84 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
84 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
MB>Actually I haven't seen it, however two books I have read describe fully
|
||
MB>that the pentagram IS part of satanic ritual, and that witchcraft is
|
||
MB>certainly another part. One book is authored by Mike Warnke, and is
|
||
MB>called THE SATAN SELLER. The other book I will have to grab
|
||
MB>title/author for you later because I cannot recall it at this time.
|
||
"The Satan Seller" is a load of Fundie hogwash that plays to the Fundie
|
||
belief that any belief system other than their own brand of Fundamentalist
|
||
Christianity is Satanic. Obviously you have "bought into" this world-view,
|
||
because Wicca, or "witchcraft" as you put it, has absolutely NOTHING to do
|
||
with Satanism.
|
||
|
||
Wicca is a modern-day reconstruction of the Keltic Old Religion, which
|
||
also has survived by oral transmission of the traditions from mother to
|
||
daughter in some Irish, Scottish, and Welsh families. Most Wiccans follow
|
||
a "reconstructed", that is, partially synthetic version of the religion,
|
||
but there are rare "family tradition" Wiccans who may very well be
|
||
preserving the pre-Christian religion of the British Isles.
|
||
Wiccans believe, to varying degrees, in a Great Goddess, known by many
|
||
historical names but usually simply referred to as The Goddess or The
|
||
Lady. She is said to have three phases, that of the Warrior Maiden, the
|
||
Fruitful Mother, and the Wise Crone. Many Wiccan traditions only honor
|
||
the Goddess; these are primarily feminist traditions that limit their
|
||
membership to women only. Zsusana Budapest, who recently appeared on
|
||
Sally Jessy Raphael with a couple of Fundie authors and two self-
|
||
professing "satanists" is a "Dianic" or Goddess-only High Priestess. To
|
||
a certain degree, so is Starhawk, who is perhaps the most famous Wiccan
|
||
author out there.
|
||
However, most traditions acknowledge a God. This deity is known
|
||
commonly as Herne or Cernummos, and is usually pictured as having antlers
|
||
or (gasp!) horns. However much this smacks of the Christian concept of
|
||
the Devil, this deity is not the equivalent of such a Christian concept.
|
||
The antlers or horns are there as a reminder that this deity is seen as
|
||
the Lord of the Wild Hunt, or Lord of the Game, with origins in
|
||
hunter-gatherer societies as far back as prehistory. Legends of Jack
|
||
'O The Green and Robin Hood also have their origins in this deity, for
|
||
he is also considered the Lord of all Green, Growing Things. As the female
|
||
deity of Wicca is most commonly as The Goddess or the Lady, this deity is
|
||
known most commonly as The God or The Lord.
|
||
|
||
Satanism, on the other hand, should really be referred to as a Christian
|
||
heresy. The concept of Satan could not exist without the concept of the
|
||
Christian God. There seems to be two readily identifiable strains of
|
||
Satanism, with one very questionable third strain, that of a "world wide
|
||
Satanist conspiracy" being talked about very much but with no conclusive
|
||
proof existing. I will speak of the two strains that are KNOWN to exist.
|
||
The first is "Dabbler" Satanism. Satanist "dabblers" are usually teenagers,
|
||
with a rebellious streak and often a love of extremely loud music and
|
||
hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and Pot. The "dabblers" are the ones who
|
||
spray-paint upside down pentagrams and upside-down crosses (symbols which
|
||
are not Satanic in themselves--both the right-side up and upside-down
|
||
pentagram inside or outside a circle were symbols used by Judaism as far
|
||
back as the beginning of this century, and the upside-down cross is known
|
||
to the Catholic Church as the Cross of Peter, referring to the fact that
|
||
St. Peter was crucified upside down to deny him the "privelege" of dying
|
||
like his Lord, Jesus) and steal cats and dogs for sacrifices.
|
||
Most "dabblers" wind up growing out of that phase of their life, but if
|
||
such dabbling is combined with underlying mental disturbances, the
|
||
combination can be lethal. The recently convicted "Night Stalker" Richard
|
||
Ramirez had all the earmarks of a Satanist "dabbler", but his underlying
|
||
mental disturbance drove him to run around killing people. There are other
|
||
cases of such people, but then again for every "dabbler" who winds up
|
||
killing, there are others who believe that God and/or Jesus is telling
|
||
them to kill "evil" people.
|
||
The other strain is Philosophical Satanism. This covers such groups as the
|
||
Temple of Set, the Church of Satan, and others that are out there. The
|
||
most important tenet of Philosophical Satanism is a belief that Satan is
|
||
symbolic of human greed, lust, ambition, rebellion...in short, things that
|
||
Christianity frowns upon, but that Philosophical Satanism celebrates. In
|
||
fact, perhaps the greatest influence on Philosophical Satanism is not
|
||
Christianity's concept of Satan, but the works of Romanticist philosopher
|
||
Friedrich Nietzche. The Philosophical Satanist world view is best summed up
|
||
by one of Nietzche's own aphorisms: "The greatest epochs of history come
|
||
when people rebaptize their evils as their best." All of the major
|
||
Philosophical Satanist groups very strongly forbid any sort of blood
|
||
sacrifice, be it animal or human, in their rites.
|
||
|
||
I welcome any further discussion on the matter. I have studied the whole
|
||
Fundie Satanic Hysteria situation extensively, and feel I can fill you in
|
||
on quite a bit of info your church may not be able to.
|
||
|
||
Regards,
|
||
Michelle Klein-Hass
|
||
Compiler of the Christian Hate Literature Project (X-Hate)
|
||
|