester in the King's Court,"
|
|
Contemporary Christian Music, June-July 1979, 130; Paul Baker,
|
|
"Two-Fold Laughter from Mike and Rose," Contemporary Christian Music,
|
|
December 1982, 14.
|
|
|
|
93. Jesse Joshua Warnke was born 4/18/74, according to Susan L. Warnke
|
|
Response, Civil Action D17252, District Court, Adams County, CO.
|
|
|
|
94. Interview, John Witty.
|
|
|
|
95. Interview, Karen Siegal.
|
|
|
|
96. "Holdup Victim Named as Call Girl's Queen," Long Beach
|
|
Press-Telegram, Evening Final, 8 January 1971, identifies Carolyn's
|
|
mother as "kingpin of a local prostitution racket . . . " Police call
|
|
incident "the latest rounds in a mob war over control of prostitution
|
|
in the LB-LA area."
|
|
|
|
97. Bill Hance, "That One-Liner Religion is Good Enough for Him," The
|
|
Nashville Banner, January 13, 1978, 30: "Until four years ago, he was
|
|
`just one of those preachers. . . . So, I started lightening my
|
|
testimony by telling jokes . . . '"
|
|
|
|
98. Bill Fisher says he flew with Warnke to Brockport while they were
|
|
still in Trinity (Fall '74-Spring '75). Fisher has a photo of himself
|
|
and Warnke on stage in Brockport, dated October 1975, and another photo
|
|
of himself and Warnke there, dated June 1976.
|
|
|
|
2671
|
|
|
|
99. See Dave Medina, "Former Rabbi Named Chaldean Archbishop," Logos
|
|
Journal, Nov-Dec 1972, 58.
|
|
|
|
100. Carol O'Connor, "Ex-Satanist Happier with Christ," The Denver
|
|
Post, 20 June 1975, 4BB.
|
|
|
|
101. Petition For Dissolution of Marriage, D-17252, confirm Warnke
|
|
moved to Colorado in August 1975.
|
|
|
|
102. March 1976 is the date on a photograph of Bill Fisher at Joy
|
|
Ranch.
|
|
|
|
103. Virginia Culver, "Devil-Worshippers Called Possible Cattle
|
|
Mutilators," The Denver Post, 5 October, 1975, 31.
|
|
|
|
104. The back cover of Mike Warnke Alive! notes "Recorded Live at:
|
|
Adam's Apple, Fort Wayne, Indiana, November 14, 1975."
|
|
|
|
105. The story of the recording of the album is told in Cusic, "Jester
|
|
in the King's Court," 28; Paul Paino interview.
|
|
|
|
106. Affidavit with Respect to Financial Affairs, Civil Action
|
|
D-17252, Adams County District Court, CO, 8/6/76. Warnke lists his
|
|
employer as "Dharma Productions, 807 Redwood Cr, Nashville, TN."
|
|
|
|
107. Interview, Dan Riling.
|
|
|
|
108. According to Petition for Dissolution, D-17252, Mike and Sue last
|
|
lived together January 1, 1976.
|
|
|
|
109. Date based on Mike Warnke's statement to Don Riling that Sue was
|
|
served while Riling was in Denver. The Affidavit of Service says Sue
|
|
Warnke was served Aug. 20, 1976, at 8:42 am.
|
|
|
|
110. Interviews, Gretchen Passantino. Two other CRI staffers also
|
|
contributed information regarding this meeting.
|
|
|
|
111. Cover story by Peggy Hancherick, "Mike Warnke, Jester in the
|
|
King's Court," Harmony, vol. 2, no. 3, 8-9. Full-page ad for "Mike
|
|
Warnke Alive!", 11.
|
|
|
|
112. This saying was related to us by Frank Edmonson (aka Paul Baker),
|
|
ex-DJ, writer, and popular historian of Jesus Music. Edmonson worked
|
|
for Word at the time Warnke was signed, and played a key role in the
|
|
signing.
|
|
|
|
113. Interview, Mike and Karen Johnson.
|
|
|
|
114. Interview, Wes Yoder.
|
|
|
|
115. Decree of Dissolution of Marriage, Civil Action D-17252, Adams
|
|
County District Court, CO, 12/3/76.
|
|
|
|
116. Marriage Certificate, Davidson County, Tennessee, 4/25/77.
|
|
|
|
117. "When Mike Warnke Speaks, the World Listens!", Myrrh records ad
|
|
in Contemporary Christian Music (hereafter, abbreviated CCM),
|
|
Februrary 1979, 26.
|
|
2672
|
|
|
|
118. See 21-page commemorative section celebrating Dharma Agency's
|
|
10th anniversary in the February 1982 issue of CCM.
|
|
|
|
119. William D. Romanowski, "Contemporary Christian Music: The
|
|
Business of the Music Ministry," in American Evangelicals, Quentin
|
|
Schultze, ed., above, 152, 155.
|
|
|
|
120. Interview, Dan Hickling.
|
|
|
|
121. Interview, Buddy Huey.
|
|
|
|
122. Romanowski, 144, 151.
|
|
|
|
123. Interview, Larry Black.
|
|
|
|
124. "When Mike Warnke Speaks, etc."
|
|
|
|
125. Itinerary in May 1979, CCM.
|
|
|
|
126. Rose Hall Warnke with Joan Hake Robie, The Great Pretender
|
|
(Lancaster, Pa.: Starburst Publishers, 1985), 73-74.
|
|
|
|
127. Rose Hall Warnke, The Great Pretender, relates her romance with
|
|
Mike, 73-85; quote cited on page 79. Carolyn is never mentioned, nor
|
|
that Warnke was married during this time, only the note, "He, too, had
|
|
been previously married." Final Decree, Sumner County Court, 11/29/79,
|
|
shows Warnke filed for divorce from Carolyn on 8/27/79, summons served
|
|
8/30/79. cf. The Great Pretender, 83: "In September of 1979, Michael
|
|
said, `I want to marry you.'" CCM itinerary shows Mike Warnke
|
|
scheduled to play Sept. 28-29, 1979, in Canada. Rose says she went to
|
|
Canada with Mike (p. 83).
|
|
|
|
128. Rose Hall Warnke, The Great Pretender, 81-82.
|
|
|
|
129. Interview, Tom Carrouthers.
|
|
|
|
130. Final Decree, Circuit Court for Sumner County, TN, 11/29/79.
|
|
|
|
131. Interview, Clarence Benes.
|
|
|
|
132. Certificate of Marriage, Johnson County, Kentucky, 1/2/80.
|
|
|
|
133. Mike and Rose Warnke, "First-Hand Rose," CCM, April 1981, 50;
|
|
"Road Rap," CCM, July 1982, 51; Paul Baker, "Twofold Laughter from
|
|
Mike & Rose," CCM, December 1982, 14.
|
|
|
|
134. Warnke, Great Pretender, on booking, 119, on accounting, 148.
|
|
|
|
135. Television interview with Mike Warnke, "Believer's Lifestyles,"
|
|
Channel 52, Orlando, Florida, 2/2/91, air-date 2/22/91.
|
|
|
|
136. Interviews, Elijah Coady; Joseph Morse; William Schillereff.
|
|
|
|
137. Marriage Certificate, Davidson County, Tennessee, 4/25/77.
|
|
Marriage "was solemnized by Mar Apriam I."
|
|
|
|
138. Articles of Incorporation, The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church,
|
|
Inc," dated 12/23/81. Pamphlet "This We Believe, Holy Orthodox Catholic
|
|
2673
|
|
|
|
Church, Eastern and Apostolic" is dated 1977, copyright by "His
|
|
Beatitude, Mar Apriam I, Patriarch."
|
|
|
|
139. Articles of Incorporation, 11/19/82, for "The Holy Orthodox
|
|
Church in Kentucky, Inc."; Certificate of Assumed Name, 11/4/83, HOCCK
|
|
authorized by to do business under name "Mike Warnke & Associates.";
|
|
Certificate of Assumed Name, 3/1/88, HOCCK authorized to do business
|
|
under name "Warnke Ministries." "HOCCK, Inc. dba" appears on Warnke
|
|
Ministries letterhead.
|
|
|
|
140. Mike Warnke, "The Root of the Problem," CCM, Februrary 2, 1981;
|
|
Rose Warnke, "Little Keys Unlock Big Doors," CCM, July 1981, 54; Land
|
|
Contract, 7/1/81, for 153 Elm Street, Versailles, between Warnkes and
|
|
Virginia Wiglesworth, her husband James, for $180,000.
|
|
|
|
141. Interviews, Dorothy Green.
|
|
|
|
142. Interviews, Roxanne Miller.
|
|
|
|
143. Interviews, Jan Ross.
|
|
|
|
144. Interviews, Phyllis Swearinger.
|
|
|
|
145. Deed, Equitable Relocation Management Corporation and Blanche
|
|
Hall, 7/29/83, for $235,000. Deed, Blanche Hall and Rose Hall, 3/1/91,
|
|
for "the sum of One ($1.00) dollar, cash in hand paid, and the
|
|
Grantor's love and affection for her daughter."
|
|
|
|
146. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, HOCCK, 1984-1990
|
|
Forms.
|
|
|
|
147. Ibid.
|
|
|
|
148. One well-known example: James G. Friesen, Ph.D., Uncovering the
|
|
Mystery of MPD (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here's Life Publishers, 1991),
|
|
uses Warnke's book in both text and footnotes to bolster far-reaching
|
|
claims concerning a satanic cult conspiracy.
|
|
|
|
149. Deed, Lelia Mann Brown, et al. and Michael A. Warnke and Rosemary
|
|
H. Warnke, 10/28/86, for $20,395.70. Deed, Michael Warnke and Rosemary
|
|
Warnke and HOCCK, for "the sum of $1.00 and as a gift, contribution,
|
|
and donation."
|
|
|
|
150. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1st Quarter, 1987, 1.
|
|
|
|
151. Ibid.
|
|
|
|
152. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1st Quarter, 1988, p. 2 " . . .
|
|
by the time you receive this newsletter, we will be moved into the new
|
|
building."
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|
153. Interviews, Dr. John Cooper.
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154. Cf. Rose Warnke, Great Pretender, 181, "At ministry
|
|
headquarters we get some 50,000 letters and telephone calls each
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|
month."
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155. Michael A. Warnke & Rose Hall Warnke, Recovering From Divorce,
|
|
2674
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|
(Tulsa: Victory House, Inc.), 22-25.
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|
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156. Rose Warnke, Great Pretender, 86.
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|
157. Ibid, 87-88.
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158. Ibid, 88-90.
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|
159. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, 9/4/91.
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|
|
160. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, Mercer Circuit Court,
|
|
Kentucky (#91-CI-00274), Rose Hall Warnke vs. Michael A. Warnke,
|
|
9/4/91; Response, Entry of Appearance, and Waiver by Respondent,
|
|
9/4/91; Separation and Property Settlement Agreement, 9/4/91.
