Prometheus

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In This Issue… The Feature Story: A Side Chat With The Devil An in depth interview with High Priest Peter Gilmore of the Church of Satan. Prometheus:........................................Page 3

Survivalist: Escaping Modern World

Devil. H.P. Peter H. Gilmore A Side Chat With The

I think I read somewhere that you were an atheist in childhood. How did that atheism

metamorphose into Satanism? What were the formative influences leading you to Satanism? I chose the label “atheist” for myself at the age of eight, as that seemed proper for an individual who was seeking to understand the truth about how the universe functioned. Religions, and I had read literature from various eastern and western functioned. Religions, and I had read literature from various eastern and western doctrines, appeared to me as collection of mythologies – stories that had no more reality than superhero comics. So atheism meant to me that I was a person who did not operate on blind faith in a world of fairy tales. As I continued to gain knowledge and experience through observation (looking both outwards and inward) and participation in the world, I saw quite clearly that people were simply animals, but often were failures in ways unique to the human species. Selfdeception was a particularly vile behaviour common to those whose company I chose to avoid. The people I favored were those who had the same purity and honesty as did all the animals I encountered and since my father bred and showed championship dogs I was constantly among animals, and given a rudimentary knowledge of eugenics as well. I was fascinated by life and its ruthless interplay, and I watched this struggle from the local insects on up to the various creatures in the swamps and sandlotrs. I read books about biology and astronomy and absorbed all that I could to increase my understanding how the world worked. These were the formative influences that prepared me for the proud acceptance of the title Satanist, which happened when I first read The Satanic Bible.

When did you first read The Satanic Bible, and what attracted you to it? When I was thirteen I found a copy of The Satanic Bible in a New York City bookstore. Since I had prior exposure to other religions, I decided to see what this point of view had to offer, letting the Devil be his own advocate. After reading this book I decided that a more accurate label for myself was “Satanist” as “atheist” did not fully cover the broad range of my world view which I had now discovered was completely congruent with Dr. LaVey’s writings. I had not examined any “occultism” of any sort prior to finding this book and later examined such literature, armed with a no-nonsense point of view honed by The Satanic Bible. Thus, Dr. LaVey’s writings are what formed my understanding that I was by nature a Satanist, and that this was a most proper label. He is really THE formative influence for this awareness of my birthright. When did you join the C/S and why did you decide to join an organization? I first contact the Church of Satan at age 15 (1973) and was told that I was too young to legally join, but they did put me in touch with a not too distant grotto for training. Then the dissolution of the chartered grotto system was put into effect and I lost contact with the organization. I went to film school for a year, then studied music, gaining a Bachelor of Science and later a Master’s degree from New York University, both in music and composition. At the conclusion of my studies I again contact the Church of Satan (1981) and was welcomed to join. After embracing The Satanic Bible I thought that an organization which embodies its

principles would be one that could prove stimulatin, and indeed it has. The opportunity to acknowledge my allegiance to the philosophy of Satanism by supporting the man who created this magnificent synthesis seemed not only to be essential, but part of my particular destiny. Were you associated with any other organizations, Satanic or otherwise, before joining the Church of Satan? No. Your rise to the position of Church of Satan Administrator seems to have been rapid. What activities and abilities led to this rise? After joining the Church of Satan. I kept the central office appraised of my various endeavours, demonstrating that I was a productive individual working to advance my various talents. I imagine that I must have impressed Dr. LaVey with my grasp of his philosophy as well as by projecting a sufficient degree of articulateness to warrant being trusted as an agent and contact point. I was given various tasks to further assess my abilities and this evolved into becoming one of the administrators. My successful initiation, as well as the subsequent evolution, of The Black Flame also demonstrated the scope of my various abilities. When did you first meet LaVey, and what were the circumstances and initial impressions? My wife and I were invited to meet Dr. LaVey in 1987, as he had been interested in our progress and felt that a personal meeting would be most appropriate. We journeyed to San Fransisco and first met him at a

restaurant – we entered and he was already inside, calling out our names so that we turned and saw him for the first time with Blanche Barton at his side. We had a delightful meal (steaks – we’re all fans of flesh), and engaging conversation which we continued back at one of his bay area retreats, being driven there in the Doktor’s sleek black Jaguar. What most impressed me about Dr. LaVey is that he is quite fully the man I expected from reading his writings. He really lives and thinks as is delineated in his books. Often I had met people who created a skilful façade in their writing, or whose creations projected but a misleading part of who they were. Dr. LaVey is what one grasps in his books, music, and videos, as well as being so very much more. His wisdom and humor charmed us both and indeed that first series of encounters left us with absolute respect and admiration that has grown into love for him as well as for Blanche and Satan Xerxes as our contact and intimacy has increased.

Your music compositions which, myself having a musical background, can best describe as ‘momentous’, seem to have a martial flavor to them. Does a martial spirit reflect your own personal ethos and aesthetic? My music captures a wide ranger of emotions, but I often focus on the feelings evoked by the continuing struggles inherent in existence. I use elements from the vocabulary of Western art music that have a martial significance – marches and fanfares, for example. Indeed, a martial spirit is part of my personal ethos, but it comes to focus in response to certain circumstances that deserve this particular part of my character.

My aesthetic embraces the whole gamut of emotional expression experienced by the human animal. I write what I find to be stimulating – indeed I feel that what I produce must come firth of necessity. As a musician (and I believe a graphic artist also?) do you consider there to be a specifically Satanic aesthetic, something of a school of Satanic art as definable as, say, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism, etc.? I believe that the Satanic aesthetic is one that embraces expression of emotion and weltanschauung through excellence in the handling of form and content, using past vocabularies to synthesize personally significant modes of expression that many Satanists will find resonance with their natures. Since Satanism is best exemplified as Man in harmony with his animal nature, there is a vast range of materials available for expression. Blanche Barton’s The Church of Satan lists films, music and literature that form a basic starting point for grasping how this aesthetic has arisen again and again in many seemingly disparate genres. Those who are naturally Satanic will produce such works, whether they’ve called themselves Satanists or not. It is broader than specifically identified “schools” or art, as Satanic individuals have used their particular experiences and perceptions, defined by their cultural context, to express the Black Flame within. Since such individuals have manifested again and again over the course of human history in varied cultural contexts, there is a vast panoply of artworks that would be consider Satanic. A specifically Satanic school of art is now being forged by those who have consciously embraced the title of Satanist, but we are still in the formative stages of this

movement. There is a broad field here for exploration by contemporary Satanists who have talents in these areas of expression. So master your techniques and look both without and within and let the inspiration fire you.

Survivalists: Escaping the Modern World By Rhiannon de Sade

Americans who pay attention to the news are starting to fear an imminent collapse of our civilization. Many of them are throwing in the towel before the slow decline, and heading to the countryside for a life of frugal self sufficiency. It's a lot like how exsmokers can't stop talking about how terrible cigarettes are. That consumer lifestyle I used to lead? I had to give it up. Panicked by the thought that after oil peaks, our consumer society will fall apart because it's held together by greed and fear, these people say they feel devastated, vulnerable and depressed. They are going green from fear of how they will survive post consumerism. Fear is a more effective motivator than an appeal to the conscience. These refugees from modernity are now growing their own food, instead of buying it wrapped in plastic, and using wood stoves for heating instead of those 0.04% more efficient "green" heaters sold at Wal-Mart. How authentic is this? From an environmental perspective, not much -- if all of us started trying to have gardens and burn wood at once, we'd denude the planet even faster than the industrial machine does.

Why do they do it? Some might genuinely long for the excitement of living in a post apocalyptic world, as they've seen in movies. Maybe it was just a good excuse to chuck aside the smothering safety net logic of suburban life. Perhaps they did just want a challenge, or some reason to feel important and effective again. Critics of survivalists say concerns that the modern life is about to explode into violent chaos are overblown. They're probably right. But no one seems to be talking about the simple fixes to modern society which would prevent it from slowly degrading itself into unsustainability. Survivalists are realists: we don't have time to wait until the other seven billion figure it out. Throwing rocks at survivalism is a passive game, played by the sort of people whose reaction to the idea of hard times ahead is to stockpile designer handbags and spare parts for high-end cappuccino makers - despite which they never wake up and smell the coffee.

The Faustian Spirit of Fascism By M.M.

Organized Satanism becomes more and more equipped to deal with the challenges of the future, it s not surprising that many on our side have adopted a progressively uncompromising stance. Certain members of the Satanic community cannot come to terms with this development, and are disturbed at its resonance with key aspects of traditional Fascism (be it "occult" or political) and National Socialism. It is, however, a perfectly natural evolution. The present world is one in which extreme situations increasingly demand extreme solutions. It is not a time for cowards. The shrill whine of the contemporary "victim culture" has replaced most all forms of true culture. Given the preponderance of

this victim culture - glorifying the lowest and holding no one accountable for his or her actions - a heroic Fascism in a pure form would be a welcome antidote. The same can be said for many of the tenets of National Socialism, including the dreaded "Holocaust" (which in the future will have far less stringent entrance requirements). Fascism means many things to many people, just as Satanism does. I see no point to endless discussions of what Fascism or Satanism may or may not be. Frankly, those of us who actually create things of value don't have time to waste on these debates. By accepting the title of Satanist one does not necessarily endorse the ideas or behavior .of others who also call themselves Satanists. Still, an intelligent person realizes that by adopting an image or title you will probably be taken to task for some of the less-than-intelligent activities of others who adopt the same image. That's life, and it shouldn't deter anyone of strong will from using the tools and* symbols they want to use, for their own reasons, without apology. I have heard many a nitwit whine that the U.S. Government is "Nazi". the Christian Fundamentalists are "fascists" and so on. ad nauseum. I've heard it argued (usually by pagans) that National Socialism was somehow an outgrowth of Hitler's Catholicism. People are certainly entitled to their own bizarre opinions, but instead of taking them at their word, I prefer to go to the source. Hitler's Reich Minister, Martin Bormann, proclaimed in 1942 that "National Socialist and Christian concepts are incompatible". The most influential philosopher of Fascism and post-war right wing extremism in Europe, Julius Evola, stated definitively in 1928: "The identification of our tradition with the Christian and Catholic Church is the most absurd of all errors" Now, who do you want to believe? The Faustian Spirit Of Fascism From Oswald Mosley To Oswald Spengler “Only a sufficiently extensive area on this globe guarantees a nation freedom of existence….we are placed in this world on condition of an

eternal struggle for daily bread, as being to whom nothing shall be given and who owe their position as lords of the earth only the genius and courage with which they know how to struggle for and defend it.” Adolf Hilter, Mein Kampf “I work that millions may possess this space, if not secure, a free and active race. Here man and beast, in green and fertile fields, will know the joys, that new-won region yields. Here wisdom speaks its final word and true, none is freedom or of life deserving unless he daily conquers anew.” Goethe, Faust Part Two

Fascism as a political ideology has, since its general demise in the West following the Second World War, become symbolic of "evil" for many commentators and historians, particularly when contrasted with the so-called freedom-loving (hence, "good") ideals of democracy. In many ways this stigma is quite apt, as a little known inspiration for many "Fascistic" ideologues and politicians came from the characterization of the Satanic magician Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Many of the prominent themes from Ghoete's masterpiece were also central to rightist thinkers spanning from Nietzsche and historical philosopher Oswald Spengler, to National Socialists such as Alfred Rosenberg and even Hitler himself. The direct line of "Faustian" politics was later taken up specifically by the English leader of the British Union of Fascists. Sir Oswald Mosley, who was a disciple of Spengler, as well as being powerfully inspired by the literature of Goethe. In this essay I will attempt to illustrate this line of thought from the early Nineteenth Century up to its present ramifications. In many ways Ghoete's drama Faust could be said to embody the Zeitgeist of Western man from the time it was published, as well as being a prophetic look into the future. The dominant themes of man striving to obtain the status of a god on earth and the disregard for the heavenly rewards of Christianity can be seen reflected in the rapid industrialization of the Nineteenth

Century and the increasingly scientific outlook of many philosophers. With the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution, the concept of mankind's divine creation as put forth in the Bible began to appear unlikely, if not altogether false. In the realm of philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) most forcefully elucidated the concept of mans ascent to a godlike form, embodied in his term the Ubermensch ("superman" or "overman") At the same time Nietzsche violently -vilified the tenets and practices of Christianity, which he detested as the hallmarks of a religion fit only for slaves. A clear advocacy of aristocratic conquest and rulership, also espoused by Faust's proclamatio the end of the drama's Part Two. can be seen u following lines from Nietzsche's philosophical novel. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “O my brethren, I consecrate you to be. and

show unto you the way to a new nobility. Ye shall become procreators and breeders and sowers of the future." "Your children's land ye shall love (be this your new nobility), the land undiscovered in the remotest sea! For it I bid you set sail and seek!"1” While Nietzsche speaks here in a more metaphorical sense, much like Faust himself in the earlier sections of Part One. on many occasions he did specifically refer to politics in a similar manner. Much has been made of the Nazi's implementation of Nietzschean ideals into the real world of social engineering, and many modern day scholars (in particular the late translator of Nietzsche. Walter Kaufmann) have tried to argue that Nietzsche never meant his ideas to be taken literally, in a political sense. However, it is not at all difficult to locate many quotations which support the case that Nietzsche did await an age of uncompromising power politics, which would certainly live up to most peoples conceptions of Fascism, and in feet an entire book has been written on the subject, strongly refuting the claims of many Nietzsche “appotogists." 2 One typical quote sufficient to illustrate the point can

be found in Section 208 of Beyond Good and Evil: "... the opposite would be more after my heart — I mean such an increase in the menace of Russia that Europe would have to reserve to become menacing, too. namely to acquire one will by means of a new caste that would rule Europe, a long terrible will of its own that would be able to cast its goals millennia hence - so that the long drawn out comedy of its many splinters states as well as ils dynastic and democratic splinter wills would ' come to an end. The time for petty politics is over: the very next century will bring the fight for the dominion of the earth – the compulsion to great politics." 3’

Regardless of whether or not Nietzsche himself would have approved of the consequences, the general aims of National Socialism, along entire Fascists axis, can easily be seen to correspond with such a sentiment, even down to unification of Europe to fight against a Russian menace – the central idea behind Himmler’s pan-European military force, the Waffen SS. So, while Nietzsche does not refer by name to a “Faustian” impulse in his writings, in many ways his philosophy bridged the gap between such an impulse and its later application by the National Socialists and Fascists. The philosopher of the Twentieth Century who did specifically incorporate the idea of “Faustian” Man into his writings, and who exerted a strong influence on many aspects of Fascistic thought was Oswald Spengler (1880-1936). Most famous for his massive interpretation of history entitled The Decline of the West, Spengler posited an argument that civilizations are organic entities and thus, like other living organisms, have a cyclical existence of birth, ascension, decline, and eventually death. Spengler then interpreted the achievements of different cultures as falling into these general phases, which he named after the seasons: Spring, Summer. Fall, and, encompassing final dissolution, Winter. Strongly influenced by Goethe and Nietzsche. Spengler utilized various ideas from both men. which he fused into his own outlook on history. His

indebtedness to Goethe, and to Faust in particular, is evident in his terming Western man and civilization as "Faustian" in nature. This spirit embodied the notion of ceaseless striving, be it for knowledge, territory or influence. In his later work Man and Technics, Spengler relates the relation between Faustian Man and technology with the quest of perpetual motion: “This last idea {perpetual motion} never thereafter let go its hold on us, for success would mean the final victory over 'God or Nature,' a small world of one's own creation moving like the great world, in virtue of its own forces and obeying the hand of man alone. To build a world oneself, to be oneself God - that is the Faustian inventor's dream, and from it has sprung all our designing and redesigning of machines to approximate as nearly as possible to the unattainable limit of perpetual motion. The booty-idea of the best of prey is thought out to its logical end. Not this or that bit of the world, as when Prometheus stole fire, but the world itself, complete with its secret of force, is dragged away as spoil to be built into our Culture. But he who was not himself possessed by this will to power over all nature would necessarily feel all this as devilish, and in fact men have always regarded machines as the invention of the devil - with Roger Bacon begins the long line of scientists who suffer as magicians and heretics."4 Although Spengler gloried in this Western "will to power." his greater concept of the cyclical destiny of all civilization meant that the present age, beginning approximately at the onset of the Nineteenth Century, was doomed as the '"Winter" period of inevitable decline and eventual collapse. As one commentator on Spenglerian theory elaborates on the signs of this dissolution: “West as early as 1800. the onset of the winter period. Decline in any culture occurs when there is a widespread feeling

that the existing institutions and ideals are no longer viable. In the life history of every culture, there comes a point when its original vitality has been dissipated -- when it is experiencing either a profound 'failure of nerve' or bureaucratic decadence. This 'failure of nerve' manifests itself as a loss of faith and instinct as intellectualism pure and simple. In a declining culture, Spengler observes, 'the brain rules because the soul abdicates.”5'

