[Editor’s note: Reader’s
caution is advised. Contains descriptions of ceremonies,events which may
be disturbing to some readers.]
In Cults That Kill:
Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime, award-winning investigative
journalist Larry Kahaner chronicles interviews with police officials and
occultists throughout the country showing that occult crimes, including
drug peddling, child abduction/rape/pornography/ sacrifice, and worse
are now practiced in places across America.1
For example, detective Pat
Metoyer of the Los Angeles Police Department observes,
We think we discovered a
correlation between Easter week and occult-related crime. From Palm
Sunday to Easter Sunday is the week for killing babies. We watch for
kidnappings and that sort of thing. The patients we’re dealing with
have told us that babies are killed during those days. One person said
she has seen six babies killed during that time period.... These
groups don’t always kidnap babies. Some have doctors within the group
who will perform the birth and not fill out a birth certificate. Then
when they sacrifice the baby they’re not really killing anyone who
existed.... Before we say something like this, it has been verified
with a minimum of five separate people who don’t know each other, who
have never spoken to each other. Minimum five people.2
Most people are simply not
ready to believe these kinds of things are really happening, which, of
course, works to the Satanist’s advantage. Frankly, we were not quite
ready for it either. We have knowledge of confidential police reports of
murders committed by Satanists that are so vile we cannot describe them
publicly—merely reading about them makes one feel debased and sick.
The fact that there are
currently hundreds of thousands of witches, Satanists, animists, and
other pagans in the country is reason enough for genuine concern. But
that such acts can and are being committed should not be surprising.
What is surprising is that
some people refuse to admit to the fact of a neopagan revival of
considerable proportions and that groups which engage in ritual murder
do so on the basis of an amoral philosophy and religious necessity.
Whether it be rewards from the devil or spirits or gods; the reducing of
the victim’s alleged karma; the supposed psychic rush and infusion of
occult power from the act of human sacrifice, or other "benefits," the
point is that the activity is condoned by an amoral worldview and
justified on the basis of religious (pagan) principles.
The attainment of power is
common to witchcraft, Satanism, and magic, and here we again see the
necessity for the abolition of time, history, and normal consciousness.
Possession and sacrifice are key ingredients. For example, the witches’
magic circle is a place
where time disappears,
where history is obliterated. ... Some covens use music, chanting, and
dancing to raise psychic energy within the circle.... The most common
form of "working" is known as "raising a cone of power."... Many of
the revivalist covens have rituals in which the Goddess, symbolized by
the moon, is "drawn down" into a priestess of the coven who, at times,
goes into trance and is "possessed by" or "incarnates" the Goddess
force. Similarly, there are rituals where the God force is drawn down
into the priest who takes the role of the god in the circle. In these
rituals Witches become the gods.3
Witch Justine Glass observes
in Witchcraft: The Sixth Sense:
The object of ritual,
including the Black Mass, is to raise power (paraphysical power) to
implement and strengthen the mental force of its practitioners. Some
form of measurable energy is given off by intensely-experienced
emotion, the exact character of which is not known—but then neither is
the exact character of electricity; and there is no doubt that the
emotions generated by the Black Mass constitute a considerable energy
potential.4
In The Black Arts,
Richard Cavendish discusses one rationale for human sacrifice: the
dramatic increase of occult energy:
In the later grimoires5 the
sacrifice tends to be more closely associated with the ceremony itself
and in modern rituals the victim is sometimes slaughtered at the
height of the ceremony. This is done to increase the supply of force
in the circle. In occult theory a living creature is a storehouse of
energy, and when it is killed most of this energy is suddenly
liberated. The killing is done inside the circle to keep the animal’s
energy in and concentrate it. The animal should be young, healthy and
virgin, so that its supply of force has been dissipated as little as
possible. The amount of energy let loose when the victim is killed is
very great, out of all proportion to the animal’s size or strength,
and the magician must not allow it to get out of hand. If he is unsure
of himself or lets his concentration slacken, he may be overwhelmed by
the force he has unleashed.
