All the secrets of Bohemian Grove are revealed, including the fact that these guys reveal themselves way, way too often.

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• From I Obtained the Attendance List For Bohemian Grove, Dan Boguslaw, Responsible State Craft, 2026: Bohemian Grove is an exclusive mens-only club that hosts a two-week summer retreat for the rich and powerful at a 2,700 acre compound in the redwoods of Northern California. With a $25,000 initiation fee and a decades-long membership waiting list, the hideaway was described in a 1989 Spy article as “the most exclusive frat party on earth.” The club serves as a popular destination for national security officials and defense industry executives to fraternize and party, far from the public eye. The 2023 camp attendance list includes two former national security advisors, three former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two former directors of the NSA. A 2017 roster, which lists all dues-paying members of the club, included three former directors of the CIA. Each club member is assigned to one of 130 separate “camps” inside the compound, which act as fraternities for attendees to party together. “Mandalay” is seen as the most elite camp, whose members in 2023 included Henry Kissinger, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Riley Bechtel, the billionaire heir of the Bechtel corporation. A visitor once said of Mandalay, “you don’t just walk in there — you are summoned.” “Wayside Log” appears to be another watering hole for the national security community and defense contractors. Its members include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers and J. Michael Myatt, a Marine Corps Major General who became an executive for Bechtel after leaving government. 
  • Bohemian Grove also serves as a place for these buttoned-up generals turned defense executives to let loose. While the rule of not talking business is widely ignored, another unwritten rule is “everyone drinks all the time.” Longtime member and musician Peter Arnott wrote that every camp in the Grove is “competing to pour drinks down your throat” in a summer 2009 edition of the club magazine. While the Bohemian Grove’s motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning leave your business outside, this rule is often ignored. More recently, Sen. McCormick wracked up over a dozen high dollar donors from fellow club members ahead of announcing his successful senate bid in 2023. In 1967 President Nixon gave a lakeside talk at the Bohemian Grove that he would later claim was instrumental to launching his bid for the presidency. According to Spy magazine, the practice of flagrantly flouting the Club’s only public rule has been going on since at least 1989, though likely much longer; State Department cables published by Wikileaks indicate that longtime member Kissinger — who attended the 2023 retreat just months before his death — discussed business at the retreats in the 1970s. We reached out to many of the national security officials who are members of the Bohemian Grove, but none responded to a request for comment. https://substack.com/@drboguslaw/p-190622651 
• From Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, Peter Martin Phillips, UC Davis, 1994: For over 150 years private men’s clubs have existed as a place of personal retreat for socio-economic elite men in American society. U.S. elite men’s clubs are seen by some social scientists as the American equivalent to European aristocracy. Defining a gentleman was one of the essential characteristics of U.S. men’s clubs and a mark of success in American Society. Elite men’s clubs tend to be introspectively oriented: Major activities, events and interactions tend to occur within club boundaries primarily for the members’ and guests’ own self-gratification. Clubs tend to establish traditions and maintain an internal culture to which new members receive some form of indoctrination before or after joining. Finally, elite men’s clubs offer their members a safe sanctum that meets personal needs away from less ordered environments. A man is an aristocrat within the confines of his club: He has supportive staff to wait on him and other aristocrats with similar interests. An elite men’s club is a system of ordered civility in what is perceived as an otherwise chaotic and disorderly world. Elite men’s clubs are actually a relatively rare phenomenon, with perhaps fewer than two hundred in the United States. Given the ubiquitous Rotary, Elks and Lions clubs in every small town in American, two hundred elite clubs is a rare phenomenon indeed. London’s West End men’s clubs, the prototype for American clubs, originated as regular gatherings of men with similar interests in taverns or coffee shops. Sir Walter Raleigh is reported to have founded the Friday Street Club which met at the Mermaid Tavern. Club life in London represented the collective alliance of men with similar tastes and perspectives. Scientific and literary clubs were some of the more honorable associations while gambling and drinking organizations abounded. 
  • Organized in 1872, the Bohemian Club was established in San Francisco as a gathering place for newspaper reporters and men who like arts and literature. (The origin of the term bohemian comes from the French artistic movement of the 1830’s and represented the mutual supportive companionship of artists and intellectuals.) By the 1880’s, businessmen had joined the Club in large numbers, as the original Bohemians found that admitting men of wealth helped pay the expenses. Club activities included poetry recitations, performances by musicians, lectures, and frequent plays. Bohemians liked to publicize their prominence by releasing news reports of important guests attending the Grove or Club functions. Oscar Wilde was entertained at the Bohemian Club in 1882 and is said to have drunk his guests under the table. The San Francisco Chronicle gave first page coverage to the opening of the new clubhouse on November 13, 1910. It was even common for the Bay Area newspapers to report on Bohemian elections and present the platforms of the various candidates for office. In the eleven-year period between 1904 and 1915, the Chronicle ran 331 stories on the Bohemian Club. This represented a yearly average of thirty articles, making Bohemia one of the most highly publicized club in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
    •  In 1878, several dozen Bohemians held a gathering in the forest in Sonoma County near what is now known as Camp Taylor. This was the start of a long Bohemian tradition of trekking to the Sonoma County redwoods during July and August for camping and self entertainment. By 1882, Bohemians were doing regular midsummer weekend campouts under the stars at various locations in Sonoma County. They rented what is now known as the Bohemian Grove from the Sonoma Lumber Company. The Bohemia’s symbol is an owl, which has been in use since the first year the Club started. The owl has come to symbolize the wisdom of life and companionship, that allows humans to struggle with and survive the cares and frustration of the world. A forty foot concrete owl stands at the head of the lake in the Grove, built in 1929 to serve as a ceremonial site. The Cremation of Care Ceremony was produced as a play in 1920, wherein a High Priest is confronted by “Dull Care,” wrapped in the chains but not dead because Bacchus, the only warrior Care fears, is dead. (The 18th Amendment was passed in 1919). Care is burned, thereby purging the “sacred Grove.” This ceremony has been rewritten on several occasions but the theme is still the same, and Care is still dispatched yearly in a fiery death that symbolizes the initiation of Bohemian fellowship.
• From Masters of the Universe Go to Camp, Philip Weiss, Spy Magazine, 1989: Monte Rio is a depressed Northern California town of 900 where the forest is so thick that some streetlights stay on all day long. Every summer for more than a century, the Bohemian Club has led a retreat into this redwood forest. The religion they consecrate is right-wing, laissez-faire and quintessentially western, with some Druid tree worship thrown in for fun. For me, the trick was getting in. A guest card was out of the question: club bylaws have stated that a member-sponsor’s application “shall be in writing and shall contain full information for the guidance of the Board in determining the merits and qualifications of the proposed guest.” And my attempts to get a job as a waiter or a valet in one of the camps failed. In the end I entered by stealth. Some observers of the Grove had warned that security was too good and they’d put me in the Santa Rosa jail for trespassing. Lowell Bergman, a producer with 60 Minutes who used to hunt rabbits in the nearby hills, remembered a fire road leading into the site near the Guerneville waste-treatment plant but said they’d spot me sneaking in. Others mentioned barbed wire and electronic monitoring devices. Finally, a mountain guide demanded only that I keep the methods he devised for me confidential. He had a keen geographical sense and a girlfriend who described a plan to seed magic crystals at the Grove gates to make them open of their own accord so that Native American drummers could walk in. We didn’t do it that way, but it turned out that Grove security isn’t quite what it’s reputed to be. The sociologists who had studied the place were right; there was no real security. I told everyone I was a guest of Bromley camp, where unsortable visitors end up. At 33, I was one of the youngest Bohemians, but I was welcome almost as a policy matter. “We looked around and saw we were becoming an old-men’s club,” a member said, explaining recent efforts to recruit fresh blood. I used my real name. No one inside acted suspicious. One day a member asked if I was related to a Bohemian named Jack Weiss. “No, but I’ve heard a lot about him and I’d like to meet him.” “You can’t,” he said. “He’s dead.” After that I began working a dead West Coast relative’s promise to have me out to the Grove one summer into a shaggy-dog story about my invitation. I was able to enjoy most pleasures of the Grove, notably the speeches, songs, elaborate drag shows, endless toasts, pre-breakfast gin fizzes, round-the-clock “Nembutals” and other drinks — though I didn’t sleep in any of the camps or swim naked with likeminded Bohemians in the Russian River at night.
  • One reason for the Bohemian Club’s poor public relations is the name it gave to the yearly opening ceremony: The Cremation of Care. The cremation is intended to put the busy men of the club at ease and banish the stress of the outside world, but it arouses critics of the encampment because they interpret it to mean that Bohemians literally don’t care about the outside world. Cremation of Care, they fear, means the death of caring. Demonstrations outside the Grove a few years back often centered around the “Resurrection of Care.” The club says it serves as a “refuge” from the strivings of the marketplace, and though it’s true that actual deal-making is discouraged, I heard business being done on all sides. A tenet of Grove life is noncompetitive egalitarianism: all men are equal here. But in fact, class and status differences among camps are pronounced. Just as you have to be sponsored for membership, you have to be sponsored for a camp. The sexism and racism were of a peculiar sort: Black jokes are out because there are a handful of black members — though one day near the Civic Center I did hear a group of old-timers trying to imitate Jesse Jackson. As for Jews, old membership lists suggest that they have taken a very small part in the club for decades. That leaves women and Hispanics. When Ronald Reagan came to the green parasol one day, the organ player broke into “California, Here I Come.” Reagan said that it was good to be back. The Grove had been a major factor in his “homesickness… when you are forced to be away, as I was, for eight years.” The speech was canned and courtly. Though he cursed now and then, he seemed uncomfortable with the word damn. It was my last hour at the Grove. My bags were packed — a camera in one pocket, a tape recorder in the other. I’d tried to grab one of the free Bohemian Club walking sticks from the museum, something I could lean against my office wall as a reminder that this had not been just a dream. But there were none left; Bohemians had taken them all hiking.
• From Transcript of the Cremation of Care, Graham Hancock, 2007: O Beauty’s vassals Who keep, in this gray autumn of the world, Her springtime in your hearts, I charge ye all: For lasting happiness we lift our eyes To one alone, and she surrounds you now, Great Nature, refuge for the weary heart And only balm for breasts that have been bruised, Her counsels are most wise. But ye must come As children, little children that believe, Nor ever doubt her beauty or her faith, Nor dream her tenderness can change or die! Nay, thou mocking Care, it is not all a dream. We know thou waitest for us when this our sylvan holiday shall end. And we shall meet and fight thee as of old, and some of us prevail against thee, and some thou shalt destroy. But this, too, we know: year after year, within this happy Grove, our fellowship has banned thee for a space, and thy malevolence that would pursue us here has lost its power beneath these friendly trees. So shall we burn thee once again this night and in the flames that eat thine effigy we’ll read the sign: Midsummer set us free. No fire, if it be kindled from the world Where Care is nourished on the hates of men Shall drive him from this Grove. One flame alone Must light this pyre, the pure eternal flame That burns within the Lamp of Fellowship Upon the altar of Bohemia. Great Owl of Bohemia, we thank thee for thy adjuration. Well should we know our living flame Of Fellowship can sear The grasping claws of Care, Throttle his impious screams And send his cowering carcass From this Grove. Begone, detested Care, begone! Once more we banish thee! Let the all potent spirit of this lamp By its cleansing and ambient fire Encircle the mystic scene Hail Fellowship; begone Dull Care! Once again Midsummer sets us free!
• From PROPOSED REMARKS BY WILLIAM H. WEBSTER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE BOHEMIAN GROVE LAKESIDE TALK JULY 22, 1988, CIA.gov Reading Room: THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I’VE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO TELL YOU ABOUT SOME OF MY RESPONSIBILITIES AT THE CIA, AND THERE IS A CERTAIN IRONY IN THIS FOR ME. AT THE FBI. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME TELLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE THAT WHAT THE FBI WAS ALL ABOUT WAS LAW ENFORCEMENT. NOT SPYING. NOW. I FIND MYSELF SPEAKING TO GROUPS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY REVERSING ALL OF THAT — ASSURING AUDIENCES THAT AT THE CIA WE ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT. BUT AS FASCINATED AS AMERICANS ARE BY SPYING. THEY ARE OFTEN SKEPTICAL–AS WELLAND WANT TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM THE HARSHER ASPECTS OF INTELLIGENCE. MY GOOD FRIEND, GENERAL VERNON WALTERS. FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE CIA AND NOW OUR AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS, DESCRIBES THE VIEW MANY HAVE OF THE WHOLE INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS: “AMERICANS.” HE OBSERVED, “HAVE ALWAYS HAD AN AMBIVALENT ATTITUDE TOWARD INTELLIGENCE. WHEN THEY FEEL THREATENED. THEY WANT A LOT OF IT, AND WHEN THEY DON’T. THEY TEND TO REGARD THE WHOLE THING AS SOMEWHAT IMMORAL.” BUT THROUGH TIMELY INTELLIGENCE COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS, THE AGENCY HAS PROVIDED ADVANCE WARNING OF WEAPONS AND WEAPONS SYSTEMS ACQUIRED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. FOR EXAMPLE, WE GAVE ADVANCE WARNING OF THE MOST RECENT IRAQI OFFENSIVES IN THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR, CORRECTLY ANALYZING THE INCREASED RELIANCE ON CHEMICAL WEAPONS. OF PARTICULAR CONCERN JUST NOW IS THE SITUATION IN THE PERSIAN GULF — A SITUATION MADE EVEN MORE VOLATILE BY THE RECENT INCIDENT INVOLVING THE IRANIAN AIRBUS. WE ARE NOW — AND HAVE BEEN PROVIDING DAILY TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT TO NAVAL FORCES OPERATING WITH THE U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND. OUR SUPPORT HAS INCLUDED REPORTS ON IRANIAN ANTISHIP CRUISE MISSILE SITES, NAVAL BASES. AIRFIELDS. AND COASTAL DEFENSE INSTALLATIONS. WE HAVE HAD A NUMBER OF MAJOR SUCCESSES THIS YEAR [the following page redacted] WE WILL BE MONITORING AND REPORTING ON THE SOVIET WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN AND ITS EFFECTS ON THAT COUNTRY. WE WILL ALSO ВЕ PROVIDING INSIGHT INTO WHAT GORBACHEV’S EMPHASIS ON “NEW THINKING” IMPLIES FOR HIS OWN COUNTRY AND FOR THE WORLD. [paragraph redacted] AMONG THE INCREASINGLY INTRICATE ARSENALS ACROSS THE WORLD.. INTELLIGENCE IS AN. ESSENTIAL WEAPON. PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT. BUT IT IS, BEING SECRET, THE MOST DANGEROUS. SAFEGUARDS TO PREVENT ITS ABUSE MUST BE DEVISED, REVISED. AND RIGIDLY APPLIED. BUT AS IN ALL ENTERPRISE. THE CHARACTER AND WISDOM OF THOSE TO WHOM IT IS ENTRUSTED WILL BE DECISIVE.