Along with Oswald Spengler, the predominant ideologists and figures of the National Socialist movement in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s also exhibited a strong inspiration from the idea of a "Faustian" spirit inherent to European culture. In a similar situation to that with Nietzsche's philosophy, the Nazis took this concept and applied it in practice, often with overwhelming results. In a sense this translation of concept into reality itself inherently "Faustian," as Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg draws attention to in his huge work The Myth of the Twentieth Century: “Goethe spent much of his creative energy in promoting the virtues of intellectual activity. The greatest hymn u l,uman activity is his Faust, After the exploration and penetration of all science, of all love and suffering, Faust is liberated through the deed, i.e., action. To his powerful spirit which sought always to comprehend the infinite,... thought was the most useful faculty for the man, the final stone of life, the tool to conquer the unknown."6 Rosenberg also starts his belief in the Faustian Man himself with further lines: “I am forced to admit that my will is divided into two parts: sensuous-instinctive and super-sensuous-willed. These are the two souls which Faust felt within his breast." "Goethe represented our essence in Faust. The eternal, which, after every

recasting of our soul, is inherent in our form. As a result, Goethe has become the guardian and the preserver of our disposition. He is a figure such as our people possessed at no other time.” 6 In the last two sentences of the above quote, it would be easy to see the name Hitler substituted for that of Goethe, and such sentiments appear often in National Socialist texts. Seen by many Germans of the time as a god-like creature sent by Providence to rescue the nation, Adolf Hitler in many ways fulfills the role as a modern Faust, who attempts to become a "lord of the earth" through the means of action, "the deed". Baldur von Sirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth, voiced his thought when he said, "Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience." 8 Indeed, the resemblance between certain words spoken by Hitler in Mein Kampf and those of Faust at the end of Part Two is uncanny. During the draining of the swarnps just before Faust's death at the age of one hundred, he states, "None is of freedom or life deserving / Unless he daily conquers it anew."9) Rephrased by Hitler in his chapter on "Nation and Race," the same idea is conveyed: "He who wants to live should fight, therefore, and he who does not want to battle in this world of eternal struggle does not deserve to be alive."10 There are likewise strong parallels between Faust's determination to create new living space for his people as a final, ideal act and Hitler's persistent theme of additional Lebensraum which it was the Germans' destiny to obtain at any cost. While in agreement on the basic concept of unceasing struggle and innovation, Spengler and the Nazis differed strongly when it came to an outlook toward the future. Spengler, as stated earlier, believed that the fate of the West was preordained and unchangeable, leading to imminent collapse. The Nazis, on the other hand, saw themselves, and Hitler in particular, as forces of regeneration which would lead Europe toward a rebirth and the founding of a "thousand year Reich." It is in their dedication to this goal that they went even further than the character of

Faust. During Faust's program of creating a new area of living space, Mephistopheles and The Three are asked to move an old couple from their home to make way for the construction effort. The couple are killed as a result, which angers Faust and causes him to shout at Mephistopheles, "My curse on this exploit of woe! Now take your share of

curse and go!"1 ' In contrast, the unremorseful attitude toward such casualties that was accepted and amplified by many of the Nazi leaders is expressed in the lines spoken in the Chorus at this point: "You serve the mighty with a will;/ Let you be brave where knocks are brisk / And house, and home and life you risk."1 :> The furthest extreme of this sentiment, and the darkest reflection of Spengler's idea that "the world itself, complete with its secret of force, is dragged away as spoil to built into our Culture," is expressed bluntly and callously in Heinrich Himmler's October 4th, 1943 speech to a meeting of SS major-generals, referring to the casualties of war in Russia:

“We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradly to members of our own blood, but to nobody else. ... What the nations can offer us in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished..."."13 It is here at this point, when Faustian conquest assumes purely racial grounds, that Spengler would have found it reprehensible. It is certainly the case that Spengler himself did not see Hitler as any kind of embodiment of Faustian Man, and this is evidenced by his remarks after they met and talked with one another: "Sitting next to him, one did not gain the slightest inkling that he represented anything significant."14

Another Fascists leader far less extreme than the Nazis but just as influenced by the Faustian ideal. Was the Englishman Sir Oswald Mosley (1896-1980) after involvement in various political groups both Conservative and Labour, he moved further and further towards an openly Fascist organization, inspired by Mussolini’s successes in Italy. In 1932 Mosley officially founded the British Union of Fascists, who were also know as the Blackshirts. After enjoying a growing mass of followers and a certain amount of influence, Mosley and other British Fascist leaders were imprisoned in internment camps during the war, as the government considered them a potentially subversive force. Mosley was deeply indebted to Spengler for providing a foundation for the ideology with which be would attempt to guide the B.U.F., and he referred to him in an early speech as "the great German philosopher," who had "probably done more than any other to paint in the broad background of Fascist thought." 15 Despite such public pronouncements, Mosley was unable to fully embrace Spengler's interpretation of history as a philosophy in and of itself, for exactly the same reasons as the National Socialists. The thrust of Fascism, as a force that intended to rejuvenate a decaying West suffering from the symptoms of democracy and Rousseau-inspired humanism, could not accept Spengler's dire predictions of an unalterable, organic, final end. For the Nazis the Faustian force which would turn the tables was Hitler, while for Mosley it was scientific technology In his words. Spengler had failed to properly take into account "modern scientific and mechanical development, if you look through the Spenglerian spectacles you are bound to come to a conclusion of extreme pessimism because they obscure the factor which for the first time places in the hands of man the ability to eliminate the poverty problem."16' Although he saw a means to regeneration through the diligent application of technology to solve the problems of modern life, Mosley also felt himself to be one of the new breed of Faustian men who had the vision to recognize such solutions. As his biographer, Robert Skidelsky, writes:

“Of all the things he read in prison, Goethe’s Faust made the most profound impression on Mosley: after the war, he published an English translation, with an introduction by himself. He identified his own destiny with that of Faust; which in turn made that destiny more concious."17 Mosley elaborated on his own particular interpretation of this destiny in his book The Alternative, published in 1947, after his period of imprisonment. As he eloquently states: “When all illusions have being destroyed we still return to the basic question - is it likely that anything so complex as the Universe, and so purposeful as the evolution of man ... can have lacked purpose and design? "Even the paradox of evil, which long appeared to contravert the presence of any beneficent or creative providence, takes place in the pattern of things as an agent which stirs from lethargy, and demands the answer of a new energy that carries men forward ... Nature drives man until he is sufficiently developed to advance under his own power, when the flame of the spirit is ignited. ... the purpose of life is not selfdevelopment, in vacua, but the development of the self in Achievement, as an artist in action and life, who creates, also, for humanity. The proud words, 'I serve', are to such a man also the highest expression of self-development. He serves the purpose of God in assisting the emergence of higher forms of life. No mechanisms of Society or of Government can function unless we can produce more such men: they are the lights of humanity." 18 That Mosley here is calling for a new breed of Faustian Men in whom to invest the fate of Europe is quite clear. It is in such men, ceaselessly striving and yet willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, just as Faust attempted to do

before his death, that both Fascism and National Socialism placed their ultimate faith. Were these leaders correct in their assessment of the West? This is a question that remains to be answered once and for all. Certainly, during their active years those who dared ally themselves with Fascism were the object of antagonism from the agents of democracy, who stopped at nothing to remove them from the world's stage. The current, status quo position on both Fascism and National Socialism as political creeds is no less tolerant, and if anything has become even more heatedly illiberal towards the philosophical underpinnings of these movements. In light of this, it could be said that the idea of the "Faustian spirit," when translated into politics, has heretofore been unacceptable and irreconcilable with the dominant forces of democratic idealism. But while the Fascists of the last century may have been discredited by the powers-that-be. the more all-encompassing Faustian concepts of Oswald Spengler have not. Although he is largely ignored and forgotten, Spengler's predictions continue to be vindicated in many ways. Perhaps Western Man is unable to alter the course of his decline, and here is where the Faustian politicians deluded themselves with self-intoxicated visions. The continued acceptance of an altruistic, democratic worldview may merely be, as Spengler thought, a sign of the decay, a symptom of the "Winter" of Western Civilization. Grim and politically incorrect as they may seem, his ominous concluding words in Man and Technics ring with a chilling tone of truth: “The Others have caught up with their instructors. ...Where there is coal, oil, or water-power, there a new weapon can be forged against the heart of the Faustian Civilization. The exploited world is beginning to take revenge on its lords. ...It is no mere crisis, but the beginning of a catastrophe. "For these 'colored' peoples (including, in this context, the Russians) the Faustian technics are in no wise an inward necessity. It is only Faustian

man who thinks, feels, and lives in this form. To him it is a spiritual need, not-on account of its economic consequences, but on account of its victories... "This machine-technics will end with the Faustian civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten... The history of technics is drawing to its inevitable close. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture. "Faced as we are with this destiny, there is only one world-outlook that is worthy of us. that which has already been mentioned as the choice of Achilles - better a short life, full of deeds and glory, than a long life without content. ...Time does not suffer itself to be halted; there is no question of prudent retreat or wise renunciation. Only dreamers believe that there is a way out. Optimism is cowardice. "We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man."19 Unlike Goethe’s fictional character of Faust, the Legacy of Western Man and the civilization he forged may not be rewarded with any ultimate salvation, though National Socialists, Fascists, Fascists, and other dreamers may continue to have faith in such a destiny. __________________________________________________ 1

' Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as quoted in A.M. Ludovici, Nietzsche, New York, undated Pg.82 2

' This is the excellent Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism by Bruce Detweiler. Chicago, 1990.

3

' Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil. As quoted in Detweiler, pg.56. 4

' Spengler, Man and Technics, translated by C.F. Atkinson, New York, 1932. Pg. 84,85. 5

' Klaus P. Fischer, History and Prophecy: Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West, North Carolina, 1977. Pg.150 6

' Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century, trans. By Vivian Bird California, 1982, Pg.155 7

' Ibid, pgs 205, 323.

8

' Sirach, quoted in G.S. Graber, The History of the SS, New York, 1978, Pg.59 9

' Goethe, Faust: Part Two, trans by Philip Wayne, London, 1959. Pg.262 10

' Hitler, Mein Kampf, Reynal & Hitchock translation, New York, 1940. Pg.397 11

' Goethe, Faust: Part Two, trans. by Philip Wayne, Lodon, 1959. Pg.269 12

' Ibid., pg.262.

13

' Roger Manwell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Himmler, New York, 1968. Pgs. 154, 146. 14

' As quoted in Fischer, pg.72.

15

' Mosley, quoted in Nicholas Mosley, Beyond the Pale, London, 1983. Pg.35. 16

' Ibd., Pg.36

17

' Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley, New York, 1975. Pg.473. 18

' Oswald Mosley, The Alternative, London, 1947. As quoted in Skidelsky, pg.477. 19

' Spengler, Man and Technics, trans. By C.F. Atkinson, New York, 1932. Pgs. 102104.

Hells Kitchen As Satanists we take it upon ourselves to enjoy life to the fullest. Entertaining, fine dining, etc., should be a part of this. In the column Hells Kitchen we will present a few recipes corresponding to the season we are entering, fine dining suggestions, and tips for entertaining.

Appetizer: Deviled Ham Spread, Main Course: Pork Loin Chops with Mushroom Gravy, Mashed Potato Casserole, Marinated Cucumbers, Deserts: Pecan Shortbread

Salt and pepper to taste 1/3 cup butter 1 large onion, chopped 2 cups fresh mushrooms, cleaned and sliced 1 clove garlic, minced 1 and 2/3 cup milk 1/4 cup dry red wine 1/2 tsp. dried thyme Combine flour and salt and pepper in a large bag. Shake each pork chop to coat with flour mixture. Melt butter in a large skillet and brown pork chops on each side; remove chops from skillet and place on a paper towel to drain. Meanwhile saute onion, mushrooms, and garlic in the skillet until mushrooms and onion are tender. Add leftover flour that was used to coat chops, milk, wine and thyme to the skillet and simmer until mixture starts to thicken. Return chops to the skillet and cover. Simmer for 30 minutes or until pork is cooked through. Mashed Potato Casserole

Deviled Ham Spread 2 small cans deviled ham 1/2 cup mayonnaise 8 oz. cream cheese, softened 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and diced 1/4 cup green onions, chopped 3 Tbsp. fresh dill chopped or 1 tsp. dried Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and mix well. Chill before serving with crackers or crust bread pieces.

Pork Loin Chops with Mushroom Gravy 6 - 8 pork loin chops 2/3 cup flour

8 large baking potatoes 8 oz. sour cream 3 oz. cream cheese 1/4 cup butter, melted 1/4 cup milk 2 clove garlic, minced 1/2 tsp. dried dill weed Salt and pepper to taste 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated Boil potatoes until tender. Beat potatoes along with sour cream, creamcheese, butter milk, garlic, dill weed and salt and pepper. Place in a casserole dish and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Marinated Cucumbers 6 - 8 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced 1 large onion, sliced

1 cup sugar 1 cup cider vinegar 1 tsp. celery seed Salt and pepper to taste Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate overnight. We keep a constant supply of these cucumbers in our refrigerator. They really are very tasty.

Pecan Shortbread 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups flour, sifted 1 cup butter, softened 1 cup confectioner's sugar, divided 1/2 tsp. almond extract 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1/4 tsp. salt 2/3 cup pecans finely chopped Combine flour, butter and 3/4 cup of the confectioner's sugar together and blend with a mixer, add extracts, salt and pecans and continue mixing until a dough forms. Shape dough into one inch balls and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minute or until lightly brown.

Groccery List

2 small cans deviled ham 1/2 cup mayonnaise 12 oz. cream cheese 1 jalapeno pepper 1/4 cup green onions, chopped 3 Tbsp. fresh dill chopped or 1 tsp. dried 6 - 8 pork loin chops 3 cups flour 2 cups butter 2 large onions

2 cups fresh mushrooms 3 cloves garlic 2 cups milk 1/4 cup dry red wine 1/2 tsp. dried thyme 8 large baking potatoes 8 oz. sour cream 1/2 tsp. dried dill weed 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated 6 - 8 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced 1 cup sugar 1 cup cider vinegar 1 tsp. celery seed 1 cup confectioner's sugar, divided 2/3 cup pecans finely chopped 1/2 tsp. almond extract 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Crowley I met him on the beach down at Cefalu, Where he sunbathed all the time while he dictated his whole life's story. Very drolly, stor, stor, stor, stor, story. I saw this bald guy sitting there on a rock, I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said, 'Crowley.' Just like 'Holy', Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Well, I've been around but I ain't never seen A guy who says he's a Magus and then writes sonnets obscene. Oh my Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand How he can make me a camel just by raising his hand. Oh my Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Well, I left home just a week before, And I've never ever been a Templar before,

But Cap'n Fuller sent me straight to Al, He said, 'Go to Crowley and he'll give you the Law!' Well, I'm not the kind that would argue with John, So I packed my bags for the Mediterranean. To see Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley, Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. So I signed the Pledge. I sat in Asana, Assumed the God-form, While I did Liber Resh. Well, I won't forget what Crowley said: He said, 'Vic, stay away from the Left-Hand Path, And if you shut yourself up, then Our Lady will laugh.' Oh my Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. 'I know my Qabalah's really got you perplexed, But remember things must add up or you'll really be vexed!' Oh my Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Well, I heard Mussollini got in a snit, So we're headed off for Tunisia, I guess. But I know that I'll be with Crowley for years, I'll be paying his way through this veil of tears. ? The long-term Pledge-form I had to sign Says I'll be buying his books 'til the end of time, Books by Crowley, Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley. Cro, Cro, Cro, Cro, Crowley.