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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|
2675
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161. Lynnwood Farm, see above note. Deed, Land Owners, L.P., and
|
|
Michael A. Warnke and Rose H. Warnke for new acreage, 4/19/91, for
|
|
$525,000.
|
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|
|
162. Mortgage, American Fidelity Bank & Trust, Corbin, KY, 9/10/91,
|
|
Rose Hall Warnke and Michael A. Warnke for $250,000. Mortgage, State
|
|
Bank & Trust Company, Harrodsburg, KY, 9/27/91, Rose Hall Warnke and
|
|
Michael A. Warnke, for $31,500.50.
|
|
|
|
163. Deed, Charles W. Pistole and Michael and Rose Mary Warnke,
|
|
5/30/86, for 2001 Salifish Point, Apt. 308, Stuart, FL for $398,000.
|
|
Deed, Mary & Clinton Woodard and Michael A. Warnke and Rose H. Warnke,
|
|
7/24,89, for Chimney Rock property for $231,500.
|
|
|
|
164. Final Decree of Dissolution of Marriage, Mercer Circuit Court,
|
|
Kentucky (#91-CI-00274), Rose Hall Warnke vs. Michael A. Warnke,
|
|
10/2/91.
|
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|
|
165. Amy Wolfford, "Official downplays effect of Warnke divorce on
|
|
ministry," Danville Advocate-Messenger, 24 Oct. 1991, 1.
|
|
|
|
166. Undated Warnke Ministries letter (begins "Dear Ministry Family,
|
|
It is again the start of a New Year, PRAISE GOD!").
|
|
|
|
167. License and Certificate of Marriage, Santa Cruz County, CA, 18
|
|
Nov. 1991. 43. "Authors Available for Interview," Christian Booksellers
|
|
Convention, Dallas, Texas, June 29--July 2, 1992, 15.
|
|
|
|
168. Warnke & Warnke, ®Recovering From Divorce,¯ 63.
|
|
|
|
169. Ibid, 164.
|
|
|
|
170. Ibid, 159.
|
|
|
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2676
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|
The Threefold Goddess
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|
I
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|
To understand the concept of Goddess requires more than the
|
|
ability to visualize God as a woman. The Goddess concept is built
|
|
around the myth and mystery of the relationship between God and
|
|
Goddess, and beneath that, and part of it, Her Threefold Aspect ...
|
|
Maiden, Mother and Crone.
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|
|
One of the oldest recognized Goddess forms is the first Greek
|
|
Goddess - Gaia, the Earth Mother; the Universal Womb; Mother of All.
|
|
The most ancient Goddesses were most often Earth and Mother Goddesses.
|
|
The were worshipped and revered as bearers of life ... fat, healthy,
|
|
pregnant and fruitful. As the Goddess concept developed, then came the
|
|
Harvest Goddesses, who were also Earth Goddesses. Understand that
|
|
this was a time when people did not even understand the basic
|
|
mechanics of procreation. Life was very sacred and mystical indeed!
|
|
|
|
Gradually, myth and mystery developed and revealed themselves,
|
|
creating the legend which we honor in the modern Wiccan Craft.
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|
|
|
We recognize the Goddess as the mother of all, including her
|
|
Mighty Consort, the God. To Her he is Lover and Son, and together
|
|
they form the Ultimate, the Omniverse, the Dragon, the Mystery.
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|
|
Now that is a pretty tough concept all things considered.
|
|
Especially in our society as it sounds rather incestuous. From a
|
|
mundane perspective, it gets worse as the Wheel of the Year Turns, and
|
|
the Oak and Holly Kings battle ... eternal rivals and
|
|
sacrificial mates.
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|
|
|
In the pages that follow, we will explore the Goddess foundation
|
|
concepts and try to reach an understanding of the basis of the
|
|
Mystery.
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|
|
|
I don't want to get off into all the names of all the Goddesses
|
|
in all the mythology in all of history. While that is certainly a
|
|
noble endeavor, it is not the objective here. What I do want to do is
|
|
look at the Goddess, in whole and in part, and see just who and what
|
|
she is.
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|
|
|
First and foremost, the Goddess is the symbol of the Cycle of
|
|
Everlasting. She is constant, ever present, ever changing, and yet
|
|
always the same. She could be compared in that respect to the oceans.
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|
|
|
As a part of that, she is that from which we have come, and to
|
|
which we will return. She is the Universal Mother, the Cosmic Womb.
|
|
While those are largely symbolic images, as opposed to literal ones,
|
|
they are important to bear in mind about any aspect of the Goddess.
|
|
She never harms, she is Mother.
|
|
|
|
One of the most difficult throwback mentalities to dispell in a
|
|
student is the difference between "dark and light" and "bad and good".
|
|
Societally, and often religiously, we are trained to see bad and dark
|
|
and evil as being the same. Hence, we are also taught to hate and
|
|
fear our own mortality. All too often I see practicing Wiccans, who
|
|
ought to *know* better, fall back on these concepts when trying to
|
|
2677
|
|
|
|
explain or understand a concept.
|
|
|
|
The Goddess is dark, she is light, she is birth, she is death,
|
|
and she rejoices in all things. With death comes joy, for with death
|
|
comes renewal. With life comes joy, for with life comes promise.
|
|
With growth comes joy for with growth comes wisdom. Sorrow and fear
|
|
are not a part of her, not the way we feel those emotions. She is
|
|
incapable of sorrow without joy, she fears nothing, because fear is
|
|
not real. It is a creation of the mind.
|
|
|
|
Whether you see the Goddess as a Warrior Queen, or like the Good
|
|
Witch of the North in the Wizard of Oz, she is the Goddess. And she
|
|
has many parts and facets which defy comprehension as "One". She
|
|
simply IS, and in that, can be whatever you need her to be in order to
|
|
establish a relationship with her. But none of that changes what she
|
|
IS.
|
|
|
|
"I greet thee in the many names of the Threefold Goddess and her
|
|
Mighty Consort. Athe, malkuth, ve-guburah, ve-gedulah, le-olam, Amen.
|
|
Blessed Be."
|
|
|
|
So here, at the Circle Door, greeted by the High Priest or
|
|
Priestess we first see mentioned the Threefold Goddess. Full-sized
|
|
covens have three priestesses who take the specific roles of Maiden,
|
|
Mother and Crone, the High Priestess being Mother.
|
|
|
|
The Threefold Goddess however is NOT three entities, she is one.
|
|
Her aspects represent Enchantment, Ripeness and Wisdom.
|
|
|
|
Taking first things first is usually best, so we shall start
|
|
with a look at one side of the Maiden.
|
|
|
|
Quoting "The Myth of the Goddess" as found in Gardenarian Wicca
|
|
(Gerald B. Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft, Aquarian Press, London,
|
|
1959.):
|
|
|
|
Now Aradia had never loved, but she would solve all the
|
|
Mysteries, even the Mystery of Death; and so she journeyed to the
|
|
Nether Lands.
|
|
|
|
The Guardians of the Portals challenged her, "Strip off thy
|
|
garments, lay aside thy jewels; for naught may ye bring with ye into
|
|
this our land."
|
|
|
|
So she laid down her garments and her jewels and was bound, as
|
|
were all who enter the Realms of Death the Mighty One. Such was her
|
|
beauty that Death himself knelt and kissed her feet, saying, "Blessed by
|
|
thy feet that have brought thee in these ways. Abide with me, let me
|
|
place my cold hand on thy heart." She replied "I love thee not.
|
|
Why dost thou cause all things that I love and take delight in to fade
|
|
and die?"
|
|
|
|
"Lady," replied Death, "it is Age and Fate, against which I am
|
|
helpless. Age causes all things to wither, but when men die at the
|
|
end of time I give them rest and peace, and strength so that they may
|
|
return. But thou, thou art lovely. Return not; abide with me."
|
|
|
|
But she answered, "I love thee not."
|
|
2678
|
|
|
|
Then said Death, "An' thou receive not my hand on thy heart
|
|
thou must receive Death's scourge."
|
|
|
|
"It is Fate; better so", she said, and she knelt, and Death
|
|
scourged her and she cried "I feel the pangs of love."
|
|
|
|
And Death said, "Blessed be" and gave her the Fivefold Kiss,
|
|
saying "Thus only may ye attain joy and knowledge."
|
|
|
|
And he taught her all the Mysteries. And they loved and were
|
|
one, and he taught her all the Magicks.
|
|
|
|
For there are three great events in the life of Man: Love,
|
|
Death and Resurrection in a new body, and Magick controls them all.
|
|
For to fulfill love you must return again at the same time and place
|
|
as the loved one, and you must remember and love them again. But to
|
|
be reborn you must die, and be ready for a new body; and to die you
|
|
must be born; and without love you may not be born. And these be all
|
|
the Magicks.
|
|
|
|
So there in the Gardnerian Myth of the Goddess we have her
|
|
Maiden aspect, seeking, searching and opening herself to the
|
|
mysteries. But it is well to remember that the Goddess herself is a
|
|
mystery, and the primary gift of the Goddess is intuitive Wisdom.
|
|
|
|
Beltaine (Bealtain) is the only Sabbat where the Goddess is
|
|
entirely devoted to the Maiden. Here, she revels in the enchantment,
|
|
in the joy of coming into fullness and mating with the God. Here, she
|
|
is maiden bride and we can most easily understand that facet of the
|
|
Maiden aspect. I should probably note here that some see this
|
|
festival as maiden turning into mother, with the maiden being in full at
|
|
Candlemas, but I do not agree with that.
|
|
|
|
Youth, newness, innocence and beauty are fundamental facets of
|
|
the Maiden aspect. But beneath those are seeking, and love, and love of
|
|
seeking. There is more to understand of the Maiden though.
|
|
Enchantment does not end with maidenhood, it is simply the beginning
|
|
of the Mystery of Life, for that, above all, is what the Goddess
|
|
stands for.
|
|
|
|
In Circle, in the Balanced Universe, the Maiden takes her place
|
|
in the East. In examining this most comfortable quarter, you learn
|
|
more about the Maiden Aspect. East (Air) rules the free mind and
|
|
intellect. It is the place to seek the ability to learn and to open
|
|
spiritually, to open your mind and find answers. It is a masculine
|
|
quarter, ruled by intellect, and analytical logic, but she brings to
|
|
it an intuition which is required to use these to best advantage.
|
|
|
|
"The river is flowing, flowing and growing, the river is flowing
|
|
back to the sea. Mother carry me, a child I will always be. Mother
|
|
carry me, back to the sea."
|
|
|
|
This Circle chant, sung in joy, sung in sorrow, is a cry to the
|
|
Mother Aspect for comfort and warmth, a power chant calling upon the
|
|
steady power and fullness of the Mother and a plea for guidance.