• From Inside Bohemian Grove, Alex Jones, 2000: I personally am a Christian but even an atheist should be concerned about the information we’re about to bring forth. People travel to Bohemian Grove to engage in bizarre ancient Canaanite luciferian Babylon mystery religion ceremonies–at least that was the rumors. And so I went to the library and got on the internet and saw many of the mainstream news articles admitting that world leaders do indeed go there and they fly into San Francisco uh and other surrounding cities and drive out into the rural uh hills and mountains of Northern California and that these stories have been coming out that they worship some 45ft Stone owl God and then I began to read some of the documentation on this Moloch character of the Old Testament mentioned many times in Leviticus that’s in the Bible. Why are world leaders traveling to the middle of nowhere to worship this thing, well I had to check it out for myself. I successfully infiltrated through the Secret Service uh through the guards through the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department we were inside 4 hours and I hope that our hidden cameras uh can give you at least a small piece of what I witnessed. To have world leaders engaging in this type of sickening behavior just shocks the very foundations of what Americans believe their leaders to be, and then to have it intimately connected with World Governmen–it doesn’t make a lot of sense until you research history, all throughout history spanning back into the midst of the beginnings of civilization we see world leaders uh from the empires of old from the Aztec Kings and priest uh to Babylonian leaders to ancient Rome engaging in Twisted Behavior. Could it be that when you have all the power and all the women and all the money and all the land and all the art you have to do something new you have to go against the basic grain of humanity you have to get off in a sick way; that’s what we witnessed in Northern California.
• From Bohemian Grove: Facts & Fictions, Mark Dice, 2016: A staff of several hundred people help run the place during the summer encampment, most of them local high school kids from nearby towns who have no idea the identities of the men they are serving. For almost a hundred years only men and teenage boys were allowed to work inside. But as powerful as Bohemian Grove is, it’s not strong enough to prevent the feminists from crashing their party. In 1978 the club was charged with discrimination by the state Department of Fair Employment & Housing for not hiring female employees. The club fought the charge and in 1981 a judge dismissed the case, but it was only a temporary victory. The judge’s decision was based on the members ‘freedom to associate and included a statement that since the men “urinate in the open without even the use of rudimentary toilet facilities” the presence of women would infringe on the men’s right to privacy. The feminists didn’t give up and continued to pursue the case. Another judge overruled the previous decision and ordered the club to begin hiring women. To be clear, the court didn’t say they had to allow women as members, but it did force them to hire women as employees. The State Civil Rights Act states “all persons within the jurisdiction of California are free and equal, no matter their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, or disability and are entitled to full and equal accommodations.” So how is the Bohemian Grove able to legally discriminate against women? Men’s country clubs and organizations like the Girl Scouts can turn down people of the opposite sex for membership without being sued because these clubs are considered private. It’s called the “private club exemption.” from civil rights legislation. Mercy Frost, an employment attorney, says, “The answer is generally yes, they have the right of freedom of association. So at least for now, membership at the Grove means exclusively rereserved for men. Back in 2008, when Hillary Clinton was running for president, Bill Clinto was speaking that at an event when a Heckler began shouting at him about Bohemian Grove. Bill responded, “The Bohemian Club? That’s where those rich Republicans go and stand naked against redwood trees right? I’ve never been, but you ought to go–you’d get some fresh air.”
• From Late Night with the Devil Is Inspired by a Real-Life Secret Society, Trevor Talley & Benjamin Vieira, Comic Book Resources, 2024: David Dastmalchian plays the host of the fictional late night show Night Owls. Dastmalchian’s character, Jack Delroy, is a member of a secret society, and while the film is fiction, what fans of Late Night with the Devil may or may not be aware of is that the “Culte Du Grove” of the film is based on a real-world private organization. The film explores Delroy’s association with a secret society that promises him everything, telling the story of Jack Delroy’s drive to become the top late-night show. The host is failing at this goal. The film goes on to say that The Grove was established in the 1800s, has politicians and major businessmen among its members and that it’s known for its arcane rituals and for making and breaking careers. The Grove visited by Jack Delroy parallels the very real Bohemian Grove, where the Bohemian Club of San Francisco holds its yearly meeting, founded in 1872, back when the American West was still considered wild. In Late Night with the Devil a person in a robe drinks from a chalice in front of a person in an owl suit and other people in robes. The owl statue in Late Night with the Devil is very similar to that of Bohemian Grove. While many accounts of the real Grove say that the event is mostly silly machismo, with a heavy focus on getting hammered and performing jokey or overserious songs and plays, there is also a creepy side to the goings-on, including paintings of naked women and many symbols representing the demand for secrecy, often repeating the motto “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.” Though it was left out of the Oppenheimer biopic, the Manhattan Project met at the Grove during the 1942 event, including Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence and members of the S-1 Executive Committee. It is said that this meeting led directly to the creation of the atomic bomb, something Bohemian Club members hold as a point of pride but which has caused critics much concern that such a world-shaking thing could happen at a private men’s club with no oversight. https://www.cbr.com/late-night-with-the-devil-real-life-inspiration-is-horrifying/ 
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The post Episode 220: Satanists Expose Bohemian Grove appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• • From The Satanic Bible etc etc you know the rest:  Remain in the area of the altar unless imagery is more easily obtained in another spot, such as in the vicinity of the victim. Producing the image of the victim, proceed to inflict the destruction upon the effigy in the manner of your choice. This can be done in the following ways: the sticking of pins or nails into a doll representing your victim; the doll may be cloth, wax, wood, vegetable matter, etc. The creation of graphic imagery depicting the method of your victim’s destruction; drawings, paintings, etc.. The creation of a vivid literary description of your victim’s ultimate end. A detailed soliloquy directed at the intended victim, describing his torments and annihilation.mutilation, injury, infliction of pain or illness by proxy using any other means or devices desired. Intense, calculated hatred and disdain should accompany this step of the ceremony, and no attempt should be made to stop this step until the expended energy results in a state of relative exhaustion on the part of the magician. If requests are written, they are now read aloud by the priest and then burned in the flames of the appropriate candle. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. If requests are given verbally, participants (one at a time) now tell them to the priest. He then repeats in his own words (those which are most emotionally stimulating to him) the request. “Shemhamforash!” and “Hail Satan!” is said after each request. Appropriate Enochian Key is now read by the priest, as evidence of the participants’ allegiance to the Powers of Darkness. Then the words “SO IT IS DONE” are spoken by the priest. Black candles are used for power and success for the participants of the ritual, and are used to consume the parchments on which blessings requested by the ritual participants are written. The white candle is used for destruction of enemies. Parchments upon which curses are written are burned in the flame of the white candle.
  • • From Satanic Scriptures, Peter Gilmore, 2007: Our rituals are not “spells” which guarantee that some actual change will occur in the real world. Since we are skeptical atheists, we do not believe in anything supernatural. However, there are many aspects of the human experience. ESP suggests that there may be a gateway through the most primitive part of the brain by which thoughts and imagery might be broadcast to other minds when fueled by extreme emotional experiences. We see this as a possible means for magic to impact the world outside of the ritual chamber. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has documented phenomena of the “extended mind” such as people’s pets sensing from a distance the time their owners are deciding to return home, as well as the “feeling” that you are being stared at by someone else, even when you don’t see the person doing the staring. These could be supernatural abilities. Perhaps only a small percentage of our population has these intuitive capabilities. Thus we leave this as an open question that each must answer for himself—does ritual do more than simply give emotional relief? Only you can answer it, based on your personally chosen criteria for validity. The format for our traditional ritual was created as a guideline that may be amended by Satanists to suit their own needs. We’re often asked by interested parties if they must use black candles, or absolutely must have all of the devices for ritual described in The Satanic Bible. The answer is that you really don’t need any of the suggested implements, since the most important tool for ritual is your own imagination. The original prescribed practice was to use at least one black candle on the left and one white candle on the right of your altar. That was dropped fairly quickly; any color candles will do, so long as they “feel proper” to you. 
    • From The Problem With Rupert Sheldrake, Sam Woolfe, 2013: Rupert Sheldrake is an English author and parapsychologist credited with the hypothesis of “morphic resonance” who has argued that dogs have the power of telepathy. The problem with Sheldrake is that his ideas do not really survive critical investigation and remain within the realm of pseudoscience. Despite having a PhD in Biochemistry, Sheldrake has received a great deal of criticism from the scientific community for his work on telepathy. He views this attack as a refusal to look at the evidence he has collected; however, none of his experiments has ever been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, suggesting that there is no compelling evidence in the first place. In his book Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, Sheldrake describes how he videotapes the behaviour of dogs and concluded that they knew when their owners set off to home; dogs would apparently wait by the doorway before they could hear the noise of their car approaching, for example. The psychologist Richard Wiseman attempted to duplicate Sheldrake’s experiment using the same ‘psychic’ pet that Sheldrake had used in his own experiments, a dog named Jaytee. Jaytee would wait on the porch for longer periods of time when the owner was closer to arriving home, a phenomenon consistent with Sheldrake’s own results. But Wiseman is not convinced. He argues that the observed patterns could easily be explained by natural waiting behaviour: A dog is more likely to wait on the porch for longer the longer their owner is away. So it should not be surprising that Jaytee is on the porch before the owner comes home. This is evidence of a dog anticipating the arrival of their owner, instead of knowing it through psychic abilities. Another idea that has characterised Sheldrake’s career has been ‘morphic resonance’ and the ‘morphogenetic field’, “the idea of mysterious telepathy-type interconnections between organisms and of collective memories within species.” Through morphic resonance each member of a species draws on a collective memory. Morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them. That the morphogenetic field is invisible leads sceptics to argue that the concept is magical and untestable. Supporters could reply by saying that the quantum world is invisible to us, yet that does not mean it is unreal. That’s true, however, evidence points to a quantum world; Sheldrake’s obsession with telepathy does not necessarily point to a world full of invisible fields. https://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/07/the-problem-with-rupert-sheldrake.html 
    • From Devil Worshiper Hell-Bent on Controversy, ABC News, 2014: In a small, darkened room, Adam Daniels, the self-proclaimed head of his own satanic church, spat and stomped on the symbolic body of Christ in a ritual devoted to Satan. The smells of incense and smoky dry ice vapors wafted over his small band of followers, who watched him and others perform the so-called “black mass” and destroy bread that was meant to symbolize the Eucharistic. Only about 40 or so people attended Daniels’ demonic service, which was held in the basement of an Oklahoma City civic center in September, but it was enough to draw nearly 2,000 Christians from all over the region, some of which drove in from out of state, for a massive protest against it. Daniels is the co-founder of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, a dark religion that worships demons, He has written his own “bible” and calls himself  high priest. Daniels has a real day job — he works as a restaurant cook — but he insists he has supernatural powers that are so strong he claims he can give someone a death sentence. “For example, we had an opponent whose mother was dying of cancer and when the destruction ritual was done on him, it put his mother out,” Daniels said. He’s also a man with a dark past — Daniels is a registered sex offender, but he doesn’t believe that conviction interferes with performing his duties. Daniels has 14 believers who worship regularly at his church, which is a converted storage room in his house. They garnered almost no public notice at all until they threatened to desecrate the Holy Sacrament of the Catholic Church, the communion wafer, during a satanic ceremony. The archbishop of Oklahoma City was outraged. “There’s a real danger involved,” said Archbishop Paul Coakley. “Danger, because of the powers that they are invoking are real. This isn’t entertainment. This isn’t a horror movie. This is real. These people are serious. They are invoking satanic powers. The archbishop even went as far as to say the satanic mass was an assault on the soul of humanity. ’The Exorcist’ [the movie] is based upon a true story. Satanic influences are real.” The news of these devil-worshipers’ ceremony spread quickly online, and 100,000 people signed a petition to block it. 