Vlad Dracula: The Man And His

Satanic Spirit By Aloysius

In the wake of Ford Francis Coppola’s screen adaptation of Dracula, an intriguing historical figure has at last come to light after centuries of dwelling in obscure infamy. This figure is Prince Vlad Drakula V, ruler of Wallachia during the 15th Century and the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous vampire count of the same name. Although history provides little information on this notorious prince, he stands today amongst those who know of him as a true embodiment of the Satanic spirit (which could be the reason why his vampiric counterpart is regarded as the Prince of Darkness. Indeed, the name drakula itself means ‘son of the dragon’ – Vlad’s father was a ‘draconic’ knight, belonging to the Order of Dragons). Vlad Drakula (also known as Vlad Tepes) was born in 1431 and was destined to become one of the most feared rulers in Romanian history. He was strong willed and merciless to his enemies, executing captured foes by brutal and painful methods. The most infamous of these methods was to impale prisoners upon long wooden stakes to die slowly and in excruciating agony. Important prisoners with higher rankings received longer stakes to die upon and after they were dead, their heads were severed and used to decorate the walls of the city. This practice was extended to his own subjects, especially those of the criminal elements. The impaled corpses of criminals were dismembered afterwards and sent to the next of kin as a grim warning. Thus the fearsome Vlad earned his nickname as ‘the impaler’. It is said that he often dined

beneath his dying enemies, enjoying the choruses of screams and groans.

quickly earned their own spot in Vlad’s grisly garden of stakes without fail.

However, although his punishments were quite grisly, Vlad Tepes was a hero to his own people. He ruled as king for three periods, gaining a reputation as a brilliant war-chief and strategist. In 1456, he captured 20,000 Turkish prisoners from an invading army and impaled every single one of them. Their corpses were staked outside the city walls and the Turkish forces took the message, returning home demoralized and sickened (not surprising!). Numbers and odds he ignored, his chief weapon was fear when dealing with invading armies that dwarfed his own legions in size.

Unfortunately, the Church finally managed to infiltrate his domain before long and when Prince Vlad died in 1476, aged 45, the Christians buried his ‘unclean’ corpse at the food of the Snagov altar as a punishment for his ‘vile earthly deeds’. The tomb was dug up in 1931 but yielded no body – the contents consisted of animal bones. The whereabouts of his remains are still a complete mystery. What does remain though is his legacy – a kingly prince, a merciless executioner, a brilliant strategist and a national hero.

Vlad personally demanded respect from all those who treated with him and took great offence if in courtesy presented itself. One report has it that when visiting Turkish ambassadors refused to remove their hats before him, he had the turbans nailed to their heads! He also detested the weak, the diseased and the beggar-filth. His methods of dealing with them were simple. At one time, he invited all of the local gutter-scum in the city to a lavish banquet, prepared by his servants. Yet once all were inside the hall – dining and rejoicing of their good fortune – he barricaded all the exits with his soldiery and torched the place to the ground – effectively dealing with all of the undesirables inside as well. Afterwards, any remaining weaklings were dealt with in the usual gruesome style upon a stake. Little is known of the prince’s religious orientation (or if he even had one) but apparently he hated the Christian Church and its followers with a fierce passion. Pious troublemakers

Thus, Vlad Drakula can be considered a truly Satanic figure. He possessed Luciferian pride, the cunning of the Serpent, and wielded the banner of the Strong. While the writings of most historians are mainly concerned with his legendary cruelty, Vlad the Impaler as a man remains as an inspiration to those in Satanism. We are fighting against innumerable odds in the decaying Church just as he opposed the might of the Ottoman Empire. And as he used fear as a weapon, so too is it one of our chief weapons. And as he won out in the end – so too shall we. Then we shall see the rotting remains of the vile Nazarene filth impaled upon the blackened barbs of Hell! Hail Vlad Drakula! We remember your greatness! Hail Vlad! Hail Satan!

Wonderful World

Way to often do “we Satanists” have the feeling that we come from a complete different planet then the herd surrounding us. There problems are not ours; there humor and amusement isn’t ours; there solutions … etc. Sometimes the unenviable contact with “them” leads to amazement or anger, but mostly it will stir up our sense of Satanichumor. We have picked a couple of those occasions where we can’t deny a great grin on our face, and shake our heads. Here is then for you “Wonderful World.”

Security Took A Dive Security had to be increased at the Olympics after a Canadian man jumped into a swimming pool in the middle of a diving competition. Bare-chested and sporting a blue tutu and clown shoes, the man wandered onto the pool deck and climbed onto a diving board during the men's synchronized three-meter springboard event on Monday. Olympic organizers said the man was trying to send a love message to his wife by getting on TV. However, the message painted on his chest appeared to be the website address for an online gaming web-site. After standing on the board for about a minute, he jumped into the pool and was immediately caught by security guards. He was arrested and questioned by a prosecutor. Although the man's intentions seemed harmless, officials for the Olympics took the breach of security seriously and will now be placing security men around the area of play. Con Ed Leaves Its Mark A 26-year-old skateboarder will never be able to forget Con Edison after one of the

company's smoking hot manhole covers scarred her for life. Liz Wallenberg said she was skating to visit friends when she hit a bump in the road. "I landed with my arm and back straight onto the metal cover," Wallenberg said. "I noticed it was kind of hot, but I didn't realize how bad it was until my skin started to sizzle." She lifted her shirt to discover a large red imprint from the cover branded on her back. "It was such awful pain," Wallenberg said. "There was blistering, and it was like I was branded. You can see the 'O' and the 'N' from 'Con Edison.' The doctor said a lot of this will scar for life." Wallenberg said she consideringtaking legal action against Con Ed, since she was unable to work for three days. Not to mention the fact she now has an ugly, painful tattoo scrawled down her lower back. What? Are They Goofy! STOCKHOLM - Sweden's 1970s charttopping pop group ABBA has turned down an offer worth $1 billion to get together again after 17 years. "It is a hell of a lot of money to say no to, but we decided it wasn't for us," Benny Andersson, one member of the Swedish quartet, told the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet. The offer came from an American-British consortium which wanted ABBA to reunite for 100 concerts to cash in on the current international revival of the catchy songs that brought the group fame and fortune. Since then, Benny and Bjorn have remained a team, writing musicals and producing records, while attempts by AnniFrid and Agnetha to launch solo careers flopped.

Defense of the Pagan Satanist

By M. Rose

Recently I was sent a “Satanic” publication which contained this statement – “I will no longer sit back and tolerate (sic) unjust and brutal attacks against our "Pagan beliefs!!" While I grant that this was a pretty wretched publication it does illustrate this point, I believe that there is a move afoot by some in the “Satanic” community to identify Satanism with 'Paganism. This is an error. I am not suggesting that alliances are impossible, I am saying that it is a mistake to believe that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. That is the credo of a fool. The enemy of my enemy is just that. Aside from a common foe we may have nothing else in common and in fact may well turn out to be enemies. the Allied forces of WWII illustrate this point very well. In the case of various Paganisms which are sometimes looked upon as friendly to Satanism I believe that this may ultimately prove to be true. There are some parallels between Satanism and the various "Pagan systems, (this is not surprising. Satanism is quite open about its syncretistic ways, we borrowed the best from -many strains of "Pagan thought Just as Christianity borrowed the worst. Even the similarities vanish upon closer examination. As an example let's take Odinism. Superficially one might think that there are certain affinities between the ethical stance of Odinism and that of Satanism but when, you consider the motivations you see that the similarities are, Just as I said, superficial. A Satanist is a Satanist because he has Satanic values. A "Pagan has "Pagan values because he's a "Pagan, furthermore, he is probably a "Pagan because it is his “heritage”. Last fail I discussed the

heavenly and hellish mindsets, "For those who did not read it these two ways of looking at the world can be summarized briefly as “Thy will be done”, The heavenly mindset, as opposed to “my will be done”, which is the hellish view. Satanism promotes the hellish view but "Paganism, with its deification of "tradition and “cultural heritage” is decidedly heavenly in its outlook. I find this attitude very silly, yet it is a part of virtually all Pagan beliefs. In memory of the Hitlerian Germanic culture I will call this attitude volkishness. The Volkish argument goes like this. Only Jews should be Christians because Christianity is a sub-sect of Judaism. Since non-Jews were Pagans two thousand years ago they should still be "Pagan. I've heard it expressed in the statement “We weren’t to be "Christians”. This is, in a word, stupid. (On the one hand it implies that there is some kind of cosmic plan and everything is * meant to be. (There is no such “meaning” in events. On the other hand it assumes that the Pagan beliefs of the past centuries would've remained unchanging through the centuries, who's to say that any Pagan system would've survived to the present even without Christianity? “Furthermore it assumes that the Paganisms of two thousand years ago always were. Consider the Norse myths. There is every reason to believe that at one time the Jotuns, or giants, were worshipped and that they were supplanted by the worship of the Aesir, the classic Norse gods, who then followed the lime honored practice of turning the old gods into devils, shouldn’t the (Odinists therefore worship the Jotuns instead since their ancestors probably worshipped them before they worshipped Odin and company? "How far back are we to

go? The devotees of “the goddess” are correct when they say that the worship of the mother goddess proceeded most other Paganisms since such beliefs go back to Neolithic times, but why stop there? During the ice ages a bear cult flourished in Europe. Should everyone of "European descent worship bears? This can get pretty silly. According to the Volkish argument I should not be a Satanist since Satanism has Jewish elements in it and I have no Jewish ancestors, (there is a problem though. My ancestry is a blend of Germanic and Celtic with a little bit of American Indian. Does this mean that d should worship the Aesir one day and the Tuatha De Danann the next with some prayer to some Indian “great spirit” thrown in every couple of weeks? As you can clearly see, this is ridiculous. Pagans would object that I choose one, but how could I do that? If I am free to choose to reject part of my 'heritage, why should I be obligated to any of it? The principal thrust of all Pagan arguments fall back upon this idea of following ones cultural heritage, but why should I place limitations on myself based upon some dead culture? The Volkish attitude treats culture as something delivered full blown in the dawn of time. A gift of the gods as it were. all living cultures borrow from other sources. -Satanism is a culture unto itself, it is a living, growing culture. Proponents of Volkishness might consider this attitude as an act of treason against *my people”. I laugh at such idiocies, what is itto me where my ancestors lived. They are dead. it says in Robert E. Howard’s excellent poem: Empire. Heritage of the world is ours, every culture that has ever existed is a part of that heritage, (the world lies before me and . I will take what I will and cast aside what I will and cultural purify be damned. It is one

thing to look back; and see something admirable and say to yourself that this or that is a thing worthy of bringing forth and incorporating into your culture; but to embrace what has been and say that this is what was meant lo be is to seal yourself into a tomb locked in an embrace with a corpse. Ultimately 'Paganism has have more in common with Christianity than with Satanism, just listen to a Pagan talking about his "spirituality” and you'll understand this. Like Christians the Pagans believe grovelling in the dust before a god to be a virtue, (there is a line in an old Mercyful Fate) that states the Satanic view clearly, and concisely, (that line is: “I don't need your god'', (that doesn't Just mean I don't need Yahweh & son. It means that I don't need any god! while they might be enemies of Christianity they are no friends of ours, do consider them to be our friends is short sighted and foolish. The Gods are dead! Let us dance on their graves!

Dear Mr. Unforgiven, A while ago my friend tortured a poor little dog. He called me and asked me to meet him behind this building with two garbage bags. Reluctantly, I went. Upon arrival he pulled out this poor dog with broken legs, ribs, and bleeding. he said he choked it and tried to kill it because the dog went into heat on his foot. I though the act was sick and would not

help him dispose of the dog. I left him there and have not spoken to him since. The dog's owner calls out the dog's name every night at 5:00 p.m. in hopes that the dog is still alive. In fact, he thinks that the dog is and will return someday. Should I tell the owner what really happened? Can you return the dog? Oh, and will you torture my x-friend just a little bit for me when he gets down there? - Bites The Hand That Feeds Dear Bites, Oh, so he's the guy. I got an urgent telegram from Heaven about that dude. He's gonna have his own room when he gets here. Unfortunately for him, it will be filled with starving, rabid Rotweilers who will tear him apart for eternity. Be careful around this guy. Animal torture is where such overachievers as Henry Lee Lucas and Jeff Dahmer got their illustrious starts. And Bites, I just want you to know I was very sad to see you in Church last Sunday. You can't be on both sides. Doggone Exited for your Soul, Satan Satan, I went to homecoming with this girl. It cost 60$. When we got there she was like 'see ya later'! I didn't see her until the very end of the night when it was time to go home. That dumb bitch wasted my money so I made that nasty slut pay for half. I still feel as though I haven't exacted my full revenge. Please send me some tips on how to get back at that ugly bitch. - Joe Dear Joe, Oh, you boys and your need for revenge! Come on lad, wise up. You probably knew she wasn't that into you before the dance, and if you weren't clued in before, you are now. It never ceases to amaze me how much time and energy you humans spend on things that make you unhappy. You have two options: Take with you the knowledge you have gained in this experience and use it wisely, or spend all your time hatching

small minded plans to get back at people who have already left you behind. People suck. That's why there's a hell. See ya soon, Satan Lucifer, I won't waste time bullshitting with you. Fact of the matter is that I want my payoff. I have been devoted to your cause for ten years now. I have sacrificed three virgins (one every three years as is customary) and countless small animals. I have burned many, many churches and made them seem like crimes committed by skinheads or Klansmen. I spend all of my time trying to make the lives of others miserable but life still sucks. I thought the deal was that you give me material and useless possessions now and then later you get my soul. You better hurry up with this big payoff you always run on about because this Jesus guy is offering me something called salvation. Wish you were here, One pissed off minion Dear Pissed, What the fuck is this, customer service? I really do appreciate all that you've done for me and for the cause of evil in general. You have made the world a more miserable place, but as any good businessman will tell you, no one's gonna pay for something they can get for free. If you wanna get paid, I'm gonna need an invoice. Sorry, but with so many bad people out there, the book keeping is a bitch. Check's in the Mail, Satan Dear Satan, My former fiancée just broke up with me cause I got busted for prostitution. Of course I realize that it's all his fault - after all - if he had been more financially supportive, emotionally available, and a better lay, then I wouldn't have had to put myself into a situation where I was vulnerable to victimization by the law enforcement

community. Now my question is - should I just sleep with all of his friends? Or should I also screw his boss, his brother, and his dad? I don't want to come across too bitchy, so what would YOU do? - Ms Hell Dear Ms. Hell, Screw everybody. Spread as much ill will and disease as possible. Your fiancée is obviously a fickle and small man to break off the engagement just because you were having sex with the scum of the Earth in trade for money. You're right. If a man can't support you financially, you should suck a bunch of cock. I mean what else is a girl supposed to do? A case of one clap handing, Satan Hey Satan, I've noticed something. I never see any new bowling alleys being built. Why is that? Have we, as a society, reached our limit of bowling alleys? We just can't support anymore. Or is it that bowling alleys have been around since the beginning and we built our society around them? What's the deal? - Pins Dear Pins, The Federal Cultural Elevation Act of 1974 strictly prohibits the building of a new bowling alley without the simultaneous building of a library. And since no one gives a shit about reading books anymore (one of my finer achievements if I do say so myself), no one's too hot to dig that first hole. But to have an entire industry, such as the bowling industry, stuck in the early 70's is a good thing. It's part of America's cultural heritage. Hell is a 7-10 Split, Satan

Lilith: The Real Story By Aloysius

Lilith, the first feminist or the figure of a mythopoesis? For our introduction, let's first begin with the feminist myth, although this myth changes depending upon which feminist you are reading it from, mostly because there's no concrete evidence for the claim, so it has to be reinvented by each feminist. Currently, there are quite a few theories out there, the first being that Lilith was once a Great primordial Goddess who was repressed by a hypermasculine patriarchal society, the next was that Lilith was a divorcement from her Goddess position by making a duality out of the Goddess in which she was the "dark maiden" portion, and the final was that Lilith was a Goddess who opposed the God, and was cast out of society from that point onward. To start off with an observation, the demons personified some force of nature in several cases, while in others, they seemed to be the sort of thing that a child draws from his nightmares. In the Mesopotamian tradition you could find Utug, the Dweller of the Desert waiting to take you away if you wandered to far; Telal, the Bull Demon; Alal, the destroyer; Namtar , Pestilence; Idpa, fever, etc. Curiously, no one ever wonders if these were once great Gods and Goddesses. For the first theory, which "Goddess" Lilith was changes every second, (and some of the more amusing ones make her every Goddess which has ever been known to mythology), but the most common reference is that she is Innana. The strength of this theory used to rest upon what we call the Burney Relief, which features Innana being surrounded by owls, and most puzzling, being naked.