|
|
While the Earth Mother, and the fully aspected Goddess are placed
|
|
North in the Earth quarter, the Mother aspect alone belongs in the
|
|
west.
|
|
2679
|
|
|
|
Comfort and love rule here. Emotions, sorrow, joy, tears, these
|
|
belong to the ripeness of the Mother. Caring and loving for all her
|
|
children, watching in pain and pride as they struggle to gain their
|
|
own, knowing full well she could reach out and do it for them, but
|
|
being both bound and desirous to let them do it for themselves.
|
|
|
|
There is a considerable difference, as you might have interpreted
|
|
from the above, between the Earth Mother and the Mother Aspect of the
|
|
Goddess. That is why we've started with her quarter, because it
|
|
reveals the limitations of the Aspect.
|
|
|
|
The Mother aspect is ripeness, the ancient bearing of fruit,
|
|
child and grain. She represents emotion and sexuality. The Goddess
|
|
in that aspect is most of the altar (as discussed in the Great Rite
|
|
lesson.) It is interesting to note the practice in numerous ancient
|
|
cultures of lovemaking or outright sex magick in cornfields to help
|
|
make the corn grow.
|
|
|
|
The Dark Mother should also be placed here, although culturally, I
|
|
have a tendancy to think of the Dark Mother as more in keeping the
|
|
Crone Aspect. It is a bit of work to see the Dark Mother in the West,
|
|
to separate Dark Mother from Crone, but it is worthwile. If you have
|
|
any background with the tarot I would suggest you take it in that
|
|
context, it is beyond the scope of this text.
|
|
|
|
Our exploration of the Goddess and her Aspects brings us now to
|
|
the Crone. For me, the Crone is the most fascinating of the Aspects
|
|
of the Goddess. Partly I suppose because she is the most mysterious
|
|
and paradoxical.
|
|
|
|
"Blessed Goddess, old and wise, open mine, thy child's, eyes.
|
|
Speak to me in whispered tones that I may know the rune of Crones."
|
|
|
|
With life and growth comes age and wisdom, and the Crone is this
|
|
in part. She holds fire and power, which wisely used can be of great
|
|
benefit, but hold great danger for the unaware. Hers are the secrets of
|
|
death and of life, and the mystery beyond the mystery.
|
|
|
|
Part of the pleasure in knowing the Crone aspect is that while,
|
|
unlike the fully aspected Goddess, she is not also Maiden and Mother,
|
|
she does retain the experiences of both those Aspects in order to be
|
|
Crone. The Crone, wizened though she is, must still be able to reach
|
|
into herself and recall the innocent joys and high passions of the
|
|
Maiden and the love and warmth of the Mother. To be Crone and to not
|
|
have forgotten, to still be able to experience Maiden and Mother is,
|
|
to me, very appealing. More importantly, to be comfortable in that
|
|
Aspect, where you have truth and knowledge but have left youth and
|
|
physical beauty behind, and to still _feel_ youth and beauty without
|
|
being desirous of them is an admirable quality.
|
|
|
|
Crone is the least paralleled Aspect of the Goddess to our human
|
|
society. We discard our old and wise, not understanding their value
|
|
as teachers and models, and fearing their appearance as a reminder of
|
|
our own mortality.
|
|
|
|
Knowing Crone is a door we much each open for ourselves for to know
|
|
and love her is to cast aside a great many of our cultural and societal
|
|
malteachings.
|
|
2680
|
|
|
|
While the individual Aspects of Threefold Goddess are certainly
|
|
valid concepts and paths to knowing Goddess, I should caution that most
|
|
mythological Goddess figures are composite Goddesses. Earth Mother
|
|
Goddess figures are fully aspected Goddess by definition because they
|
|
represent the full cycle of the Wheel. Most other Goddess figures can
|
|
be classified as having a dominant (or operative) aspect and recessive
|
|
(promised, or in some cases past) aspect. Future and past should not be
|
|
taken literally, mythological Goddess figures are always whatever they
|
|
are eternally, they do not tend to change (ie age).
|
|
|
|
Maiden Goddesses possessing their operative in the Huntress or
|
|
Warrior aspects most often have a promise of Crone. Maiden Goddesses
|
|
expressing their dominance in beauty and/or love usually have their
|
|
recessive aspect as Mother. For example, Athena is a Maiden Goddess
|
|
with Crone attributes (the combination produces many Mother-type
|
|
qualities, and this results in the Crone aspected Maiden being the
|
|
most complete of the Mythological Goddesses, with the exception of
|
|
Earth Mother Goddesses.) Aphrodite is of course a Maiden Goddess with
|
|
Mother attributes.
|
|
|
|
Similarly, Dark Mother Goddess figures mostly find their promise in
|
|
Crone and Light Mother figures their recessive in Maiden. Crone
|
|
recessives work the same way, although sometimes it takes a bit of
|
|
close examination to find the "hidden" aspect.
|
|
|
|
One should note that this is not a formula, rather a tool to
|
|
assist in examining and understanding Goddess figures and creating
|
|
one's own personal spiritual link with Goddess. It is also a useful
|
|
consideration when invoking a specific Goddess with purpose in ritual.
|
|
The purpose of this course has been to open avenues of approach
|
|
in discovering and developing a relationship with Goddess. For me
|
|
personally, I do not "believe" in the reality of mythological Goddess
|
|
figures as they were presented, but I do believe they are a valid way to
|
|
establish communication with Goddess. I also believe Goddess will
|
|
appear in whatever form we are most ready to accept. The real
|
|
Goddess, by my belief (and this is personal, not trad) is an entity
|
|
beyond my comprehension, perhaps composed of light (could 5000 sci-fi
|
|
films be wrong?), most assuredly unlike anything I could ever imagine in
|
|
true form. However, I do find mythological Goddess figures highly
|
|
useful for ritual, and of some help in my personal relationship with
|
|
Goddess. I hope you will too.
|
|
|
|
Blessed Be
|
|
|
|
Eileen
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2681
|
|
|
|
Being A Witch in Britain Today
|
|
by James Pengelly
|
|
|
|
Written for the Newcastle University Conference; Encounters of
|
|
Religion
|
|
|
|
I am regional co-ordinator for the Pagan Federation (PF) for
|
|
Humberside, North Yorkshire and the counties that form the
|
|
northeast of England up to the Scottish Borders. The PF was
|
|
founded in 1971 by a group of Gardnerian Witches, the object of
|
|
it being to counter what was perceived as being popular
|
|
misconceptions about Witchcraft.
|
|
The main reason for the existence of the PF remains largely
|
|
unchanged, as the last few years have seen what can only be
|
|
described as an onslaught by various fundamentalist Christian
|
|
organisations who have latched on to the unfortunate and sad
|
|
matter of child abuse to which they have added the word "Satanic'
|
|
as a means by which they can attack and defame the occult in
|
|
general, and Witchcraft in particular.
|
|
|
|
I will return to this matter elsewhere in this lecture, but I
|
|
mention it now to illustrate the importance of our
|
|
anti-defamation work. In addition, the Pagan Federation acts as
|
|
a networking organisation to put people who share views on
|
|
religious and spiritual matters in touch with one another, to
|
|
enable them to get together, discuss and learn, and experience
|
|
further.
|
|
|
|
The third important aspect to our work is to increase awareness
|
|
of the spiritual and cultural heritage of this country. Given
|
|
that many, if not most, of our customs and traditions have their
|
|
roots set deep in our Pagan past and that our countryside is rich
|
|
in the physical remains of this we feel that a positive promotion
|
|
of this inheritance is vital to a fuller understanding of who we
|
|
are.
|
|
|
|
The topic of this lecture is Being A Witch In Britain Today. Now
|
|
I think that when one mentions the word, "Witch" to the average
|
|
member of the public, the image that is immediately conjured up
|
|
is one of a wizened old hag boiling up an extremely noxious brew
|
|
in some bubbling cauldron, probably on a windswept moor
|
|
somewhere. This is of course Shakespearian in its perception, but
|
|
unfortunately, whatever his intentions were at the time he wrote
|
|
Macbeth, William Shakespeare did Witchcraft a considerable
|
|
disservice, because this image has stuck. In addition, the public
|
|
is very much subject to conditioning laid down in the Middle Ages
|
|
by the Church, through historical accounts of Witch trials, which
|
|
were heavily biased. Consequently it is hardly surprising that
|
|
the image the general public has is of nasty, evil, thoroughly
|
|
bad people riding around on broomsticks at dead of night creating
|
|
havoc all over the place, poisoning people right left and centre,
|
|
doing unspeakable things with goats, not to mention chickens,
|
|
frogs, toads, cats, and sundry other animals. All in all not very
|
|
nice people!
|
|
|
|
It is interesting to note that even in this day and age, many
|
|
people are still very superstitious when it comes to magic, the
|
|
occult, Witchcraft and so on. In addition to the historical
|
|
2682
|
|
|
|
misconceptions about Witches and Witchcraft, I would go as far
|
|
as saying that people still have a deeply rooted superstitious
|
|
attitude, and that while some may automatically dismiss out of
|
|
hand Witches having any sort of magical power, deep down, the
|
|
majority of people still harbour deep rooted fears about this
|
|
sort of thing being possible.
|
|
|
|
At a time when mankind has seemingly achieved so much in the
|
|
field of science, when there is so little mystery left in life
|
|
because everything has been rationalised and explained, and
|
|
developed beyond that which our ancestors were able to
|
|
comprehend, the fact that people do still harbour superstitions
|
|
and worries about Witchcraft and the occult in general does not
|
|
altogether surprise me. If one removes the mystery from life, one
|
|
has nothing left with which to replace it, and one has to look
|
|
to that which one cannot explain. The problem being that man has
|
|
for countless generations been frightened by that which he cannot
|
|
explain. And this is why we are now living in the scientific age,
|
|
because man has purposely set out to explain that of which he is
|
|
afraid. The thing being that there is very little left that man
|
|
cannot explain. And one of the areas that he cannot explain is,
|
|
of course, magic, Witchcraft and the occult.
|
|
|
|
Let us for a moment, examine the term, "occult". Occult simply
|
|
means 'that which is hidden'. The term has been used for
|
|
centuries to explain the general workings of the universe. The
|
|
creation of fire would have, at some point in time, been regarded
|
|
as magic. Why things moved when they were subject to certain
|
|
power sources such as steam would have been deemed magic before
|
|
the principles were understood. Illnesses were originally
|
|
considered to be occult based. You could impose an illness on
|
|
a neighbour or friend if you had the magical power to do it. But
|
|
of course, none of these things were actually magical in any
|
|
sense. The magic lay in the fact that a lot of people didn't
|
|
understand what was going on. Those who did have an understanding
|
|
of what was going on were perceived as having some sort of power.
|
|
The biblical phrase, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live", is
|
|
in this context quite revealing because in its original format,
|
|
the word, "Witch", did not actually translate as Witch, it
|
|
translated as "poisoner". And there is no doubt that the original
|
|
village Witch would have in her own way been a doctor of sorts,
|
|
in that she or he would have understood the uses of various herbs
|
|
for good purposes and for bad purposes. And could quite probably
|
|
been paid to use that knowledge to achieve the results for which
|
|
she was being paid, to either kill or cure. Consequently, the
|
|
village Witch, was someone to be feared, and respected.
|
|
|
|
As the Christian Church took hold, the older Pagan ways were
|
|
perceived as something to be got rid of. I do not think this was
|
|
particularly a spiritual battle. It was a power battle. It was
|
|
simply a matter of one religious-political system wishing to gain
|
|
control over another. And as Christianity grew in strength,
|
|
largely through fear and oppression, the old ways were presented
|
|
as being evil and wicked, and not to be tolerated.
