It’s not something new, but it’s been exploding in popularity and notoriety since the election of Donald Trump. Witches and warlocks and Wiccans have been gathering each month since February of 2017 to cast a spell on the Donald and end his presidency. Thousands will gather in the week preceding Halloween to repeat the ritual. The Washington Examiner describes the practice. “The ritual calls for the use of an unflattering photo of Trump, a tarot card, a stub of an orange candle, a pin, and a feather. Participants then call on the ‘heavenly hosts, demons of the infernal realms, and spirits of the ancestors’ to bind Trump ‘so that his malignant works may fail utterly.’” The number of Wiccans in the US has gone from about 8,000 in 1990 to possibly as many as 1.5 million in 2015.[i] The occult is no longer considered rare or shocking. It even has its place in the military.
We’ve been seeing examples of it here in Western New York. A few months back a van full of what appeared to be witches invaded our second-ring suburban church parking lot and prayed spells and incantations while gesturing wildly at our church. Those of us present went out and prayed on the same ground, took communion and redeemed the land. And just this week it was reported that the library of a nearby town was having a medium present on a regular basis as a part of their events schedule – and that a local coven would be ritualizing at a local flea market. [And there are plans again to deal with that in a spiritual manner. It is good to remember in these times the words of scripture. “Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1John 4:3-4)]
Where is this dramatic shift in our culture coming from? I would argue that there is a kind of synergy that exists between the Christ-Rejecting / Scripture-Renouncing movement that would overthrow all external moral authority and the purely hedonistic tenets of Satanism. Aleister Crowley was given the Book of the Law while under the influence of the demon Aiwass. Chapter I, line 40 sums up Satanic philosophy quite succinctly by laying down the central tenet of what they call the Law of Thelema. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”[ii] [A rather selfish principal by which to live, one must admit.] One leg of the anti-God movement is firmly planted in the LGBTQ movement. For one thing, even though some denominations will ordain clergy and perform gay marriages they have to do a pretzel dance to justify such actions biblically or just plain lie about or ignore the clear dictates of scripture. Lucien Graves, head of the US Satanic Temple, estimates that more than half his membership is LGBTQ. “Within the Satanic Temple, we’re all pretty much one and the same. We’re all Satanists and it’s not like we have ‘tolerance’ for trans people or gay people or sex workers, we just don’t [BLANKING] care, and a lot of people in those communities appreciate that.” Now it should be noted that one of the chief causes of the Satanic Temple is anti-pro-life campaigning. And that happens to be the other major source of anti-Christian, anti-biblical virulence.[iii] They are, as it happens, finding willing allies in the form of some rather confused clergy who apparently, do not take the dictates of scripture seriously. Here’s this headline from Life News. “‘Christian’ Pastors Bless Abortion Clinic, Singing ‘Hallelujah. Bless This Room’”[iv] The result of all of this is a form a moral chaos in which there exists no culturally definitive expression for what’s right and wrong on a societal level. [That being the case, it’s interesting that the form of ‘magick’ being performed in the anti-Trump spells is defined by some as “chaos magjick.”[v] That does, after all, define the state of today’s society.]
[i] Jeffrey Cimmino, Witch Hunt, The Washington Examiner, October 18, 2019
[ii] Brandi Williams, Do What Thou Wilt, Patheos, May 9, 2014
[iii] Satanic Temple head: More than 50% of our membership is LGBTQ, Life Site News, August 29, 2019
[iv] ‘Christian’ Pastors Bless Abortion Clinic, Singing ‘Hallelujah. Bless This Room’, Life News, August 28, 2019
[v] Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, October 30, 2017
Leave a Reply