Formerly, this was considered an anomaly, as it was the only nude statue of Innana, but fortunately, we soon discovered another one. The weight of the testimony of both the first and second figure made it abundantly clear that Lilith was not whom the statue was portraying, though most feminist websites are blissfully unaware of this. The identification of the statue we now know is Innana, but thought to be Lilith, was made by the renowned scholar, and now deceased, Henri Frankfort, but the identification was more than tenuous, as Thorkild Jacobsen shows. This picture had a curious problem, which was that the Goddess carried a ring and rod in upraised hands. These two symbols are "symbols of justice" by usual interpretation, but they are the most powerful symbols as well, whomever had them was extraordinairrely strong. This doesn't make sense because "Lilith" in the Epic of Gilgamesh, (the tablet is roughly contemporary), is a weakling who runs off and doesn't even own her own house. Some scholars suggested that these symbols were for the punitive power to punish parents by killing their children, but that line of reasoning has mostly been abandoned. Some newer interpretations suggest that this is a Goddess previously unknown to the area. With that link destroyed, feminists have to rely upon making Lilith some sort of repressed universal Goddess. Unfortunately though, the theory makes no sense. For instance, they espouse that before Christianity came along the Goddess was highly venerated, but for some reason, one very stupid and almost worthless Goddess gets cut out from the picture? Isis, Ishtar, Astorthe, Allat, etc. were all prominent Goddesses leading up to the advent of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. In fact, Judaism had a stronger feminine cult than male cult until the 5th century BCE when they had contact with Persia, whose leader Darius managed to purge it from the people's minds, so effectively that he was even praised in the Old Testament scriptures

for his pious nature. Why is it then that Goddesses like Isis, Ishtar, Ninlil, etc. were all unscathed by this purported "male dominence", and why were temple harlots still popular up until Herodotus day, and in fact, even up until Muhammad's day, if these male mysogynists were out "repressing" women everywhere? The theory oversteps the lines of plausibility, and into the very remotist realm of "possibility". Winnett, writing for “The Moslem World Journal”, gives a good number of quotes that demonstrate the preferential treatment of the Goddess over the God. As an example, he shows us the form: "dkrt'lt kll s(t)rt" which is translated into, "May Allat, (The Goddess), remember every wish." In petitionings, the Goddess was clearly loved more. Winnett is not the only known scholar who says this, Andrew Crichton, "The History of Arabia", David Kay, "The Semitic Religions", and Langdon, "Semitic Mythology", all inform us that the Goddess was appealed to for help, particularly childbearing, though the God may be as well. Thus we come into yet another problem, a Goddess was responsible for helping childbirth, not destroying it. In fact, female deities such as the wives of Hawron and Ba'l were chiefly responsible for controlling the demonesses which afflicted child-birth. Again, this completely throws the "Male patriarch" theory off its rocker, but facts won't bother ardent feminists. (Amazingly, they'll usually be the same people who whine about Christian mythology, without even recognizing their own!) P Jayakar, "The earthen drum. New Delhi: National Museum of India", tries to reconcile this because of the beleif that the perception of Mesopotamian Goddesses were influenced by India, only they split the monistic viewpoint into a dualistic one. Even so, this is an unacceptable explanation for monistic viewpoints in Sumerian/Babylonian religion such as the view of Ishtar, both "cruel to her lovers",

and simultaneously venerated. Examples abound of Gods and Goddesses who were dualistic, yet still seen as beneficial to the people. In fact, many scholars have suggested that the way the people viewed Gods and Goddesses were as being outside the realm of normal morals and ethics; it simply didn't apply to them. Likewise, Serinity Young believes in the book "An Anthology of Sacred Texts By And About Women" that nomadic warriors caused a dramatic shift towards a more warrior society, transforming the roles of Goddesses, which eventually caused a shift to patriarchal societies. However, only a brief look at the history of Sumeria reveals it was under attack constantly, and when it wasn't under attack, it was the one doing the attacking . In fact, Sumeria often had problems dealing with soldiers who were too far out to be under their control anymore, from its earliest inceptions! Irregardless, Young counters the point of feminists who believe that the Goddesses were being "written out", Young makes it clear the Goddess still had high favor amongst the people. Now we have a real starting point for our discussion of Lilith, where did she come from? Most scholars believe the first link is from the lilitu, winged night spirits of Sumero-Babylonian myth dating from around 3500 BCE. Mistakenly assumed to mostly be succubi, they're actual role was primarily as spirits who preyed upon infants and women in childbirth. The lilitu lived in open areas such as deserts, renowned for inspiring terror, away from crowded people. Their breasts were filled with poison instead of milk, and the other portion, the ardat lili were sexually frustrated and infertile women who behaved aggresively towards young men. Our next major clue lies in Sumeria at the 2400 BCE mark. Here, we find that Gilgamesh's Dad belongs to the male class of male demons. Nothing much can be

gleaned from this, but our first major clue lies in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", and in particular, the story of Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree. This can be found in Kramer's "Sumerian Mythology", in which the the character we call Lilith appears incidentally as a "maid of desolation" who invades Queen Inanna's "holy garden" on the banks of the Euphrates. Along with the "snake who knows no charm," Lilith menacingly builds her house at the base of the queen's cherished tree. The mighty Gilgamesh rescues the queen by slaying the snake and frightening Lilith back to the "desolate places she was accustomed to haunt." (Also cf: Wolkstein and Kramer: " Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth") Thorkild Jacobsen "The Sumerian Kinglist" gives us this footnote: "Thus with R. Campbell Thompson, who in this lil-la sees Sumerian lil-la, Akkadian lilu, 'the demon equivalent to a male vampire. There are four demons of this class - the idlu lili, the ardat lili, the lilu, and the lilitu. The ardat lili is well known as the female vampire or succuba who visits men by night and bears [them] ghostly children: the idlu lili must be her male counterpart who can visit women and beget offspring by them, just as demigods are created'(The Epic of Gilgamesh p. 9)" Our first real references to Lilith comes from late Babylonian times, roughly 800 to 600 BCE, in the form of an elaborate drawing depicting Pazzuzu driving Lilith out of the World. A quick look at how Lilith is depicted here shows what people thought of her. All of her characteristics were of the "abominable" animals. She had a hairy human body, a head of a lioness, with teeth and ears of a donkey, long fingers and fingernails, and the feet of a bird with sharp talons. She is often shown standing or kneeling on a donkey, nursing a pig and a dog, and holding snakes. That description isn't what any ancient culture would have called a benevolent deity. Almost all of those

animals are the hated animals of the ancients. This continues in an unbroken succession in Jewish amulets, in Babylonian pottery, in Persian amulets, and in the Qumran scrolls. In fact, without exception, there is not one good reference to Lilith in the entire corpus of ancient literature. The only reference with Lilith as a feminist archetype is in a parody work, largely believed to have been written by Jews outside of maintainstream Judaism. (The Alphabet of Ben Sira). It appears to be anti-Judaism material, which chief purpose was either to sway Jews to convert to Christianity or to Islam. More than likely, it was the former and not the latter. The reason being is that Christianity of the time placed little, if any, references to the Old Testament, the New Testament was almost the exclusive study of the Scripture. Meanwhile, Muslims trace their lineage and religion through most of the great people in the Old Testament, so it's doubtful they would parody it, especially considering the consequences, though the author of it is unknown. Some Jews were trying to convince other Jews to convert to Christianity because they saw the Jewish religion as the major source of their persecution. Eliezer Segal contends the Lilith myth is nothing but a parody, which was rather common in the Middle Ages. (Cf: David Stern and Mark Jay Mirsky, eds., Rabbinic Fantasies). Also commenting on it is Rabbi Jacob Neusner, a professor at South Florida State University. If you actually go and read all of the literature on Lilith in all Jewish literature, you still won't get the Lilith story that feminists espouse. When questioned on the myth of Lilith being the first feminist, he remarks, "That's no myth. That's just a story somebody made up yesterday." The real origins of the Lilith myth feminists dream about were invented by Judith Plaskow, in a book called "The Coming of Lilith".

Next, one curious piece of evidence gets brought to the front, which is a most striking oddity. Some feminist scholars have suggested that there's a tablet which has Lilith as the "hand of Innana" and as a temple harlot who gets the men gathering into place. This sent my B.S. meter ticking, as it seems rather odd that after reading a few dozen books on ancient mythology and visiting some very high quality webpages that this fragment went totally unnoticed. Even more curious than that, wellresearched feminists never quoted this piece of evidence either, even when making their "Lilith as first feminist" theory, which relies heavily upon Sumeria. An argument from silence, no doubt, but it's striking when no hard evidence is being presented. After that, and still even worse, what the tablet "said" changed as I started looking for websites with the information on it. Sometimes, it was one tablet which had "hand of Innana", others said it was "right hand of Innana", others still said there were "several tablets", yet not one of them listed a source. This is curiuos because in all the literature of ancient Sumeria, I only know of three disputed references to Lilith. Finally, I found Merlin Stone's, "When God Was A Woman", which seems to be the source for this quote. Stone only says that it was a fragment, and that it mentions Lilith as the hand of Innana and as the temple prostitute. Unfortunately, Stone doesn't give a reference either, nor show the fragment in question. Again, another striking oddity. The closest I found was the Epic of Gilgamesh as translated by Kramer, who suggests the phrase "ki-sikil-lil-la-ke," means "Lila's maiden, beloved, companion, or maid." (I assume this is also the origin of Merlin Stone's mistaken suggestion that Lilith was the "maiden" of Inanna. A maiden was a virgin, and nothing about calling someone a maiden of a Goddess indicates them as being a Goddess themselves, but temple harlots surely were not, and a temple harlot fetched twice as much money if she were

not a virgin). This translation is actually a bit curious, I'm guessing he focused on the lilla, though he could have just said the word "ki" at the beginning indicates the Earth Goddess of the same name. The actual translation of this is somewhat questionable, as under the entry on Lilith in the "Anchor Bible Dictionary" (Lowell K. Handy): "Two sources of information previously used to define Lilith are both suspect. Kramer translated ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as "Lilith" in a Sumerian Gilgamesh fragment. The text relates an incident where this female takes up lodging in a tree trunk which has a Zu-bird perched in the branches and a snake living in the roots. This text was used to interpret a sculpture of a woman with bird talons for feet as being a depiction of Lilith. From the beginning this interpretation was questioned so that after some debate neither the female in the story, nor the figure are assumed to be Lilith." (Vol. 4, p. 324) (Emphasis added). Ellen M. Umansky (for The Encyclopaedia of Religion) on Lilith: As the name of a demon, Lilit is etymologically related to the Sumerian lil ("wind") and not, as some once supposed, to the Hebrew laylah ("night"). Yet like the Sumerian wind demon and her later Babylonian counterpart, Lilitu, a succuba who seduces men in their sleep, Lilith is active at night, seizing men and forcing them to copulate with her. Although as child slayer Lilith bears greatest resemblance to the Babylonian demon Lamashtu, Lamashtu eventually became confused in the popular imagination with the succuba Lilitu. Right there we have found our clue. There can be no doubt of the Babylonian origin of this word. The god of Nippur was known as En-lil, " lord of spirits " (see BeBrroxie, VII., 2, § 2), and the Assyrian Ulu, lilutu had the signification "sprites." The Semitic lilatu, " night," may be compared, and the female "Lilith" is named in the cuneiform

inscriptions as an attendant of 4. Other ones are Namtar, the deity of plagues (see Hebrew Beayr.oxra, VIL, 2, § 8). The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead by J. Gordon Melton tells us that Lilith was originally a Sumerian storm demon, part of a group of vampires, but was adapted to the Hebrew mythology as Adam's first wife. Interestingly though, the role of Lilith in the Kabballah wasn't as a woman, she was a parthenogenic hermaphrodite. (There goes the "World's first feminist" theory again...) So... what happened? The old interpretation of Lilith refers to a group of spirits, the lilutu, who wondered about. When cultures started to cross-integrate with each other, their legends and apocryphal tales started to merge, as explained by Dinah and Carol Mack in "A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits", Lilith borrowed demonic traits from ancient child slayers such as the Arabian Um Es Sibyan and the vindictive Greek Lamia, a serpent goddess also renowned as a succubus. The idea of Lilith was starting to get popular in romantic literature, and it lead to an honest, though wrongful, conclusion about the antiquity of Lilith. Even in Babylonian pottery inscriptions by which Lilith is referenced to in the plural, i.e. class of demons. Next, Lilith wasn't a temple whore in the amulets of protection, her main thing seems to be killing children. I'm not currently aware of any amulets designed for men against Lilith. Depictions of Lilth on these amulets, when they appear at all, show an insect headed creature covered with hair or spines, a flipper for a tail, and a pair of tentacles for arms. It's hard to be sure, these were carved crudely onto cheap silver with a heated knife. Barbara Walker believes that the lily or lilu, (lotus) was the Great Mother's flower - yoni, whose title formed Lilith's name. Unfortunately, the worst part of any Barbara

Walker book is when she starts talking about etymology and linguistics. One Sumerian tablet refers to Erech/Urak, Inanna's city, as the city of "courtesans and prostitutes". Deities in these days tended to be locally assigned, that is to say that they were regional, each city having a patron God or Goddess. There, one of the duties of Innana's priestesses, considered incarnations of the goddess, was to make love to strangers. The other class of female spirits which the late Lilith derived is the Ardat Lili, Ardatu being a term that described young women. That makes them succubi. It is also interesting to note that the Sumerian word for "wantonness" was "Lulu." The word for "luxuriousness" was "Lalu." Also, the very word for "evil" was "Limnu." This has an obvious relation to the word Lili (and Ardat Lili specifically); not just in the similarity of pronunciation and spelling, but also in the very definition of the words. The last point which will be addressed is that "Lilith" is obviously bad Hebrew. The actual name of Lilith would be properly translate as LYLVT, though in this cause the Vau acts as a vowel, giving us an "o" sound, or LYLOTh. If you know Hebrew, "-oth" is a feminine plural suffix, 'ith' makes it masculine. We note that by this proper translation we are left with a plural word instead of a singular one, which is similar to "the liloth", which is translated as "the spirits". Babylonian pottery refers to what we now call "Lilith" in the plural version, though Lamashtu was singular, as does Persian amulets as far as I know, but Hebrew made it a singular woman, Lilith. What they did was take the liloth, the ardat lili, and most importantly, a Babylonian demoness known as Lamashtu, and combined them into a composite character we now call "Lilith". What more needs to be said from here? Lilith was just a classic example of what happens when imaginative bias creeps into the historical method and composes itself

into a curious form of exegetic mythopoesis that defies all laws of common sense and history.