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2683
|
|
|
|
This situation remained largely extant until 1951, when the last
|
|
laws remaining on the English statute book against Witchcraft
|
|
were repealed, and what is now commonly referred to as the
|
|
British Revivalist Craft came to light. The fact that it had, in
|
|
some form or another, managed to survive over countless
|
|
generations was, in itself, quite a surprising thing. But we now
|
|
know that what are often referred to as the Hereditary Craft and
|
|
the Traditional Craft were to a certain extent passed down from
|
|
generation to generation either within specific families or
|
|
small, invariably farming, communities. It was this that the late
|
|
Dr Gerald Gardener is thought to have discovered, and built up
|
|
into what is today known as the Revivalist Craft. His work was
|
|
later developed by others such as Alex Sanders who founded the
|
|
Alexandrian Craft and, more recently, by Janet and Stewart
|
|
Farrar. Their works are very well known, popular, and easily
|
|
available, and they have created what is sometimes jokingly
|
|
referred to as the Farrarian Craft; a hybrid mixture of
|
|
Gardenerian, Alexandrian and their own methods of working.
|
|
|
|
Being a Witch today in this country is not necessarily a hard
|
|
thing, but nor is necessarily an easy thing. There is still a
|
|
great deal of superstitious prejudice and nonsense held against
|
|
Witches. And this is fermented, and that is the only word I can
|
|
think of, to a large extent by certain areas of our national
|
|
media, in particular the more lurid tabloid press, and of course
|
|
Christian fundamentalist groups, who have over the last few years
|
|
started to expand at a rather alarming, and for many
|
|
non-Christians, a rather frightening rate. The phenomena of
|
|
Christian fundamentalism is something which has largely been
|
|
imported to this country from America, where it has been a
|
|
populist Christian movement for many, many years. One only has
|
|
to look at the news over the last few years concerning some
|
|
American fundamentalist leaders to realise that basically, they
|
|
are like so many of us human beings, subject to all the little
|
|
foibles that human beings are generally subject to, that they are
|
|
just as easily led astray as any of us can be. The rising issue
|
|
of fundamentalism is, as I say, quite a frightening thing because
|
|
it seeks to impose a set of standards, a set of behaviour, and
|
|
a set of religious beliefs, on everyone, which no-one is
|
|
permitted to question. This is one reason why we find so many
|
|
people are now turning to Paganism in its broadest sense, and to
|
|
Wicca in particular. (Wicca being the commonly used modern term
|
|
for Witchcraft.) They turn to us because they are disillusioned
|
|
with the level of dogma and the level of imposition they find
|
|
within established Christian traditions, be they Church of
|
|
England, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, or some of the more
|
|
extreme fundamentalist sects.
|
|
|
|
People seem now to be dividing into groups. There are those who
|
|
are 'the led' and they search for leaders. And when they find a
|
|
leader who is prepared to tell them what to do, when to do it,
|
|
how to think, how not to think and so on, they latch onto that
|
|
and they go on quite happy in their own way because they want to
|
|
be told. On the other hand there are an increasing number of
|
|
people who are prepared to listen to what others have to say but
|
|
then like to go away and make their own minds up about things,
|
|
and work things out for themselves. And we are finding more and
|
|
more that this is what Paganism in general and Wicca in
|
|
2684
|
|
|
|
particular is providing. It is providing people with the means
|
|
by which they can form deeply personal relationships with their
|
|
own particular perceptions of deity. They can work with that
|
|
perception. They can utilise it within a framework that is,
|
|
generally speaking, of a very high moral and ethical standard.
|
|
And the idea that Witches are evil, nasty, wicked people who go
|
|
around sticking pins in little lumps of wax shaped into the form
|
|
of a person containing lumps of fingernail and pieces of hair and
|
|
other sundry bodily parts, is being increasingly recognised as
|
|
grossly untrue. We have to bear in mind that a lot of the popular
|
|
perceptions of the Witch are, as I have already said, largely
|
|
determined by historical records. Historical records written by
|
|
people in whose interest it was to defame the Witch, and to
|
|
register her, or him, as an evil person, but even these are now
|
|
being challenged by more and more people.
|
|
|
|
So, as I've said, being a Witch in this country today is not
|
|
always an easy thing. On the one hand, you can meet with extreme
|
|
prejudice, on the other hand you can equally meet with extreme
|
|
derision. A number of perfectly normal, sane, rational people
|
|
that I know of think that the fact that I am a Witch is a huge
|
|
joke. I am very used to people asking me "When can I come round
|
|
to your house and take all my clothes off?." My usual response
|
|
to which is "Any time you like providing I'm not having my tea
|
|
at the time, or watching Coronation Street, but believe me pal,
|
|
you're on your own." I personally find that this is the best way
|
|
to approach this sort of thing. If you can turn the question into
|
|
a joke aimed at yourself, people are happy with that and feel
|
|
comfortable with that, and will go away thinking that basically
|
|
you're a pretty decent sort of person with just some very strange
|
|
ideas. If, on the other hand, you become intensely defensive, the
|
|
opposite can be true because they will assume that you have
|
|
something to hide, something which you don't wish to talk about.
|
|
And we all know that faced with that sort of situation the human
|
|
mind is capable of conjuring up all sorts of unpleasant images.
|
|
So I stand before you today proclaiming myself to be a Witch. I
|
|
do not particularly like using the term, but it is a term with
|
|
which most people are familiar, so within the context of this
|
|
lecture, I am happy to use it. And I stand before you here, not
|
|
a wizened old crone, dressed in rags and tatters with a big wart
|
|
on the end of her nose, but, I hope, a fairly presentable man in
|
|
his early middle age, who has a very respectable job. I have a
|
|
house, a mortgage, a small daughter, I am like many people of my
|
|
generation, separated from my wife, for purely personal reasons.
|
|
I am, to all intents and purposes an ordinary person. And yet I
|
|
stand before you here, and tell you I am a Witch.
|
|
|
|
What does this mean for me personally? Basically, like most
|
|
Witches, I am a Pagan. I believe in the Old Religion. The
|
|
religion that was worldwide before Christianity or Hinduism, or
|
|
Islam took a hold on large areas of the world. Once upon a time,
|
|
whether people like to admit it or not, the whole world was
|
|
Pagan. Paganism then was vastly different from Paganism today.
|
|
There are those who go round saying that they are practising
|
|
pre-Christian Paganism. I would say, that while they are not
|
|
necessarily deluding themselves, they are mis-leading themselves.
|
|
What we are practising today is the spirit of ancient Paganism.
|
|
We cannot possibly practise ancient Paganism, because if we were
|
|
2685
|
|
|
|
doing so, we would be indulging in such things as blood
|
|
sacrifice, and so on and so forth, which forms no part of modern
|
|
Pagan tradition.
|
|
|
|
Witchcraft is a sub-system of broad Paganism. Most Witches regard
|
|
it as the mystery aspect of Paganism. The mystery aspect being
|
|
that one searches for the spark of the ultimate divine source,
|
|
which is inherent in each one of us, in the hope that one can
|
|
find it, come to terms with it, and accept it as part of
|
|
ourselves.
|
|
|
|
Most Pagans believe in an ultimate creative source. Christians
|
|
call it God. We believe that there exists, somewhere out there
|
|
in the wider universe, the source of all creation. We do not
|
|
give it a name, we do not give it a form. It is, to our way of
|
|
thinking, entirely neutral. It is all things in one thing. It is
|
|
all things and it is nothing. It is largely beyond our reach.
|
|
Some people aspire to attain union with the ultimate, very, very
|
|
few people ever reach it. Consequently, most Pagans will choose
|
|
to leave it alone.
|
|
|
|
It is unreachable. And it is unaware of our existence, because
|
|
it is neutral in form. What we do is we aspect it; we split it
|
|
into the various components which form it. The ultimate split is
|
|
gender, male and female. If the ultimate creative source is all
|
|
things, then it must have male and female aspects. So the
|
|
ultimate male aspect is 'The God', the ultimate female aspect is
|
|
'The Goddess'. Below this one can continue splitting into various
|
|
other aspects as one chooses, until one gets down to a level of
|
|
elementals, nature spirits, and so on and so forth. The idea
|
|
being, that all natural things coming from the ultimate creative
|
|
source contain a spark of that creative source, and consequently
|
|
all things are inherently sacred. We reject entirely the
|
|
Christian concept that man is born sinful, and has to spend the
|
|
whole of his life begging forgiveness for sins real and
|
|
imaginary. We believe that it is because of this attitude that
|
|
mankind does a lot of the things he does. If you bring somebody
|
|
up and condition them to believe that they are inherently bad,
|
|
they are going to react in that way.
|
|
|
|
Pagans and Witches believe that man is born inherently sacred,
|
|
and it is what he himself does with his life that makes him bad
|
|
or good. It is nothing to do with God, the Gods, the Goddesses
|
|
or anything else. Consequently, Paganism and Witchcraft are
|
|
extremely responsible forms of religious practice in that they
|
|
teach that we are responsible for what we do and the effect that
|
|
it has for those around us, both immediately and out in the wider
|
|
world. We believe in what is commonly referred to as 'the ripple
|
|
effect'. Drop a stone in a pond, and it will create ripples which
|
|
will go on and on until they reach the bank and are forced to
|
|
stop. If you regard the universe as a very large ocean, everytime
|
|
one of us does something, we create a ripple effect. The ripples,
|
|
on a universal scale, may be imperceptible, but they are there
|
|
none the less. And if we regard life in that way, we need to
|
|
immediately take stock of that which we do and act upon it.
|
|
Now obviously it is not possible to take this sort of philosophy
|
|
to an extreme, otherwise, one would literally do nothing. If one
|
|
flushes the toilet one is potentially adding to sea pollution.
|
|
2686
|
|
|
|
If one turns an electric light on, one is potentially adding to
|
|
air pollution. Whatever one does, somewhere along the line is
|
|
likely to have a detrimental effect on someone.