    • From Satanic Bay Area’s Lupercalia Destruction Ritual, Tabitha Slander and Daniel Walker, 2025: If a man can show his hands and prove that they are clean, no wrath of ours shall lurk for him–unscathed he walks through this lifetime. But one like this man, with bloodstained and hidden hands, shall find us there beside him as witness of the truth, and we rise up against him to the last. Hear me, mother Night, who gave birth to us to avenge                                               the living and the dead: This man of false piety dishonours us: Let this song of ours fall upon our victim’s head, our sacrifice, our curse of madness to weigh always on his mind. Remorseless Fate gave us this work to carry on, a destiny spun out to attach ourselves to those haughty with corrupt and foolish power until they go beneath the ground. These rights are ours by birth, even gods may not divert us. We share no feasts with them, no fellowship: their pure white robes are no part of our destiny. We Sing now this enchantment, A song without music, a clamor of furies, A sword in the senses, A storm in the heart, a fire in the brain, a drought in the soul. This task we take, ministers of overthrow, brewing strife for the one who threatens what we hold dear. We are here now, eager to contest the charges and challenges of other god. . There will be no prayers— for their gods despise us, consider us unworthy, refuse to converse with us, and so instead we deal in blood. Those proud opinions people have, who raise themselves so high above us, will melt away when we, in our black robes, beat out our vengeful dance. Dark clouds of defilement hover all around this man. Murky shadows fall, enveloping his home and Rumour spreads a tale of all his sorrow. We have our powers to fulfill, keeping human evil in our minds, and we cannot be appeased by men like this. Dishonoured and despised, we see to our revenge split off from gods, with no light from the sun. We take the path more arduous, and seek always what is ours. What man is not in awe and stands there unafraid to hear me state my rights, those powers allowed by Fate and ratified by all my words, mine to hold forever? No god is enraged on my behalf: So wake, you powers of the underworld, and let my reproaches prick the heart of justice, a spur for those who act with righteousness. Blow your blood-filled breath all over him; let those fires in your bodies shrivel his, and drive him to a fresh pursuit. For happiness will never fall upon this man who cheats justice, this reckless man who goes too far, who piles up riches for himself in any way he can and disregards all justice—I tell you this— In time storming torments will break his ship. He screams for help, but no one listens. In the middle of the seas he fights—but all in vain. Hail Satan.
    • • From How To Perform a Destruction Ritual, Ali Kellogg, Medium, 2017: Rituals are repeated human actions to fulfill, reinforce and maintain a part of the human function and experience. The Destruction Ritual was born from a tradition I have done for many years with friends and loved ones on New Year’s Eve. We would gather around a fire with some scraps of paper, pens, and a few bottles of liquor. We would take turns writing things down, reading them aloud, throwing them into the fire and then taking a shot. As the night progressed, we found ourselves sobbing, hugging, and getting some really sticky shit off our chests. Then one year, we started bringing physical objects to destroy. Things that bore some kind of sentimental value we hung onto, but in reality just sat in a box in a closet somewhere and caused us negative emotions when we remembered they were there. By hanging onto these objects, we were holding onto the hope of a failed relationship or the improvement of someone’s character, or a good memory we would cling to like this object was a life raft. My friend had a box of these creepy ceramic dogs her abusive grandfather gave her every year for her birthday. Another friend had an engagement ring from his ex fiancée. I had an antique children’s tambourine my ex gave me that I couldn’t let go of for some reason. We took turns smashing our objects and throwing the pieces into the fire. Afterwards, I felt a sense of empowerment I had never felt before, and an epiphany. The relationship was done, but I had let it still continue to hurt me; I allowed the toxicity to seep into my every day. We all cried, hugged, and stood around the fire silently watching the shards of our bad memories burn in the fire. The Destruction Ritual serves this very purpose — destroying objects that we have given the power to hurt us. It’s a form of self love, as you are trusting that by destroying these stupid things, you will be stronger and lighter, so to speak, after doing it.
        • The Incantation: These were things that I held in my hands. These were things that belonged to me. These were things that I held in my heart. These were things that have meaning to me. These things are not dead, because they never carried life. But I gave these things life, because they have carried me. I gave these things my memories. My fear. My secrets My tears My blood My devotion My hate My forgiveness My pain My pleasure My love My disdain. I am the creator of life in these things, for without me, they would not be, and people would seek to profit off what I give with no mutual heart given back to me .We emancipate ourselves from this; we liberate ourselves from this endless cycle of voids filled with unnecessary greed. I fill my void with the beauty that surrounds me. Together we raise our arms and unshackle ourselves from the control these things have over us. Together we raise our hammers and daggers, and with them pierce the heart of that control, a power driven by addiction, attachment, consumption, and by a relentless hunger for excess. I do not belong to these things: These things belong to me. Hail Satan.  Have at it, and be well. https://medium.com/@allthebigtrees/how-to-perform-a-satanic-destruction-ritual-4c76baf0ea30 
      • From Satanic Bay Area’s Candlemas Ritual, Tabitha Slander & Daniel Walker, 2024: Some religions are obsessed with destruction. You know the type: “The end is near,” “Rapture incoming,” lots of talk about the Hidden Imam, that kind of thing. In 1988, NASA engineer and Bible kook Edgar Whisehant sold 4.5 million copies of his book, “88 Reasons why the Rapture will happen in 1988”; as you can imagine, sales dipped in 1989. But Edgar kept it up, he wrote another book, explaining that the end would actually come in 1989; then 1993; then again in 1994. Among his original 88 reasons was, and this is true–I mean, it’s not true, but it’s true that he wrote it–since the world was supposedly in the midst of “a population explosion,” Edgar projected that human consumption would render the earth uninhabitable in just a few years, and since “god wants his glory,” god would have to intervene and destroy the world before humans did. I remind you, this man worked at NASA. Edgar of course was not the only one, if you lived in the Bay Area for a long time you probably remember Oakland minister Harold Camping spent $5 million on billboards predicting global destruction in 2011; he died in 2013, so, in a certain sense, perhaps he was only a few years off. By comparison, our deployment of the virtues of destruction is on a decidedly more human scale. The late Christopher Hitchens–whom I will say I was not always the biggest fan of but whom I do have to concede articulated this particular point with sobering clarity–observed that “a large part of modern religion quite clearly wants us all to die, it wants this world to come to an end, you can tell the yearning for things to be over, whenever you read any of its text, or listen to its authentic spokesmen. The eschatological element that is inseparable from Christianity, if you don’t believe there will be a final separation of the sheep and the goats, then you’re not really a Believer. They cannot wait for death and destruction to overtake and overwhelm the World, a hateful idea very much opposed to our daily lives.” And he was right, that is a troubling norm. Instead, we are here tonight to embrace the beauty of flames that are not everlasting but which we mean to last only as long as they have to, and to witness not the destruction of all things but only of these things, and to hope not for End Times, but just for the end of a time in our lives–and that, we think, is a much healthier kind of eschatology. This ritual has also included some quotations from late Satanist poet Baron Jacque Fersen; when Fersen wrote about Satanism he was actually writing about the scandal around his own swinging sex-positive queer lifestyle; he did write because he seemingly wanted to get something off of their chests, but he did not want to confess in the conventional meaning of that word. Confession is bad for the soul; it appropriates the right you have to assess your own life and embezzles it into the account of some god–-we know not who. When we unburden ourselves, it should be with ourselves. Gods do not write the endings of our stories, our lives, or our worlds–that is the privilege that we resolve for our own persons. Hail Satan.
    • From Canyon River Pride Interfaith Service, Satanic Idaho, 2025: Destruction rituals. far from being acts of violence, are deeply symbolic practices that signify transformation, renewal, and the cyclical nature of existence. Destruction rituals are intentional acts of breaking down or dismantling objects, symbols, or even structures. They are not about chaos for its own sake but are deliberate expressions of letting go, clearing the old to make way for the new. These rituals are prevalent across various cultures and religions, each with its unique significance and purpose. It’s roots trace back to the dawn of civilization. Before human kind could farm, we knew we wanted to shed ourselves of trauma and grief. Honored guests, seekers of transformation, and guardians of the sacred flame, Today, we gather not to celebrate creation, but to honor the power inherent in endings, the force that clears the path for new beginnings. We stand on the threshold of a ritual as ancient as time itself, the Rite of Destruction. This is not an act of mindless violence, but a deliberate, sacred process of severance. It is the sacred act of severing ties with that which no longer serves us—be it a toxic relationship, a destructive habit, or an unhealed wound. Through this rite, we reclaim our agency, our sovereignty, and our future. In the ancient world, destruction rituals were performed to obliterate the influence of enemies and to purify the land. The Egyptians crafted execration texts, inscribed curses upon figurines or clay tablets which were then smashed and buried to symbolically annihilate their foes. Similarly, in parts of Asia, statues or objects were submerged in water along with deceased loved ones. They were profound statements of intent, of closure, and of transformation. Today, we invoke this tradition with reverence. We do not seek to harm others, but to liberate ourselves from the chains of the past. We gather our intentions, our will, and our focus, and we channel them into this sacred act. This ritual is consent based. If you do not feel comfortable in participating, there is no requirement or pressure to do anything you do not wish to participate in. What we faith leaders are asking you, to do is step forward and write a name, a phrase, a memory, or an experience that you wish to no longer to carry with you, on one of these pieces of paper. And release it into this bowl of water. This is a space for reflection and for honoring thyself. This moment is yours. Afterwards, myself and other faith leaders will be at the front of the stage and would love to hear your stories if you are in a place of sharing. The hugs are free and so is your future. A future you choose to create on your terms.
    • From A New Rage Room Is Ready For You, Leslie Bridgers, Portland Press Herald, 2025: There’s no question people are worked up about all sorts of things these days, and while some are channeling their anger by gathering in protest or on social media, a new business is offering another option: breaking stuff. The Wreck Room opened in January and every month since, demand has multiplied for its ax throwing, paint splatter, air-gun range and most of all, its rage rooms. Aside from breakups, the current political climate is the most common reason people come in, said owner Brent Gumbs. But despite his impeccable timing, that’s not why he started the business. Growing up in New Hampshire, Gumbs said he saw too many of his peers turn to drugs and “wanted to try to counteract that” by offering less self-destructive activities in the Midcoast, where he had noted a similar lack of things to do, especially in bad weather. The rage rooms are the main attraction, offering a private space for customers to unleash their anger by taking a bat or a hammer to various breakable objects including vases, Mason jars and, for an additional cost, appliances like TVs, toasters and crockpots. Although rage rooms have been around for more than a decade, there aren’t many in Maine, and none in the southern part of the state. Perhaps we had been too peaceable a lot until now. I’ll admit, I wasn’t feeling particularly ragey when I decided to head up to Topsham to give it a try but pretty quickly things got serious. First, there was the waiver, releasing The Wreck Room of any responsibility for whatever I did to myself in there. Then I was given a plastic face shield and what looked like gardening gloves to protect me from the objects I was about to break and those in the pile of previously smashed material on the floor. There was a plastic tub holding 10 items: a pint glass, some Mason jars and vases, a ceramic mug, a pail and a cooking pot lid. There was also an old water heater lying on its side that Gumbs said was for people to beat on or to prop up the items before hitting them into the wall, like some sort of very impractical softball tee. In the corner were several baseball bats, a hammer and a pickax. Truthfully, I didn’t give my inner rage much of a chance. Though I’m no physicist, it seemed that the harder I hit these things, the faster the shards flew back at me. So, rather than swinging for the fences, I went for more of a slap hit followed by a flinch and duck. Although I never fully unleashed my anger, you don’t have to be bitter to enjoy The Wreck Room. You can shoot at glass bottles from a much more comfortable distance in the air-gun range or put on a full-body suit and take spray guns to the walls of the paint splatter room. There’s also a bar serving f specialty cocktails, as well as snacks, with plans to add more food. Gumbs has other ambitions, too. He’s getting a glass pulverizer to turn the broken objects into sand that he wants to donate to help restore the coastline. The day after I was there, he held his first trivia night and later that week, an ax-throwing competition. Those sound like good activities to do any day, but I’ll wait to revisit the rage room. https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/21/feeling-angry-a-new-rage-room-in-topsham-is-ready-for-you/ 