It is an ancient magical
principle that blood is the vehicle in which an animal’s life-energy
is carried. The spirit or force which is summoned in the ceremony is
normally invisible. It can appear visibly to the magician by fastening
on a source of energy on the physical plane of existence. It may do
this by taking possession of one of the human beings involved in the
ritual. Alternatively, it can seize on the fumes of fresh blood, or on
the smoke from the brazier, but blood is more effective.
The most important reason
for the sacrifice, however, is the psychological charge which the
magician obtains from it. The frenzy which he induces in himself by
ceremonious preparations, by concentration, by incantations, by
burning fumes, is heightened by the savage act of slaughter and the
pumping gush of red blood.6
He proceeds to refer to human
sacrifice:
It would obviously be more
effective to sacrifice a human being because of the far greater
psychological "kick" involved. Eliphas Levi said that when the
grimoires talk about killing a kid they really mean a human child.
Although this is highly unlikely, there is a tradition that the most
effective sacrifice to demons is the murder of a human being....
In practice, human victims
normally being in short supply, the magician’s bloody sacrifice is the
killing of an animal or the wounding of the magician himself or one of
his assistants, whose skin is gashed till the blood runs. If this is
combined with the release of sexual energy in orgasm, the effect is to
heighten the magician’s frenzy and the supply of force in the circle
still further.7
Satanists have various
reasons for human sacrifice. With specific body parts, they can
allegedly garner increased power. The head may be believed to contain
the spirit and may even be slept with for a period of weeks until the
power of the spirit is absorbed by the Satanist. The heart may contain
the soul and may actually be eaten for its power, etc. A candle made
from the fat of an unbaptized baby is allegedly a prized possession
among some Satanists.8
Witches are also involved in
human sacrifice, though to a much lesser degree; several cases are
mentioned in Kahaner’s Cults That Kill.9 But witchcraft easily
becomes a recruiting ground for Satanism as the need for more power
grows. And as the need for power grows, occult crime increases.
Indeed, for the last 30
years, stories about devil worship, witchcraft, satanic ritual, and
criminal activity have become increasingly common across the world. In
Australia, the Melbourne Observer tells the tragic story of
Lorrian Faithfull who died in bizarre circumstances in her St. Kilda
flat. It was some 15 days after she died of a suspected overdose of
drugs that her rotting body was found, no longer beautiful, a bloated
and blackened thing.
Only ten days before her
death, she had spoken to reporter Brian Blackwell and revealed how
deeply troubled she was—afraid of members of the satanic cult to which
she once belonged. There were paintings and books about the devil all
over her apartment, and little bells draped around the walls were
supposed to keep the evil spirits away. The air had been thick with
incense, and she constantly drew on her marijuana joint as she told
about her life as a so-called daughter of the devil.
She admitted that she had
taken part in a number of satanic orgies, and that those taking part
sought Satan’s help to bring harm to other people. According to Lorrian,
it had worked in a number of cases. However, the time came when she felt
she could not continue with these practices. According to the newspaper
report, the crisis came when she saw a privately made Italian film
showing an actual human sacrifice. She left the cult, but could never
shake off the past, and night and day she was tormented. Though she had
rejected the macabre world of the satanic underground, she still felt
its power and did not seek deliverance in the only way that could be
effective spiritually.
In the end this tortured and
bewildered girl tried, for the tenth time, to commit suicide by an
overdose of drugs. She finally succeeded.10
Notes:
1 Larry Kahaner, Cults
That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime (New York:
Warner, 1988), p. 246.
2 Ibid., p. 240.
3 Margot Adler, Drawing
Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans
in America Today (New York: The Viking Press, 1979), p.167.
4 Justine Glass,
Witchcraft: The Sixth Sense (North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire, 1965),
pp. 47-48.
5 A grimoire is "a
text-book of Black Magic" (Lewis Spence, An Encyclopedia of
Occultism (New York, NY: Citadel Press, 1996), p. 194).
6 Richard Cavendish, The
Black Arts (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), pp. 247-48.
7 Ibid., pp. 248-249.
8 Kahaner, Cults That
Kill, pp. 140-141, 161.
9 Ibid., pp. 17, 103.
10 Melbourne Observer,
Feb. 17, 1974.