|
|
|
|
The Witch or Pagan will judge what he or she is doing with his
|
|
or her life and will try and determine the least harmful way of
|
|
living. It requires a great deal of thought, it requires a great
|
|
deal of honesty and self analysis and not a small amount of
|
|
self-sacrifice. it forces one to look at how one relates to
|
|
oneself, and life around us, because we believe that all natural
|
|
things on this world are sacred, and therefore to be treated with
|
|
respect.
|
|
|
|
So, what then, is our relationship with our perception of
|
|
divinity? As 1 have already mentioned, we personalise aspects of
|
|
the ultimate creative source. These personalisations can be drawn
|
|
from one or another of the existing Pagan pantheons, such as
|
|
Norse, Greek, Roman or Egyptian, or they can be done on a much
|
|
more personal level where the individual will somehow personalise
|
|
whatever aspect of divinity they wish to work with in that moment
|
|
in time. Most Witches have the Great Goddess, and the Horned God.
|
|
(The horns, incidentally have absolutely nothing to do with the
|
|
concept of the devil having horns. And are usually, in this
|
|
country, personified as being deer's antlers being simply symbols
|
|
of power and strength.) The Great Goddess is seen as being the
|
|
Mother of all things, the Horned God, her consort who is also
|
|
frequently linked with the Sun as the All Father.
|
|
|
|
Below that, we have the Triple Goddess, whose symbol is the Moon,
|
|
the Maid, the Mother, and the Crone. And then there are any
|
|
number of other personifications largely based on the individual
|
|
preference of the person or group, doing whatever it is they're
|
|
doing. This may seem to be an immensely complicated system, and
|
|
indeed it sometimes takes a great deal of understanding. But you
|
|
have to relate it to the natural seasonal cycle, or festivals,
|
|
that most Pagans, whatever their traditions, will follow.
|
|
|
|
The seasonal cycle basically follows the agricultural and solar
|
|
cycle of the year. We have eight major festivals.
|
|
The first, and possibly the most important, is Samhain, spelled
|
|
S-A-M-H-A-I-N, commonly known as Hallowe'en, and is thought to
|
|
have been the time when the ancient Celts celebrated the new
|
|
year. It was the end of one agricultural year and the beginning
|
|
of the next. It was the final onset of Winter. It was, as it is
|
|
commonly regarded today, also a festival of the dead. The modern
|
|
concept today of ghosts and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties
|
|
and things that go bump in the night, stemmed directly from the
|
|
Celtic feast of the dead. This is not some necrophiliac intention
|
|
of summoning up spirits for evil purposes, it was/is simply a
|
|
time when one reflects on the memories of lost loved ones, lost
|
|
friends, and hopes to gain some insight into one's own life from
|
|
the lessons that we can learn from those who have gone before us.
|
|
It is interesting to note that, even in its christianised form,
|
|
Halloween, or All Hallows Eve is still a festival of the dead.
|
|
|
|
The mid-Winter Solstice is, of course, Yule, an Anglo-Saxon word
|
|
so old its meaning is now completely forgotten. It has been
|
|
suggested that that it could mean 'wheel', and within a Pagan or
|
|
2687
|
|
|
|
a Wiccan context the year is often referred to as "the wheel of
|
|
the year", in that it turns on, and on. Yule celebrates the
|
|
re-birth of the Sun. It is indeed interesting that Christians
|
|
should have taken this festival to mark the birth of Christ, when
|
|
what historical evidence we have seems to suggest that Christ was
|
|
actually either born in March or September.
|
|
|
|
From then we move on to Imbolc, christianised as Candlemas, which
|
|
represents the first stirring of Spring and the gradual return
|
|
of light. We then have the Spring Equinox, which when the earth
|
|
comes back fully to life, and has become largely associated with
|
|
Easter. Many people today do not realise that Easter is a
|
|
moveable feast because the date of Easter is set on the first
|
|
Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox. And
|
|
if that isn't a Pagan concept, I really don't know what is. In
|
|
fact, the very name "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon fertility
|
|
Goddess "Eostre" and many of the items traditionally associated
|
|
with Easter such as eggs and rabbits are directly derived from
|
|
Pagan ideas and symbols.
|
|
|
|
Then follows Beltane, which is interesting in that it is the only
|
|
Pagan holiday which does not have a Christian counterpoint. This
|
|
is probably because of its overtly sexual nature. It is
|
|
interesting that children conceived at Beltane were invariably
|
|
born on or around Imbolc, which is lambing time in the sheep
|
|
farmers year. Ewe's milk would have been important in the past
|
|
to strengthen children for the last part of Winter and to give
|
|
them strength to grow through the Spring and Summer.
|
|
|
|
After Beltane we have of course the Summer Solstice, mid-Summer,
|
|
which represents the Sun at its height. Solstices and Equinoxes
|
|
all being solar festivals. The union of Sun and Earth to produce
|
|
the harvest that is to come. Lugnassadh, commonly referred to as
|
|
Lammas, which literally means loaf-mass from the Anglo-Saxon, is
|
|
the start of the harvest. It is the time when we prepare to cut
|
|
down that which the union of the Sun and the Earth Mother has
|
|
provided for us. The Autumn equinox is the harvest festival. A
|
|
time to rest and relax after the harvest has been collected. And
|
|
then we come back again to Samhain, or Halloween.
|
|
|
|
So as you can see, we follow a very natural cycle. Rituals and
|
|
ceremonies can vary immensely from group to group, or individual
|
|
to individual. But each one, whenever it is done, will consist
|
|
of some sort of symbolic, what I can only describe as 'drama',
|
|
that reflects what we see going on in the world around us, and
|
|
how we perceive the Gods and Goddesses of Paganism or Witchcraft
|
|
as playing a part in that. There is a lot of talk about the use
|
|
of spirit powers and so on and so forth, and many Christians
|
|
perceive this as being inherently very, very dangerous.
|
|
Spiritualism, as it is commonly perceived, plays very little part
|
|
in Wicca. It is not something that we believe should be played
|
|
around with. We will invoke on one another the spirit of a
|
|
particular God or a particular Goddess dependent on what we are
|
|
doing at the time. But all we are asking that particular God or
|
|
Goddess to do is imbibe us with something of their power,
|
|
something of their insight. It is basically an intensely
|
|
psychological thing. Because, as we all know, if one stands in
|
|
front of a mirror saying "every day and every way, I am getting
|
|
2688
|
|
|
|
better and better", then one is likely to grow in
|
|
self-confidence. The concept is pretty much the same.
|
|
|
|
So, as we can see, Witches are not horrible evil people, but
|
|
generally, quite ordinary nice decent people who have chosen to
|
|
try and relate more to the natural things around us than some far
|
|
distant imperceptible god-form. But what of magic? Witchcraft
|
|
is obviously very closely associated with the use of magic. So
|
|
what is magic?
|
|
|
|
Magic was once described as 'the art of causing change in
|
|
conformity with will'. Put more basically, this simply means mind
|
|
over matter. Causing something to happen simply by the strength
|
|
of your own mind. This is perhaps a bit too far fetched for a
|
|
great many people to accept, but when one considers the nature
|
|
of prayer, one has a concept which is easier to understand. For
|
|
most Witches, an act of magic is simply a form of prayer. You
|
|
will seek the attention of a particular God or a particular
|
|
Goddess, and you will ask her or him to assist you in something
|
|
that you want done. Surely, this is no different from anyone
|
|
going into a church or synagogue, kneeling down, and saying,
|
|
"please God, help me".
|
|
|
|
It is true that Witches will dress that up in some way and use
|
|
items of equipment and paraphernalia which are alien to a church,
|
|
mosque, or synagogue. These are primarily nothing more than
|
|
psychological props, means by which the individual can focus
|
|
their attention on something. Using the appropriate equipment at
|
|
the appropriate time aided by appropriate colours and scents are
|
|
all means by which one can focus one's mind onto a specific
|
|
point. Like anything, our acts of magic do not necessarily always
|
|
produce the desired result. But we choose to believe that if it
|
|
does not happen, it is because it is not meant to happen, rather
|
|
than we are not worthy of it happening.
|
|
|
|
Many people talk of white and black magic. This is an entirely
|
|
Christian concept; we do not accept the terms white or black
|
|
magic. Magic is a neutral force which is used by the individual
|
|
and it is what the individual does with it that makes it white
|
|
or black. But most Witches, in using the powers that they have
|
|
available to them will consider the implications of what they are
|
|
doing, and will think very seriously about undertaking any act
|
|
of magic which could prove detrimental to any-one or anything
|
|
which cannot be justified morally and spiritually.
|
|
|
|
If the Craft has any "laws" as such they apply to the use of
|
|
magic in a more obvious way than any-where else, and there are
|
|
basically two such "laws".
|
|
|
|
The first is more of an ethic - "An it harm none-do what thou
|
|
will". On the face of it this seems to offer carte-blanche to do
|
|
what you want as long as no-one gets hurt but if regarded within
|
|
the context of the "ripple effect" mentioned earlier the
|
|
relevance and importance of it becomes clearer.
|
|
In addition to this, most Wiccans subscribe to what is usually
|
|
referred to as the "Law of Threefold Return" which basically
|
|
means that the result of an act will reflect on the instigator
|
|
times three. As you will possibly appreciate, this is worth
|
|
2689
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|
|
|
serious consideration if what one is undertaking is potentially
|
|
or deliberately harmful.
|
|
|
|
Between the clearly "white" or "black" areas of magic however
|
|
lies the "grey" area. This is hard to define as it depends
|
|
largely on the conscience of the individual but whatever the
|
|
shade, a Witch will never undertake any act of magic without
|
|
serious consideration of all the matters and questions
|
|
surrounding it.
|
|
|
|
To go back to the matter of Satanic child-abuse, the suggestion
|
|
that there exists some sort of organised conspiracy of Satanic
|
|
based child abuse is nonsense. It is a myth created entirely by
|
|
so-called Christian extremists whose intention is to ferment a
|
|
modern Witchhunt in exactly the same way as the Nazis fermented
|
|
action against the Jews. There is no question of that. Whilst I
|
|
would not deny that there may be some sick, criminal perverts,
|
|
who utilise the cover of the occult in general and Witchcraft in
|
|
particular, to abuse children, these people are not Witches, they
|
|
are sick and evil perverts who deserve the full weight of the law
|
|
to fall upon them.
|
|
|
|
To specifically identify Wicca with child abuse is criminally
|
|
irresponsible as it brands a huge number of totally innocent
|
|
people as potential child abusers, and given that it is an
|
|
intensely emotive issue, there is a real risk of a lynch mob
|
|
mentality being provoked, with all the horror that it implies.
|
|
If we are to judge a whole belief system on the strength of the
|
|
activities of a few perverts, one could equally point the finger
|
|
at the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, both of
|
|
whom have suffered from the publicity of members of their own
|
|
clergies being caught for this very crime.