The post Episode 202: Satanic Destruction Rituals appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

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• • • • From A Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels Davidson, Gustav Davidson, 1967: Abezi-Thibod, meaning “father devoid of counsel.” In early Jewish lore, Abezi-Thibod is another name for Samael, Mastema, and other chief devils. He is a powerful spirit who fought Moses in Egypt, hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and assisted Pharaoh’s magicians. He was drowned in the Red Sea. With Rahab, he shares the princedom over Egypt. In The Testament of Solomon, he is the son of Beelzeboul and the demon of the Red Sea: “descendant of the archangel,” he declares.
        • From Testament of Solomon, Anonymous, 1000 CE(??): And I outwitted these spirits and then I sealed them in with my ring.. And I, Solomon, questioned the spirit which came up from the depth of the Red Sea: “Who art thou, and what calls thee? And what is thy business? For I hear many things about thee.” And the demon answered: “I, O King Solomon, am called Abezithibod. I am a descendant of the archangel. Once as I sat in the first heaven, a fierce spirit and winged, plotting against every spirit under heaven. I was present when Moses went in before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and I hardened his heart.. I am he who fought against Moses with wonders with signs.” I said therefore to him: “How wast thou found in the Red Sea?” And he answered: “In the exodus of the sons of Israel I hardened the heart of Pharaoh. And I excited his heart and that of his ministers. And I caused them to pursue after the children of Israel. And Pharaoh followed with (me) and all the Egyptians. Then I was present there, and we followed together. And we all came up upon the Red Sea. And it came to pass when the children of Israel had crossed over, the water returned and hid all the host of the Egyptians and all their might. And I remained in the sea, being kept under this pillar.” I, therefore, Solomon, having heard this, adjured the demons not to disobey me, but to remain supporting the pillar. And they both swore, saying: “We will not let go this pillar until the world’s end. But on whatever day this stone fall, then shall be the end of the world.”

• Ahriman: 

• From Encyclopedia Iranica: God’s adversary in the Zoroastrian religion seems to have been an original conception of Zoroaster. But the notion of Ahriman did not remain unchanged through the centuries: In the Gathas, Angra Mainyu, [the angry or destructive spirit] is the direct opposite of [the bounteous spirit] Spənta Mainyu; both spirits are essentially actors in the primeval choice, a great drama dominating the life of man and the destiny of the world. Later, Ahriman serves as the negative counterpart not of the other spirit but of [the creator] god Ormazd. The name Angra Mainyu appears only once in the Gathas, when the “most bounteous of the spirits” declares his absolute antithesis to the “evil one” in all things. These are the twin spirits who made the great choice [between good and evil at the beginning of the universe]. It can be deduced that there must have existed in Iranian belief, before Zoroaster, gods and demons, notably demons of death; there existed also tales, if not myths, of the birth of wonderful twins. Zoroaster propounded belief in one supreme god, yet wanted to explain the existence of evil (a fact of life) as a consequence of free choice. The myth of the Twin Spirits is a model he set for the choice every person is called upon to make.