Visionaries Those few men and women who see beyond black and white, who dare to stand apart. Their words and ideas should be the foundation for anyone wishing to escape herd mentality. Some accomplish this with the subtlety of a handshake; others with the might of a fist. And almost all find a pen is often mightier than the sword!

William Seward Burroughs II (1914 1997) If one were to think of a heroin addict, you'd be forgiven for not associating this with any kind of serious literature or philosophical thinking, especially today where all celebrities or 'artists' all seem to be checking into rehab after one spliff and a pint of beer. However, Burroughs seemed to avoid being more famous for his excesses than his works, and deservedly so. Despite personality traits that many would deem distasteful Burroughs left some fantastic works that stripped away the pleasant façade of modern society, revealing it for what it really is. INTRODUCTION William S. Burroughs (II) was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1914, the grandson of William S. Burroughs I, inventor of the adding machine. Maybe somewhat surprisingly, Burroughs' childhood was seemingly nothing out of the ordinary. In the introduction to Junky (his first work, semi-

autobiographical), Burroughs recalls memories probably similar to those experienced by thousands of others: being neither brilliant or backwards in school, disliking maths and sports. Although he does recall nightmares as a child and hearing an adult say that smoking opium causes pleasant dreams. So it was decided. "When I grow up I'm going to smoke opium." After graduating from Harvard, Burroughs was able to live off the allowance allowed to him by his parents. He wound up in Europe, having a brief period of being a medical student in Vienna, and marrying a Jewish woman in order for her to gain entry to the U.S.A (they would later divorce, naturally). Burroughs eventually returned to his home country having no great desire for work. Trying odd jobs after being deemed unfit for service in the army during the second world war, Burroughs eventually wound up in New York, and it was these experiences that made out the material for Junky. It was also in New York where the foundations for the 'beat movement' were laid and he met his wife Joan Adams, whom he would later shoot in a drunken game of William Tell. Burroughs later stated that "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death." In later year Burroughs would once again leave the U.S. and live in several locations in Europe, Tangiers and Mexico. He eventually returned home, first to New York city and later Lawrence, Kansas, where he died from heart attack complications in 1997. BEAT GENERATION The "Beat Generation" was an American literary movement during the fifties/early sixties featuring well-known writers such as Kerouac and Ginsberg. There was no real style to bind the movement; some writers wrote stories, others poems and the writing

style itself varied from bare-bones staccato sentences to spontaneous prose and cut-up (which we will come to later). To look at it in a less cynical light (viewing the movement from an 'aftermath perspective' would warrant a cynical perspective), the Beat movement was supposed to achieve what the hippies tried the following decade. Known faces within the movement (regardless of any political affiliation) rejected the commonly accepted ideas from that particular era. There was an emphasis on freedom, not a freedom to own as many cars as you liked or to earn lots of money, but on a more basic, human-nature orientated freedom (a kind that appeals to most humans without the bad aftertaste of 'political freedom'). That is to say a freedom found within, not something granted by external political bodies. Such freedoms are represented in Kerouac's free-roaming inwardly searching 'mad men', or Burroughs law-defying, job-avoiding narrator 'Lee'. Whilst most literary scholars would class Burroughs as a part of this movement, it doesn't seem to paint the picture correctly. As Hunter S Thompson once noted of himself 'I was too young to be a beatnik and too old to be a hippy.' Regardless of Burroughs' age in comparison with that of the other 'beats,' what is of actual importance is the gap in ideologies between the rest of the group and Burroughs. This might be where the Beat movement failed; a lack of tying ideology aside from some very basics. The Beats managed what most counterculture movements managed to achieve, that is, to step back and say "Jesus Christ, I think we went wrong somewhere." However, merely identifying a problem isn't enough. The real task is identifying the root causes and not the symptoms caused by this root problem or root problems. The Beats managed to only notice symptoms: it is wrong to invade foreign countries for no

particular reason; it is wrong to exploit people to earn more money for yourself and so on - all the things that aren't very 'right' in modern society. Ginsberg seemed happy to simply stay on the left of the fence. Whilst he wasn't entirely wrong he never did much except call the U.S. government names and suggest solutions of holding hands, hoping that everything would turn out okay; the same kind of swill people like Lennon wound up spewing -- the kind of stuff that would make Burroughs vomit, were the truth told. In On The Road by Kerouac we can read a somewhat deeper meaning beneath the searching for 'kicks,' probably highlighted by Dean Moriarty's searching for 'It'. Kerouac, a Catholic, claimed his characters' search in On The Road was inward and religious, which is possible. However, in the end, most of the beats' philosophy boiled down to 'just leave me alone, man.' Burroughs, on the other hand, had a more mature philosophy. Whilst this might be contributed to his age, nobody else seemed to follow in time, either sticking with their old ideas, falling prey to New Age Spiritualism, or dying prematurely. In Kerouac's On The Road, it is noted how, in New Orleans, everybody sits at the feet of Old Bull Lee (the pseudonym applied to Burroughs in the book) as if he were a teacher. Kerouac tells us of a man who wants to build a table, a fence and a shelf 'that will last a thousand years.' Perhaps at first glance that is just a statement to highlight Burroughs' quirkiness, however, read more deeply it is a window into a life philosophy. THE JOHNSON FAMILY “To say someone is a Johnson means he keeps his word and honors his obligations. He's a good man to do business with and a good man to have on your team. He is not a

malicious, snooping, interfering selfrighteous trouble-making person . . . . A Johnson minds his own business. But he will help when help is needed. He doesn't stand by while someone is drowning or trapped in a wrecked car.” --- William S. Burroughs, The Adding Machine Whilst many have interpreted this as some kind of arch-libertarian, pro-individualism philosophy, I'd have to disagree. Whilst Burroughs may have enjoyed having his own individual identity, I wouldn't call him an individualist. To suggest that he was would suggest he held a belief in modernity, democracy and the idea that every individual is capable of making sensible choices. Just quickly glancing through some of his works or statements is enough to see that this is far from the truth. What Burroughs recognised is the paranoia and cowardice that runs rampant in modern society. To a point, we are encouraged to spy on our neighbours to see if they commit minor offences, like working for cash in hand or smoking grass, and to go running to the correct authorities if we find this is so. Such actions appeal to particular kinds of people in our society. They like to think they are heroes for ridding their community of such evil fiends; horrible menaces who think the government doesn't have the right to take their money or regulate naturally occurring substances less harmful than legal drugs. However, these same people are not heroic at all. When it comes to some real action: if their tax evading, dope smoking neighbour's house is broken into, for instance, they are the last to put a hole between the intruder's eyes or at least wrestle him to the ground until the cops get there. That would place them at significant risk, and they cannot understand the need to risk sacrifice in order to stop a town being overrun by thugs.

A Johnson might be more accurately described as a regular decent human being, maybe like your parents or your friends or partner. Not concerned with absolutes like 'individualism' or 'collectivism', they recognise the serious and the non-serious. They realise that a person has a right to have his business un-interfered with, but that seeing things solely in the realm of the individual is collective suicide. The world operates on symbols and not reality. We live in a strange age where cops are judged on figures, not real results. It isn't really the fault of police but the arrest of 100 relatively harmless drug users is considered better than the arrest of one murderer/child molester/rapist. Not on a moral level, but on a statistical (symbolic) level. A Johnson, unlike the general public, is able to separate symbols from reality and is not concerned with this superficial version of reality peddled out by governments and their bureaucracies. JUNKIE This was Burroughs' first published work, originally coupled with the confessions of a narcotics agent. Firstly it seems 'just' an account of heroin addiction, I say 'just,' but such a document might be more useful for 'professionals' to take advice from rather than listening to a suit who thinks a beer after work counts as alcoholism. However, much more than an account of heroin addiction lies within the pages of Junky. One might compare Junky to, say, Sartre's Nausea, as a story of someone who is struggling to come to terms with the world and find meaning. Where the main character's preoccupations in Nausea are a historical book and a woman, the main character's preoccupations in Junky are heroin and crime.

“The question, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default.” This quote, found early in the book, indicates a symptom of the Modern Disease.. to put it bluntly: there's fuck all to do. The alternative to the lifestyle portrayed in the book is the school-college-jobgirlfriend-wife-TV-brats-suburban house scenario (not necessarily in that order). Whilst maybe more palatable than a life of crime and addiction, it really isn't any different. It used to be the norm, now more like an exception, but the desire to form a family used to come from a stable foundation built with someone you'd like to share a life journey with. Now people seem to stumble into having kids with people they don't love but were screwing to take away the boredom in their lives. Burroughs couldn't really think of any job he wanted to do (reflected in the narrator in Junky) and didn't really need to work thanks to his allowance from his parents. He makes token risks at losing his freedom; lush rolling on the subway, selling and using heroin etc. Almost as if prison seems preferable to the non-existence of a life filled with no experience, just jobs and other distractions. Whilst later novels used the 'cut up' technique, Junky is written in a straight narrative, using short and straight to the point sentences, similar to, say, Ernest Hemingway. Beyond merely being a writing style, when compared with Hemingway we again see a suggestion in such a style. Despite characters doing 'exciting' things, these actions are described basically and without significance, hinting at the futility of a life lived without a deeper, richer meaning.

THE NAKED LUNCH Some grindcore bands challenged people's views by thrashing an extreme, comical parody in their songs. Naked Lunch does much the same, savagely attacking all the ideas modern society holds dear: democracy, equality and so on. But more than just being an entertaining rant for people who'd find a political doctrine boring, Naked Lunch delves much more deeply into the problems of modern society, rather than just criticizing obvious symptoms. As in other books, drugs (particularly heroin) feature often, but their metaphor is taken further than in earlier works. Heroin is used a symbol of control in Naked Lunch, not in the paranoid liberal idea of governments pushing drugs into cities to control the population. Burroughs makes a much more ballsy statement: the governments in modern society work the same way as the heroin business (Burroughs noted he never found anything useful about being addicted to heroin, however, his experiences with the drugs, he claims, gave him fantastic insight into the operations of society). The Dependency Pyramid “The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops as there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on the basic principles of monopoly.” Sounds like your workplace? The town you live in? It's supposed to. Many people shriek in horror at the idea of people selling heroin in their towns and cities, shedding tears at all the people being destroyed and used just for profit. Then they go off to work to get

the same treatment. The difference being selling software is legal. Burroughs also refers to need; the government constantly invents new needs, whether they be minor like bigger houses, faster cars or major like security against those Evil Terrorists or protection against That New Deadly Virus. The result is the same; namely that more control is gained. Aside from just drugs, many scenarios and parodies from the real world are used to emphasise the control used in our modern society. The Talking asshole The Naked Lunch is made up of several scenarios and routines. One segment within the book is a short story about a man who taught his asshole to talk as part of a standup comedy gig. Because it earned him laughs and a bit of cash, the man did not think much about his talking asshole, but in time, he learned the consequence of his ignorance. “After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy incurving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: 'It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me.

Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.” Many parasites live amongst us in society, and most people feel sorry for them and want to help them. They want marginalised foreigners to have more control over the community, they want retards to be involved in MENSA, born paraplegics to train runners etc. They do this, not because they really believe those people were destined to do those jobs and were halted by some cruel and unjust force. They do it to feel better about themselves; in the first instance it is nothing more than a kind act of charity to make them feel better and look better in the eyes of others. But, as the saying goes, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. People expect that, having helped these parasites, one day birds will tweet, the sun will shine and a retard will skip off with his head of MENSA badge pinned to his jacket, all achieved with some good ol' fashioned hard work. However, that is not the reality. A whole society becomes victim to these parasites who have been allowed more and more and thus have expected more and more. What we thought was harmless and in need of a helping hand overthrows us and selfishly takes more and more. The Talking Asshole is a symbol of the lack of direction in society. Because we no longer have any goals and have stagnated, we rely on charity and focus on miniscule 'cute' distractions to keep us focused and amused without recognising how these things are able to grow and take over our lives - not out of any evil will of their own, but through our own misguided 'good deeds' spawned from our own lack of any healthy culture. Naked Lunch faced obscenity trials back in the 60's. Whilst many would presume this was due to references to sodomy and the generally graphic material, maybe it had

more to do with the challenging of those dearly held ideas of the government and church that the book contained. “The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principle of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action, to the complete parasitism of a virus.” WILLIAM S. BURROUGH SATANIC PERSPECTIVE

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A

As mentioned before, one might not expect great things to come from a seemingly degenerate heroin addict, but despite such an image, Burroughs no doubt wrote fantastic books with a great insight into the failings of our modern society, which ties him in with many figures that otherwise have nothing to do with him. Burroughs' work was far ahead of its time. One of the things he introduced to the literary world was the so called cut-up technique. Burroughs described the cut-up technique as a way of altering reality. The idea is to write something (or find an already written page), cut it up and re-order it so the story or article changes. Some have dismissed this as garbage claiming it as an obvious sign of a

lack of artistic merit. However, such people are probably the ones who saw the cut-up technique as a novelty technique. What Burroughs was getting at was a lack of linear reality; for example, he claimed that The Naked Lunch could be entered into at any page and still leave the book readable. That is a reflection of reality itself. Whilst some would claim that 'reality' is absolute and cannot be altered, this is not true. Hallucinogens seem to show that perception-based reality (which is all we can experience) is merely data that can be fed through any kind of interpretation device e.g. the brain. The brain is not foolproof, so who can claim any kind of objective reality based solely on perception?

Negroes / Terrorists / America and so forth. This simple solution thesis is rampant in modern society. What Burroughs recognized is that individuals or ideas were not the problem, but that the existence of certain individuals or ideas within particular contexts were the result of the failing of particular societies. The problem lies within ourselves as a collective, not within the symptoms that have come our way as a result of our failings.