|
|
Recently, in this country alone, there have been several
|
|
instances of Church of England and Roman Catholic clergy abusing
|
|
children, and there is evidence to suggest that it is rife within
|
|
the Roman Catholic church in America. I pass no judgement on the
|
|
churches for that. This is down to individuals, and again, we
|
|
come back to the concept of individual responsibility for one's
|
|
own actions.
|
|
|
|
For a Witch to abuse a child is total anathema. It is contrary
|
|
to everything that we hold close to our hearts. Our children are
|
|
our future. If we abuse them, we run the risk of turning them
|
|
into abusers. Apart from the fact that in abusing them, we abuse
|
|
that which is part of the sacred, the ultimate divine source.
|
|
Children born in love and unity are sacred and to be treated as
|
|
such. There is no evidence, other than in the minds of those that
|
|
make the allegations, that so-called Satanic abuse exists.
|
|
|
|
As to the future, and what we would like; basically all we seek
|
|
is the acceptance of society to be what we are, and to practise
|
|
what we choose to practise. We do not seek to impose ourselves
|
|
on anybody, or anything. We wish more than anything else, to
|
|
exist in harmony with members of other religions, who have the
|
|
perfect right to believe what they choose to believe. All we ask
|
|
is that they afford us that same right. Nobody has the right to
|
|
impose their values on any other person, other than in a purely
|
|
secular sociological situation where rules and regulations are
|
|
2690
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|
|
|
necessary to avoid total anarchy.
|
|
|
|
On the spiritual level, the individual has the right to choose
|
|
what form of religion he or she will follow, and how he or she
|
|
will perceive his/her own God. When one looks around the world
|
|
today, one can see that many of the conflicts going on in places
|
|
like Yugoslavia, and Northern Ireland have a religious basis.
|
|
They are based on one group of people trying to impose its
|
|
religious form on another. This, we feel, is entirely wrong.
|
|
|
|
Since the onset of Christianity, it has been the fact that one
|
|
religion has tried to impose itself on another. Millions of
|
|
people have died in modern times for this very reason. And so
|
|
much harm, and so much suffering, and so much pain could have
|
|
been avoided if mankind only accepted that one person has no
|
|
right to impose his religious will on another. We do not ask for
|
|
converts. We do not actively seek converts. All we ask is that
|
|
we be left alone in peace, to do that which we feel is right. We
|
|
would dearly love to work in harmony with members of other
|
|
religions, towards a greater good. Surely, although we walk along
|
|
different paths, our ultimate aim should be the same - to achieve
|
|
a world that can live in peace with itself.
|
|
We believe that our way is one way to achieve that. We do not say
|
|
that it is the only way, we say that it is one way. Our paths may
|
|
not meet, they may certainly not cross, but they run in parallel,
|
|
and if we can hold hands across the divides that exist between
|
|
us, surely, the world will be a better place. We have a great
|
|
deal in common. Each religion professes a love of humanity. Each
|
|
religion professes a love of the world that surrounds us, and yet
|
|
so few of those religions that profess those beliefs, do very
|
|
much about it. We do not say, as I have already said, that ours
|
|
is the only way, the one way, the true way. There is no one true
|
|
way. The Arabs I think have a saying, and I may have this wrong,
|
|
that there are a million ways to God, and it is for each one of
|
|
us to find his or her own way. This, we feel, is a fundamental
|
|
truth. We believe passionately, that the world could be a better
|
|
place if half the people in it stopped trying to impose their
|
|
will on the other half. We have no desire to do this. We wish to
|
|
move forward with others who may or may not share our beliefs to
|
|
a better world.
|
|
|
|
This paper may be freely copied or re-published providing it is
|
|
copied or re-published in its entirety without changes, and
|
|
authorship credited to James Pengelly, Pagan Federation.
|
|
|
|
James Pengelly
|
|
The Pagan Federation,
|
|
BM Box 7097,
|
|
London WCIN 3XX.
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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2691
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|
RITUAL THEORY AND TECHNIQUE
|
|
|
|
Copyright Colin Low 1990
|
|
(cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com)
|
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|
|
1. Introduction
|
|
2. Magical Consciousness
|
|
3. Limitation
|
|
4. Essential Steps
|
|
5. Maps & Correspondences
|
|
6. Conclusion
|
|
|
|
1. Introduction
|
|
|
|
These notes attempt to say something useful about magical
|
|
ritual. This is difficult, because ritual is invented, and any
|
|
sequence of actions can be ritualised and used to symbolise
|
|
anything; but then something similar can be said about words and
|
|
language, and that doesn't prevent us from trying to communicate,
|
|
so I will make the attempt to say something useful about ritual,
|
|
and try to steer a path between the Scylla of anthropology and
|
|
sweeping generalisations, and the Charybdis of cultish
|
|
parochialism. My motivation for writing this is my belief that
|
|
while any behaviour can be ritualised, and it is impossible to
|
|
state "magical ritual consists of this" or "magical ritual
|
|
consists of that", some magical rituals are better than others.
|
|
This raises questions of what I mean by "goodness" or "badness",
|
|
"effectiveness" or "ineffectiveness" in the context of magical
|
|
work, and I intend to duck this with a pragmatic reply. A magical
|
|
ritual is "good" if it achieves its intention without undesired
|
|
side effects, and it is "bad" if the roof falls on your head.
|
|
Underlying this definition is another belief: that magical ritual
|
|
taps a raw and potentially dangerous (and certainly amoral)
|
|
psychic force which has to be channelled and directed;
|
|
traditional forms of magical ritual do that and are not so
|
|
arbitrary as they appear to be.
|
|
|
|
An outline of ceremonial magical ritual (in the basic form
|
|
in which it has been handed down in Europe over the centuries) is
|
|
that the magician works within a circle and uses consecrated
|
|
tools and the magical names of various entities to evoke or
|
|
invoke Powers. It seems to work. Or at least it works for some
|
|
people some of the time. How *well* does it work? That's a fair
|
|
question, and not an easy one to answer, as there is too much ego
|
|
at stake in admitting that one's rituals don't always work out.
|
|
My rituals don't always work - sometimes nothing appears to
|
|
happen, sometimes I get unexpected side effects. The same is true
|
|
of those magicians I know personally, and I suspect the same is
|
|
true of most people. Even at the mundane level, if you've ever
|
|
tried to recreate a "magical moment" in a relationship, you will
|
|
know that it is hard to stand in the same river twice - there is
|
|
an elusive and wandering spark which all too often just wanders.
|
|
|
|
In summary, I like to know why some rituals work better than
|
|
others, and why some, even when that elusive spark is present, go
|
|
sour and call up all the wrong things - these notes contain some
|
|
of my conclusions. As I have tried to lift the rug and look
|
|
underneath the surface, the approach is abstract in places; I
|
|
2692
|
|
|
|
prefer to be practical rather than theoretical, but if magic is
|
|
to be anything other than a superstitious handing-down of mumbo-
|
|
jumbo, we need a model of what is happening, a causality of magic
|
|
against which it is possible to make value judgements about what
|
|
is good and bad in ritual. Traditional models of angels, spirits,
|
|
gods and goddesses, ancestral spirits and so on are useful up to
|
|
a point, but these are not the end of the story, and in
|
|
penetrating beyond these "intermediaries" the magician is forced
|
|
to confront the nature of consciousness itself and become
|
|
something of a mystic.
|
|
|
|
The idea that the physical universe is the end product of a
|
|
"process of consciousness" is virtually a first principle of
|
|
Eastern esoteric philosophy, it is at the root of the Kabbalistic
|
|
doctrine of emanation and the sephiroth, and it has been adopted
|
|
by many twentieth century magicians as a useful complement to
|
|
whatever traditional model of magic they were weaned on - once
|
|
one has accepted that it is possible to create "thought-forms"
|
|
and "artificial elementals" and "telesmic images", it is a small
|
|
step to admitting that the gods, goddesses, angels, and spirits
|
|
of traditonal magic may have no reality outside of the
|
|
consciousness which creates and sustains them. This is what I
|
|
believe personally on alternate days of the week. On the
|
|
remaining days I am happy to believe in the reality of gods,
|
|
goddesses, archangels, elementals, ancestral spirits etc. - in
|
|
common with many magicians I sit on the fence in an interesting
|
|
way. There is a belief among some magicians that while gods,
|
|
goddesses etc may be the creations of consciousness, on a par
|
|
with money and the Bill of Rights, such things take on a life of
|
|
their own and can be treated as if they were real, so while I
|
|
take the view that magic is ultimately the manipulation of
|
|
consciousness, you will find me out there calling on the Powers
|
|
with as much gusto as anyone else.
|
|
|
|
2. Magical Consciousness
|
|
|
|
The principle function of magical ritual is to cause well-defined
|
|
changes in consciousness. There are other (non-magical) kinds of
|
|
ritual and ceremony - social, superstitious, celebratory etc -
|
|
carried out for a variety of reasons, but magical ritual can be
|
|
distinguished by its emphasis on causing shifts in consciousness
|
|
to states not normally attainable, with a consequence of causing
|
|
effects which would be considered impossible or improbable by
|
|
most people in this day and age.
|
|
|
|
The realisation that the content of magical ritual is a
|
|
means to an end, the end being the deliberate manipulation of
|
|
consciousness, is an watershed in magical technique. Many people,
|
|
particularly the non-practicing general public, believe there is
|
|
something inherently magical about ritual, that it can be done,
|
|
like cooking, from a recipe book; that prayers, names of powers,
|
|
fancy candles, crystals, five-pointed stars and the like have an
|
|
intrinsic power which works by itself, and it is only necessary
|
|
to be initiated into all the details and hey presto! - you can do
|
|
it. I believe this is (mostly) wrong. Symbols do have magical
|
|
power, but not in the crude sense implied above; magical power
|
|
comes from the conjunction of a symbol and a person who can bring
|
|
that symbol to life, by directing and limiting their
|
|
2693
|
|
|
|
consciousness through the symbol, in the manner of icing through
|
|
an icing gun. Magical power comes from the person (or people),
|
|
not from the superficial trappings of ritual. The key to ritual
|
|
is the manipulation and shifting of consciousness, and without
|
|
that shift it is empty posturing.
|
|
|
|
So let us concentrate on magical consciousness, and how it
|
|
differs from the state of mind in which we normally carry out our
|
|
business in the world. Firstly, there isn't a sudden quantum jump
|
|
into an unusual state of mind called magical consciousness. All
|
|
consciousness is equally magical, and what we call magical
|
|
depends entirely on what we consider to be normal and take for
|
|
granted. There is a continuum of consciousness spreading away
|
|
from the spot where we normally hang our hat, and the potential
|
|
for magic depends more on the appropriateness of our state for
|
|
what we are trying to achieve than it does on peculiar trance
|
|
states. When I want to boil an egg I don't spend three days
|
|
fasting and praying to God; I just boil an egg. One of the
|
|
characteristics of my "normal" state of consciousness is that I
|
|
understand how to boil an egg, but from many alternative states
|
|
of consciousness it is a magical act of the first order. So what
|
|
I call magical consciousness differs from normal consciousness
|
|
only in so far as it is a state less appropriate for boiling
|
|
eggs, and more appropriate for doing other things.