• It cannot be doubted that both are sons of the creator god, since they are explicitly said to be twins. In the beginning, neither of them was wicked, so there is therefore nothing shocking in Angra Mainyu’s being a son of the true god, and there is no need to resort to the improbable solution that Zoroaster was speaking figuratively. (That Ormazd and Ahriman’s brotherhood was later considered a heresy is a different matter.) Although demons are said to to be the offspring not of Angra Mainyu but of another evil spirit, Akəm Manah (whose names means “evil thinking”). The abode of the wicked in the hereafter is said to be the abode of this same “worst thinking,” not of Angra Mainyu; one would have expected the latter to reign in hell, since he had created death. Ahriman is evil by choice: “It is not,” he says, “that I can not create anything good, but that I will not.” That there existed Ahriman worshippers is attested by Plutarch and in Dēnkard. The former says that Zoroaster taught the Persians to sacrifice“offerings for averting ill, they invoke Hades and darkness; then having mingled it with the blood of a slaughtered wolf, they bear it forth into a sunless place and cast it away.” Iranian influence, especially during and after the exile of the Jews in Babylonia, may very well have helped in bringing about the conception of Satan.  https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ahriman 

• Uzza:

• • • • • From A Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels Davidson, Gustav Davidson, 1967: In their hurried exodus from Egypt, and in their encounter with Pharaoh’s horsemen at the Red Sea, the Hebrews were helped by “the angel of God, which went before … and behind them . . . ina pillar of fire and cloud”. Here the identity of the angel of God poses no problem: he was Michael or Metatron, guardian of Israel. However, Michael or Metatron did not fight alone: he had the aid of a swarm of “ministering angels who began hurling arrows, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. On the enemy side, harrying the Hebrews, was the guardian angel of Egypt, once holy but now corrupt. It appears though that Egypt had more than one guardian angel—four in fact, and that they all showed up, armed to the teeth. Various sources identify them as Uzza, Rahab, Mastema, and Duma. The fate of Rahab we know: he was drowned, along with the Egyptian horsemen. Mastema and Duma went back to Hell, where they had unfinished business to attend to. As for Uzza, some authorities say he was actually Semyaza, grandfather of Og, a leader of the fallen angels, [the Watchers]; Semyaza may be summoned ttby the pronouncement of any of a string of variations on his name—Samiaza, Shemhazai, Amezyarak, Azael, Azaziel, or Uzza. In the Book of Jubilees and the Dead Sea Scrolls, where Mastema is the angel of adversity, it was Mastema who tried to kill Moses and who hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but according to the Midrash, Uzza did this. Also in the Midrash, God is reminded that “the angels Uzza and Azael came down from Heaven and were corrupted through cohabiting with the daughters of men. In legend, Uzza is tempted by the maiden Ishtahar to reveal to her the Explicit Name of God. It is said that he now hangs between heaven and earth, head down, and is the constellation Orion.

• Odin: 

• • • • • From The Witch, Ronald Hutton, 2016: There is, however, one very striking form in which a definite element of Norse paganism survived into the early modern period, and that was in ceremonial magic. Just as magic preserved the names of Egyptian deities as powerful spirits, so Scandinavian gods continued to be associated with magical workings, although as devils. It seemed that in the north the Christian tactic of demonizing the divinities of older religions had worked with particular effect: Those divinities certainly remained known throughout the Christian period; as demons, however, they, and especially their leader, Odin, retained a supposedly ‘real’ presence. A late fourteenth-century Norse rune stick invokes Odin as ‘greatest among devils.’ In 1484 a man tried for theft in Stockholm confessed to having “served Odin” for seven years. Nine years later another thief was executed for having dedicated himself in a cemetery to ‘the devil Odin” to get rich, and a text from the late 1530s stated that people who suddenly became mysteriously wealthy were suspected of having made a pact with Odin. Another Swedish case, from 1632, involved advice to find wealth by going to a crossroads at night to make exactly such a pact with Odin. A trial in 1693 said that he came to those who invited him with black servants, dogs and coach horses, the latter having flaming eyes.” From Iceland comes a seventeenth-century book of magic which contains a curse in the names of Lord God the Creator, Christ, Odinn, Thor, Frey, Freya, Satan, Beelzebub and spirits with unknown names: the powers of heaven and hell are thus indiscriminately enlisted. All this provides a spectacular example of how ancient gods could be fully assimilated into Christian mythology, though they do not seem to feature in the witch trials themselves.

• Lucifer: 

• • • • From KJV, Isaiah 14: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. 16 They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; 17 That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners? 18 All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house. 19 But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.”

• From Against Marcion, Tertullian, 208 BCE: At any rate, if there is a God of this world, He blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be understood from His Scriptures. Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage, indeed, I might have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready to hand in interpreting the god of this world of the devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: I will be like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the clouds. The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands, so that he blinds effectually the hearts of unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion’s. Undoubtedly he who has raised up children of disobedience against the Creator Himself ever since he took possession of that  air of His; even as the prophet makes him say: I will set my throne above the stars;… I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High. This must mean the devil, whom in another passage (since such will they there have the apostle’s meaning to be) we shall recognize in the appellation the god of this world. For he has filled the whole world with the lying pretence of his own divinity.

• From Commentary On Ezekiel, Origen, 238 CE…ish: Adam, you see, was in Paradise, but the serpent saw to it that he was cast out. The serpent is the Enemy who is opposed to the truth. He was not created that way from the beginning; just as Adam and Eve did not sin immediately after they were made, so also the serpent at one time was not a serpent—when he was abiding in the Paradise of delights. For the prophet says, “Lucifer, who used to rise early, has fallen from heaven; he has been dashed to pieces upon the ground.” Jesus says, “I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning.” In what respect does it differ to speak of lightning and Lucifer “careening from heaven?” What is relevant in this context is the full agreement regarding the falling. Through the freedom of the will some have ascended to the heights of goodness, while others have plunged into the depths of wickedness. But you, O mortal, why do you not wish to be abandoned to your free will? Why can you scarcely bear to strive, to labor, to exert yourself, and by means of good works to become yourself the cause of your own salvation? Do you not wish righteousness, wisdom, and chastity to become your work? Do you not wish fortitude and the other virtues to be your work?

• Beelzebub: 

• From the KJV, 2 Kings 1: Ahaziah [King of Irsael] was sick, and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, inquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron [city of the Philistines] whether I shall recover. But the angel of the lord said to Elijah [the prophet], Arise, go up to meet the messengers and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a god in Israel, that you go to enquire of Baalzebub?

•  From Matthew 12: Then was brought unto [Jesus] one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, and all the people were amazed. But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow casts out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.” And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:  And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out?” 

• From the Jewish Encyclopedia, 1901: The name “Beelzebub,” written also “Beelzebul,” which occurs nowhere else in Jewish literature, is a variant form of “Baal Zebub,” the god of Eḳron, whose oracle King Ahaziah consulted during his illness, provoking thereby the wrath of God. Plagues being often ascribed to the influence of flies, the god who dispelled flies  probably retained his popularity long after he had ceased to be an object of worship. In fact, the fly was regarded by the Jews in particular as more or less impure and demonic. with reference to “the flies of death” in Ecclesiastes. The devil in German folk-lore also appears in the shape of a fly Geiger hinks that Baal Zebub, in his capacity as god of the hated Philistines, became the representative of the heathen power and consequently the arch-enemy Satan, the foe par excellence, and therefore the name “Baal Debaba” (“debaba” being the Aramaic form corresponding to Hebrew “Zebub”) acquired the meaning of “hostility,” the verb  with the sense of “hostile action” being derived from it. But neither this opinion nor a similar one expressed by Storr, and revived in Riehm  seems acceptable, as “Beel Debaba” is the ordinary Aramean word for “calumniator.”

• Mastema:

• From Jubilees: And they made for themselves molten images, and they worshipped each the idol, the molten image which they had made for themselves, and they began to make graven images and unclean simulacra, and malignant spirits assisted and seduced (them) into committing transgression and uncleanness, and the prince Mastéma exerted himself to do all this, and he sent forth other spirits, those which were put under his hand, to do all manner of wrong and sin, and all manner of trans- gression, to corrupt and destroy, and to shed blood upon the earth. And the prince of Mastéma sent ravens and birds to devour the seed which was sown in the land, in order to destroy the land, and rob the children of men of their labours. Before they could plough in the seed, the ravens picked (it) from the surface of the ground. And on the fourteenth day and on the fifteenth and on the sixteenth and on the seven- teenth and on the eighteenth the prince of the Mastéma was bound and imprisoned behind the children of Israel, that he might not accuse them.

• From Notes on Jubilees, RH Charles, 1902: Over against the angelic kingdom stands a demonic or satanic kingdom governed by “ the prince of the Mastéma,” where Mastema is in derivation and meaning the equivalent of Satan. His demons are the spirits which went forth from the bodies of the [giants], slain children of the Watchers and the daughters of  men. By means of these demons the prince of the satans is able to compass his evils, the seduction and destruction of men. Satan and Mastema represent all manner of disease. In Ethiopic texts the name is wrongly given as “Prince Mastema,” but “Prince of Mastema” is correct. Like the Chronicler, the author of Jubilees takes offence at the frequent mention of men being tempted or slain by god in Genesis and Exodus, so he represents the temptation of Abraham to offer Isaac as due to Mastéma ,and the attempt on Moses’s life as made by the same evil agent, instead of by god; likewise the hardening of the hearts of the Egyptians and the slaying of the first born he ascribes to Mastéma and his angels. 

• From Angels and Demons in the Book of Jubilees, Jacques Van Ruiten, University of Groningen, 2007: Mastema is possibly not a demon himself. He seems to be a bad angel. It is impossible, however, that he be one of the Watchers, since they are tied up in the depths of the earth by the good angels, awaiting their judgment. The context o implies that Mastema is identified with Satan. The demons do everything Mastema tells them, so that he is able to exercise the authority of his will among mankind; in Jubilees 49, for example, demons seem to assist Mastema in killing the firstborn of Egypt. When Noah’s sons complain about the attacks of the demons on their children, God grants Noah’s intercession by commanding the good angels to bind all demons. Mastema protests against this plan: “Lord, creator, leave some of them for me, because if none of them is left I shall not be able to exercise the authority of my will among mankind. For they are meant for the purpose of destruction and misleading, because the evil of mankind is great.” God grants Mastema’s protest, and leaves ten percent of the evil spirits; this implies that Mastema has a function in the divine order, and God seems to approve. 