Wicca & Satanism By Aloysius

What is best about the works of Burroughs and the views he has expressed in interviews is his ability to see through the sham that is modernity. Whilst his contemporaries in the 'beats' were fooled by revolutionary talk or a more comfortable material lifestyle with some indulgences less marginalised, Burroughs saw it for the bread and circuses that it was. Burroughs also succeeded where many 'political activists' failed. He was able to differentiate between symptom and cause. Whilst some went attacking the Jews, others capitalists, others the government, others 'lefties' and others 'righties,' he was able to see that: “I feel there is some hideous new force loose in the world like a creeping sickness, spreading, blighting. Remoter parts of the world seem better now, because they are less touched by it. Control, bureaucracy, regimentation, these are merely symptoms of a deeper sickness that no political or economic program can touch. What is the sickness itself? Politicians today give us easy answers: The problem Capitalism / Nazis / Communists /

Through popular media and culture, we find that a lot of analogies and comparisons have been made between Satanism and Wicca, much to the dismay of both groups. However, was there ever really a link between them? The answer is, “No”. The only link between Satanism and Wicca is one book, (just one!), and the original name of this book was “La Sorciere”, (The Sorceress, more contemporary, The Witch. Marie Ndiaye wrote a book of the same title and won a 20,000 dollar prize interestingly enough. It was a satirical piece, with flimsy characters). You may now be scratching your head and wondering how a book named “La Sorciere” could have anything to do with Wicca and Satanism. The answer lies in the name it was released in the United States. The version of it released in the United States was Jules Michelet’s “Satanism and Witchcraft”. Yep, that name alone was what spawned the comparisons. No matter how you translate “La Sorciere”, Satanism and Witchcraft won’t come up. The primary thing that Michelet did though was represent that “Satan” and “Satanism”

were present at the time, and that they must have been the “witchcraft“, because obviously, this is what the trials were about. (The witches were being accused of Satanism, and they were practicing witchcraft, ergo they were one and the selfsame.) At this time period, (The period that Michelet is writing about), Satanism didn’t exist, but there were defrocked priests who had orgies and tried to use Goetic magick to summon demons for their bidding. Michelet wasn’t familiar with this piece of history, but hey, so what right?) Aidan Kelly's book, "Crafting the Art of Magic" (p.21-22, 25-26, and 176), is one book which identifies some links between Michelet and Wicca, along with Jeffrey B. Russell in "A History of Witchcraft", (admittedly though, Russell believes in actual demons and devils, so caveat emptor). Anyway, I’m going to give a history lesson here for everyone who reads this essay, concerning Witchcraft, Satanism, Michelet, and the “Burning Times”. There’s so much confusion on this issue I feel it needs to be addressed. Michelet was basically on the argumentative position that the ancient witches were based on a real religion. Like his predecessors, his historical arguments for the existence of an ancient Goddess religion tried to show that European witchcraft was a descendant of a prehistoric religion. Michelet was influenced primarily by two people, who had first hypothesizing that witchcraft had been an organized religion prior to Christianity. The major one was in 1749, by a man named Girolamo Tartarotti, who brought about the claim that witchcraft was a descendant of the Dianic cults of Roman times. Jules Michelet argued that witchcraft was a survival of a pre-Christian northern European fertility cult. Michelet further argued that the “Burning Times”, were a

direct result of male oppressive doctors wanting to get rid of their competition, which were female witches who were healers. Michelet was instrumental in several feminist movements, though his role is often times denied. His work was used by Feminist writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English in their booklet "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers” (Feminist Press, 1973) Surprisingly, for all the good Michelet's done, several feminist authors seem reluctant to mention his contributions to the area of feminism. Michelet was born from a poor family, and as such, when he became a historian, he considered himself the champion of the poor people. Historical works by him such as "La Magistrature De L'Histoire", "Les Origines du droit francais", "Histoire de la Revolution francaise", etc. are all considered great works, but one thing is evident. Michelet was not friendly to anyone of power. His works completely shunned clergy, nobility, monarchy, or anyone of power. Michelet writes in "La Magistrature De L'Histoire" that the law is "a labor of itself on itself." Awareness is the central theme of his books, and that is an awareness of public consciousness, what the people think. Historical events like the French Revolution did not occur overnight, they were caused by "a long generation of causes." In order for liberty to continue, history must told by someone who is giving the speech to the "silences of history," that is, to all those who are dead and perhaps forgotten. It's easy to see why Michelet keeps lasting so long. The French scholar Gabriel Monod, although very critical of what Michelet wrote, also stated that he could "not escape the contagion of his enthusiasm, his hopes, and his youthful heart." Indeed, a reviewer in the Moniteur was not alone in acknowledging the hint of collaboration by citing the work as having "the style of a superior man softened by the grace and delicate sensitivity

of a woman". Monod wrote of Jules that, "(he has) a sympathy for the untolled dead, who were our ancestors". "Michelet, Historian: Rebirth and Romanticism in Nineteenth-Century France" by Arthur Mitzman describes Michelet as seeing life as mother, who promoted social harmony through love, and the villian of it all was the Church, particularly the Jesuits, who would disrupt this harmony. His attack on the Jesuits is seen in published lectures in 1843, and in "Priests, Women, and Families" (1845). That's not to undermine Michelet's work, indeed, he was a very important historian, but it will shed light on some things in a little bit. However, we need to look further for Michelet’s influence onto today‘s train of thought. Michelet greatly influenced an occultist and poet, Leland, who became the first President of the Gypsy-Lore Society. He received his formal education at Sorbonne, and here he was presented with the theory that Michelet had expounded upon, that witchcraft was a survival of a Pagan cult. In “Aradia”, or “the Gospel of the Witches” (1899), Leland further enunciates on the claim of Pagan witches existing from time immemorable by saying that the history of contemporary Italian witches shows that they were descendants of a cult which worshipped the Roman goddess Diana. Like Michelet, his use of evidence was mostly anecdotal, and few actually accepted it as being serious evidence. However, some of the newer Paganistic traditions use his book to show that witchcraft is an ancient religion. (Believe me, it’s not. Or more appropriately, the versions we have of it now do not have any lineage to ancient occultism.) The next in line to go along this route was Margaret Murray, an amateur folklorist and professional Egyptologist, who advanced the same sort of ideology. She was the author of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921)

and The God of the Witches (1931), wherein she argued that witchcraft was an ancient religion by comparing Paleolithic rock art from Ariege and Dordogne depicting masked and horned dancers with Roman, Greek, and Celtic art, Christian depictions of the Witches' Sabbath, as well as the folk dances and costumes of rural people in England and Europe. Murray then reached the overall conclusion that witchcraft is an old religion, and one which is dedicated to the worship of a nature deity known as the “Horned God”. In establishing a link between Satanism and Wicca, we might note that in Leland's, "Aradia: Gospel of the Witches", we find this line, along with some diabolical references. “Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light, who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from Paradise." Wiccans will contend this on the grounds that "Lucifer" is not the Christian Devil but is just "the god of the Sun and of the Moon". The backfire will be that Lucifer was "driven from Paradise" for his "pride" is clearly a reference to Christianity's Devil myth. Actually, to be correct, “making up mythologies” would be more appropriate. In the actual Jewish story, the tale is about Nebuchadnezzar, whom Daniel identifies as “Heylol” or “bright Star”, a reference to the planet Venus, who “falls from paradise” because though the bright “Star” in the morning, when the sun comes up, you can no longer see it. The allegory of the tale is that if Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t help the Jews, the Jewish God will overshadow him. Very few translations still use the word "Lucifer" in that phrase, and even polemic writers such as St. Jerome knew the story was an allegory.

Lucifer was the planet Venus as well, and also a minor God in Greek mythology, though in Greek mythology, he was “Phosphor”, or Phosphoros, or Eosphorus, along with his twin brother Hesper, or Hesperos. The Romans realized they were both the same God, and called it “Lucifer”. There was one cult that did have a Diana Lucifera, whom we still have today as the Goddess Europa, (for whom “Europe” is named, though I should add that Goddess and Gods earned their names through philological associations. Thus the etymology may be a bit harder to trace than just that), and the torch she bears in her hand is Lucifer, the “Light bearer”, supposedly symbolizing spiritual resurrection. Leland just mixed up his mythologies, (Lucifer should be the son, not the brother), or more likely made it up. The whole presentation is balanced rather precautiously on the word "Literary Satanism". In reality, literary Satanism is a misnomer, something like calling the Stoics, "literary Christians". Nevermind the details though. Continuing onward, Wiccans say that their horned God isn't Satan. This might be true, but Wicca derived the concept of a horned God from Middle Ages writings and Christian iconography, guessing from accounts of pagan sacrifices during Pope Gregory's time, the horned God was probably still popular, or at least it remained an image in the people's minds. Christians adopted this image of Pan and other horned Gods into their concept of Satan. Wicca was a modernized reinterpretation of Christian writings. As any mythologist knows, prior to James Frazier, Franz Cumont, and Gerald Massey, we really didn't know very much about ancient religions. It's therefore not very hard to figure out why these problems are popping up.

If you really wanted to trace the idea back to a more definitive source, go to the Knight’s Templar and to the Baphomet. The Baphomet was called the "Horned God", it seems to be a representation of any bull sacrificing fertility cult. You can find it virtually anywhere, due to the amazing syncretism of the ancient World. (What Murray didn't understand). No one's really sure where the name comes from, Kenneth Grant, leader of Ordo Templi Orientis ( Order of Eastern Templars) says that the name Baphomet comes from "Bapho Mithras", the son of Mithras, an Iranian angel/God that may have been responsible for Mithrainism, (scholars are unsure). In the celestial/astrological aspect, the ram became the bull as the Zodiac sign changed, or in a more naturalistic explanation, the ram and the bull were always side by side for sacrifices, the bull being used for the elite classes. The Baphomet was associated with witchcraft, and it was a horned deity. All kinds of Gods including Zeus, Shiva, Min, Ra, and Amen are called "the young bull with sharp pointed horns." Ancient Osiris and Apis, (later on becoming merged into Serapis), are likewise were depicted as horned Gods. Even Goddesses had horns, such as Neith and Hathor. “Horned Gods”, were very popular in the ancient days and well known, and the connection between Lucifer, a Horned God, Christianity, Wicca, and Satanism is somewhat a twisted tale to tell. Thus we find another problem, in that what was/was not associated with witchcraft was even more ludicrous to find. Everything from hair, (hence women had to keep their heads covered, and male witches had to shave their chests), to mirrors were considered evil, and so what God/Goddess and what was/was not associated with witchcraft was pretty hard to find. The

predominate religion was Christianity, and those who could write were usually in service of the Church. Then there’s yet another problem. LeLand was a more ancient source, and even if we take that he was making a direct reference to ha-Satan of the Christian religion, he was not the last. The next in line was Murray, and the thesis Murray proposed was that with the advance of Christianity and the witch hunts, the witches went underground and formed disparate covens. While these covens largely disappeared before the end of the Nineteenth century, Murray suggested that some had survived and had left a group of cultural artifacts that permeated European culture. For instance, she argues in The Divine King in England (1954) that the principles of kingship in Britain were inextricably bound up with the murder of the sacred king demanded by the old religion of witchcraft. Note: If you’re wondering what that means, the old religions had annual sacrifices of the King’s, (Gods), such as Ishtar and Tammuz, where she would go into the underworld to save her king. This first came about in Sumeria where Innanu was the Goddess who made every king her bridegroom. She had to descend into the underworld to rescue her consort Dumuzi, (Tammuz). The King himself had been sacrificed by the wife, so that he would restore the fertility of the land. Thus Gilgamesh remarks that the Queen was “cruel to her lovers”. Coincidentally, the Queen tries to kill Gilgamesh, as Gilgamesh was just another form of the Sun-God Nimrod. Since James Frazier's "Golden Bough" has lost credence in this category, the idea has largely been abandoned

Thus, even if the there was transposing by LeLand, Murray is the more contemporary, (and more often referenced) work on Wiccan, so that we'll be making fourthgeneration connections in the end. Anyway, after the last of the English Witchcraft laws had been repealed in 1951, and Murray's research had been published, Gerald

Gardner also began to write popular treatments of witchcraft. During the 1930’s, he had encountered a coven of witches and became an initiated member. Based on his experiences with this coven, the rituals of British occultists like Aleister Crowley, as well as the works of both Leland and Murray, Gardner began to try to reconstruct the history and rituals of witchcraft or Wicca. Note: There’s a somewhat popular and erroneous belief that Crowley and Gardner worked together, and that Gardner was a high level initiate in the OTO, Crowley’s organization. It is true that Crowley gave Gardner a minerval contract, (first level of initiation), but that’s hardly a high level initiate. In addition to that problem, we further find that Gardner only met Crowley about a year before Crowley died, meaning he didn’t have the time to become a high level initiate. Where the confusion comes from is because Gardner often found that he was missing pieces to the formation of Wicca, and thus needed something to “fill in the gaps”, so to speak. Thus, he would take pieces of Crowley’s poems, revise them to his needs, and use them in his own material. This would seem strange, were it not for the fact that even a lot of Crowley’s own material was not entirely his either.

Gardner maintains the same type of historical presentation that Murray did in his book “Witchcraft Today.” So, where have things been taken to today? Gardner's saying on having revived an ancient Dianic cult has been discredited, as in "Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revived", by Loretta Orion. She does a historical tracing of the roots of Wicca and finds them rooted more in Western ideas about Gnosticism than in ancient ideas of Paganism. Well, most everyone discredits the Dianic cults theory, but there’s been a new one that’s emerged. The contention is whether or not Pagan religions really did survive, in a clear lineage, to their present day formation. Several of the more conservative scholars

believe that the Pagan religions of today are primarily inventions of today. The newest contention from the field of those who believe that Pagan religions survived from ancient times are those who believe witchcraft today was formulated by the Sabians. The Sabians are a religion from Syria. 'Sabian' (with an 'i') is often used of the people of Harran. 'Sabaean' (with an 'ae') is often used of the Mandaeans of Southern Iraq, followers of John the Baptist. While 'Sabean' (with an 'e') is often used of the people from Sheba (as in 'Queen of ...') in Southern Arabia. The religion of the Harranians was described in some detail by many contemporary Muslim scholars. All agreed that it included Hermetic and (what we would call) Neoplatonic elements, aspects of the indigenous cult of the Moon God, rites addressed to the seven Planets, etc. Of course, being worshipers of the stars meant that there was strong motivation for the study of astronomy, and the sect produced many quality astronomers and mathematicians. The sect, with strong Greek connections, had in earlier times adopted Greek culture, and it was common for members to speak Greek, although after the conquest of the Sabians by Islam, they became Arabic speakers. Now, the new theory states that the name of the Sabians who practiced magick were called the “Magi”. (Some people believe these were the first people who saw the Star of Bethlehem which led them to Jesus, as they were from the East, and in addition, they were ardent students of astronomy.) The Muslims initially made pacts with their neighbors, until such time as they were strong enough to overthrow the indigenous religions of that area. One such people were the Magi. When the Muslims pushed

westward, however, they didn’t find the Sabians; they mainly found abandoned temples. The newest theory is based upon that, the Sabians had to abandon their former places of residence, thus they went West, into Europe, and established the covens. However, if this is true, it means that the Witch-craft survivors lost any and all sense of their oral and written religious heritage. Murray/Leland/Gardner, whomever, can't show any organized existence, nor any religious literature, nor even any examples of anomolies which can only be explained by the presense of an underground surviving cult. I.e. Greek and Arabian words and inscriptions, intricate rites to the planets, etc. As such, I have to discredit their theory as being groundless. Anyway, Murray’s theory grew to receive larger criticism in the later portion of the 20th century. The primary antagonist to her theories was a man named Norman Cohn, who had his theory about the persecutions. As he details in his book, Europe's Inner Demons, it was simply the persecution of the weak and vulnerable by the Western Churches as they vainly tried to reassert their fading authority in an increasingly secular world. In other words, 'witchcraft' as portrayed by the trial documentation never existed. The were no diabolic elements to it at all; either people were falsely accused, or they were still indulging in some harmless Pagan tradition, the meaning of which had long since been forgotten. Defenders of Murray will tell us that Cohn was wrong. Cohn’s major attack on Murray was that her theory was contrived out of very credulous sources, such as those that list the devil appearing in clouds of gas, and a whole slew of other such strange details. He thinks that the sources are too diluted and strange in order to constitute primary evidence. The contention is that many historical facts are gained from outside influences, under the same level of

scholarship and methodology. Think about a historian studying the hagiographies of medieval Irish saints. These accounts contain many fantastical elements; episodes where saints turn people into water-birds, or extinguish fires with prayer. Does stripping away these elements to study the 'factual substrata' of an account render the study worthless? Does the inclusion of episodes like the resurrection of a dog in the story of Saint Declan "prove" that he, or the Irish Church, never existed? At this point, we reach a larger portion of the criticism. A lot of the Saints DID NOT exist, most were Pagan Gods, and those who were real had their stories changed so much that it would be impossible to consider their stories historical facts. Even if you WERE to remove all elements of fanciful supposition, the end level you would be left with is very little. Thus, we find that Cohn has a valid point in that regard, but, that doesn’t mean his theory is correct. His theory states that all of the magistrates and clerics were actively involved in a conspiracy to kill old widows and recalcitrant young girls; a theory that conveniently ignores a host of awkward questions and facts. If you’re wondering how this happened, Cohn was a specialist in persecution studies. It doesn’t take very long until you can piece it together and figure out where his theory was derived from. Now, let’s examine some crucial evidence. This is related to both Michelet and Cohn, and it disproves both of their theories. For that, some people may not like it, particularly certain extreme feminists. In the same manner that people get angry when you tell them something they believe true through enforced beliefs, (i.e. their religion, their aims, etc.), people have long believed the “Witch myth”, as I call it, for far too long. The “burning times”, were not the result of any one causative source, but an

interbreeding of several factors, including social conflict, Jewish hatred, economic problems, and most importantly, the schism between the Lutheran and Catholic Church: Here’s the key factors in disproving the myth: 1. The timespan: Assuming that this was some part of a male global conspiracy chain, or that this was the result of a massive anti-female killing spree, it should have taken place over a large period of time. The problem was that it didn’t. Although some persons were burned alive or hung over a five century interval, from the 14th to the 18th century, the vast majority were tried from 1550 to 1650. 2. To support the midwife/healer theory, there would seem to be a need to show that the majority were Pagans. However, it only appears that a minority of them worshipped a Pagan deity 3. Some of the victims were midwives and native healers; however most were not. 4. Here’s the biggest problem If this were occurring on a conspiracy level, then some figurehead must have been orchestrating it. Most of the victims were tried executed by local, community courts, not by the Church. This fact has been grievously overlooked. 5. Many countries in Europe largely escaped the burning times: Ireland executed only four "Witches;" Russia only ten. The craze affected mostly Switzerland, Germany and France. Eastern Orthodox countries had few Witch trials. Most of the deaths seem to have taken place in the times and areas where Protestant-Catholic conflict -and thus social turmoil -- was at its maximum. Modern research has debunked this theory quite conclusively. Although many stereotypes about Witches pre-date