|
|
|
|
Secondly, there isn't one simple flavour of magical
|
|
consciousness; the space of potential consciousness spreads out
|
|
along several different axes, like moving in a space with several
|
|
different dimensions, and that means the magician can enter a
|
|
large number of distinct states, all of which can be considered
|
|
different aspects of magical consciousness.
|
|
|
|
Lastly, it is normal to shift our consciousness around in
|
|
this space during our everyday lives, so there is nothing unusual
|
|
in shifting consciousness to another place. This makes magical
|
|
consciousness hard to define, because it isn't something so
|
|
extraordinary after all. Nevertheless, there is a difference
|
|
between walking across the road and walking around the world, and
|
|
there are differences between what I call normal and magical
|
|
consciousness, even though they are arbitrary markers in a
|
|
continuum. There is a difference in magnitude, and there is a
|
|
difference in the "magnitude of intent", that is, will. Magic
|
|
takes us beyond the normal; it disrupts cosy certainties; it
|
|
explores new territory. Like new technology, once it becomes part
|
|
of everyday life it stops being "magical" and becomes "normal".
|
|
We learn the "magic of normal living" at an early age and forget
|
|
the magic of it; normal living affects us in ways which the
|
|
magician recognises as magical, but so "normal" that it is
|
|
difficult to realise what is going on. From the point of view of
|
|
magical consciousness, "normal life" is seen to be a complex
|
|
magical balancing act, like a man who keeps a hundred plates
|
|
spinning on canes at the same time and is always on the point of
|
|
losing one. Magical consciousness is not the extraordinary state:
|
|
normal life is. The man on the stage is so busy spinning his
|
|
plates he can spend no time doing anything else.
|
|
|
|
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
|
|
2694
|
|
|
|
A characteristic of magical consciousness which
|
|
distinguishes it from normal consciousness is that in most
|
|
magical work the magician moves outside the "normally accessible"
|
|
region of consciousness. Most "normal people" will resist an
|
|
attempt to shift their consciousness outside the circle of
|
|
normality, and if too much pressure is applied they panic, throw-
|
|
up, become ill, have hysterics, call the police or a priest or a
|
|
psychiatrist, or end up permanently traumatised. Sometimes they
|
|
experience a blinding but one-sided illumination and become
|
|
fanatics for a one-sided point of view. Real, detectable shifts
|
|
in consciousness outside the "normal circle" are to be entered
|
|
into warily, and the determined ritualist treads a thin line
|
|
between success, and physical and psychical illness. A neophyte
|
|
in Tibet swears that he or she is prepared to risk madness,
|
|
disease and death, and in my personal experience this is not
|
|
melodramatic - the risks are real enough. It depends on
|
|
temperament and constitution - some people wander all over the
|
|
planes of consciousness with impunity, some find it extremely
|
|
stressful, and some claim it never did them any harm (when they
|
|
are clearly as cracked as the Portland Vase). The grosser forms
|
|
of magic are hard to do because body and mind fight any attempt
|
|
to move into those regions of consciousness where it is possible
|
|
to transcend the "normal" and create new kinds of normality.
|
|
|
|
The switch into magical consciousness is often accompanied
|
|
by a feeling of "energy" or "power". Reality becomes a fluid, and
|
|
the will is like a wind blowing it this way and that. Far out.
|
|
|
|
There are several traditional methods for reaching abnormal
|
|
states of consciousness: dance, drumming, hallucinogenic and
|
|
narcotic substances, fasting and other forms of privation, sex,
|
|
meditation, dreaming, and ritual, used singly and in combination.
|
|
These notes deal only with ritual. Magical ritual has evolved
|
|
organically out of the desire to reach normally inaccessible
|
|
regions of consciousness and still continue living sanely in the
|
|
world afterwards, and once that is understood, its profundity
|
|
from a psychological point of view can be appreciated.
|
|
|
|
3. Limitation
|
|
|
|
The concept of limitation is so important in the way magical
|
|
ritual has developed that it is worth taking a look at what it
|
|
means before going on to look at the basics of ritual.
|
|
|
|
We are limited beings: our lives are limited to some tens of
|
|
years, our bodies are limited in their physical abilities, and
|
|
compared to all the different kinds of life on this planet we are
|
|
clearly very specialised compared with the potential of what we
|
|
could be, if we had the choice of being anything we wanted. Even
|
|
as human beings we are limited, in that we are all quite distinct
|
|
from oneanother, and guard that individuality and uniqueness as
|
|
an inalienable right. We limit ourselves to a few skills because
|
|
of the effort and talent required to acquire them, and only in
|
|
exceptional cases do we find people who are expert in a large
|
|
number of different skills - most people are happy if they are
|
|
acknowledged as being an expert in one thing, and it is a fact
|
|
that as the sum total of knowledge increases, so people
|
|
(particularly those with technical skills) are forced to become
|
|
2695
|
|
|
|
more and more specialised.
|
|
|
|
This idea of limitation and specialisation has found its way
|
|
into magical ritual because of the magical (or mystical)
|
|
perception that, although all consciousness in the universe is
|
|
One, and that Oneness can be perceived directly, it has become
|
|
limited. There is a process of limitation in which the One (God,
|
|
if you like) becomes progressively structured and constrained
|
|
until it reaches the level of thee and me. The details of this
|
|
process (sometimes called "The Fall") lies well outside a set of
|
|
notes on ritual technique, and being theosophical, is the sort of
|
|
thing people like to have long-winded arguments about, so I am
|
|
not going to say much about it. What I *will* say is that
|
|
magicians and mystics the world over are relatively unanimous in
|
|
insisting that the normal everyday consciousness of most human
|
|
beings is a severe *limitation* on the potential of
|
|
consciousness, and it is possible, through various disciplines,
|
|
to extend consciousness into new regions; this harks back to the
|
|
"circle of normality" I mentioned in the previous section. From a
|
|
magical point of view the personality, the ego, the continuing
|
|
sense of individual "me-ness", is a magical creation with highly
|
|
specialised abilities, an artificial elemental or thoughtform
|
|
which consumes all our magical power in exchange for the kind of
|
|
limitation necessary to survive, and in order to work magic it is
|
|
necessary to divert energy away from this obsession with personal
|
|
identity and self-importance.
|
|
|
|
Now, consider the following problem: you have been
|
|
imprisoned inside a large inflated plastic bag. You have been
|
|
given a sledghammer and a scalpel. Which tool will get you out
|
|
faster? The answer I am looking for is the scalpel: a way of
|
|
getting out of large, inflated, plastic bags is to apply as much
|
|
force as possible to as sharp a point as possible. Magicians
|
|
agree on this principle - the key to successful ritual work is a
|
|
"single-pointed will". A mystic may try to expand consciousness
|
|
in all directions simultaneously, to encompass more and more of
|
|
the One, to embrace the One, perhaps even to transcend the One,
|
|
but this is hard, and most people aren't up to it in practise.
|
|
Rather than expand in all directions simultaneously, it is much
|
|
easier to *limit* an excursion of consciousness in one direction,
|
|
and the more precise and well-defined that limitation to a
|
|
specific direction, the easier it is to get out of the bag.
|
|
Limitation of consciousness is the trick we use to cope with the
|
|
complexity of life in modern society, and as long as we are
|
|
forced to live under this yoke we can make a virtue out of a
|
|
necessity, and use our carefully cultivated ability to
|
|
focus attention on minutiae to burst out of the bag.
|
|
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What limitation means in practise is that magical ritual is
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designed to produce specific and highly *limited* changes in
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consciousness, and this is done by using a specific map of
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consciousness, and there are symbolic correspondences within the
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map which can be used in the construction of a ritual - I discuss
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this later. The principle of limitation is a key to understanding
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the structure of magical ritual, and a key to successful
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practice.
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To summarise the last two sections, I would say the
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characteristics of a "good" ritual are:
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1. Entry into magical consciousness and the release of
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"magical energy".
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2. A limitation of consciousness to channel that energy in
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the correct direction, with minimal "splatter".
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Without the energy there is nothing to channel. Without the
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limitation, energy splatters in all directions and takes the path
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of minimal psychic resistance to earth. A magical ritual is the
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calculated shifting and limitation of consciousness.
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4. Essential Steps
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There is never going to be agreement about what is essential
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in a ritual and what is not, any more than there will ever be
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agreement about what makes a good novel. That doesn't mean there
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is nothing worth discussing. The steps I have enumerated below
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are suggestions which were handed down to me, and a lot of
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insight (not mine) has gone into them; they conform to a Western
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magical tradition which has not changed in its essentials for
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thousands of years, and I hand them on to you in the same spirit
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as I received them.
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These are the steps:
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1. Open the Circle
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2. Open the Gates
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3. Invocation to the Powers
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4. Statement of Intention and Sacrifice
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5. Main Ritual
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6. Dismissal of Powers
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7. Close the Gates
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8. Close the Circle
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4.1 Open the Circle
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The Circle is the place where magical work is carried out.
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It might literally be circle on the ground, or it could be a
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church, or a stone ring, or a temple, or it might be an imagined
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circle inscribed in the aethyr, or it could be any spot hallowed
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by tradition. In some cases the Circle is created specifically
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for one piece of work and then closed, while in other cases (e.g.
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a church) the building is consecrated and all the space within
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the building is treated as if it is an open circle for long
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periods of time. I don't want to deal too much in generalities,
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so I will deal with the common case where a circle is created
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specifically for one piece of work, for a period of time
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typically less than one day.
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The Circle is the first important magical limit: it creates
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an area within which the magical work takes place. The magician
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tries to control everything which takes place within the Circle
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(limitation), and so a circle half-a-mile across is impractical.
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The Circle marks the boundary between the rest of the world
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(going on its way as normal), and a magical space where things
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2697
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are most definitely not going on as normal (otherwise there
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wouldn't be any point in carrying out a ritual in the first
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place). There is a dislocation: the region inside the circle is
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separated from the rest of space and is free to go its own way.
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There are some types of magical work where it may not be sensible
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to have a circle (e.g. working with the natural elements in the
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world at large) but unless you are working with a Power already
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present in the environment in its normal state, it is useful to
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work within a circle.