• In the Bible, there is no demonology: In Genesis, one cannot read anything about evil spirits. Demons sees to be part of the wider influence of material originating from Enoch. Why did the author of Jubilees think it appropriate to incorporate the myth of the demons in his rewriting of Genesis? The evil spirits play a part in the rewritten narrative of the period between the flood and the story of Abraham. The shedding and consumption of blood is an important characteristic of the demons in Jubilees, just as the shedding and eating of blood is an important theme in Genesis. Moreover, in this period, the earth is repopulated after the flood and divided among the three sons of Noah. Different family lines emerge in different nations, and tensions between the different nations announce themselves, for example, the curse of Canaan. Jubilees seems to take up several elements of Genesis and relate them to the demons, and the development of the nations is under the demons’ control. The incorporation of the demons shows that the author of Jubilees brought the passages on the division of the earth and the separation of the nations from the chosen people into association with other biblical passages,

• Asmodeus

• • • • From the Book of Tobit: It came to pass the same day that Sara was also reproached by her father’s maids, because that she had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed before they had lain with her. Dost thou not know, said they, that thou hast strangled thine husbands? thou hast had already seven husbands, neither wast thou named after any of them. Let us never see of thee either son or daughter. When she heard these things she was very sorrowful, so that she thought to have strangled herself; and she said, I am the only daughter of my father, and if I do this, it shall be a reproach unto him, and I shall bring his old age with sorrow unto the grave. Then she prayed toward the window, and the prayers were heard before the majesty of the great god, and the angel Raphael was sent to give Sara to Tobias the son of Tobit and to bind Asmodeus, because she belonged to Tobias.

• From THE FIGURE OF THE DEMON IN THE BOOK OF TOBIT, Ida Fröhlich Pázmány Péter Catholic University, 2016: Tobiah is familiar with Sarah’s story, “that she has already been given in marriage seven times, and each man has died in the bridal chamber” being killed by a demon. Also he knows the demon does not harm Sarah “because he loves her.”. Raphael repeats emphatically that Tobiah should not be afraid, “for Sarah was destined for him before the world existed, and it is Tobiah who will rescue her, and Asmodeus fled to Egypt, a land distant from Media. Nothing is told here about the demon’s nature, his origin, and habitat, and there is no information about his relation to Sarah. Some sources report that the demon gets divorced from his victim by the angel Raphael. In virtue of the remark “because he loves her,” Ego thinks that both concepts are linked to the idea that Asmodeus is in love with Sarah; she labels the demon Asmodeus as an incubus, a demon who desires sexual relationship with his victim, while Sarah represents the type of the killer-wife who means a danger for her husband. Any sexual contact with such a wife can prove deadly. Worse still: a killer wife is viewed as being directly responsible for the death of her husbands . The killer wife is an international folk motif, known also as the narrative motif in catalogues of international folklore as “The Monster in the Bridal Chamber”. However, the enigmatic comment “because he loves her: does not necessarily refer to sexual desire between the demon and the girl: The Greek verb means “to like, be fond of, cherish” and  has a multiple meaning, including (1) human love for human object (including sexual relation), (2) appetite for food, drink for object, food, etc., and (3) love for God. Group two includes a very special meaning “to be mindful of, to attend to, to care about”.

• Belial:

• • • From Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906: Belial is a term occurring often in the Old Testament and applied, as would seem from the context to anyone opposing the established authority. The Talmud regards it as a compound word, made up of “beli” and “‘ol” (without a yoke). Gesenius finds the derivation in “beli” and “yo’il” (without advantage; i.e., worthless). Ibn Ezra contents himself with the remark that “Belial” is a noun, and quotes the opinion of someone else that it is a verb with a precative force, “May he have no rising.” Cheyne (“Expository Times,” 1897, pp. 423 et seq.) seeks to identify Belial with the Babylonian goddess Belili; Hebrew writers, according to this view, took up “Belili” and scornfully converted it into “Belial” in order to suggest “worthlessness.” Hommel agrees with the equation Belial = Belili, but argues that the Babylonians borrowed from the western Semites and not vice versa. In the apocalyptic literature where all angelologic and demonologic lore was faithfully preserved, Belial held a very prominent position, being identified altogether with Satan. The uncircumcised heathen are “the sons of Belial,” and in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Belial is the archfiend from whom emanate the seven spirits of seduction that enter man at his birth . He will, like Azazel in Enoch, be opposed and bound by the Messiah. In the Ascension, Belial is identified with Samael and called “the angel of lawlessness”—”the ruler of this world, whose name is Matanbuchus.” In Sibyllines, which partly is of Christian origin, Belial descends from heaven as Antichrist and appears as Nero, and Belial is the seducer who, as the pseudo Messiah, will appear among the Samaritans, leading many into error by his miraculous powers, .
    • From SOME PHILOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE SONS OF BELIAL, ANDRÉS PIQUER OTERO, University of Madrid, 2011: Though the meaning of the word seems more or less clear as an attribute which reflects impiety or some other sort of generic negative quality, an exact explanation and etymology have baffled experts and given rise to a considerable speculation. “Belial” appears 27 times in the Hebrew Bible. All in all, the word, either singly or in the nominal construction detailed above, defines a negative concept or quality, though its interpretation —and hence its translation, both in ancient versions and in modern works— may differ. A small but remarkable number of cases  chooses to render the word as oppression or oppressor, but the general definition “badness” is often given. “Death” would be, at first sight, closer to the Hebrew term. The tendency to personification is well attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where Belial is clearly presented as a personal negative entity in a large number of instances, leader of the forces of darkness agains the Sons of Light. There are also references to the evil spirits of Belial, which are the source of humans’ sinful actions. These ideas are remarkable given the continuity they establish with the Greek Pseudoepigrapha, especially the relationship between Belial and his spirits and the evil or sinful disposition among humans. There is a continuity between some of the Dead Sea Scrolls referencing “the traps of Belial.” It is then between two main lines of interpretation, either a common noun which creates a negative attribution or a supernatural being associated with evil and hence negative behavior, that one has to attempt the placement of a translation. 

• • • Sammael: 
      • From THE DEVIL IN LEGEND AND LITERATURE ALLEN H. GODBEY, 1931: In the case of Sammael, Rudwin contents himself with a bare reference to a very late Jewish tangling of Sammael with Lilith, and his being chief of the fallen angels, and never replaced by Satan. An Assyriologist must come to the rescue, incidentally asking why he writes Samael instead of Sammael. Sammael is well known in cuneiform lore, thousands of years before late Judaism has made of the facts. Sammael is Sammu-ilu, “divine plant”: wormwood. Exhilarating in small quantities, its deadly absynthian powers made it an ordeal-plant where evidence was insufficient. Old Babylonian reliefs show an accused person led before a god or chief priest who holds out the deadly cup—Here the Samniu-ilu is resorted to by the accuser or prosecutor: “the satan.” The rabbinical lore that makes Sammael an angel of Death, an angel of the Lord, killing with a drop of wormwood when the man’s time is come, is fundamentally correct. 
      • From Lilith and Eve, Wives of Adam, Marlene E Mondriaan, Old Testament Essays, 2005: Rabbinic legend refers to the longhaired, winged Lilith as queen of the demons. She was one of Sammael’s 18 wives, and from this communion the demons came. These were responsible for illnesses and any ailment that caused suffering. With her wild and passionate nature, Lilith decided to abandon Sammael and join Adam, who insisted that she obey him. Lilith refused. Certain aspects of this legend correspond with that recorded in the Alphabet of Ben Sira. Lilith was generally regarded as grandmother of the devil or the devil herself, as well as progenitor of witches and witchcraft. Talmudic tradition denotes Lilith as daughter of Ahriman. Sammael or Satan was a created being, the personification of evil, created to test man’s moral strength. He was the supreme ruler of demons, evil spirits and fallen angels. Lilith, Sammael and Satan are the most important demons. Ashmodai, also associated with Sammael, and at times with the serpent of the Garden of Eden, commanded Lilith. As consort of Satan and mother of the demons, Lilith was regarded as a symbol of sensuality and sexual seduction.

• Mephistopheles

• From Faust: A Commentary, Denton Snider, 1886: Much discussion has been spent itself over the derivation of the word Mephistopheles, which seems a corrupted Greek compound. The Greek particle of negation (Me) and the Greek word for love (Philos) seem to be suggested by the first and last terms, but the middle term is more doubtful. Three meanings may here be noticed: 1) Not loving light? 2) Not loving Faust, or Phosto, the old form of the name being “Me-Phosto-Pheles”, and 3) Allied to “Mephitic” the term which designates poisonouv vapors arising from the earth in certain places–pools, caverns, springs–destructive of human life.

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The post Episode 189 – Names of the Devil III appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

SHOW LINKS

• From Genesis 2-3, King James Version: And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree; the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the Lord God commanded, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. tNow the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, The woman whom thou gavest me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Unto the woman he said, in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Unto Adam he said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And the Lord God said, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and live forever. So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

• The Bible and the ancient Near East, Gordon & rendsburg, revised 1998 Ed: Man is intelligent because he ate magic fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, gaining knowledge that up to that time had been a monopoly of divinity. It is interesting to note that the knowledge imparted by the fruit of this tree is the “knowledge of good and evil,” a much misunderstood phrase. The antonyms “good and evil” represent “everything.” The same expression in inverted order occurs in Egyptian, where “evil-good” means everything, and from Greek literature we may cite the words of Telemachus, “I know all things, the good and the evil”. The only reason that readers of the Bible have failed to grasp the proper understanding of “the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil” is that the traditional interpretation is so deeply entrenched. Thus man obtained universal knowledge and to that extent shares with god a divine prerogative. Mankind was driven out of paradise because God saw that man could not be trusted to obey His will and to refrain from eating the fruit of another tree in the Garden of Eden that would give man immortality. God decided that man should not obtain immortality lest he become like the gods. Accordingly, if we examine the story in Genesis objectively, we see that, while many elements go into making up the whole picture, it is not so much an account of the “Fall of Man” but rather of the rise of man halfway to divinity. He obtained one of the two prerogatives or characteristics of the gods: intelligence; but he was checked by God from obtaining immortality, which would have made him quite divine. 