Christianity, the lethal crazes of the Great Hunt were actually the child of the "Age of Reason." Lamothe-Langon's forged trials were one of the last stumbling blocks that kept the theory of medieval witch hunting alive, and once these trials are removed, the development of witchcraft stereotypes becomes much clearer. All pre-modern European societies believed in magic. As far as we can tell, all passed laws prohibiting magical crimes. Pagan Roman law and the earliest Germanic and Celtic law codes all contain edicts that punish people who cast baneful spells. This is only common sense: a society that believes in the power of magic will punish people who abuse that power. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English promoted the belief that most victims of the burning times were mid-wives and female healers, in consistency with Michelet. Although they were able to describe many cases involving healers, they really only represented a very small minority of the accused. Michelet’s theory revolved almost entirely around the forged Lamothe-Langon trials, thus his conclusion was far from factual. Most victims of the burning times seem to have been a diverse group, who did not share a common factor: midwives, native healers, single women who lived alone, and/or who owned property, people against whom neighbors had a grudge, practitioners of ancient Pagan rituals, individuals who were accused by other victims, often under torture, and people who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, one critical factor is the fact that testimony produced at the times are completely inaccurate. These “testimonies” were often given under torture, so that the people being inquired would say anything, much the same as the “Knights Templar” confession. The main problem was that prior to 1975, historians had mainly used "witch hunting manuals, sermons against witchcraft and lurid pamphlets on the more sensational trials...historians frequently used literary

accounts of these cases, not the [trial documents]... themselves." (Historian Jenny Gibbons). There is a problem with that however. These sources were propaganda literature, used to make it seem as if there was a greater threat than what existed. Anyone familiar with propaganda literature knows how everything is made to seem to be a global “threat”, which is used to goad the general public into an agreed upon idea. A systematical study of the burning times, using actually court proceedings, only began circa 1975. However, rumors from credulous sources had already destroyed the truth. The biggest problem that we find is this. The courts did not specifically target only women. The gender balance varied with location. In Iceland, over 90% of the accused Witches were men; in some countries in central Europe, over 80% were women; overall, it was probably about 75% women. Overall, the correlations show that it was unrelated groups of people who were accused of the crimes, brought about by civil disrest. Most of the persecution was concentrated in Eastern France, Germany, and Switzerland, many other countries didn’t even HAVE a burning times! Only four witches are known to have been killed in Ireland, only ten in Russia, and almost non-existent in Eastern Orthodox countries. In other words, any sort of a massive or global conspiracy fails to show anything, because they simply wasn’t one! Most of the executions, (90% or so), took place in local community courts, in places filled with civil disrest. As I outlined earlier, the Church was actually pretty tolerant to Paganism, so long as they got their money's worth. Thus we find a substantial clue here. The majority of the practices which were given

to be contemporaneous of that period were inaugurated, not by actual practices, but by the writings from thousands of writers, most of which were using each other as sources. Going back to the actual records, we find little to show that, (before the torture), the accused even knew anything about foreign religions. Why you might ask? Simple, foreign religions would have to be passed down either orally or written. As Joseph McCabe notes in his “Rationalist Encyclopaedia”, the average European couldn’t read or write. It comes as a bit of an irony that even the Church fathers probably couldn’t read or write Latin. Latin today sounds like a dictated language, primarily, because the Church Father’s, (our main source of Latin. “Original” Latin would constitute less than half a bookshelf on a library, because most of the Libraries of ancient days were attached to temples, and the pious Christians couldn’t have those foreign temples around,) couldn’t read it or write it, so a scribe would do it for them. Very few would want to maintain an oral tradition, (hint, even oral traditions as done by the Arabians and Semites of early days required quite a bit of intelligence. The Middle Ages was a time period when almost no one had any.), and thus any line or lineage would have been lost long ago, because the population simply wouldn't have been intelligent enough to even record them. Another look brings us to the "Chronicle of Higher Education", 6/18/99, Vol. 45 Issue 41, "New Research Plumbs Mysteries Behind European Witch-Craze" by Peter Monaghan. The first problem in tackling the problem is stated as thus: "During this century alone," writes Brian P. Levack, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, in his muchcited The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (Longman, 1995), "the witch-hunt has been attributed, in whole or in large part, to the Reformation, the Counter-

Reformation, the Inquisition, the use of judicial torture, the wars of religion, the religious zeal of the clergy, the rise of the modern state, the development of capitalism, the widespread use of narcotics, changes in medical thought, social and cultural conflict, an attempt to wipe out Paganism, the need of the ruling class to distract the masses, opposition to birth control, the spread of syphilis, and the hatred of women...." “It's easy to explain the witch trials through simple vilification of the witch-hunters," says Richard Kieckhefer, a professor of religion at Northwestern University and a leading researcher in the field. "The interesting historical problems arise when you realize that the witch-hunters were in many cases among the moral and even intellectual leaders of the society." “The historical context of the witch trials is dizzyingly complex. The persecutions emerged during a period of religious, social, and economic upheaval and uncertainty. They were facilitated by fundamental changes in criminal law under which the secular courts of kingdoms, states, and smaller jurisdictions took over from the Church and hugely expanded the prosecution of such crimes." “Peasant and elite conceptions of witchcraft were quite different during the persecutions, and scholars have long been aware that both must be taken into account, along with their interactions. Mr. Kieckhefer, in his influential European Witch Trials: Their Foundation in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), traced how peasant and elite notions merged. The merger led to, among other changes, the increasing conversion of minor charges of sorcery into more-serious charges of diabolism--of witchcraft.” He has since studied the relations of Witchcraft and magic more closely. "When I published European Witch Trials," he says, "the one

serious reservation I had was that it seemed to me artificial to discuss witchcraft in isolation from other forms of magic." As a result, he wrote Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Penn State University Press, 1998), which analyzes what was included in magic manuals, and what light that throws on the witch-hunts. “Too few scholars, he says, have "clear and detailed knowledge of the kinds of magic that are contained in those manuals." He discovered that, in the period preceding the anti-witch treatises, Christian theologians were profoundly uneasy, because they had begun to doubt that spirit--which Church doctrine held was the ultimate reality, beyond physical matter-really existed. For the theologians, Mr. Stephens suggests, that question appears to have amounted to "a kind of unacknowledgeable, unconfessable, unspeakable doubt about the fundamental definitions of reality put about by Christianity." And that, he deduces, led them to adopt a plan that would prove fateful for the 100,000 or more eventual victims of the witch purges. The theologians could hardly admit that they doubted the existence of spirit, let alone God. Unable to prove the reality of God, they feverishly set about demonstrating the inverse: Evil spirits, demons, really did have corporeal existence. And what could it prove? Why, that that they had sex with real women, of course! All that was needed were women’s confessions that such liaisons had occurred.” That's not our only problem to contend with as well. In "The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe" by Stuart Clark, he talks distinctively of one thing which has been

overlooked, and that is that there were two types of theology at the time. Those were church-type theologies, and sect-type theologies. Church-types saw witchcraft as a symbol for rebellion, and actions against Witches affirmed the belief in orthodoxy. Meanwhile, sect-type Churches saw the devil as something personal, he didn't have any enemies in the external World. Clark informs us, as other scholars noted above have, that if we don't understand the total atmosphere of the contemporary settings, we'll never understand the exact mentality behind the "Burning Times". The ideas about witchcraft were not homogenous, everyone had different ideas, some wildly conflicting. This type of chaos is another precursor to violence. Meanwhile, James Paxson, "Theorizing the mysteries' end in England, the artificial demonic, and the sixteenth-century witchcraze. Vol. 39, Criticism, 10-01-1997, p. 481, says that at least part of the problem is due to the loss of Medieval theaters and plays, which had diabolical elements to them. He does agree with Clark in stating that the disbelief in the demons was a big reason, as all the theological documents from Acquinas, Reginone of Pruem (lOth cent.), and of Burchard of Worms, showed "literate disbelief" in corporeal demons. He examines the early demon hunter documents versus later ones, and found that the late owns showed signs of reaction against skepticism. They thus have to resort to more and more outrageous explanations of how the Witches secret power worked, and how they met, and what the symptoms were. In short, like modern day Satanic Ritual Abuse, the effects had to be broad, the members large and unknown, and the activities secret. Quoting it: "Greenblatt argues, the new need to fear a more real but less palpable demonic world might have been the practical social manifestation of a wholesale bankrupting of

spiritual forms and beliefs that characterized the later Middle Ages: "The reality of witchcraft [in the Malleus maleficarum] is secured by the reality of the demonic contract-a contract insisted upon dogmatically, we may suggest, precisely because it is the one thing (unlike withered arms, dead cattle, or male impotence) that is never actually witnessed." In the end, what needs to be remembered is that Cohn, Michelet, etc., should not be trusted for information on the Middle Ages, or the religions of the Middle Ages. The next big contention from the Satanism and Wicca field is that of Aleister Crowley being a Satanist. Mainly because of his "Beast 666" reference. Refer to the chapter on the origins of Revelation for a thorough discussion of that. Crowley identified the number 666 with the Sun, as in the Gnostic elements and Egyptian tradition. Crowley’s idea of Satan was much different than what anyone would even identify with the Christian Satan, as he further elaborates here: "The devil does not exist. It is a name invented by the mythic Black Brothers in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil that had unity would be a God." Aleister Crowley, "Magick In Theory And Practice", page 193. The comparisons thus far between Satanism and Wicca have been very vague, and very anecdotal. While it is true that there are some undeniable connections, similarities, etc., how close they are is somewhat strange. Wicca has some connection to what I consider Modern-day Luciferianism, but to Satanism the links are negligible. Going back to Michelet, the best review of the book is given by historian Jenny Gibbons on the subject:

Jenny Gibbons, a review of Satanism and Witchcraft: "S&W is one of those hoary old books that never seems to go out of print. Written in the 19th century, it is a vivid, passionate description of medieval Witchcraft. Michelet saw Satanism and Witchcraft as the religion of the oppressed peasantry, a revolt against the crushing depredations of the feudal lords and predatory church officials. Rather than laying his theories out in a dry, academic manner, Michelet illustrates them through the "life" of a typical 14th century Witch. He describes her world and the events which drive her to embrace the Prince of Darkness. As a result, S&W reads more like poetry than history. Sounds great huh? Well, there is one teensy problem: S&W is basically a work of fiction. I can't even say that it contains a lot of errors, because that implies that it actually includes some accurate facts. S&W is a gripping book, but it doesn't bear the faintest resemblence to anything that happened on this planet.. Recently, the Sci-Fi Channel helped me come up with a good analogy for S&W. S&W is to Witchcraft Studies as "One Million Years B.C." is to paleontology. "One Million Years B.C." has cave-woman Rachel Welch running around in a fur bikini and mascara, constantly menaced by giant desert-dwelling brontosauruses. It's a hilarious combination of wildly incongruous objects. Cave-men and dinosaurs rub elbows; animals from all time periods happily roam the desert together. Fun? Yes. Science? No. S&W is a lot like that. Michelet takes Witchcraft, the Inquisition, feudal law, and a bunch of other medieval-ly sorts of things from ten different centuries (several of which are actually not part of the Middle Ages...). Then he smooshes all of them into a great story about a 14th century woman.

You'll notice that his book doesn't contain any dates -- that's because there's no time when all his various objects could co-exist. Like, when did cave-men eat t-rexes? His heroine isn't a typical victim of the Witchcraft trials, any more than Rachel's bikini and mascara are standard Paleolithic garb. How did this book happen? I mean, no one can feel too vexed with Ray Harryhousen for making "One Million Years B.C." He wasn't a scientist, and he wasn't trying to create an accurate depiction of ancient life. Michelet *was* a historian, and he *does* call this a work of fact, not fiction. What happened?

that they are both based upon Christian paradigms. Satanism is largely a reaction against Christianity, in the form of a humanistic/hedonistic approach to life. Wicca is formed by Christian conceptions about Medieval “witches”. If there is one strong constant link between the two, that is it right there. (Ironically, so many Wiccans and Satanists whine about Christianity when they owe their religion to Christianity.)

What Is Satanism? By Julian Karswell

Forger Etienne de Lamothe-Langon. Michelet drew most of his information on Witchcraft from the fictional Witch trials that Lamothe-Langon invented. So it's no surprise that his book doesn't contain many accurate facts -- it was based on a work of fiction, not historical evidence.

Satanism is a protest behavior that may or may not be connected with persons beyond the protester. It uses as a symbol Satan, the bogeyman of Judeo-Christian mythology, who in the Western world is the primary symbol of the revolt against cosmic injustice.

Does this mean I recommend you don't read S&W? Not at all! It's a great book! Michelet is witty, biting, insightful, and a joy to read. The story is a compelling tale of a woman's dawning perception of her oppression, and what she did about it. This unnamed Witch is a *much* better heroine than Rachel, who constantly needs to be rescued by Ugh the Cave-Man. So my advice is, pop some popcorn and curl up in a chair with this critter. Is it history? No. Is it fun? Oh yeah!

Protest behaviors are brought about when the inner world of a person, henceforth referred to as the Subjective Universe, is completely out of harmony with the conditions prevailing in the other world, henceforth referred to as the Objective Universe. In a healthy individual protest behaviors are a way to make the whole person aware for the need of change in their lives. In unhealthy individuals protest behaviors are obsessive and symbolic only, and are a sign of individuality making its last stand against the Objective Universe.