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The Circle may be a mark on the ground, or something more
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intangible still; my own preference is an imagined line of blue
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fire drawn in the air. It is in the nature of consciousness that
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anything taken as real and treated as real will eventually be
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accepted as Real - and if you want to start a good argument,
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state that money doesn't exist and isn't Real. From a ritual
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point of view the Circle is a real boundary, and if its
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usefulness is to be maintained it should be treated with the same
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respect as an electrified fence. Pets, children and casual
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onlookers should be kept out of it. Whatever procedures take
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place within the Circle should only take place within the Circle
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and in no other place, and conversely, your normal life should
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not intrude on the Circle unless it is part of your intention
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that it should. Basically, if you don't want a circle, don't have
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one, but if you do have one, decide what it means and stick to
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it. There is a school of thought which believes a circle is a
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"container for power", and another which believes a circle "keeps
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out the nasties". I subscribe to both and neither of these points
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of view. From a symbolic point of view, the Circle marks a new
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"circle of normality", a circle different from my usual "circle
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of normality", making it possible to keep the two "regions of
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consciousness" distinct and separate. The magician leaves
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everyday life behind when the Circle is opened, and returns to it
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when the Circle is closed, and for the duration adopts a
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discipline of thought and deed which is specific to the type of
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magical work being undertaken; this procedure is not so different
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from that in many kinds of laboratory where people work with
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hazardous materials. The circle is both a barrier and a
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|
container. This is a kind of psychic sanitation, and in magic
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"sanity" and "sanitary" have more in common than spelling.
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Opening a Circle usually involves drawing a circle in the
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air or on the ground, accompanied by an invocation to guardian
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spirits, or the elemental powers of the four quarters, or the
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four watchtowers, or the archangels, or whatever. The details
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|
aren't so important as practicing it until you can do it in your
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sleep, and you should carry it out with the same attitude as a
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|
soldier on formal guard duty outside a public building. You are
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|
establishing a perimeter under the watchful "eyes" of whatever
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guardians you have requested to keep an eye on things, and a
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martial attitude and sense of discipline creates the right
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psychological mood.
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ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
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4.2 Opening the Gates
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The Gates in question are the boundary between normal and
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magical consciousness. Just as opening the Circle limits the
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ritual in space, so opening the Gates limits the ritual in time.
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Not everyone opens the Gates as a separate activity; opening a
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|
Circle can be considered a de-facto opening of Gates, but there
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|
are good reasons for keeping the two activities separate.
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Firstly, it is convenient to be able to open a Circle without
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going into magical consciousness; despite what I said about not
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bringing normal consciousness into the Circle, rules are made to
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be broken, and there are times when something unpleasant and
|
|
unwanted intrudes on normal consciousness, and a Circle can be
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|
used to keep it out - like pulling blankets over your head at
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|
night. Secondly, opening the Gates as a separate activity means
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|
they can be tailored to the specific type of magical
|
|
consciousness you are trying to enter. Thirdly, just as bank
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|
vaults and ICBMs have two keys, so it is prudent to make the
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|
entry into magical consciousness something you are not likely to
|
|
do on a whim, and the more distinct steps there are, the more
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|
conscious effort is required. Lastly - and it is an important
|
|
point - I open the circle with a martial attitude, and it is
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useful to have a breathing space to switch out of that mood and
|
|
into the mood needed for the invocation. Opening the Gates
|
|
provides an opportunity to make that switch.
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4.3 Invocation to the Powers
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The invocation to the Powers is often an occasion for some
|
|
of the most laboured, leaden, pompous, grandiose and turgid prose
|
|
ever written or recited. Tutorial books on magic are full of this
|
|
stuff. "Oh glorious moon, wreathed in aetherial light...". You
|
|
know the stuff. If you are invoking Saturn during a waxing moon
|
|
you might be justified in going on like Brezhnev addressing the
|
|
Praesidium of the Soviet Communist Party, but as in every other
|
|
aspect of magic, the trick isn't what you do, but how you do it,
|
|
and interminable invocations aren't the answer. On a practical
|
|
level, reading a lengthy invocation from a sheet of paper in dim
|
|
candlelight requires so much conscious effort that it is hard to
|
|
"let go", so I like keep things simple and to the point, and
|
|
practice until I can do an invocation without having to think
|
|
about it too much, and that leaves room for the more important
|
|
"consciousness changing" aspect of the invocation.
|
|
|
|
An invocation is like a ticket for a train, and if you can't
|
|
find the train there isn't much point in having the ticket.
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|
Opening the Gates gets you to the doorstep of magical
|
|
consciousness, but it is the invocation which gets you onto the
|
|
train and propels you to the right place, and that isn't
|
|
something which "just happens" unless you have a natural aptitude
|
|
for the aspect of consciousness you are invoking. However, it
|
|
does happen; people tend to begin their magical work with those
|
|
areas of consciousness where they feel most at home, so they may
|
|
well have some initial success. Violent, evil people do violent
|
|
and evil conjurations; loving people invoke love - most people
|
|
begin their magical work with "a free ticket" to some altered
|
|
state of consciousness, but in general, invoking a specific
|
|
aspect of consciousness takes practice and I don't expect
|
|
2699
|
|
|
|
immediate results when I invoke something new. If interminable
|
|
tracts of deathless prose work for you, then fine, but I find it
|
|
hard to keep a straight face when piety and pomposity combine to
|
|
produce the sort of invocations to be found in print. I name no
|
|
names.
|
|
|
|
I can't give a prescription for entering magical
|
|
consciousness. Well devised rituals, practised often, have a way
|
|
of shifting consciousness which is surprising and unexpected. I
|
|
don't know why this happens; it just does. I suspect the peculiar
|
|
character of ritual, the way it involves the senses and occupies
|
|
mind and body simultaneously, its numinous and exotic symbolism,
|
|
the intensity of preparation and execution, involve dormant parts
|
|
of the mind, or at least engage the normal parts in an unusual
|
|
way. Using ritual to cause shifts in consciousness is not
|
|
exceptionally difficult; getting the results you want, and
|
|
avoiding unexpected and undesired side-effects is harder. Ritual
|
|
is not a rational procedure. The symbolism of magic is intuitive
|
|
and bubbles out of a very deep well; the whole process of ritual
|
|
effectively bypasses the rational mind, so expecting the outcome
|
|
of a ritual to obey the dictates of reason is completely
|
|
irrational. The image of a horse is appropriate: anyone can get
|
|
on the back of a wild mustang, but reaching the point where horse
|
|
and rider go in the same direction at the same time takes
|
|
practice. The process of limitation described in these notes
|
|
can't influence the natural waywardness of the animal, but at
|
|
least it is a method for ensuring that the horse gets a clear
|
|
message.
|
|
|
|
4.4 Statement of Intention and Sacrifice
|
|
|
|
If magical ritual is not to be regarded as a form of
|
|
bizarre entertainment carried out for its own sake, then there
|
|
has to be a reason for doing it - healing, divination, personal
|
|
development, initiation, and the like. If it is healing, then it
|
|
is usually healing for one specific person, and then again, it is
|
|
probably not just healing in general, but healing for some
|
|
specific complaint, within some period of time. The statement of
|
|
intention is the culmination of a process of limitation which
|
|
begins when the Circle is opened, and to return to the analogy of
|
|
the plastic bag, the statement of intention is like the blade on
|
|
the scalpel - the more precise the intention, the more the energy
|
|
of the ritual is concentrated to a single point.
|
|
|
|
The observation that rituals work better if their energy is
|
|
focussed by intention is in accord with experience in everyday
|
|
life: any change involving other people, no matter how small or
|
|
insignificant, tends to meet with opposition. If you want to
|
|
change the brand of coffee in the coffee machine, or if you want
|
|
to rearrange the furniture in the office, someone will object. If
|
|
you want to drive a new road through the countryside, local
|
|
people object. If you want to raise taxes, everyone objects. The
|
|
more people you involve in a change, the more opposition you
|
|
encounter, and in magic the same principle holds, because from a
|
|
magical point of view the whole fabric of the universe is held in
|
|
place by an act of collective intention involving everything from
|
|
God downwards. When you perform a ritual you are setting yourself
|
|
up against a collective will to keep most things the way they
|
|
2700
|
|
|
|
are, and your ritual will succeed only if certain things are
|
|
true:
|
|
|
|
1. you are a being of awesome will.
|
|
|
|
2. you have allies. The universe is changing, there is
|
|
always a potential for change, and if your intention
|
|
coincides with an existing will to bring about that change,
|
|
your ritual can act as a catalyst.
|
|
|
|
3. you limit your intention to minimise opposition; the
|
|
analogy is the diamond cutter who exploits natural lines of
|
|
cleavage to split a diamond.
|
|
|
|
Suppose you want to bring peace to the world. This is an
|
|
admirable intention, but the average person would have no more
|
|
effect (with or without magic) on the peacefulness of the world
|
|
than they would if they attempted to smash Mount Everest with a
|
|
rubber hammer. Rather than worry about the peacefulness of the
|
|
whole world, why not use your ritual to create a better
|
|
relationship with your spouse, or your boss, or someone who
|
|
really annoys you? And why not work on the specific issues which
|
|
are the main source of friction. And try to improve things within
|
|
a specified period of time. And do it in a way which respects the
|
|
other person's right to continue being a pain in the arse if they
|
|
so wish? This is the idea behind focussing or limiting an
|
|
intention. Having said all this, there are a lot of people in the
|
|
world who would appreciate some peace, and perhaps your grand
|
|
intention to bring peace might catch a wave and help a few, so
|
|
don't let me put you off, but as a general principle it is
|
|
sensible to avoid unnecessary opposition by making the intention
|
|
as precise as possible. Think about sources of opposition, and
|
|
about ways of circumventing that opposition - there may be a
|
|
simple way which avoids making waves, and that is when magic
|
|
works best. Minimising opposition also reduces the amount of
|
|
backlash you can expect - quite often the simplest path to earth
|
|
for any intention is through the magician, and if there is a lot
|
|
of opposition that is what happens. [The very act of invoking
|
|
power creates a resonance and a natural channel through the
|
|
magician.]
|
|
|
|
I try to analyse the possible outcomes and consequences of
|
|
my intentions. There is a popular view that "if it harms none, do
|
|
what you will". I can think of many worse moral principles, and
|
|
it is better than most, but it is still naive. It pretends that
|
|
it is theoretically possible to live without treading on another
|
|
person's toes, it leaves me to make unilateral decisions about
|
|
what is or is not harmful to others, and it is so wildly
|
|
unrealistic, even in the context of everyday life, that it only
|
|
seems to make sense if I intend to live in seclusion in a
|
|
wilderness living off naturally occuring nuts and berries (having
|
|
asked the squirrels for permission). If it is used as a moral
|
|
principle in magic, then it draws an artificial distinction
|
|
between magical work and the "push me, push you/if it moves,
|
|
shoot it, if it doesn't, cut it down" style of contemporary life.
|
|
It completely emasculates free-will. I prefer to believe that
|
|
just about anything I do is going to have an impact on someone or
|
|
something, and there are no cute moral guidelines; there are
|