• From The Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Knowledge, Nathan French: A range of commentators suggest that the primary interpretation should be toward a contextualized meaning of “beneficial” and the “harmful.” I will demonstrate that the principle of divine retribution, in relation to ‘some’ experiences of ‘good and bad/evil,’ assumes the divine agency of reward and punishment through blessing and cursing. Additionally, it will be shown that these texts reveal an interplay between human and divine retribution as indication of divinely sanctioned retribution through ‘blessing and cursing.’ Thus, the words that generally mean “knowledge of good and evil” in their target languages often appear within these literary contexts signifying the whole of the retributive process, from discrimination to response, the fruit of the knowledge of reward & punishment. It is the knowledge for administering reward and punishment that empowers humans to become judges with ultimate power, like Yahweh himself. The divine knowledge is forbidden since it is ultimate power for retribution. In this way, Yahweh’s reward and punishment serve as his tools for establishing a particular political and social order, a body politic. Knowledge of good and evil represents the advancement from childlike innocence to moral decision.

• From Loss of Immortality, Konrad Schmid, University of Teubingen, 2008: Especially within the Christian tradition, there is a widespread notion that the first human beings were created to be immortal, making physical death the bitter consequence of human sin. However, there are also some newer approaches that see death as a natural part of creation, while death only becomes a frightening and threatening element under the influence of sin. At first glance, the traditional notion of an original immortality which was lost after the fall would fit perfectly into the Paradise story: This would be just another element contrasting the situations before the fall and after. In addition, God’s threat “you shall surely die” would be narratively fulfilled. Humankind, after its fall, has to die. But upon further review, there are far too many problems for such a thesis. First, Gen 2:7 states: “YHWH God formed man from the dust of the ground.” “Dust” in the Hebrew Bible functions clearly as a metaphor for transience, for being mortal. Secondly, in the punishment sentences in Gen 3:14-19, there is only one instance where the topic of death is brought up. This verse does not claim that humankind from now on has to die in contrast to the situation before. Death is not mentioned among the elements of punishment themselves. In Gen 3:22 God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of lif, and eat, and live forever. “‘ This sentence apparently does not reckon with the possibility that the human beings could again become immortal after having lost their original immortality a short while earlier. Rather, the prohibition of the tree of life is now mandatory, because after the humans have gained knowledge, immortality is the main element which still very clearly distinguishes God and humans.

• The prevalent Christian interpretation which sees the primitive status of humankind as immortals is the result of an apocalyptic perspective on the paradise story which was historically alien to it. Genesis 3 is probably one of the most non-eschatological texts of the Bible, as is evident especially from its final verse: “[The Lord God] drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” The angels with their sword stand for the conviction that paradise is lost forever. The Paradise story tries to explain how the present conditions of human life outside the paradise came about. lt is not interested in painting out  a model for eschatological expectations. The common Christian interpretation has thoroughly transformed this, as can be seen for example from a famous German hymn by Nicolaus Hermann which ends with the words: “Today, Christ unlocks the door to the beautiful paradise, the cherub no longer stands in front of it.” But in Genesis, there is no way back, never ever. The Bible obviously sees no problems in determining human life – as it was designed by the creator – as substantially limited. Genesis 2-3 seems to present the wish to become immortal as a real wish only for fallen humanity. Immortality as such does not seem to be theologically important.

• From Adam & Eve & The Serpent, Elaine Pagels: In their arguments from Scripture, Jewish teachers often avoided speaking directly about sexual practices but engaged in heated discussions about Adam, Eve, and the serpent, and in this metaphorical way revealed what they thought about sexuality and about human nature in general. The Book of Jubilees, for example, written about 150 years before Jesus’ birth by a Palestinian Jew, retells the story of Adam and Eve to prove, among other things, that Jewish customs concerning childbirth and nakedness were not arbitrary or trivial but actually built into human nature from the beginning. As this author tells it, Adam entered Eden during the first week of creation, but Eve entered the garden only during the second week; this explains why a woman who gives birth to a male child remains ritually impure for one week, while she who bears a female remains impure for two weeks. The author goes on to recall that God made garments for Adam and Eve, and clothed them before expelling them from Paradise; this shows that Jews must “cover their shame, and not go naked, as the Gentiles do,” in public places like the baths and the gymnasia. Throughout subsequent generations, what Jews and Christians read into the creation accounts of Genesis came, for better and worse, to shape what later came to be called tradition. Meanwhile certain radical gnostics, railed against marriage and procreation and against the God who had created such impurities. This radical teacher dared to tell the story of Paradise from the serpent’s point of view, and depicted the serpent as a teacher of divine wisdom: ‘For the serpent was wiser than any of the animals that were in Paradise. . . . But the creator cursed the serpent, and called him devil. And he said, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.’ What kind of God is this? First, he envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge. . . . And secondly he said, ‘Adam, where are you?’ So God does not have foreknowledge, since he did not know this from the beginning. And afterwards, he said, ‘Let us cast him [out] of this place lest he eat of the tree of life and live forever.’ Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier. And what kind of God is this? Great is the blindness of those who read, and they did not know it.’” What church leader would not bridle at a critic who turned the Genesis account upside down?

• From Justin Martyr, Dialogues, Second Century: Then what is next said in the Psalm —’For trouble is near, for there is none to help me. Many calves have compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. All my bones are poured out and dispersed like water,’— was likewise a prediction of the events which happened to Christ. For on that night when some of your [Roman] nation, who had been sent by the Pharisees and Scribes, and teachers, came upon Him from the Mount of Olives, surrounded Him. And the expression, ‘Fat bulls have beset me round,’ He spoke beforehand of those who acted similarly to the calves, when He was led before your teachers. And the expression, ‘For there is none to help,’ is also indicative of what took place. For there was not even a single man to assist Him as an innocent person. ‘They opened their mouth upon me like a roaring lion,’ designates him who was then king of the Jews, and was called Herod, a successor of the Herod who, when Christ was born, slew all the infants in Bethlehem born about the same time, because he imagined that among them He would assuredly be of whom the Magi from Arabia had spoken; Or He meant the devil by the lion roaring against Hi,: whom Moses calls the serpent, but in Job and Zechariah he is called Satan, and by Jesus is addressed as devil, showing that a compounded name was acquired by him from the deeds which he performed. For ‘Sata’ in the Jewish and Syrian tongue means apostate; and ‘Nas’ is the word from which he is called by interpretation the serpent. We may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him. 

• From How the Serpent Became Satan, Shawna Dolansky, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2016: Introduced as “the most clever of all of the beasts of the field that YHWH God had made,” the serpent in the Garden of Eden is portrayed as just that: a serpent. Satan does not make an appearance in Genesis for the simple reason that when the story was written, the concept of the devil had not yet been invented. Explaining the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan would have been as foreign a concept to the ancient authors of the text as referring to Ezekiel’s vision as a UFO. In fact, while the word satan appears elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, it is never a proper name; since there is no devil in ancient Israel’s worldview, there can’t yet have been a proper name for such a creature. After the canon of the Hebrew Bible closed beliefs in angels, demons and a final apocalyptic battle arose in a divided and turbulent Jewish community. In light of this impending end, many turned to a renewed understanding of the beginning, and the Garden of Eden was re-read—and re-written—to reflect the changing ideas of a changed world. Satan became the proper name of the devil, a supernatural power now seen to oppose God as the leader of demons and the forces of evil; and the serpent in the Garden of Eden came to be identified with him. In 1 Enoch, the “angel” who “led Eve astray” and “showed the weapons of death to the children of men” was called Gadriel, not Satan. Around the same time, the Wisdom of Solomon taught that “through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who are on his side suffer it.” Though this may very well be the earliest reference to Eden’s serpent as the devil, in neither text, nor in any document we have until after the New Testament, is satan clearly understood as the serpent.

• Although the author of Revelation describes Satan as “the ancient serpent”, there is no clear link anywhere in the Bible between Satan and the serpent in the garden. The ancient Near Eastern combat myth motif, exemplified in the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, typically depicted the bad guy as a serpent. The characterization of Leviathan in Isaiah reflects such myths nicely: “On that day YHWH will punish With his hard and big and strong sword Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisted serpent, And he will kill the dragon that is in the sea.: So the reference in Revelation to Satan as “the ancient serpent” probably reflects mythical monsters like Leviathan rather than the creature in Eden. In the New Testament, Satan and his demons have the power to enter and possess people; this is what is said to have happened to Judas. When Paul re-tells the story of Adam and Eve, he places the blame on the humans and not on fallen angels or on the serpent or Satan; still, the conflation begged to be made, and it will seem natural for later Christian authors—Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Augustine, for example—to assume Satan’s association with Eden’s snake. Most famously, in the 17th century, John Milton elaborates Satan’s role in the Garden poetically, in great detail in Paradise Lost. But this connection is still not forged anywhere in the Bible.

• • From Commentary on the Bible, Matthew Henry, 1706: It is certain it was the devil that beguiled Eve. The devil and Satan is the old serpent, a malignant spirit, by creation an angel of light and an immediate attendant upon God’s throne, but by sin become an apostate from his first state and a rebel against God’s crown and dignity. Observe here: He does not discover his design at first, but puts a question which seemed innocent: “I hear a piece of news, pray is it true? has God forbidden you to eat of this tree?” Thus he would begin a discourse, and draw Eve into a parley. Those that would be safe have need to be suspicious, and shy of talking with the tempter. He quotes the command fallaciously, as if it were a prohibition, not only of that tree, but of all. God had said, Of every tree you may eat, except one. He, by aggravating the exception, endeavours to invalidate the concession: Hath God said, You shall not eat of every tree? The divine law cannot be reproached unless it be first misrepresented. He seems to speak it tauntingly, upbraiding the woman with her shyness of meddling with that tree; as if he had said, “You are so nice and cautious, and so very precise, because God has said, ‘You shall not eat.’ The devil, as he is a liar, so he is a scoffer, from the beginning: and the scoffers of the last days are his children. That which he aimed at in the first onset was to take off her sense of the obligation of the command. “Surely you are mistaken, it cannot be that God should tie you out from this tree; he would not do so unreasonable a thing.” See here, That it is the subtlety of Satan to blemish the reputation of the divine law as uncertain or unreasonable, and so to draw people to sin; and that it is therefore our wisdom to keep up a firm belief of, and a high respect for, the command of God. In answer to this question the woman gives him a plain and full account of the law they were under. It was her weakness to enter into discourse with the serpent. She might have perceived by his question that he had no good design.. But her curiosity, and perhaps her surprise, to hear a serpent speak, led her into further talk with him. Note, It is a dangerous thing to treat with a temptation, which ought at first to be rejected with disdain and abhorrence. The garrison that sounds a parley is not far from being surrendered. “You shall not die,” he says, so the word is, in direct contradiction to what God had said. Thus Satan endeavours to shake that which he cannot overthrow.
  • From the Book of Adam & Eve, Anonymous, Sixth Century: Then Adam said unto God, “Lord, Thou didst create us, and make us [fit] to be in the garden; and before I transgressed, Thou madest all beasts come to me, that I should name them. Thy grace was then on me; and I named every one according to Thy mind; and Thou madest them all subject unto me. But now, Lord God, that I have transgressed Thy commandment, all beasts will rise against me and will devour me, and Eve Thy handmaid; and will cut off our life from the face of the earth. I therefore beseech Thee, God, that, since Thou hast made us come out of the garden, and hast made us be in a strange land, Thou wilt not let the beasts hurt us.” When the Lord heard these words from Adam, He had pity on him, and felt that he had truly said that the beasts [of the field] would rise and devour him and Eve, because He, the Lord, was angry with them [two] on account of their transgression. Then God commanded the beasts, and the birds, and all that moves upon the earth, to come to Adam and to be familiar with him,† and not to trouble him and Eve; nor yet any of the good and righteous among their posterity. Then the beasts did obeisance to Adam, according to the commandment of God; except the serpent, against which God was wroth. It did not come to Adam. Then Adam and Eve came out at the mouth of the cave, and went towards the garden. But as they drew near to it, before the western gate, from which Satan came when he deceived Adam and Eve, they found the serpent that became Satan coming at the gate. And whereas aforetime [the serpent] was the most exalted of all beasts, now it was changed and become slippery, and the meanest of them all, and it crept on its breast and went on its belly. 