In addition, us compulsively serious sorts can study the book from a histriographical point of view. S&W is one major sources of the mythology of the Burning Times. Reading it helps you see where many our misconceptions came from.” So, where and is there even a time-in between Satanism and Wicca? If there would be one, it’d be that both have heavy influences of Aleister Crowley in them, and

The figure of Satan is chosen since he represents the revolt from God. Belief in "God" or "Satan" is not the criteria here. "God" is a great symbol for everything that surrounds a person, and conditions them. "God" is the town you live in, the people you live with, the paperwork you have to fill out to do something as simple and healthy as run a small home business, and that velvetrope maze that you have to go through to get

to an airplane ticket. "God" represents all and everything that has accumulated since the beginning of time, that most people in their lives firstly come to accept and secondly to valorize. "God" is easy to hate or love, but like the weather hard to do anything with. "Satan" is not the only figure that may be used against "God." If you see the patriarchal society as the source of all evil, the "Goddess" is the likely figure of choice for your spiritual dissent. However Satanists avoid this symbol, not because of a fear/mistrust of the feminine, but because the symbol becomes so easily a replacement for the figure of "God." To make such a revolt, even symbolically, presents four areas of strain in the life of the rebel. Firstly the social matrix in which the rebel finds herself will not be supportive of the revolt. In most cases this is desired on some level. We are deeply aware that we are social creatures and that we have to enlist the help of others in our Quest for freedom. Sometimes the easiest way to get their aid is to anger them, so that we can use the pressure without to aid us in our change within. But beyond the "it's neat to piss people off" stage there is a human want for approval and affection that either ends the revolt, or ends the family matrix. Only those destined to inner strength can manage to revolt and be a family member. Secondly the notion of "good" -- meaning social norms -has to sorted out from the idea of "Good" -meaning those things that increase and deepen the experience of healthy humans. Since both "good" and "Good" belong in the constellation of ideas of "God" -- the rebel has to rethink everything, and he will make mistakes. Thirdly since the figure of Satan in the postmodern age is an Image, the material that makes that image so powerful (mainly movies and rock-n-roll) does not offer an adult role model as does the literary Satanism of Anatole France or Mark Twain. Figuring out what to do after you've worn

that inverted cross for six weeks is a strain that most can't take due to the paucity and weakness of their own imagination. In fact it was due to that very weakness that they fixated on image rather than thought. Fourthly there is an utter lack of in-depth material on philosophical Satanism. Most of the information about Satanism is either psychological studies of protest behavior, Christian propaganda, or material written to convince an audience that they are already (in some obscure fashion) lord of the earth. This lack of Lore ends the revolt for all but the most self sufficient. It might be thought that leaders of Satanic movements would find these conditions deplorable. Indeed far from it. By having a situation that encourages certain responses, Satanists -- which include all sorts of the scum of the earth -- will self select to a better sort of individual, UNLESS their bad behaviors are simply enabled by those around them -- giving us the rather sad picture of a thirty-five-year old man in a faded black T-shirt living over his parents' garage and saying "Hail Satan!" a great deal. Each of the four areas of strain provide a strengthening in those that overcome them. In the area of family and job relations, certain things occur. The Satanist must develop inner strength to continue in his practice. He must demonstrate his competence and commitment to the social matrix in which he lives so that his practices are tolerated. He must develop a tolerance for the beliefs of others that does not slip into a weak-minded belief that all systems of human thought are equal. This provides for emotional training. If the Satanist is, however, enabled, or simply deals with the strain by running away for good -- he or she will never have this training and the protest behavior does not lead to a strengthening of individualism, but merely to an infantile acting out of fantasies that cannot effect the Objective Universe.

Secondly the notion of "good," "Good," and "God" provide a useful struggle for the Satanist. On the path of human ethical development, the moment when she realizes that wearing short black skirts isn't on the same moral plane as, say, murder the Satanist realizes that a large part of society is a game designed for the efficient movement of energy and money by unquestioning obedience. This moment of awakening happens in the lives of most people, certainly without the stimulus of Satanism. And in the lives of most people this awakening goes away, long before it can effect the nature of either personal or human affairs. For the Satanist however the image of Satan focuses that attention long enough for it to become part of her personal inventory. This has a positive effect on avoiding entanglements in the world, by shutting off arguments based on sentimentality and thus causing the media of the world to have an Awakening effect, exactly the opposite of what they are designed to have. Thirdly the strain of lack of direction because of the imagistic nature of Satan provides two benefits. Firstly since an image rather than a text is centralized, the Satanist is forced to make changes in his consciousness based on (hopefully) rational means -- and that any such changes are *individual* syntheses, rather than group think. However since this is hard work -- in fact making changes this way is so hard humanity pretty much dropped this methodology three thousand years ago -most people make no changes. They merely become Eskimo Pies, "Dark on the outside, light on the inside." Secondly, the Satanist must create personal mythological and aesthetic models for self-guidance. This remains why Satanism has and will have such a great effect on music and the arts. But again this requires a depth or Self (or as the world would say, "talent") so most such products are as uninspired and amateurish as the images which inspired them. Thus a

below-mediocre Satanic culture is maintained that drives away people cursed with good taste. Lastly, the lack of Lore forces four sorts of development on the serious Satanist. He must look to other persons (either historical or of his personal knowledge) to be role models. He must find people that produced both a change in themselves and the world through the mechanism of revolt. This leads to a certain deepening of self as one chooses heroes, whether artistic revolutionaries like Goethe or political ones like Gandhi. Beyond role models the question of practice comes to mind; movie images of Satanist chanting may be great -- but what do they chant? This leads to a certain "Satanic anthropology" that begins for merely aesthetic reason, but broadens into the study of the structures of the human psyche. Again the moment that people have to do something harder than pick up a tome in their local occult store, most of the weak are weeded away. The creation of lore will (at a certain level of development) require that the Satanist speak. This means that he or she must learn certain communication skills on the one hand, and truly have thought about what they are going to say on the other. This self-selects for articulate thoughtful people. The weak, who will always be with us, will have another approach -- getting on latenight radio and quoting the scripture of another person (usually a bald one). Lastly since the dissemination of such material is difficult in a world ruled by vast corporations who have a vested interest in not promoting individuality -- the Satanist (normally an anarchistic lot) -- must voluntarily band together, which provides for both a social matrix and sets up for cultural change. It must be stressed however, that Satanism is not about cultural change as a goal. If one merely identifies with a cultural/political change and one succeeds, one is made redundant and weak -- and if one fails, one is bitter and an object of fun. Cultural change, like muscles gained

working in a gym, is not the goal of the individual -- but a pleasant side effect and way of measuring progress. Satanism, an unorganized social movement, arises out of the protest behavior called Satanism. The nature of that behavior against the grain of the social matrix is one that will of its nature lead to rapid self change (for the few) and rapid self deterioration for the many. It is easy to locate any number of the later to speak on the talk show circuit, but the former seek to give a rather more precise message to the world than can easily be encapsulated in a sound bite. It should be noticed that there is a fundamentally developmental path in the strains caused by Satanism, which act synergetically on the person with focused attention. These strains -- by the nature of their resistance -- can empower an individual in his or her work with the world; however they are ultimately an exterior pressure which can only take you so far. For an even more select group in this already select group, there arises a need to develop internal (non-reactive) forces for self change. For these people there are Initiatory Schools. These Schools are the most feared part of the Satanic movement, since they can not be easily dismissed as a way to sell more albums, market cool bumper stickers, or get a spot on the Springer show. I simply want to leave you with the observation that the School is no more the object of Satanic practice than social change is. It, too is a byproduct, whose excellence or mediocrity reflects the work of those involved with it. The object of Satanic practice is, has been, and will remain the Self.

The Bizarre Legacy Of The Bavarian Illuminati.

By Michael Barkun

The Bavarian Illuminati (formally, the Order of Illuminists) was established by a Bavarian canon law professor, Adam Weishaupt, on May 1,1776. Utilizing organizational models taken from both taken from both the Jesuits and the Masons, Weishaupt created a secular organization whose aim was to free the world "from all established religious and political authority." An elaborate apparatus of secrecy and ritual was designed not only to protect the organization from state penetration but also to mold its members into an elite capable of achieving Weishaupt's grandiose objective. By the early 1780s, the group had acquired a peak membership of approximately 2,500, most in German-speaking areas. The organization's aims and clandestine methods (for example, the infiltration of some Masonic lodges) attracted unwelcome government attention. By 1787, the Illuminati had been dissolved, but its sweeping goals, attention to secrecy and insistence on unswerving personal dedication made it a model for a sizable number of early 19th-century revolutionary organizations. In short, the Illuminati influenced subsequent revolutionaries, albeit indirectly, even though the organization seems on the most reliable evidence to have lasted no more than 11 or 12 years. Yet the irony is that if its sympathizers were eager to preserve its legacy and achieve the total liberation that had eluded Weishaupt, its enemies were even more eager to keep it alive. They insisted that it had never died, that its dissolution was only apparent and that in the ultimate act of clandestinity, it had survived its own death. The fact that the order had been dissolved even before the French Revolution began made allegations of its survival all the more attractive, for how better to explain an unprecedented upheaval than by fastening on an

unprecedentedly cunning cabal. Hence, by an act of reductionist self-deception, opponents of the revolution could both explain its occurrence and resuscitate the Illuminati. And so began the convoluted tale of an evil conspiracy that was said to move from country to country and century to century, setting off revolutionary conflagrations wherever it appeared. Indeed, Richard Hofstedter began his seminal essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" with an example probably unfamiliar to most of his readers— the belief in late 18th- and early 19thcentury America that the new nation was about to be taken over by the Bavarian Illuminati. The fear of a plot by this secret Masonic society had been stoked by earlier literature that sought to portray the French Revolution as the result of an Illumi-natist conspiracy. The two key works on this revolutionary conspiracy were John Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy (1798) and Abbe Barruel's memoirs, Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1803). Although the alleged doings of Dluminatist plotters in America seemed credible to some prominent New England clerics and academics, the panic peaked by the turn of the 19th century, after which it became increasingly clear that the Illuminati lived mostly in Robison's fantasy life. Hofstadter himself disposed of the topic by noting that it may have opened the way for the antiMasonic movement of the 1820s and 1830s. The Illuminati was relegated to the role of the progenitor of a conspiracist strand in American lif e that was to take other forms in the future. In fact, however, the Illuminati— or at least the image of the Illuminati—had just begun to spread by the 1830s. Illuminati literature took a major leap in the in-terwar period of the 20th century, when the legend of Weishaupt's group became placed within a far more complex and ambitious conception of history. This

transformation was mainly the work of two English writers, Nesta Webster and Lady Queenborough, also known as Edith Starr Miller, each responsible for remarkably similar syntheses of the Illuminati literature. It is scarcely hyperbole to say, as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke does, that without Webster "few Americans today would have heard of the Illuminati." The women shared an unshakable faith in Robison's and Barruel's notion that the Illuminati was responsible for the French Revolution, and like the earlier authors, they insisted that the Illuminati had not disappeared in the late 1780s but had gone on causing mayhem for decades thereafter. More important, Webster and Queenborough added two ideas that turned out to be immensely influential in later years: First, that world history could be correctly understood only as the product of the machinations of secret societies; and second, that Jews were central to these activities. By elevating secret societies to the role of prime movers in world history, the authors left the French Revolution behind, extending the Illuminati's field of action into the present—including, above all, a catalytic role in the Russian Revolution. By linking Illuminism with the Jews, Webster and Queenborough gained access to a whole new body of conspiracy ideas, which they quickly appropriated. The problem they both confronted was that of fitting an organization that had not been founded until 1776 and that appeared to have fizzled out in about 1787 into a conspiracist historiography. Building such a theory, while at the same time giving the Illuminati their due, required them to sweep in a who raft of other organizations as ancestors, successors, affiliates or subsidiaries of the Illuminati. In the end, Webster and Queenborough included, among many others, the Knights Templar, the Cabalists, the Rosicrucians and the Carbonari, postulating or claiming to demonstrate all manner of linkages among

dozens of clandestine groups. Thus was born the concept of a kind of interlocking directorate of conspirators who operate through a network of secret societies. The fact that there had been secret societies that played a modest role channeling European political dissent from about 1790 until the middle of the 19th century gave a surface plausibility to some of these claims. Webster's and Queenborough's ideas quickly crossed the Atlantic. The main channel for their dissemination in America appears to have been Gerald Winrod. His 1935 pamphlet, "Adam Weishaupt, a Human Devil," drew explicitly on Webster and Queenborough, as well as on Barruel and Robison. Paraphrasing Queenborough, Winrod concluded, "The real conspirators behind the Illuminati were Jews." As far as he was concerned, communism in the Soviet Union was merely Iluminism's most recent manifestation. Anti-Illuminism thus became a staple of the American far right, particularly in that variant that linked the Illuminati to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. This tendency was doubtless reinforced by the wide circulation given in the 1920s to Victor Marsden's English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whose contents were disseminated in the United States through Henry Ford's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. In fact, Illuminism was of more than merely antiquarian interest, for the American right was on the threshold of an Illuminati explosion. Much of the stimulus for this renewed interest came from the John Birch Society, founded by Robert Welch in 1958. Welch himself picked up the strands of Robison's argument even as Hofstadter was writing in 1964, and it remained a staple of the society's view of history after Welch's death. Larry Abraham's Call It Conspiracy, first published in 1971, claims to expose a

conspiracy of "Insiders" bent on world domination: "After the Insiders have established the United Socialist States of America (in fact if not in name), the next step is the Great Merger of all nations of the world into a dictatorial world government." Although his roster of Insiders is drawn from the usual reservoir—the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission—their roots are claimed to be in the late 18th-century Illuminati. A more openly anti-Semitic version of Illuminati theory came in 1984 from the pen of Eustace Mullins, a protege of Ezra Pound. Like his men- tormentor, Mullins sees the world's evil as a product of financial manipulation, in which Jews play a central role. But his conspiracist vision makes the Illuminati merely a link in a much longer chain that extends back to the ancient Near East and forward to the nascent community movement of early Marx. A slightly different set of emphases informed William T. Still's 1990 book, New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies. Here, the link between the Illuminati and the Rothschilds is of prime importance. By the time Weishaupt and his key followers were forced to flee Bavaria, "the Illuminati had taken root among the rich and powerful of Europe, including, possibly, the wealthiest of all, the first international bankers and railway kings, the German brothers Rothschild." Weishaupt's infiltration of the Masonic movement, together with the Rothschilds' money, made possible the manipulation of the French Revolution. But Still parts company with many earlier writers in concentrating on Masonry as the key to understanding the conspiracy's reach. Religious concerns hover in the background of much recent Illuminati literature; the Illuminatists' deism tends to be regarded as anti-Christian agitation, if not outright Satanism. In the majority of the literature, the

alleged Illuminatist attack on revealed religion is a secondary motif, but in the works of Texe Marrs and Pat Robertson, it emerges as the central theme. Unlike almost all others who have written about the Illuminati, Texe Marrs detaches the idea from any historic roots. While deeply suspicious and fearful of Masonry, Marrs, a Texas-based evangelist, has no particular interest in Weishaupt or in the actual Illuminati order. Instead, it becomes an umbrella category under which he can subsume everything from the Knights of Malta and Skull and Bones to the Aspen Institute and the Trilateral Commission. No work on the Illuminati published in recent decades—whether secular or religious —has matched the influence of Pat Robertson's The New World Order, which first appeared in 1991- With several hundred thousand copies in print, it turns up in mainstream bookstores and airport paperback racks, as well as at outlets that cater to evangelicals. Robertson's secret plotters aim to create a world government, simultaneously attacking Christian religion and American liberties, and setting in motion the final struggle between the forces of good and evil that will bring history to a close.

The Bill of No Rights by Rhiannon De Sade

We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our greatgreat-great grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally

whiny, guilt-ridden delusional and other liberal, commie, pinko bedwetters. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that a whole lot of people were confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of No Rights. ARTICLE I: You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV or any other form of wealth. More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything. ARTICLE II: You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the World is full of idiots, and probably always will be. ARTICLE III: You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful, do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy. ARTICLE IV: You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of professional couch potatoes who achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes. ARTICLE V: You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we're just not interested in health care. ARTICLE VI: You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim or kill someone, don't be surprised if the rest of us want to see you fry in the electric chair. ARTICLE VII: You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don't be surprised if the rest

of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won't have the right to a big-screen color TV or a life of leisure. ARTICLE VII: You don't have the right to demand that our children risk their lives in foreign wars to soothe your aching conscience. We hate oppressive governments and won't lift a finger to stop you from going to fight if you'd like. However, we do not enjoy parenting the entire world and do not want to spend so much of our time battling each and every little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat. ARTICLE VIII: You don't have the right to a job. All of us sure want all of you to have one, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make yourself useful. ARTICLE X: You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to pursue happiness which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.

Closing Statement