• When the accursed serpent saw Adam and Eve, it swelled its head, stood on its tail, and with eyes blood-red, did as if it would kill them. It made straight for Eve, and ran after her; while Adam standing by, wept because he had no stick in his hand wherewith to smite the serpent, and knew not how to put to death. But with a heart burning for Eve, Adam approached the serpent, and held it by the tail; when it turned towards him and said unto him:– “Adam, because of thee and of Eve, I am slippery, and go upon my belly.” Then by reason of its great strength, it threw down Adam and Eve and pressed upon them, as if it would kill them. But God sent an angel who threw the serpent away from them, and raised them up. Then the Word of God came to the serpent, and said unto it, “In the first instance I made thee glib, and made thee to go upon thy belly; but I did not deprive thee of speech. “Now, however, be thou dumb ; and speak no more, thou and thy race31 because in the first place, has the ruin My creatures happened through thee, and now thou wishest to kill them.”* Then the serpent was struck dumb, and spake no more. And a wind came to blow from heaven by command of God, that carried away the serpent from Adam and Eve, threw it on the sea shore, and it landed in India.

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The post Episode 188 – Satanists Read the Bible III (Year of the Serpent) appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

The history of Satanism is bedeviled by misinformation, and in the age of social media, a lie can travel to Hell and back to avoid correction. As hopefully savvy digital consumers, how can we better train ourselves to separate fact from affliction?

SHOW LINKS

• FaustFest Sign-Ups
• TST MN: Warmer Than Hell
• Filter Magazing: Court-Ordered Into AA? You Could Use Sober Faction

Misinformation vs disinformation

• Misinformation is bad information spread by mistake
• Disinformation is bad information spread on purpose
• Bad actors need more people to amplify their message — they may try to persuade an influencer to spread their disinformation as-is — or as a “debunking.” Simply repeating a rumor can perpetuate it, add fuel to the fire, and even legitimize it.

• • Imposter content: Using the names, logos of well-known, reputable outlets to steal credibility

• • Weaponized content

• • • Content can be used out of context
    • Old content is reshared as new, with new context

• Why do people fall for disinformation? Because they want to. People like things that confirm what they already believe, and reject information that challenges them.

Critical reading of the news

• Basic credulity – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
  • This goes double for anything to do with money or products you see online. (Do not buy shit from Facebook ads!)
  • Is it realistic? Would someone really say or do what the article is saying? Would you do that thing yourself? Would any reasonable person?
• Understand how headlines are written – usually by someone else, not the article writer, and therefore doesn’t always encapsulate what the article actually says. It’s meant to grab your attention – whether for good or bad.
• Opinion vs news – sometimes editorials look a lot like reporting.
• Slow down! Articles (and certainly their headlines) are meant to provoke emotion and a knee-jerk response. Ask yourself, why am I being made to feel this way? What reaction does the writer want me to have? What reaction do I actually have, once I have more time to process the information?
• Who owns what? Consider who really owns the website or publication you’re reading.
• Who wrote the article? Have you heard of them before (do they even exist?), or read their other work? What do their previous stories tell you about them and their point of view?
• When was it written? This is one of the easiest to miss, especially on social media. Make sure the article isn’t out of date – and if there’s no date at all, be suspicious. 
• Who is the target audience? Was this written to appeal to a certain kind of person?
• Verify with other independent sources. Does the information fit with what you already know, or what you’ve read elsewhere? If you can only find one article that says something, that’s a red flag. (And it doesn’t count if all the other sources you find lead back to only the first article!)
• Read the original. This is especially important when it comes to science writing. News articles try to summarize super-long scientific studies in just a paragraph or two – they could be cherry-picking what the study says, or miss the point entirely. When you can, click through to the original study and check it out – and again, if there are no links to sources… that’s a bad sign.
• What isn’t being said? Not citing sources is the big one. But you have to ask questions of what you’re reading. Most mainstream news sites at least try to offer a different perspective / counterpoint to the main narrative of their piece. For example, if a politician really said something inflammatory, there would be a reaction from an opposing party. 

The wild west of unsourced shit on social media

• Social media is great for communicating with people you actually know – but be wary of accounts from people you’ve never heard of. If someone has shared what looks to be original content (i.e., not a link to an article on another publication), check their account to see if they seem legitimate.
• Who’s doing the sharing? Is it a reporter? A politician? Some random person? A celebrity? Just because it’s a big account or a famous person doesn’t mean they’re legit. There are lots of famous dummies out there.
• When was the account made? Brand-new accounts with no profile / cover pictures or friends / followers might be bots or sock puppet accounts. 
• What’s their location? Are they geographically located close enough to what’s said in the post / shown in the photo?
  • There is a private group on Facebook for Satanic Bay Area that is for locals only (for privacy and planning reasons). People will request to join the group, and answer the question of whether they’re local as “yes” – but their location on Facebook says otherwise. Or they don’t have a location at all. That’s when I go to their accounts and look at things like their place of work (maybe it has a location), the Pages they follow (if they like a lot of restaurants in Chicago, maybe that’s where they’re actually located), and even their photos (if they say they’re from San Jose but they’re posting pics of snow in their backyard… they ain’t in San Jose).
• Is the photo altered? Even a skillful cropping can change the meaning of an image. Look for signs of Photoshopping. Use Google reverse image search / TinEye to find the pictures elsewhere on the web.
  • Deepfake videos
• Cross-reference Google Maps / Instagram location tags for visual clues
  • Check things like street signs, their colors, their fonts, etc. Does it match up with what you know of the city’s street signs?
  • Look for seasonal cues. Are the leaves the right color for that part of the year? What does the terrain, plants look like for a particular area?
• Image degradation: if you suspect the photo’s not the original, see if there’s blurriness, pixelation that indicates it was screenshotted and reshared.

Stop the cycle

• Don’t share a story that might be untrue (duh). If you accidentally do, go ahead and delete it. If you want, maybe make a post discussing how you were fooled – but best not to leave the bad article up.
• If you see someone else sharing a story you know to be untrue, speak up (but don’t be a dick).
• It is extreeeeeeeeemely difficult to dissuade someone from believing something. 
  • When someone has internalized a belief and made it part of their identity, attacking that belief feels to them like you’re attacking them personally. They become defensive and work even harder to justify that belief to themselves.
  • The debunker becomes the bad guy, and any facts you present are written off as coming from biased sources.
• Instead, try asking questions. Where did you hear this information? Do you know the person who shared it? How did it make you feel when you read it or saw it? Have you ever heard of that happening before? Why do you think it’s interesting or believable?
• Don’t publicly humiliate them. Send them a private message or better yet, speak in person.
• Consider what else is going on in their life. Is there trouble at home or at work? These may be sources of anxiety they’re unknowingly trying to soothe with conspiracies as a distraction.
• If you need to go low- or no-contact with someone, do what is best for yourself.
• But also consider that conspiracy believers are often socially isolated, and their conspiracy groups give them a sense of community. Perhaps engage on neutral topics – go ahead and comment on Aunt Shirley’s cat pictures, but do not engage when she starts talking about the Flat Earth.
  • Encourage them to spend less time online. Just taking a break from social media can loosen the grip it has over them. Spend time with them in person, away from triggers like television. Remind them of the hobbies and pastimes they used to enjoy before becoming entrenched in conspiracy.
• Set a good example. Sharing real, verifiable news – and mentioning why you know it’s true – on social media can expose people to another point of view. But don’t target your posts at anyone, or engage in arguments in the comments. 
  • People who like to say they do “research” are more likely to believe an article they find themselves, as opposed to something sent to them. It’s a kind of gamification of conspiracy theory.

Sources: 

• The News Literacy Project: Understanding Misinformation and How to Talk to People Who Believe It
• Business Insider: Misinformation vs. disinformation: What to know about each form of false information, and how to spot them online
• New York Times: How to Talk to Friends and Family Who Share Conspiracy Theories
• Slate: How to Talk to QAnon Loved Ones This Thanksgiving 
• Rolling Stone: It’s Not Q. It’s You
• NPR: Illinois Is The First State To Have High Schools Teach News Literacy
• American Psychological Association: Controlling the spread of misinformation
• First Draft News
• Google News Initiative

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The post Episode 113 – Lies & Misinformation appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once said, “Beauty and the devil are the same thing.” Maybe with that in mind, many Satanists who are also artists find themselves developing certain themes in their work. We asked our Unfaithful Listeners for their testimonials about how Lucifer enlightens their creativity, in hopes that we can all answer the question: just what is “Satanic art” really?

SHOW LINKS

• For more information on submissions to Hannah Hellcat’s “Baby Soup for the Satanic Soul,” please email hannahslamma AT gmail.com. Submissions close December 1, 2020.
• Right Wing Watch: Mark Taylor Says Christians Who Voted For Biden Have Cursed Their Families for Generations to Come.
• Full Satanic Artist Statements

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• Facebook
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SATANIC BAY AREA

• Website
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• Twitter (as @SatanicSF)
• Instagram
• Sign up for Satanic Bay Area’s newsletter
• On TikTok as DailyBaphirmations
• Coffee Hour is the third Thursday of every month from 6 – 8 pm at Wicked Grounds in San Francisco!

The post Episode 84 – Spotlight: Satanic Artists appeared first on Black Mass Appeal.